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The evening bells rolled out over the walls, towers and courtyards of the great Arcanists’ Academy, their bright song amplified by spellcraft to reach every corner of the grounds, and the ears of every student, hurrying them along to their respective House dormitories, and their evening curfew…
Gracefully avoiding being jostled by hurrying academics, a pretty blonde girl with a bright, sweet smile stepped seamlessly into the flow. Just another student on her way to her sleeping quarters, assigned books in hand, to perform the assigned readings of the assigned spells for her assigned evening study before sleeping in her assigned bed and waking at the assigned hour for her assigned morning classes.
Only her eyes were the tell. The other students kept theirs ahead on their destinations, or on the faces of their friends as they chattered, or on their own feet as they huddled in their thoughts while they walked.
Hers darted like bright blue fish from one architectural detail to the next, taking almost imperceptible note of the layout of the academy’s maze of corridors, stairs, courtyards, vaults and annexes. Studying the timing on the dimensional shifting of some of the buildings, the exact angles and fields of vision of the arcane eyes peeking from glorious statues of the Academy’s esteemed founders and past alumni to keep vigilant tabs on the movements of the student body…
Her musings were only interrupted by a sound that still made many of the student body jump, no matter how accustomed they were to it by now; the rumble of an explosion, big enough to shake the marble floors under their feet and make the floating will-o-wisp lanterns wobble in midair, followed by the zing and pop of fireworks.
It came from the Grand Alchemy Tower, of course. Master Arcanist Ziggs’ personal laboratory, one of the most mysterious and difficult to access places on the Academy grounds, for safety reasons, of course.
The girl didn’t let her eyes go there.
Ziggs was both a figure of legend and infamy. One of the greatest living Arcanists, a true master of magic and science and the places they meet—but also one excessively fond of volatile chemicals, and using his incalculable knowledge, for reasons unfathomable to his peers, to make things explode. A lot.
The girl hid her smile.
But as the tide of students heading back to Silverwing Tower’s quarters flowed up the main tower stairwell, she, dressed in Academy colours, simply stepped out of the tide and into an alcove between two arch-necked statues of the resplendent, griffon-like birds…
No one noticed the subtle bending of light that wreathed her. They didn’t see her, settling her back to the statue, right in the corner…
…and then no-one could.
The resting hours had long since commenced. Wisp-lanterns floating down the many corridors of the Academy now bobbed and drifted with their lights dimmed all the way down, followed by the one-eyed golems the students called ‘the Ol’ Peepers’, sleepy sentinels whose primary task was catching misbehaving students sneaking about after curfew.
Once they were sure there were no flesh-folk about, a few of the statues would, on occasion, animate for a quiet conversation or two. They had a lot to catch up on, after all, being incorrigible gossips. What else did one have to do with one’s sedentary (sometimes sedimentary) existence when one was a statue, after all, except spill all that overheard tea from the noisy walkers around?
Even the books rustled and whispered and occasionally swapped pages just to mess with the students. It was well known that the tomes on the ninth library floor all snored incessantly, and had been moved there together on purpose so as to no longer disturb the rest of other books…
The Arcanist Academy never truly slept. Of course it didn’t—it was more than half alive itself, as might be expected of a floating cluster of ancient wizards’ towers built over the ruins of an even-more-ancient forgotten city built by primordial demigods whose culture, origins and indeed existence was a subject of ferocious academic debate, built over a nexus of ley-lines and their accompanying arcane energies, after all…
No wonder the greatest wizards, witches, warlocks, sorcerers, thaumaturges, enchanters and evokers, arcanists and artificers, magicians and mages from all over flocked here to study! Here one could learn from the most venerated philosophers and practitioners of magic in the entire world! Here were endless libraries, repositories and vaults filled with the rarest books and artifacts of mighty power and mystery…
And wherever there were a great deal of spellcasters, of course, it followed naturally that there were a great deal of spells.
Luxanna Crownguard was here to steal them all.
…well, maybe, admittedly, not all of them, that’d take an awfully long time, but if she was going to have to pick and choose, that just meant that those she copied would have to be no trifling cantrips…
No, if she was going to infiltrate the Arcanist’s Academy itself, her most ambitious score yet, she was going to make it count…
Soft leather shoes padded soundlessly on the worn marble floors of the upper floors. Lux pressed her back to the wall and let a sleepily-yawning hippocampus statue above her block the scanning eyeline of a passing Peeper.
She made her way easily around the eyelines of the few Peepers on this floor. Really, the cyclopean eyeballs on those floating metal heads looked intimidating but completely lacked in depth perception…so all she had to do was keep out of their direct eyeline and predictable, pre-programming golem sweep patterns.
They could, however, spot her even if invisible, if she got caught right in their spotlights. Fortuately, that magical detection beam left an arcane signature of its own—a thin, watery beam of light, barely visible to the human eye. But quite visible to Lux. Light, after all, was something of her specialty.
The statues were easier to evade, lacking the senses to detect her invisibility, and much interest in human goings-on after curfew hours when they would trade their gossip.
Lux stopped at the archway out to the Grand Alchemy Tower, taking a breath, and lifted her foot to step out onto the eldritch, uneven, floating stones of the bridge leading across the great gulf to the Tower itself—
She stopped, foot still cautiously lifted.
Ah, she’d almost been sloppy—there was the faint crackle of a sigil ward! One more step and she’d set off an alarm and be blasted onto her butt and out of her invisibility for all to see…
Lux narrowed her hidden eyes.
