Derik's Luck 03

From TSade

[edit] The Master Thief

High above the Baron Hamel’s great hall, there lies a sapphire of incredible beauty and flawlessness. This sapphire is a perfect sphere, not a single facet along the brilliant blue edge. Rumors state that it was polished against the thighs of a hundred virgins, but Derik suspected it was closer to thirty, and probably not all of them were really virgins. And maybe not even their thighs.

But that didn’t really matter.

What mattered is that the sapphire was flawless. And in a world where the more perfect the tool, the more magic can come of it, the sapphire is probably the most desired crystal in all of the barony or even the country. At least two million marks worth of desire.

He sighed softly as he stared at it. It was beautiful, almost the same color as his eyes, but somehow more ethereal than he could ever imagine. Four massive statues, each one easily ten meters in height, stood around the sapphire. Carved in the shape of a dragon-like ferret, it somehow gave the impression of strength and absurdity that marked Hamel’s belief that you should never take him for granted. Each statue held out a single massive paw, pointing with a single massive claw to balance the sapphire on four points of perfectly balanced stone.

Below the sapphire, the statues held a large sheet of stained glass parallel to the floor. The baron had the entire barony mapped out in lead so the magical light that shone through the sapphire would cast a blue-tinted image of the map on the floor of his great hall. Stealing the sapphire would turn the map a different color and the six, heavily-armed guards who patrolled the great hall at all hours would instantly notice something messing with the sapphire.

Another way of seeing it, it was the perfect way of displaying the sapphire without anyone stupid enough to risk stealing it. Even if the guards with crossbows weren’t enough, Derik already knew that the statue arms, though the perfect stepping place, were trapped with a magical flame trap. And they also dripped acid when there was any pressure on them. The flame above the sapphire was just as dangerous, able to burn away flesh and bone in seconds but inflict no damage on the priceless sapphire.

Derik let out another sigh of amusement as he crouched in the shadows of the great room, balanced on a thin ledge five meters above the ground. His slender body was wrapped in dark gray fabric, clinging to his body so tightly he couldn’t even wear underwear. The only other color were his blue eyes and the intricate stitchery along the hands and feet of his outfit.

He swallowed, mentally preparing for the worse. But, he couldn’t make a mistake. There was too much at stake, including his own life if he screwed up.

There was also the fear of Rick.

Or even worse, Wendi. If it wasn’t for Gluk paying for the healer, he’d still be in traction and Wendi would be gloating. She and her brothers worked him over pretty hard and he still felt the ache in his bones from their beating.

He shuddered at the thought and inspected the ceiling. Despite the guards patrolling, he managed to cross the mosaic ceiling three times already, placing nearly invisible brackets made of glass into the cracks. His uniform held an enchantment to allow him to climb along ceilings and walls; it would have been child’s play to steal the sapphire but he would be vulnerable to the guards if he crawled that way. Instead, he held on a clear rope that would have cost him a fortune... if he didn’t just outright steal it from the artificer’s shop two nights before.

Heart pounding, he worked a large blue glass sphere from a small bag at his waist. It was sapphire, but not nearly as perfect as the one above it. But, it was almost the right color and the least amount of fractures inside. It would last under the magical flame for a while, at least, and he planned on being long gone before it shattered.

His eyes probed the floor below, watching the guards moving in their almost graceful patrol, shifting and turning almost unexpectedly. It was a dance, one that left no moment with the floor unprotected.

Except one.

Seeing how the practiced movements came to the point he needed, Derik held his breath and tried to calm his heart. He hefted the crystal in his hand and almost dropped it. Then, he had to move and launched himself into the air.

A faint popping noise filled the room, barely heard with the impact of the heavy boots against the ground. Each of the glass brackets snapped off, cracking the mosaic as he flung himself toward the center of the hall. The world blurred as he raced toward the sapphire, the magical flame shimmering the air as it bore the blue flame into the map of the barony.

