The Elemental Heist

  Five men gathered around a flagon of wine. Well, it was not a real flagon; real flagons would not lower themselves to the standards of the establishment these five chose to gather in. In fact, the wine was of so poor a quality it qualified to be prized vinegar to season the drinkers’ throats rather than palate them. So, to recapture the image, five men were gathered around a flagon of nothing that resembles wine.

  Outside, brown dirty rain kept on its journey forever downwards and sometimes sideways, flooding the muddy streets of Haboria the capital city of the opulent kingdom of Moloria with an impressive layer of brown slush which passersby couldn’t really distinguish wither it came from the bowels of hell below or fell on their heads from above. Except in the area surrounding the temple of the elements three hundred cubits away, where the most adapted of all elemental sorcerers kept residence, studied and granted their service at excruciatingly high prices to the populace; namely the cream top of Moloria.

  Above the temple, by about twenty cubits the rain sloshed in a lake suspended in the air, bounded and contained by very strong air magic. It occasionally sloshed over the side into the streets around the temple totally drenching the already wet passersby. Rain sloshed to the sides because it usually had vindictive thoughts when it hung above the temple; it madly thought what those foolish mortals are trying to stop? Let’s put the wetness of the gods in their pants and their underpants, or at least let’s drench their guards and porters. Unbeknownst to the rain, the sorcerers didn’t really give a damn who the rain wets as long as it was not them.

  The five men were gathered inside not to escape the rain; this was not a gathering of men afraid of wetness, even if aforementioned wetness drenched their underpants. In fact, for those five men, wetness was a thing that happened to other people, the necromancer with his body covering tattoos was protected from all kinds of water, including holy water, a natural deterrent to his lively hood, the undead. This is why necromancers stink and have an aura of being unwashed forever; it was a privilege of the job, well, for people who rather spend their time with the dead than the living it was at least acceptable. The air sorcerer with his unmistakable blue silvery robes can call on air to be his umbrella whenever he needed it, but generally, rain tended to avoid him for fear of being pulverized by his omnipresent air elementals. The shade, being a shade, which was a creature that defied the laws of nature most of the time, just accepted but part of this reality and rain was not part of this acceptance. The dwarf always traveled underground and didn’t take rain seriously unless it caused an underground landslide and the regular looking man in this myriad group of inn patrons, just entered the inn from the torrent of rain outside mysteriously dry.

  “So, they move it at dawn you say,” the dwarf, considered here a man since men of ill reputation liked to be called men even if in fact they were of different sex, species or even status of being alive or dead, it is part of the vibe really. Which brings the ephemeral shimmering man into focus; the shade was nothing less than a shade of color and nothing more occupying a seat at the table, solid colors meant little to shades anyway, they were more into shades and subtle tones. Shades are usually very self-conscious creatures about their status and their urges; it is why they turned to shades when they died in the first place. But enough about shades, as the story will turn shady if this line of telling goes on.

  “This is the twentieth time you made the same statement Roger; it is really not healthy, for you, to keep trying to vent your anxiousness on us,” the only seemingly normal man among the group addressed the dwarf in a warning tone.

  “He isssss really annoying, I want to ssssuck his life forcccce” the shade made a slurping noise then he added, “now,” the shade gave a wheezing laugh in a voice scrapped with grave dust and his tones of color turned a shade greener as he contemplated his comrade the dwarf, ”maybe after the heisssst,” he sighed a rather disturbing sigh as he ogled the dwarf.

  “I didn’t come here for idle chit-chat shade; I am of a mind to just banish you to the nether realms right now,” the necromancer glared through tattooed eyebrows and snorted through tattooed nose as he said these words through a tattooed mouth giving the impression of moving letters like the ones seen in those magical commercials for the richer more successful establishments. But of course it was not, necromancers didn’t believe in commerce, in fact, they operated on the concept of I wanteth therefore I taketh, and commercial establishment owners were more than welcoming to this concept; not a lot of people entertained the idea of crossing a necromancer, it usually involved your innards seeing the light of day, something that nobody wants on any given day. Necromancers were actually a paranoid type of people; the tattoos were permanent invocations of protection against their very subjects, the undead.