Not tonight. Not for this Spellthief!
Other learner mages needed spellbooks and scrolls and arcane artifacts of various kinds to cast their spells. Lux’s wand might count as a focus—but really it just made things more convenient for her…
The light was her ink, the whole world her parchment.
Lux’s fingertips drew threaded Light from the faint pool of pink glow at the end of her oaken spiral wand and wove it into a quick, precise Passward spell, glowing lines suspended in the air in front of her.
The trick with wards was not to break or counter them, which would often just trigger them, but to find the exact pattern to bypass them forcelessly, like sidestepping a clumsy dancer on a crowded ballroom. Indeed, a good passward sigil, if it were drawn on a piece of translucent paper and laid over the top of the ward sigil it was being cast for, would neither cross, break, nor touch any part of the lines of the opposing mark, but flow through the white space around them, circumvent, and slip past…
Thus, as powerful as a good passward spell was, it would always need to be drawn with great care and precision. Lux only let out her held breath when the final stroke was drawn in the air before her, and her sigil floated to gently overlay the one hidden in the tiles patterns on the floor.
The wards aligned, and the passward activated with a faint flare of orange light shifting to blue. A faint hum in the air within the archway was only tangible by its sudden absence. Lux, breathing sharp, darted forward like a slim gazelle and over the warded floor, onto the bridge.
She’d made it!
…one step closer.
The passward spell actually worked? Good! Lux thought, it was quite a pain to steal!
Shifting blocks of stone darted beneath her feet. Lux hopped dutifully from one to the next, sharp eyes following the patterns.
If she fell, she wouldn’t die—oh no, the Academy wouldn’t dispose so callously of its pupils, even those foolish enough to test Ziggs’ after-hours defences—but she’d hit that teleportation field and wind up wherever it is they plopped troublemakers who’d been caught red handed sneaking into forbidden areas.
It was, actually, surprisingly difficult to die at the Arcane Academy, despite the mystical perils and sorcerous mishaps inherent in every corner of the school. Equally magical failsafes abounded to ensure that foolish or mischievous students didn’t meet gruesome mystical ends within the school grounds—no, this was a place of learning, sheltering and nurturing the future masters of magic, plenty enough of such dooms to be found out there, after all!
That, Lux had to admit, was both comforting, and made the whole venture a little less thrilling than it should have been.
So what? I’m the infamous Spellthief, infiltrator of the iron fortress of doom, thwarter of the mage-hunters, pilferer of arcane knowledge from across the land! And not a soul alive knows I’m really Luxanna Crown-
Lux ducked away from a swooping gargoyle sentry, doing its sweep across the bridge before returning to its stony roost.
Whew. That was close.
Ziggs had eyes on the front door of his annex. Of course he did.
“…stay positive, Lux,” she muttered to herself, “There’s always a way, just need to wait for the right…illumination…”
Lux’s eyes lifted higher, higher up the tower, where a wedge of warm glow shone out of the dark stonework; a window. Smoke and steam wafting out as someone cooled a rather charred pie on the windowsill.
Her lips curved in a smile.
“Just like that.”
And, one application of a spiderclimb charm and maybe a wee spot of levitation just to be lazy later, she was in.
Lux’s soft, scuffed boots hit the floor of the Alchemy laboratory’s interior. She stood, a nondescript shadow, bathed in darkness beneath the window.
Perhaps ‘nondescript’ wasn’t quite the word; a blue leather rogue’s bodysuit blended in with the cool nocturnal lighting around her, a bandolier of pouches and potion bottles slung across her chest. Her spill of coiling blonde hair was tucked into the hood of a brown stealth cloak hemmed with runes of silencing—one of the first acquisitions of her short but eventful career so far.
She had her spellbook clasped at her side on one of several belts, runic armbands and bracers of protection—she hadn’t really had to use them that often, but they also came in handy if you happened to slip and fall from a considerable height—and of course her handmade oaken wand.
Lux was ready for anything.
And so far, Ziggs’ workshop was rather exactly as she’d expected. Blast marks all over the walls. Bottles and boxes and stills of magical chemicals of all kinds. Big metal tanks and lots and lots of books…
Now…what to steal?
She paused, shrewd eyes studying the floor panels before her.
Traps. There’d definitely be traps, that’s for certain.
Lux’s careful steps negotiated the paths forward, her gaze flitting from one potential trap point to the next—
“…what?” she murmured under her breath, aloud, as she crept around the next stack of bookcases.
Wow. What a mess. There was stuff scattered all over the floor—was the legendary Master Ziggs really this much of a slob?—what if he didn’t have any traps engaged because he was still here and awake, and Lux was about to walk right into him…?
What if…
No, that was a trap tile—there was a physical tripwire there, dangling, disabled—there was a counterweight on the pressure pad—wait had someone used…a mirror to reflect and circumvent an arcane…detection…ray?
Lux didn’t have time to process it—her eyes fell on a pedestal—a book, lying open, just beyond a concealing bookcase she could lurk behind while she siphoned off the grimoire’s magic—a perfect steal.
Almost too perfect…
Lux brushed close to the bookcase, leaning to peek beyond it.
There was someone up on a tall library ladder on one of the bookcases further in, a figure in an enormous purple wizard hat and robe, one of the ‘adminions’, possibly, little mage-constructs who scurried about the Academy in their big wizard hats tending various of the endless tasks and chores that a place like this required to keep everything running smoothly…
The creature was completely ensconced in its task.
