Victim for Hire

It was a dark and stormy night, so obviously pink goo was bubbling out of the wizard’s gutters from this morning’s explosion.

I’ll clean it up later, she thought as she rushed out the door into the rain – nearly diagonal in the gusts – and piled into her car.

Brita chucked her somatic spell component duffle into the back seat, then patted every single pocket in her rain jacket before giving up on her keys. The car door had opened, so it meant they were nearby. Just where had she left them?

Brita thought back to the previous night when she had stumbled through the door covered in salt. I kept my keys with me until I after I washed my hands in the kitchen sink, then... this is where her thoughts got a little fuzzy.

“Aha!” the wizard exclaimed. I put them next to the fruit basket so I would remember to get a pear on my way out.

She had remembered the pear but forgotten her car keys. Oops.

Brita cupped her hands in front of her and focused on the exact location she left the keys. A minute and a pop and a fizz later, the fob dropped into her hand.

A nifty little bit of magic, if you had the time – which Brita did not, she was going to be late. And one should never be late to ransom exchanges.

***

She parked three blocks away and pulled her duffle into the front seat. She put a grappling hook, giant quartz crystal, and a Ziplock of ash on the passenger seat before selecting a small, enchanted dagger and her pear, prepared just that morning.

The wizard removed her tiny hoop earnings and looped one through the hole in the hilt of the dagger and pierced the other through the pear. Both items shrunk until they looked delicate and felt light, then Brita put her earrings back in.

For the final touch, the wizard checked the face she had crafted at home in her rearview mirror. The illusion was holding up nicely under the rain, and she could see real moisture dripping from her fabricated cheek. Perfect.

Brita pulled up her hood up, stuffed a small pouch in her pocket, and hopped out of the car. Streetlamps struggled to light the deserted alley she crossed, and they disappeared altogether when she approached the abandoned building she had scoped out that afternoon. A side door sat newly ajar.

It was wonderful comfortable inside, merely by the absence of rain. There were piles of palates and boxes to one side, and a forklift missing two tires, the front windshield and an arm. It looked like the space had been recently abandoned because there was not nearly as much dust on the floor as Brita would have liked.

Empty. Twenty minutes past the meeting time and ten minutes after the wizard’s arrival, the place remained devoid of creatures. She had just pulled out the burner phone to check she had the right address – the door may have been a coincidence – when she was grabbed from behind.

You may have heard wizards are not particularly sturdy beings. Brita would have loved to argue that this is false, but you’d have to wait a while because she was presently unconscious.

***

Brita awoke with a jolt, and the acrid smelling salts were quickly pulled away from her face before she could grab them and summon any devils. Then again, Brita couldn’t grab anything because her hands were bound with hemp rope – likely enchanted – behind her back.

The no longer abandoned building stretched around her, and several of the palates had been dragged over to serve as a table. A large LED lantern had been placed atop the palate, around which three shadows conferred.

The wizard hunched her shoulders and set her eyes dancing around the room uncertainly. Her customer was unused to kidnappings, which meant today, so was she. She discretely checked that she still had her earrings (she did) and the pouch (she did not), before addressing her attackers.

“Did you...” Three heads swivelled to her.

Oops, she thought, that sounds way to assertive for a random kidnappee.

“Why did you attack me?” she exclaimed with, let’s be honest, a little too much melodrama.

“Shhhhh!” the leftmost shadow hissed. “Frank’s counting.”

Perfect, she thought. A moment to think. And then it will seem appropriate to ask all the required questions.

Brita studied the shadows a bit. She deduced the shorter, middle shadow was Frank since he was muttering to himself. Brita could hear the gemstones from that pouch clicking gently on the table, but her chair was too short to see over the edge.

Well that’s rude, she thought.

The other two shadows were taller and had matching athletic builds. Brothers, maybe? That didn’t matter now; she had the beginnings of a plan swirling in her mind.

Brita cupped her hands behind her back so her palms were facing up, and focused on her left earring, the one bearing her dagger. She waited until Frank had finished counting and the others had leaned in to hear his whispered report.

Then, Brita coughed loudly to cover the pop as her earing disappeared and the fizz as the earing reappeared in her cupped hands. This time only the leftmost figure paid her any mind.

The wizard clasped her earing and attempted to open the backing, but she was spooked into dropping it when Frank spoke.

“Everything seems to be in order, Alvin,” Frank said to the leftmost figure.

Brita grabbed for the earring as it fell and managed to snag the tip of the miniaturised dagger.

“Great,” Alvin said. He patted his pocket absentmindedly before rounding on Brita. “However, we can’t give you the SD card.”

Brita was so focused on twisting her other hand in her bonds to grab the earring more firmly that it took a few seconds for her to register the words.

“Why not?” Why is everything going awry?

This was supposed to be a very low stakes, simple job. She hadn’t charged additional hazard pay. She didn’t even know what was on the SD card, but how bad could it be? she wondered.