  “So, they move it by dawn you say,” Roger the dwarf winked conspiratorially to the sorcerer.

  “This is it; I will kill him right here and right now,” the sorcerer shouted at the assemblage.

  “Calm down Fred, Roger is the best digger in the business,” the seemingly normal man called to the air sorcerer to calm down, “he also happens to be as much interested in this venture as you.”

  “But he isssss very annoying Cole,” The shade slurped noisily while he spoke to Cole, the seemingly normal human, seemingly because in Moloria it is usually unwise to assume the normalcy of an individual by his looks, this kind of lapse is considered a lack of wisdom that frequently led many a speculator of normalcy to death.

  “Silence in my presence foul spirit, I Philip the necromancer commands you,” the necromancer cried out in a theatrical voice while waving his hands in complex patterns at the shade. Normally, if any other necromancer would have uttered these words, the shade would have been forced to be mute until released by will and invocation, but in this very instance, the shade just felt compelled to look away while he mumbled incoherent hissing insults.

  “Calm down all of you,” Cole signaled to all of them with his hands to calm down as he spoke “Zortan, you are here to regain physical presence on this world, remember the rewards, you will no longer be a non-effective shade, and you will gain the body which was lost to death,” he smiled as he turned to face the necromancer, “Philip, you know that your hold on the dead and the undead had wavered since you were stripped of most of your power by the temple of the elements; this is your chance to regain this power,” Cole regained his sway on the group of misfits, then he turned his attention to the dwarf, “Roger, nobody in the criminal world would hire you because of your halitosis curse; it could be felt like a pain in the nostrils a mile away, Gods know we are feeling it to the depth of our bones,” he made a sign to his nose as Roger nodded apologetically, then he faced the sorcerer, “Fred, you never were allowed to pass the fifth circle of magic ritual for the mark of desire on your heart,” he reached to the sorcerer who naturally flinched, so, he ignored the gesture and continued, “passing the fifth circle would have increased your ability ten folds; you are anguished by your dark desires for the power you can’t attain,” Cole passed his gaze from one of his co-conspirators to the other, “you all need this heist more than anything to fulfill your most wanted desires.”

  “Cole, I never knew what your stake in all of this is,” Fred looked critically to Cole as he spoke, “you gathered us, you devised the plan, you assigned the roles of each of us, and yet I can’t see any benefit for a non-magic user, cursed individual or magical creature from stealing the batteries.” The sorcerer finished the accusative question he threw at Cole who sat calmly to his right, then he added “I don’t see you in this plan and I don’t like it,” Fred made a clicking noise at the back of his mouth, one that under normal circumstances would be a signal for people present to start running, as this is how sorcerers usually call on their dedicated elementals, but not these people, and not in this inn, “nobody does anything of this magnitude without a personal stake in it.”

  “I like your skepticism Fred, I really do,” Cole smiled and continued, “What my stake is mine alone and I don’t want to share it,” he gave Fred an innocent smile and continued, “ plus a favor exacted from each one of you when I need it,” his smile grew as he turned to each one of his co-conspirators, “by then, you all will have the power to fulfill it.”

  “Still not convinced this is enough, you are already infamous as the most powerful underworld crime strategist in all of Moloria, rumor says that you are far richer than the king, and more secretive than the temple of elements masters,” Fred continued in an exasperated voice, “it doesn’t add up.”

  “Who cares sorcerer?” Philip intoned gravely, “It serves our purposes.”

  “Excuse me, good people, are you going to order something else?” the landlord of the tavern approached them rubbing a talisman around his neck nervously, “we have to pass the accounts to the grave shift.”