Getting caught at all would be a problem, but one of those little guys would be just as likely to ignore her and go about its busywork as pose a problem to Lux, so…
She bit her lip and let the glow at the tip of her staff build, swirling pink energy like a luminescent lotus opening between the curling oaken thorns…
Concealed by the bookcase, it was just another of many arcane lights floating in the darkened alchemy lab.
Lux stretched her hand, peering just beyond the bookcase, reaching to perform the necessary gestures to turn the pages of the book…
Her eyes fluttered in and out of focus. Explosions, explosions, detonations, munitions, demolitions—gosh, Ziggs, is there anything else you think about at all?—Lux could admire a good loud bit of fireworks herself, a very useful distraction for her stealthy business, but…there was a limit—oh, aHAH!…
Lux smiled to herself as she began, with another cautious peek at the busy creature—probably no taller than herself, if it weren’t for the hat—to work her magic.
Threads of blue light rose from the pages, swirling, gossamer and delicate as the last wisps of smoke from a candle, drifting back to Lux’s fingertips, then separating into little motes of light collecting in her staff…
Her eyes darted across the page, reading each line of the spell, and as she did—Lux imprinted them not only in her proudly eidetic memory, but copied them literally into the patterns of her Light, to be collected by her staff…
…and transferred to safe storage in the photomimetic liquid in the vials strapped at her chest.
Lux loved a good book as much as—more than!—the next girl, but the efficiency of being able to conceal hundreds of spells in a potion bottle for later decryption to the pages of her personal spellbook was something she prided on herself.
She was fairly sure nobody else alive would be able to unravel her technique! No one without her natural affinity with Light would be able to see those patterns, let alone transfer them, themselves! It was perfect cover, truly ingenious…
She wasn’t technically stealing spells, she supposed. She wasn’t draining away any magical energy, or actually siphoning and reflecting spells like her old rogueish mentor, Sylas, the big doublecrossing jerk, she was more…well, learning and reproducing illegal magic. Copying the homework, she supposed…
But “illegal spell learner Lux” didn’t have the same ring to it!
She picked through the spellbook, gleefully acquiring a few of the more interesting ones—cantrips for cleaning up soot after explosions might come in handy, sure, but ‘a Shield Most Protectivve, To Avert Maiming and Injurye Most Foule From Shrapnel, Heat and Yon Concussive Forces For Thy Mortal Coil and Those Which Belongst Unto Thy Companye, Parte One,’ and its successive seven variants, those Lux figured might prove a lifesaver at some point in her nefarious career…
Just one more. She could do another…it wasn’t like she was anywhere near getting caught—
Lux leaned, eyes gleaming, pinching her lips together and stretching her fingers—
“Ff—gibbit–c’mon–frassnabbin–dang thing—stuck in—grrr—” muttered the figure on the ladder, grunting as it struggled to pull a gigantic tome almost as big as it was out of one of the high shelves, “–come to mama you gossfrissin’—GAACCK!”
Lux looked up and froze.
The hatted adminion, yanking on the tome one last time, successfully loosened it—only to overbalance as the massive weight of the book slid off the shelf and into its chest.
Lux only got a chance to catch a brief glimpse of huge wide eyes and a mouth stuck in an ‘o’ beneath the hat, before the figure tottered backward, book, ladder and all, the whole tower twisting about and wobbling like a drunken stilt walker—
Its shadow fell over Lux.
“…oh no,” she whispered, but all she could do was pull her arm back and tuck it against her body to cover herself, wincing, as the ladder toppled—
The screaming creature crashed down on top of Lux. She crumpled under it with a yelp.
Lux’s back hit the cold flagstones and her arms and legs both went up in the air like an undignified spider. There was something on her - a mass of robes and limbs that was both uncomfortably flailing about and also rather pleasantly smelled of cooking herbs and some kind of sweet candy mixed with the more bitter scents of flash powder and burnt toast—
“Gack-ack-wait—hold-on—” Lux tried to detangle herself, “—your foot’s caught in my—” the adminion’s voice scratched out of the mess of purple robes, “Hey, watch my hat!” “Careful of those potions!—what are you—stop wriggling!” “Well get your stick out of my robe—grrr—” “That’s not a stick, excuse you—”
It took Lux a few seconds to realize that adminions didn’t usually talk like that at all. In that split second of distraction, however, the creature attempted to peel off her, just as Lux was trying to extricate herself in the opposite direction—they promptly tripped over again and fell in a heap.
A big hat tumbled away and Lux found herself face to face, inches away, from the visage of a girl about her own age, smudged with soot and paint and a blop of pie filling.
“Y-you’re not an adminion!” Lux blurted out, only for the girl to clap a hand over her mouth.
“Shhh!”
She had a heart-shaped face with a snub nose, expressive purple lips, and huge eyes, a brilliant amethyst purple colour, smudged around like she hadn’t properly slept in a long time. Her vividly blue hair was splotched with patches of bright green, yellow and pink at the tips—perhaps stained by some magical mishap—and it had been bound up in two enormous braids, one of them stuffed into a smaller but absurdly long liripipe style wizard hat covered in scribbles and doodles and skrunkly monster faces.
The heavy, squat purple robe had mostly gone the way of the big adminion hat and tumbled free, revealing a skinny body in various patchwork bits of robe—cut short, torn or maybe singed off on one shoulder, a floppy detached sleeve on the other arm, a short skirt and long skinny legs in long mismatched socks with stripes on one side, diamonds on the other, and mismatched boots.