“We were given a better offer,” he shrugged. Meanwhile, Brita had finally clasped the earing properly and had set about carefully taking the dagger off. “Unfortunately for you, that means we can’t risk you messing with the subsequent sale. Perry, do you mind?”

Alvin nodded to his maybe-brother, and the maybe-brother, Perry, pulled out a perfectly spherical bubble about 10 cm in diameter. It glistened with a pearlescent sheen as Perry walked towards Brita.

The wizard jumped several feet in the air despite having been seated. She would know that glistening bubble anywhere.

“No no it’s okay,” Alvin rushed to explain. “This enchantment only lasts 1 day. Give or take. But it will be fine. We’ll just leave you here in the bubble and by the time it pops we will be long gone. You’ll be free to go.”

Brita appraised the bubble disdainfully. Perry had hesitated at her jump, and now he hovered nearby with the awful thing.

The wizard knew what was like to be trapped in that bubble. When enchanted correctly, there is no known manner of magical escape, and the bubble was impenetrable from the inside. Brita had luckily been trapped in a poorly enchanted bubble, but it had taken days of despair and shots in the dark escape its deadly confines.

She was in no hurry to repeat the experience and had come to mistrust even the nicest of kidnappers, so she skipped right past reasoning with them to slicing her bonds with her (now properly sized) dagger.

Out of her seat before the hemp rope hit the floor, Brita sprinted for the palates along the wall and disappeared in the stacks. Footsteps followed her, gaining ground, but the wizard had a strong head start.

As she ran, she held her second earing with the hand holding her dagger and used the other hand to rip the pear off the hoop. It immediately jumped to normal size in her palm, so Brita rounded a final corner and began climbing.

Palates creaked and wined under her weight, but she scrambled up the stack and got a good view of the room.

Perry was blocking the channel where she entered palates and Frank had stayed back with the gemstones he was hurriedly ushering back into the pouch. There was a far exit, but Alvin chased her into the palates, and he heard her scrabbling. He was seconds away.

With one shot and mediocre aim, Brita tossed the pear she had prepared somewhat equidistant between Frank and Perry. It landed a little closer to Perry, but that didn’t matter as it exploded into a giant, sticky pink foam that trapped them both, coming up to Perry’s waist and Frank’s sternum.

Yes!

Then Alvin grabbed Brita’s ankle and pulled her off the palate.

The wizard landed hard, dagger sliding out of her hand along the smooth cement. She pulled herself to her feet just as Alvin picked up the dagger.

He lunged, bringing the dagger down in a massive swipe. Brita ducked and Alvin drove the dagger into the ground.

Oh no, was all the wizard had time to think before the ground shook and a web of cracks sprung open, radiating from the dagger’s tip.

Both parties jumped back to avoid the deep fissures, up to a foot wide in places. Alvin kept hold of the dagger despite his obvious surprise and regarded the instrument with new appreciation.

“Where did you get-” he coughed as Brita gusted dust up from the fissures into the air.

Brita heard a thump. Alvin had stepped in a crack in his confusion.

Without missing a beat, the wizard sent another wave of dust into the air and snuck up behind Alvin. She lithely grabbed what she hoped was the SD card from that pocket he kept tapping and sequestered it in her own jacket. Then, she tried to pry the dagger from his hand.

Alvin swung around and Brita did the first thing she could think of: she head-butted him. She stunned herself, barely managing to pull the dagger away. She staggered out of reach and leaned on a stack of palates as Alvin yanked and twisted, trying to free his leg.

After a few moments and the return of her breath, Brita ran through the stacks looking for the exit she had noticed standing on top of the palates. She rounded a corner and had to pull up short to avoid Perry, who was trudging through the slush towards the ruckus.

That route blocked with pink goo and people, the wizard turned and dashed down a different path. She twisted and turned through the maze as angry shouts rose behind her. Finally, Brita found the warehouse wall and followed it, ducking around abandoned boxes, until a door appeared.

She threw her weight against the door, but it held fast. She tapped the tip of her dagger near the lock and bolt and they crumbled with minor tremors. She pushed on the door again and a section disintegrated.

Footsteps pounded behind her. She tapped the dagger on the remaining section. Enough of the door fell away that she could squeeze through. Brita emerged into the howling night winds and splattering rain, and did not stop running until she reached her car.

***

Brita pulled into her driveway and was immediately reminded of the mess she left. She stayed out an extra 10 minutes to scrape most of the pink bubbles down the storm drain. Once her home was less conspicuous, she plodded inside.

Making a considered effort to keep track of her keys, she placed them next to her sopping jacket and somatics duffle. She tucked the SD card into her home safe before she forgot.

The adrenaline of the evening had long abandoned Brita, but she took the time to wash away her enchanted face and grab dinner – toasted waffles and cold pizza – before heading to bed. It was all in a night’s work.

The End of Part 1