  Normally the grave shift would mean the late hours shift in any other inn in the multiverse, but not in Moloria where magic was a normal everyday practice, almost like dentistry in other realms, just slightly less painful.

  The original founder of the Black-Eyed Clown, the tavern where our conspirators sat, is a man turned ghoul through the grace of one of his regular clients who happened to be a necromancer and never wanted his favorite cocktail mixer to go from this world after his demise , he also happens to be the ancestor of the present hapless owner. When the grave shift is announced, most living souls have to leave in a rush, for the new arriving clie ntele matched the ghoulish proprietor. Ghouls were a raucous and mirth loving bunch usually, but their debauchery frequently involved eating anything that moved, including other patrons. Suffice to say, not all ghouls returned to their underground hideouts by the end of the night, especially nights spent in the Black Eyed Clown. Apprentice sorcerers usually had a gruesome rite of passage involving waiting near the Black-Eyed Clown carrying a toothpick, a can of apple juice and the aid of a minor demon, some of them actually returned to tell the tale. The practice was encouraged by the senior sorcerers as a method of culling out the future competition.

  “Gentlemen, I think this is our queue to leave,” announced Cole, “we meet at the darkest hour of this night to achieve the impossible,” and he winked, which gave Roger the shivers, and he couldn’t really know why he did.

  ###

  Every year at mid of winter, the temple of the elements sorcerers and priests would gather the surplus energies of prayers and practiced magic and store them in five elemental beings representing the five elements which they called “the elemental batteries”. Those elementals are then bound magically to a fortified carriage, one that was created as the ultimate achievement of sorcerers and alchemists, a one of a kind armored vehicle rumored to be impenetrable even to a seventh circle sorcerer. That carriage would then travel almost half the world away to be entered in the infinite warehouse of Gom, in itself the most secure place on the planet, not because of the ten thousand strong army guarding it, and not because of the magic traps placed around the perimeter of the city for ten miles, not even for the presence of the most devious of booby-traps in the entire realm; it was the most secure because it doesn’t even exist in this realm of existence, the whole city of Gom was just a gateway to dimension only accessible from there. A depositor wishing to peruse the facility has to leave a part of his or her soul attached to what they wish to store, for the only way to retrieve your deposit is by calling on your own soul. Some theorized that the warehouse in Gom was a gate to the nether realms because of the soul involvement, as in most dealings with the nether realms, it involved soul trading, but unlike the nether realms and their famous deals, Gom offered only to take your soul, not give anything in return, which caused theorist to argue that Gom was actually the gateway to heaven, yet that also was refuted by the resident angel in the temple of elements, as she adamantly stated that heaven was a state of mind and not a real place, as she was just a reflection what men wanted her to be. The seat of esoteric studies commented on the statement of the angel that if what she said was true, where is the bust size to prove it, which she reacted by smiting him on the spot. The people in the know, knew that souls were promised to be freely given in a future date in the practice of communicating with the denizens of the nether realms; hence it was called Soul Futures, also known as the stock market, for the known knowledge that souls are the stickiest part of all living creatures, and apparently the nether realms needed a lot of stickiness to keep working, or that the denizens of the nether realms just ate souls, the perpetrator of this theory claims that he worked for ten years in an especially shady restaurant specializing in soul food. The price of depositing a gram of material is ten grams of gold, and in case of magical essences like in the case of the elementals, the price for one cubic centimeter of magical storage is one hundred grams of gold. It is a very exclusive facility where only the top of the elite find reasons to use it.

  Aside from the obvious unaccessible warehouse, the batteries travel in the company of a troop of two hundred of the king’s elite, two sorcerers of each order and of course the infamous Impenetrable Fort Carriage, in itself a marvel of mixing science and magic, and this is why nobody in the history of the elemental batteries journey had ever contemplated stealing them, not until now.