She also had a bizarrely large purple satchel on one hip with a grinning monkey face stitched onto it.
Lux glared at her, “Whmmmhehmryhhh?”
The girl glared back and pressed a fingertip over her lips.
“…wow, you’re super pretty,” the stranger whispered, and Lux found a heat on her cheeks with her confusion, “But shh now, kay? Don’t wanna wake up grumblebum!”
She peeked up and across the room, and Lux followed her gaze to a sudden rumbling, roaring snortle—
Oh, there was Master Arcanist Ziggs, slumped face down on a rather charred looking grimoire, right there at his desk, out like a candle. Right next to a big slice of pie…
“Oh, good,” said the strange girl, grinning almost as wide as Ziggs was in his sleep, “He’s zonked, ha ha! We’re good!”
Lux pushed the hand away from her mouth, “Who the heck are you!?”
The girl peered at her with big unblinking eyes, sat back on her haunches, and plopped her hands on her hips in a bounce of braids.
“Me? I’m his apprentice, of course!” she beamed ear to ear, “Call me Jinx!”
Lux stared at her, open-mouthed.
“Ziggs…has an apprentice?”
“Mhm.”
“And you’re her.”
“That’s me! Waaaaitaminute,” Jinx squinted at her, “If that’s me, who are you? I should’ve asked that question!”
“Um…” Lux darted her eyes about for escape. Shoot, she couldn’t reach her spellbook and doing her invisibility charm was about useless with Jinx sitting…very warmly and rather comfortably on top of her…
Nobody knows that Luxanna Crownguard is a Spellthief…I need an alibi, I need…damnit…!
“Call…me…um…Lumen!” she blurted out, “Yes, Lumen!”
Oh heavens that’s terrible…‘Lumen’, really, Luxanna? That the best you could do?
“Hmmm,” said Jinx, rubbing her chin, in thought, “You’re totally making that up, ha ha, but fine, I’ll letcha just this once. For funzies. If you help me…” she upthrust her rubbing fingertip toward the ceiling, as if a great idea had just occurred to her, “With my shenanigans!”
“Get off me.”
“Nope!” said Jinx, “Not until you either agree or disagree to shenanigans!”
Lux stared at this colourful weirdo still plopped down on top of her.
“Fine. Now get off.”
“Fine what…?” said Jinx, still grinning.
“Fine, I agree!” Lux growled, “Get off me—wait, that pie, did you drug Ziggs…”
“Agree to whaa-a-a-a–t…” Jinx wiggled her brows.
Lux gave an exasperated groan, “Fine I agree to shenanigans! Just get your skinny butt off me!”
Jinx giggled and hopped up, releasing Lux to gasp out another ‘oof’, “Why didn’t ya say so?”
She swept a long bow, trailing her braid and liripipe, which happened to have a mismatched star at the end, “C’mon then!”
“Precisely what ‘shenanigans’ are you intending anyway?”
“Oh, just an experiment!”
Lux darted her eyes about again. Okay, fine, she could play along with this loopy wizard girl until she could give her the slip. Her vials were undamaged, that was a relief…she just had to get away with the stolen spells…
“An ‘experiment’…?” she hummed, “Would this perchance involve anything…exploding?”
“Oh, you do know Ziggs then!”
Lux sighed. She rolled her bright eyes.
“No! And I’m sorry but I don’t know if I believe you’re his apprentice since…” she pointed at the slumbering Master Arcanist, “You’ve drugged his pie!”
Jinx peered over, and burst into giggles, “Oh that, hah, don’t worry, I put the sleepytime potion in his food and zonk him like, all the time!”
She was already dragging the giant book over with surprising strength, flipping the cover and turning pages that were almost as big as she was.
“Otherwise he stays up all night splodin’ stuff and doesn’t get any sleep and then he’s all grumpy when he’s gotta teach morning classes—aha!”
“You’re completely insane, aren’t you.”
"—so people say! Anyway look here, look here!” Jinx pointed at the page she was on, and snickered out a bunch of adorable giggles—adorable, what? “I was right! Wahahahohh, oh this is gonna be just the bestest, I’ll show you Ziggs…”
Lux, peering over her shoulder, caught her breath at the book she had uncovered.
The spells in this tome were levels above what she’d stolen already—she had to—she had to get closer—if she could only get an opportunity to—
Jinx was already rubbing her hands together with glee and ducking off with a quick, darting, long-legged stride, wow she really did have long legs for such a short girl, and there she was snatching bottles and jars and mortar and pestle from Ziggs’ collection of alchemical supplies…
I need to get out of here, warned some part of Lux’s brain, actively at war with I need a closer look at that spellbook…
“Jinx, mind if I, uh, study this tome? I might find something you’d um, miss!”
“Go for it, Blondie,” said Jinx with a dismissive jerk of her head, “Yoink away!”
Lux’s staff was glowing, the threads of her magic already turning the pages, scrolling through line after line of complex equations with her eyes lighting up in avaricious glee—
Her concentration wobbled, “…yoink?”
“Well yeah you’re a spellyoinker, right? Lumen the Spellyoinker! That book’s got way crazier in it than the one you were yoinkin’ from before, haha, wait till you get to page two-sixty-four…”
Lux furrowed her brows, concentrating harder, “Excuse me, I’m not a ‘yoinker’ and I do not ‘yoink’–”
“Lumen Magenicker? Ooh! Lumen, Arcane Stickyfinger!?”
