Hope

The city stank.

Not just the usual stench of the slums, mostly because they were on Road Street, but something far stranger and fouler, unlike anything he knew to compare it to; no one else, seemed to smell it either so it might be magical in nature and omnipresent.

Either way, he had to put that out of his mind. They had been staking out this place for almost three days now and a carriage literally leaking mana, even though there were several restrictive enchantments as far as Irwyn could tell, had finally rolled up in front of the labyrinthine warehouse complex. Well, the carriage part was mostly Kalista speaking since they were hidden on a roof a bit too far away for him to properly see with the naked eye. He just felt the magic, and he also did feel most of the source move as Kalista reported four figures leaving the large carriage with a large strongbox.

“That is definitely our mark,” Irwyn said. “I can feel it a bit better now but it is a bit strange. The magic leaking from within tastes a bit like both Fire and Light but not quite like either.”

“I have no clue what that means.”

“Yes, sorry. I think I can also suddenly feel two casters, they were probably hidden in the carriage, but their presence is… faint.”

“Two smug-looking assholes in bath robes commanding around the two grunts carrying our loot,” Kalista confirmed as the quartet entered the building. “Faint?”

“How to put this... One of them is definitely Void but they just don’t feel that much like Void. For example, if Alira felt like 10 out of 10 Void, this person feels more like a 1 or 2. Same for the other one who feels like he would be Time/Space.”

“Well, no surprise some poor sod sent as an escort is not exactly up to standards of house Blackburg. Can you take them?”

“Maybe, but I can definitely get a jump on them. If Blackburg agents could not tell I was a caster those two certainly will not.”

“Alright, let’s go back and call it in. It’s dusk in a few hours and we need to get ready,” Kalista retracted her monocular and crept towards the ladder at the edge of the roof. It was better to not stand up and risk being haphazardly seen.

Irwyn nodded and followed suit. They would do one last round of scouting before going in but one thing was for certain:

The heist of their lives was happening that very night.

Irwyn was damn nervous and the consistent stench did not help. Still, their group walked through the tunnel. Maxim, Waylan, Rainer and himself all went in while Kalista, as well as another group, waited outside to give support if need be. They had many contingencies but the plan itself was relatively simple: Get to a wall adjacent to the vault, burn a hole through it without the mages noticing, let Rainer unlock the strongbox and then get out before things went to hell.

That probably was not going to work which was why they had a cartload of back-ups for every scenario they had managed to think up.

The tunnel was a blessing as it spared them the trouble of actually getting inside, apparently, it was an escape chamber leading from the warehouse manager’s office though it could also be used to get in if you had an inside woman who knew that the current manager never stayed overnight and was not particularly strict about how to keep secret layouts plans all that secret.

They filled into the office and Waylan immediately went out to scout as he would for this operation. In the meantime, Maxim made sure his uniform was properly adjusted, which it was; he looked perfectly like just another guard on a night shift. He would be their rear guard.

Waylan returned to the room and gave them a hand sign of all clear. They would not speak a word before the heist was over or things went way out of control. The group snuck out and went down the agreed-upon route, fully based on the map they had all memorised.

Waylan generally sneaked ahead of the group and warned them of any possible patrols, the hallways were dark but not pitch black, the occasional wall lamp providing just barely enough light to see their ebony-clad figures if one knew they were there.

Irwyn counted the turns and how many times they had gone straight at an intersection, comparing it to the image of the layout he had in his head. He had the advantage of being able to roughly feel where the vault was at all times so navigation would be down to him in case everyone else lost track.

And it was much harder than just following a fixed path. Waylan had to take them on multiple detours because of patrolling guards. Even with all the insider knowledge they had, it was impossible to actually rely on matching the supposed guard patrol paths. The guards were people and with minimal oversight, they realistically went wherever they felt like, some even just resting against a wall somewhere, alone or in chatting groups.

Maxim even had his broken lantern prepared, as well as a cursing explanation of it breaking and a comment about complaining to the shift manager that they knew the name of. Fortunately, that did not come into use.

As they were getting close Irwyn tapped on the wall, just loudly enough to gather attention on him. They were in a short hallway, Waylan having just returned with an all-clear. With hand signs and a bit of pantomime Irwyn conveyed what he felt: That only one of the casters he had felt earlier in the day was there, the Void/Darkness one. Unfortunately, they were also inside the vault.