  The first to arrive at the meeting point was the necromancer, Philip. It is a well-known fact that you can set your watch on one of the necromancers’. It was not really decency which kept them right on time; it was a life of rituals involving losing your mind, a limb or your own soul if you missed the exact moment of the proper incantation. This was also the reason most necromancers are very grave and serious, losing your soul doesn’t allow for a lot of humor, yet ironically it supplies enough material for the guild of jokers to keep on paying their bills year after year, the deal between the guild of necromancers and the guild of jokers goes back to centuries, some people theorize that this the main reason we have the playful spirits called poltergeist, they were members of the jokers guild in life.

  Then, Roger, the dwarf arrived through the sewers’ canals at the side of the road; since his curse, sewers didn’t pose much of a challenge; any smell overpowering his own is usually emanated from the alchemists’ guild graveyard on stormy nights which was entered into Jorkos’ guide of Moloria as the most offensive smell in existence, sewers were mild in comparison.

  Fred the sorcerer descended from the back of a minor air elemental dragon in their vicinity and proceeded on foot. Following him, step for step Zortan shuffled silently dragging a glowing sack.

  “So where is our architect of mayhem?” Philip asked the others, “is it possible the infamous Cole would arrive last?”

  “I am right here my friends,” Cole stepped from behind a boulder, “I don’t like to be standing in the open in the way of the convoy of the batteries.”

  Roger actually jumped a foot in the air in surprise, “That is a nifty trick, I didn’t feel your feet touching the ground at all,” dwarves had a keen sense to anything geological, including seismology, footsteps cause minor tremors for even the lightest of creatures; dwarves can usually sense that accurately in a mile radius, it has to do with their evolution from earthworms; it also is the reason dwarfs usually live underground and enjoy eating toxic mushrooms of Hokk, like there is no tomorrow, although for any other being these very mushrooms will never be considered a good source of nutrition since they tended to leave their consumer in a stupor, hallucinating, in severe diarrhea and eventually vomiting. Nevertheless, the Priests of The Fearsome Bunny God maintained that ingestion of those mushrooms was soul cleansing and was the best way to communicate with the combatant god, specifically through cleansing the innards, which they called detoxification, and they usually charged an arm and a leg for their toxic mushroom inclusive formulas. The mythos that claims that all dwarves evolved from earthworms has been approved by the council of priests of the dwarfs’ race as coinciding with the vision of their Gods, especially the God of wet dark places and the God of harvest, who was said to spend a lot of his time tasting and testing the infamous mushrooms.

  “No tricks my friend,” Cole smiled as he walked to the edge of the road, “just a natural gift I guess for stealth.”

  “So, Philip you arranged the transportation?” Cole turned to the necromancer.

  “One haunted carriage,” he looked at his wrist watch; a ridiculous contraption usually carried only by necromancers as nobody else would enjoy the ridicule it harvested being a five pound glass with thousands of ticking pieces inside and all, Philip continued, “arriving right now.”

  Around the bend of the road, a glowing shape came hurtling at an incredible speed seemingly about to crash the gathered five.

  Roger jumped back; Fred flew up and Zortan faded out of his state of shimmering while Philip watched his watch standing in the middle of the road with casual disregard to the chagrin of the others. Only Cole stood beside him with a vague smile on his face.

  The hurtling carriage came to a sudden stop without raising a speck of dust half a meter away from the necromancer.

  “You are late,” Philip consulted his watch, “by ten whole seconds.”

  The carriage moaned and hissed apologetically, it even showed a shade of pink slouching around its contours, it was apparently embarrassed at disappointing its master, or it was a female as pink usually was a trademark of unmarried females of any culture in Moloria, believed by other married females to look rather cute on the hapless younger ones. According to tales of old, it could also mean that it was in the search of a good match, and as that particularly worrying thought ran through the mind of Roger, himself a perpetual bachelor always on the run from aforementioned pink attired females, it caused him to feel a short but strong torrent of natural to occur panic.

 

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