Lux growled, finishing copying the first lines of—oh, damnit, she’d messed that up, she had to start again—argh, why was Jinx so distracting…
Only when she’d finished the current spell, ignoring whatever Jinx was doing, and moved on to the next, the absolutely amazing arcane explosion that she could very clearly alter to use bent light as a source and possibly even slow enemies caught in it before it detonated, did Lux deign to speak again.
“I prefer the term Spellthie—”
A heavy mechanical clunk and a thin magical pulse and whine behind her jerked Lux’s attention away.
“AHAH! It worked!” crowed Jinx, hoisting something that looked like a clunky, ornate mechanical dragon over her shoulder.
Lux’s eyes widened, “Jinx, what are you doing…?”
“Shenanigans!” Jinx cackled, “Watch this!”
Lux’s stomach sank. Oh no, I absolutely waited too long—
She hurriedly snaveled the last few lines of the spell and ducked back from the book, as Jinx stepped right into a chalk circle she’d drawn and angled the dragon’s jaws upward at the ceiling.
“HEY ZIGGS!” she screeched, “CHECK THIS OUT!”
The jaws splayed wide and glowed deep within; it got brighter and brighter and Lux felt her stomach sinking ever deeper…
Ziggs snorted, perked up, and twisted around on his chair, wiping drool and squinting around his arcane goggles, “—whmm–what—do I smell explosions?”
“Jinx no!”
Too late; cackling, the girl fired an enormous arcane rocket shaped like a grinning dragon—trailing magical sparks, stars and moons—right up into the domed ceiling of Ziggs’ tower, far above, smashing a hole through it and exploding in a massive shower of sparks, fireworks, and fragments of stone—
“A ‘noisy brat’ is it! ‘A wet squib’ is it! How’s them apples!” cackled Jinx.
Lux dove right at her, without thinking, tackling her away from the magic circle she’d drawn as a chunk of masonry descended and smashed to pieces right where Jinx had been standing.
“–gack!—” Jinx tumbled back into Lux’s chest, still swinging the heavy weapon, “Ooo, thanks, nice save, Blondie—gosh, you smell really nice—”
“Jinx, what the heck was that!”
Jinx beamed ear to ear and dusted herself off, pointing to the enraged Ziggs, coughing and waving dust away as he hopped off his chair and aggressively plopped his big red wizard hat back on his head.
“My audition!” sang Jinx.
“JINX!” the Master Arcanist roared, “Not again! You…little—!”
Lux tensed to flee, hands up in front of her, staff between them, “Now I know what this looks like Master Ziggs, but I assure you I had nothing to do with—”
Another chunk of ceiling plummeted, smashing down right on top of where a glowering Ziggs was advancing.
“—did—did we—” Lux’s jaw dropped. “I think…I think we just killed Ziggs?!”
“Oh, dang,” Jinx mumbled.
The two girls looked at each other, ashen-faced, and then at the giant steaming pile of rubble…
“So, um..." said Jinx.
…the collapsed stone suddenly burst apart in showers of debris and fire, a shockwave of force blowing Jinx and Lux off their feet and sending them both sprawling in a tangle of cloaks and robes.
The smoke cleared to reveal a very angry Ziggs, arcane bombs in either hand, smoke rising from his somewhat squashed hat…
“Jinx, I told you!” he growled, “No. How many times, NO?! Why won’t you just get out of my laboratory! And put down the damn rocket launcher—”
“Ohhh he’s really grumpy this time,” whispered Jinx, “Guess I really did it, huh?”
“Oh help,” Lux whispered back.
Sparks were still bouncing around Ziggs’ lab from Jinx’s rocket and Ziggs’ own bombs, and as Lux watched in horror, one of them caught one of the wicks in a box of Ziggs’ magical explosives.
“Help,” whimpered Lux, as Jinx’s eyes lit up when she spotted the wick sizzling…
“Ooo—” said Jinx, “Scratch that, this is gonna be fun!”
She seized Lux’s hand and tugged on it.
They’d almost made it to the door when the bomb blew, with a pop of pink, green and aqua—the laboratory shook as a series of other explosives all went off at once, chaining around the laboratory—
“Oh for boom’s sake,” muttered Ziggs, stalking after them, juggling the orbs in his hands to toss one repair cantrip after another into his exploding shelves, reassembling them as he went, “You two, stay right there, you’re in so much trouble this time, Jinx!”
—an ornate urn tipped off a rocking shelf, smashed in the middle of Jinx’s magical circle, and with a burst of sulphurous stench and flame a diminutive, cutely fuzzy red creature with curling black horns and a smiling face popped into existence and rolled out sputtering onto the floor, right in front of Jinx and Lux.
“…oh no,” Zigg’s big toothy grin actually faded, “…aw crap, not Him!”
Lux sucked in a breath as the little creature beamed up at her with its squinty eyes and big soft smile.
“But he’s so cute,” she squealed, “Hello there, little guy!”
Only then did she see how pale Jinx had gone.
“Lumen,” she grabbed Lux’s arm, “Nope! Nope nope! Run now! Not cute!”
“What do you mean—”
“That’s Teemo!” shouted Jinx, grabbing Lux and pulling her back from a bouncing, grinning demon face landing in front of her and erupting in a laughing burst of flame suddenly washing heat over her face from where she’d just been standing.
~Hi there friendly campers!~ The little red devil giggled, in a hideously friendly voice. A burning crown appeared between his horns as he hopped up on his hoofs. ~Can I eat your SOULS?!~
His face split into an ear-to-ear grin of jagged spiky teeth and huge burning yellow eyes popped open, full of malice.