That was not the scenario their group had hoped for. Best case the casters would not be anywhere near. On the other hand, one of the casters was not in the warehouse complex at all, Irwyn was sure of that much. The main reason he could only determine that was the case from so up close was that the over-enchanted vault door and leaking treasure impeded how accurately he could sense the circumstances from a large distance. As they reached the enchanted back wall of the vault, Iwyn could feel the caster was in the middle of the sealed room. He couldn’t see inside but they seemed to be sitting or standing still in place. So Irwyn’s group waited for them to move.

As confident as they were, there was no way someone inside the vault would not notice the walls melting and react before they got to restrain them. In the meantime, Irwyn got to confirm that the enchantment had not changed and that there definitely was no alarm attached to them.

It took almost an hour before the caster moved. During that time they had to get out of the way of a passing guard twice, confirming at least that this area was not secured significantly more than the rest of the building.

When they did move, the caster came to the very corner of the room, one accessible from where they were. Irwyn signaled as such and immediately got to work. Perhaps there would not be another such opportunity.

Magic built up inside Irwyn as he carefully restrained it from leaking from within his body. He took a deep breath and placed his palm against the wall as everyone moved far away from him. Flames burst from his palm and the wall melted, the stone unable to bear that heat with the enchantment barely helping against a kind of intrusion it was not designed to prevent. He felt the enchantment crumble as a hole was torn into it; in just a second he was almost through, molten rock flowing out with a bit of help from the half-solid flames moving it. Instead of burning straight through and possibly killing the person on the other side, Irwyn leapt from his prepared pose and burst through the remaining few centimeters of the loose wall, tackling the mage in doing so.

As it turns out they had caught him, for the mage was visibly male, with his pants literally down, sitting on the improvised toilet installed for him in the corner. As the man was dazed Irwyn quickly filled the caster’s mouth with solid, albeit harmless, light proceeding to bind his legs and arms. It was a bit of a gamble but it seemed like most mages needed to speak to actually cast, Irwyn would keep a constant watch over him for any buildup of magic but it was better than constantly knocking him unconscious for however long they needed to open the strongbox.

Irwyn did not burn. That could not be said about his clothes that he had to hastily extinguish as well some of the fire spreading over the caster. Irwyn’s full black attire was damaged but that much was acceptable he supposed. Clothes were replaceable, all that mattered was that his face remained hidden. Keeping a bit of focus on the gagged and dazed caster he returned to the burned hole. With significantly less urgency he enlarged it and shaped it until he felt like it looked as though someone had dug through. Not that it would make any real difference once someone interrogated the caster but he felt like it was worth the extra few seconds to possibly confuse some investigator later. Then he cooled the rock down, the heat in them had come from his very own flames after all, and beckoned for Rainer to come in.

Then they got to work on the strongbox while Waylan and Maxim kept watch beyond the wall. They were on a clock now. When someone came by and noticed the torn-down wall there would be only so much time that could be stalled for before someone started yelling alarm across the entire building.

First off, Irwyn inspected the highly magical chest with their loot, the locking mechanism in particular, and sighed in relief because his most hopeful guess had been fulfilled: Whatever protected the lock was made of void magic. This was the Duchy of Black after all and such enchantments were probably the most accessible. That made things easier for them as Irwyn manifested lockpicks of pure solid light, handing them to Rainer.

Next, he carefully watched for any hint of magical buildup or a trap while Rainer fiddled with the lock itself. Based on his expression it was apparently very well made mechanically and based on the void magic layers that kept being dispersed it also had a surprising amount of enchantments, though not quite as many as the vault door and without any hint of intention behind the magic.

It took several minutes, far longer than Rainer would usually take with even the most complex locks, but then it finally opened. There was no click, in fact, no sound at all; instead, Irwyn felt the leaking magic magnify tenfold and spew forth as the opening seemed to interrupt the enchantment hiding it.

Cautions of a last-second trap, Irwyn motioned Rainer to move away, his friend immediately moving over to the tied caster to move him out of sight from the hole, and carefully opened the strongbox himself.

Inside was a single crystal.

But just that word did not do it justice for it was so much more, for within that crystalline structure were contained the very skies. But not night or day or dusk or dawn but all skies and none at the same time. It was like every impression of heavens above had converged into one and despite the impossibility of it had all been merged into one unshakable impression. However, despite the beauty, it was problematic; Irwyn’s brain knew what it was seeing while it was unable to actually translate it into coherent thought or memory, quickly starting the onset of a headache as his mind tried to cope with the illogical images.

Yet Irwyn could not look away for a part of him yearned. Yet another was melancholic. A few were happy at just the proximity, some screamed in anger. It was confusing beyond words, so many mixed emotions and thought rampaged through him to the point he could not think straight, or even so much as think at all. Instead, he instinctively reached out. He touched the mesmerizing crystal.

And something awoke.