He almost dropped the fake crystal once again as the world seemed to come to a halt. Every heartbeat pounded in his chest as he felt the heat pouring off the crystal and the flame above. His hand slid down the rope, practiced mentally as he reached out.

At the first touch of the flame, pain exploded along his wrists, the heat and light so bright he could see his bones.

Then, with a flick of his wrist, he managed to swap the two crystals, release the rope with a snap and fling himself across the room.

A second rope glitter in the edge of his vision and he caught it, swinging hard as more glass brackets popped along the ceiling. The wall rushed up to him and he prayed that he guessed everything right. At the last moment, he spotted one of the many ventilation openings in the great hall, used to exchange some of the heat that built up when the room bustled with life. He already removed all the covers to sixteen of the openings but he still worried.

Then, as he reached the apex of his swing, he released his hand and plummeted toward the opening, stretching his body thin as he punched right inside, sliding along the tight opening with the speed of his movements. One edge caught his uniform and he felt it tear from the movement.

Behind him, he could imagine how the ropes would snap around, wrapping around the arms of the statues and trigger their acidic touch. The glass brackets would finally snap off, falling to the ground. They would be easily found, he grinned to himself, except the brackets were mounted in very carefully.

Well, almost carefully, it took him a couple hours in the old courthouse to find the building plans.

He came to a halt inside the ventilation of the baron’s castle right as the mosaic on the ceiling started to fall off, raining down ceramic and glass down on the heads of the guards. He grinned as he heard the cries for help and alarm, then the crack as a large section plummeted to the ground.

Derik gave himself a chance to congratulate himself when he realized his hand was smoking. Looking down with surprise, he realized the super-heated sapphire was burning a hole in his stealth outfit. Swearing silently, he jerked and the sapphire dropped to the bottom of the vent, smoldering as he tried to quietly put out the flame.

It took a few precious seconds for him to put out the flame and he already felt the heat filling the vent. The noises in the great hall were increasing as more guards came rushing and he felt an hourglass counting down the seconds until he was discovered.

He grabbed the sapphire, but his fingers only bruised against the side of the vent. Surprised, he looked around to see the priceless, nearly magical, sapphire rolling down the vent, into the darkness.

“Fuck!” he whispered as softly as he could and crawled after it. Dust burned away from the sapphire as it casually rolled just out of his reach. He crawled after it, winching with every crunch of dust against his knees.

Five minutes of frantic crawling in the narrow vent left him sweating and gasping, the sapphire rolling to a stop then moving again just as his fingers almost touched it. He swore softly as he snarled at the sapphire and chased after it.

Finally, it came to a halt and he let out a sigh of relief. Sweat dripped from his brow, soaking into his uniform, as he stared at it. The sapphire rolled back and forth, as if teasing him.

Then he noticed it was caught on the very edge of an opening of the vents. An open opening.

“Aw, fuck...” he whispered as the sapphire bumped up against the edge and seemed to balance right on the stone edge, dancing on the edge of the dark pit below.

The flawless sapphire casually rolled over the edge and Derik lunged forward, fingers clutching. His slender body slid along the stone and he braced his feet on both edges of the opening as he caught the sapphire.

He didn’t have a second to spare, dangling above the darkness of an unknown room, before the heat of the sapphire began to burn at his clothes. He stared at the dim flames as they rose up along his shirt. Flames roared up his arm, igniting it as if the magically treated cloth had been doused in oil.

Biting back a whimper of pain, he clenched his stomach and tried to roll up.

That is when, in a spat of terrible luck, the injuries Wendi gave him flared up, a spasm that sparkled along his back and made his muscles lurch. Derik’s feet started to slip into the opening of the vent. Hissing, he managed to lurch up long enough to shove the sapphire down the vent, in a safe direction he hoped, before his feet slipped off the edge. Blindly, he grabbed at the edge of the vent to pull himself up, but his clothes flared into full flame and he slipped, plummeting into the darkness, lit only by his flaming clothes.