“—eek nevermind no thank you soul stays put!” Lux flashed up a defensive barrier—trying the new spell!—with a whirl of her staff out and back to her hand—snapping around herself and Jinx.
“Why’d I leave an unspeakable sealed evil on an easily destructable shelf?” Ziggs grumbled, then glared at Lux, “Hey is that my spell?”
But now the little cackling red devil was darting about the laboratory, blasting things with arrows of fire from a trident it had summoned out of nowhere, and Ziggs glared through his goggles at the two troublemakers—
“Ugh! I’ll deal with you two later!” Ziggs began weaving a complicated banishment spell, “This little jackass—is first!”
“Aw,” Teemo’s hideous face popped back into an adorable pout, “Me?”
“Time to go, Blondie!” Jinx whispered in Lux’s ear, and with a squeal she was pulled away from Ziggs and Devil-Teemo and out of the laboratory, still shuddering with explosions and whining, popping fireworks of magic—
“Oh help, help help,” Lux muttered like a mantra as she and Jinx ran full pelt down a twisting exit corridor—no, literally, the security spells had all been triggered, the corridor was turning into a spiral right under their feet as they ran.
Lux yelled, her cloak starting to hang from her shoulders up as up became down, she was suddenly running on a wall, no a ceiling…
She heard Jinx giggling, whispering a charm she didn’t know, and suddenly her new companion was leaping down beneath her, trailing pink streaks from her eyes, striking what had just been the ceiling just as Lux lost her grip and fell with a yelp.
Jinx snapped her arms up and caught her, beaming as though Lux didn’t weigh much at all.
“Oof,” said Jinx, wiggling her brows, “Too many croissants in the ol’ Duchy of Demacia, eh?”
“W-what?!” Lux stammered breathlessly, unconscious of how her arms had slung around Jinx’s neck, “How’d you know?”
“Accent, dur! C’mon, this way!”
They tumbled around the next corner, Jinx ducking both of them under the closing teeth of the tower portcullis, dashing over the rotating bridge of stones.
“Put me down, idiot!” Lux shouted, “I marked the path on the way in—aaah!”
Jinx had already stepped on one of the wrong stones; the flagstone inverted, and Jinx squealed as she tumbled, almost losing her ungainly dragon-weapon-thing she had slung over one shoulder.
Lux caught her with both hands, staff awkwardly slung in her belt, grunting as she hauled her up with every ounce of strength she had.
Ziggs’ guardian gargoyles were swooping in.
“Damnit!” Lux growled between clenched teeth as she pulled Jinx the rest of the way, “Why did I agree to shenanigans?!”
“My charming—” Jinx panted, “Personality, Blondie?”
“I hate you!” Lux turned and flung two blasts of light at the incoming gargoyles, forcing them to veer off their clutching swoop, “Come on! Follow my steps exactly!”
She darted her eyes ahead, to where she’d left luminous threads of her own magic marking each of the ‘safe’ stones, that only her own eyes could see—aha!
Lux sucked in a deep breath, pulled her staff back into her grip and leapt from one stone to the next, to the next. She was pleasantly surprised that Jinx was keeping up, following her exactly, cackling all the way.
The gargoyles were circling to come back. Damnit!
Jinx stopped and reached into her monkey-faced satchel. To Lux’s shock, she pulled another oversized gadget weapon out of it —this one looking like six completely different wands all locked into a rotating barrel device shaped like a grinning monster face with multiple tongues.
“No chips for you seagulls!” Jinx howled with wild laughter, “Shoo!”
Brightly coloured globs and sparks and blasts of magic spat erratically from the spinning wand-barrels, sending the three gargoyles shrieking and retreating, spattered in paint, scorch marks, glue, and patches of overgrown moss…
“Really gotta figure out what those wands actually do one day,” Jinx puffed as she slung the weapon and bounced after Lux, finally off the bridge.
~ ALERT! ~ boomed the carved mouths on the bridge ahead of them, ~All faculty and student body, intruders alert! Proceed in an orderly fashion to defend the Academy!~
Well, this was surely one way to increase her infamy as a spellthief…
“This,” gasped Lux, out of breath, “Wasn’t my plan at all!”.
Jinx grinned, wild-eyed, back at her.
The whole Academy security force was tumbling down the corridors to stop them.
“But isn’t this more fun?”
Jinx grinned back at her, as she winked and punt-kicked a snarling homunculus out of their way like a football, zapped a pouncing griffon statue with a lightning wand concealed in her sleeve and tossed a trio of chattering potion bottles that exploded into cackling flashes of smoke, fireworks and frogs in the face of a couple of faculty wizards trying to trap them in a warding forcefield...
They were running again, while Peepers and living statues and wizards in flapping robes pelted after them, hurling spells and incantations all the way.
“Define fun!” Lux screamed back, between dodging streaks of fire and ice, charming spells, freezing spells, leaping over entangling vines, ducking under searing Peeper eyeball-rays…
But it was bubbling up in her chest, wild, carefree, and chaotic…
Laughter.
This was fun. Jinx was fun…
And, braids and hat flapping as she ran ahead of her, breathless, beaming smile on her face, eyes bright with mischief…
Lux had to admit, she was also really, really cute.
Dang it!
The towering spires of the Arcanist’s Academy still sparkled and sputtered with magical wards and triggering spells, like flashing thunder in a distant storm.
