A halfling thief crept through the halls of a cave, slipping from shadow to shadow, avoiding the light of fancy magical lights and naturally occurring glowing crystal as he navigated the mazelike cavern.
Adding to the difficulty was that each passage was enormous, big enough for an immense beast to pass easily, without brushing up against the fancy chandeliers incongruously worked into the ceiling.
Great gouges were torn in the rough stone floor, and the halfling thief slipped past them carefully.
He passed dozens of large rooms, furnished lavishly but with a distinct lack of style, mismatched art, and statuary and furniture and thick piles of carpets tossed about almost haphazardly.
Britchard Orril was a skilled thief and 'intrusion specialist', but even for him, a dragon's hoard was a risky target.
The door didn't look high-security, a grille of wrought iron, locked by a gold-plated locking system with a dial.
But Britchard had state-of-the-art penetration tools, and he didn't need the small gem on his wristwatch glowing bright enough to almost blind, to tell him the thing was suffused with enough magic to vaporize him or worse, if he fucked up.
Fortunately, the client had offered a truly ridiculous payment for this job, and paid half up-front, which had funded a significant upgrade to his kit.
He strapped a cold-iron gauntlet over one hand, and got to work.
The wand of aspen, chased with silver, that he drew from his belt was meant for a mage, but it served well enough with a couple of quartz lacrima wired to it with copper, to hold several useful spells.
He tapped it against the lock, and waited.
With the iron gauntlet between him and the wand, he couldn't actuate the magic directly, so he had to wait until the loaded spells reacted to the presence of their target.
One by one, the lacrima went dark.
And the shroud of crackling energy setting the small thief on edge faded, pulling back, and then it was merely a matter of physically cracking the lock.
Child's play, even with the cold iron fouling his dexterity a little.
A small price to pay to be safe from any clever traps left under the main wards.
[]
The hoard was shockingly well organized, with hundreds of ornate wooden shelves and tables and casks laid out in a visually disordered yet considered arrangement that meant Britchard could find his way relatively easily, once he worked out the organization principles.
Amongst the gold and jewels and such, were the occasional bit of pottery, statuary and paintings, and even the skull of some long-ago beast, maybe a proto-dragon.
Britchard had a target though.
He found a table placed in the center of the hoard, lit from all sides to display its contents.
Row upon row of lifelike sculptures of nude women, made of fine porcelain and gold and more precious materials, representing many body types and shapes and species, all of them finely worked with lifelike detail. His breath caught in his throat.
One was a beautifully crafted porcelain doll in the shape of the Duchess Venkast, who the Dragoness had kidnapped. The doll was naked and shockingly detailed, porcelain face caught in an expression of ecstasy.
He reached for it...
And he heard a voice.
"Well well well, looks like a little thief slipped in!"
[]
"So, thief, what do you have to say for yourself?" she asked, her voice deep and melodic.
The dragon was about the height of a Human, surprisingly small for a creature that had made every neighboring country step carefully around the Wyrnholt Range for fear of her.
She stood about two meters, dark, jewel-tone green scales covering a surprisingly curvy body, brighter-green wings folded over her otherwise naked form like a cloak.
Her face was human-shaped. Presumably part of her current shape, as her ordinary form was quite reptilian.
He'd seen photographs of her in flight, engaging with the comparatively tiny biplanes and triplanes of the various local kingdoms' rough aerial militia, from a few years back when duchess Venkast had had the enterprising but ultimately foolish thought that machine guns on airplanes were a good way to beat Avris the Green.
Avris had leveled half her palace and made off with the duchess in the night after that, and now nobody flew anywhere near the Wyrnholt.
A tail lashed behind her, and hanging in front was what Brichard initially took to be another tail, until he realized it was issuing forth from her crotch, and, despite the barbed shapes on the long, conical tip, and its unusual length and slimness, it was recognizable as a distinctive, peculiar phallus.
Britchard smelled a peculiar scent, musk and spice and a bit of sulfur, but ignored it as he tossed his wand to his bare hand, the lacrima lighting up brilliantly as he dumped magic from his, remedially small, reserves into it and a cloud of steam coalesced out of the air.
He turned and bolted.
The dragoness tsked. "They always try to run!" she called out, "And it never works, so why don't you save the effort and come quietly?"
Brichard didn't answer, catching the vault door with his gauntleted hand and swinging his small weight around it, spinning around and sending another eruption of steam behind to cover his movement.
The lacrima were visibly dim, and he felt the faint ache in the back of his head that meant he was running low on magic.
He bolted down the halls.
And something erupted from behind him, a breath of wind that wasn't wind, a faint smell of ozone, a tidal wave of magic, leaving the mist he'd raised untouched and washing over him.
For a moment, he felt relief as the spell seemed to wash past, but then, he felt an intense pressure slam into him, like a sudden change in air pressure, as the spell washed inwards.
The gauntlet began to glow red-hot as magic slammed into it, and he hurriedly tore off the straps, leaving the red-hot metal to puddle behind him on the stone floor as the leather lining erupted in foul-smelling smoke.
He staggered, dropped to his knees as weakness accompanied the spell.
He felt like he was falling, his clothes and gear shifting, growing looser and looser, the entire passageway seeming to grow further and further away.