Miles down the road, in the forests near the village of Hemlocke, a few dry leaves and a couple of lizards rustled out of the path of two figures decloaking from a light-bending Invisibility charm in the depths of a massive hollow tree.
Lux wiped sweat from her brow and eyes and settled her back against the wood, laughing wheezily.
“Okay,” she said, “That did not go to plan…”
“Dur,” said Jinx, “I was involved!”
“Gosh,” Lux patted her chest. All of her vials were there. Phew! Not a total wash then, actually, she’d gotten some pretty impressive spells…
Lux squinted up at the wild girl shaking out her braids and adjusting her liripipe.
As much as she wanted to chew out the mad apprentice for all of that chaos, Lux had to admit, she’d never have gotten those spells without Jinx’s special brand of ‘help’.
“Why on earth did you want to be Ziggs’ apprentice, anyway?” said Lux.
Jinx grumbled into her hat.
“Um…he’s the most famous wizard from my home town of Zaun?” she winced, “Like, he’s the best of the best! The greatest boomsmith who ever lived! And I’m…I’m poor…and everyone says I’m just a troublemaker, practically cursed…I blow everything up around me whether by accident or not!”
She drooped, fidgeting with the braids in her lap.
“…figured if anyone could…could teach me what to do with that, it’d be Ziggs! But he doesn’t want an apprentice. He doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
Lux sighed softly at her. She chewed her lip, considering.
“Being an apprentice is overrated. You’re more than skilled enough to go it alone.”
“Y’think so?”
“Hey, you escaped Ziggs’ laboratory, and the entire Arcanist Academy couldn’t stop you! Give it a week, you’ll be the most notorious wizard from Zaun. What we just did—that sort of thing passes into legend, trust me—”
Lux grew paler herself with each word. Oh no, what have I done…I’m supposed to be the invisible Spellthief, come and gone like a ghost, never seen, never known…
“Wow, if you put it like that,” Jinx brightened, “Well, how about you? What’s a fancy Demacian girl with a posh accent doin’ running around yoinking magic from the Academy for? I thought the ol’ Duchy was all grr-grump-grr-magic-bad-dangerous-witchcraft-blah—”
“I do not yoink–nevermind, ugh,” Lux rolled her eyes, “Listen, yes, it’s all of those things!”
“So,” said Jinx, rummaging in her bag, pulling out a Kingdom News Monthly! magezine scroll with a triumphant squeak, and proudly dragging her fingertip through the centre article until the swirling arcane ink had scrolled through several boring news alerts to the ‘missing persons’ decrees…
Lux paled further as she saw her own smiling face in elegant family portrait, the same hated one that hung in the family mansion back home, shimmering back at her from the arcane parchment.
AN INDIVIDUAL, MOST MISSING AND ABSENTEE, LUXANNA CROWNGUARD OF HOUSE CROWNGUARD, IF WITNESSED BY ANYE PERSONNE, PLEASE NOTIFYE THE AUTHORITIES OF THE GRAND DUCHY OF DEMACIA…
“Hmmm,” Jinx squinted at her, “I kinda thought so, but the more I’m lookin’ at your sweaty hooded mug, the more I think you’re prettier than this dame…”
A little colour flashed back into Lux’s cheeks, “Excuse me? Th-that is absolutely not me—that’s—um—”
No way! My cover blown, by…by HER?
Jinx grinned.
“Wow, you’re really bad at lying, Blondie! For a thief. And a fugitive. What’s your deal, Miss Mystery!? Oh, sorry, Luxanna—”
“Lux, please,” Lux puffed her cheeks, “My name is Lux!”
“Ooohhh…wait…” Jinx boggled her big eyes, “Wait, you called yourself ‘Lumen’, that also means light, oh wow, that was a terrible nom-de-plume—”
“Stop, you put me on the spot, I was improvising,” Lux grumbled, “Look, you must absolutely not tell anyone who I am, if I even think for a moment you will I—I’ll mind wipe you! A complete memory erasure spell, I can do that, I swear…”
“Wow you’re a really really terrible liar,” Jinx giggled until her eyes were wet with tears, “Lux!” she clicked her tongue around it, “Lux Lucky Luxie Lux…that’s really pretty, too, I like it…”
“Stop calling me pretty.”
“Aw, d’you really want me to?”
Jinx wiggled her brows and pouted, and Lux’s heart ticked up just a little as she noticed how close Jinx was sitting in the squishy proximity of the hollow tree—the warmth of her bare knee resting against Lux’s leather-clad one.
“…No,” Lux mumbled. “You’re, um…very, very pretty, yourself.”
Now Jinx actually blushed, “Um. Nobody’s…ever said that before…c’mon, Blondie…you really are a terrible liar…”
“Do you really think I’m lying, now?” said Lux, with a wry curl of her lips, “Really? Come on, you saw through all of my other lies, am I lying now?”
“…no,” mumbled Jinx, cheeks suddenly beet-red.
Lux bubbled up laughter, and impulsively sat up, leaned in, and just to tease Jinx—just because of some perverse impulse taking her over—pressed her soft peach lips to Jinx’s plump apple cheek.
Jinx froze up and gulped, her eyes big and soft, and Lux found her heart was beating suddenly faster.
The way Jinx was looking at her…no, couldn’t be…
“S-so, um…” Jinx mumbled, “…why, Luxie? You didn’t answer my question…what’s your deal?”
Lux’s smirk faded. She chewed her lip and slumped next to Jinx, leaning their shoulders together, as her eyes peeked out the trunk of the tree, across the valleys, to the distant sparks of magic flickering from the faraway Academy.
“You were right, the Duchy doesn’t like magicians and doesn’t trust magic,” she blew a strand of damp blonde from her cheek, “When I found out…that I had a talent for it? The first thing I was really good at, other than being pretty and well-behaved and well-mannered like my family expected of me? I…wanted to change that. Show them how amazing my magic could be…but there was nobody in the whole Duchy to teach me…”
“Oohhh, you found someone to apprentice yourself to!” Jinx suggested, and Lux winced.
“Oh that I did,” she scowled, “When I found out they’d caught the most famous thief of magic in the kingdom? Spellstealer Sylas himself? Well, I pulled my family name and talked my way into the very dungeons themselves, convinced I could bargain with him to teach me magic, in exchange for my good word in pleading for his freedom!”
“But…?” Jinx ventured, cogs starting to whirr in her mind.
Lux growled under her breath, “But the jerk tricked me! He promised he’d teach me, and he did, for a few months, from behind bars, but one of the spells he taught me—as soon as I tried it, it siphoned my magic back to him and let him break out! Then he was gone and I had to run for it, too, or get caught in his place! That’d be a huge scandal for my family, so I didn’t know what to do—I ran and kept running—vowed I’d travel to the kingdoms where magic was accepted and learn by myself, for myself!”
Jinx’s eyes widened, her chin was in her hands, absorbing every word.
“And more than that—” Lux’s eyes flashed, “I’d show him he should never have crossed me. I’d become a greater Spellthief than Sylas ever was. A master thief, I’d steal the greatest spells and hone my magic, without anyone else…until I was the greatest Spellthief who ever lived.”
“So that’s why you don’t think I should be an apprentice,” murmured Jinx.
“Teachers, parents, kings and lords—people who think they’re above you will always let you down,” said Lux, “Trust me.”
“Y’know, I just might, Blondie,” said Jinx, brooding suddenly on an intense thought.
She lifted her eyes to study Lux’s face.
Hesitantly, she reached out and tucked that errand blonde hair back in Lux’s hood.
“If y’don’t want an apprenticeship...what about a partnership?”
Lux’s breath caught in her throat.
“What?”
“‘Spellthief Jinx’,” mused the wild Zaunite girl, “Has a pretty cool ring to it. Maybe you’re right. Maybe that suits me better than bein’ some grumblebum’s apprentice.”
“Are you offering to be my…” Lux swallowed, “Partner?”
“Oh you bet I am,” Jinx beamed. “You and me, Luxie? We just tweaked Master Arcanist Ziggs’ nose and yoinked a bunch of magic right out from under those stuffy Academy guys and they couldn’t stop us! Hah! Greatest wizards ever, my big toe! Back to back, equals, partners in crime? Imagine what we could do!”
Equals. Partners. Back to back…
Lux stared into Jinx’s pretty face. It could be a trick. It could be a mistake. It could go horribly wrong…
But she’d been tripping from one misadventure to the next since she’d first decided to become a Spellthief, hadn’t she?
And wasn’t she tired of being alone?
“Oh, crazy girl,” said Lux, twitching a smile of her own, “You sure are tempting me here.”
She clasped Jinx’s hand, tight, blushing only slightly.
Her eyes narrowed.
“You have a deal, partner.”
YE OLDE KINGDOM HERALD ~ MORNING EDITION! ~
Hear ye, hear ye, all wizards, witches, and spellcasters of the Kingdom! The Arcanists’ Academy is still reeling from the disastrous escape of two daring ‘Spellthieves’ having absconded with rare magics from the very workshop of Master Arcanist Ziggs himself, wreaking mayhem, chaos and havoc in their wake!The Arcanist has thusfar refused to identify either of the mysterious villains, referring to them instead as ‘one gigantic pain in my rump and some pretty friend of hers’ before turning our intrepid reporter into a small fire-belching salamander for bothering him.
Should either of these fiends be identified, ye must keep watch, all citizens, for the safety of the kingdom and the security of its magics may never be the same until these sticky-fingered devils be caught…included herein, approximate witness portraits drawn of the two fiends…
Jinx tore the poster from the village noticeboard and grunted, between chompingly chewing a bright apple she held in her other hand, filched from a nearby orchard.
“Ugh, Blondie,” she tapped the gurning, sad-eyed urchin in a floppy hat with devil horns on it on the poster, beside a fangy blue-eyed monster girl in a hood, “They made me look all mopey! What’s with that? I’m such a happy soul!”
“Oh, I know, do they really think I have teeth like that?” Lux licked hers, subconsciously, reassuring herself they were still neat white squares. She’d always been rather proud of her nice healthy teeth.
“Suffice to say I think your identity’s still intact,” Jinx said, with a giggle, scrunching up the notice and tossing it in the river behind them.
Crows cawed over the little border hamlet of Wytchwicke. The two Spellthieves turned to the road out of town, into the vast, shadowy sea of creaking trunks and rustling leaves that was the Wyldwoods beyond…
“Do y’really think she’s in there, Luxie?”
Lux took a deep breath.
“The Veiled Lady, witch-goddess of the downtrodden and chained?” She smiled. “Oh yes. I’m sure she is.”
“…keeper of the most powerful binding spells known to magecraft?” added Jinx, with an avaricious flicker in her big wide pink eyes.
The two thieves locked gazes and grinned.
“Ready, Luxie?”
Lux lifted her leatherclad knuckles and bumped them to her partner’s.
“Let’s go rob a goddess!”