This was a terrible idea. Absolutely horrible. Thomas slid through the barely-opened door he’d lockpicked open, hurrying inside and setting it closed before any of the magically constructed guards got a glimpse of his all-too obvious bright red hair out of the corner of their… eyes? Eyes. Whatever. Had he had more time to prepare for this turn of events he’d have worn a hood, but alas, his beloved doe-eyed but currently very frustrating wizard was getting ‘bright’ ideas in his head.
Also, Thomas could be impulsive when he was feeling emotional, and might have just snapped at everyone to ‘wait around and look casual’ so he could go and do his thing.
Might have.
It had been a while since he’d carried off a proper break-in solo but Gale wanted that damn book from the vaults they’d been refused access to, and anyway, fucking over Lorroakan in this way before the asshole faced the inevitable and highly-deserved wrath of Dame Aylin felt rather fitting. Being a magically-empowered roguish sort made it a perfect job for him and him alone; letting anyone else come along would just make it more likely they got caught. Thomas swept quickly and carefully through the seller’s office, snatching a few useful notes but not really getting anywhere in his actual goal until he moved to a bookcase and saw the hilariously obvious ‘book’ there. When he finally stepped into the actual vaults through the portal, well…
”Bet we could break into that place, Tommy.” His friend Myrri grinned up at him as she gestured with her head, eyes bright with mischief. “Maybe not quite yet, but give it a few years and your little tricks will be all we need to fuck with the wizards.”
The memory was sharp and vivid, almost igniting his blood with a long-forgotten feeling (fueled in part by adrenalin already burning through). He and his best friend Myrri had spent a lot of time as teenagers discussing how they might get into here, get into there, get into just about anywhere just for the fun of it… but also with some measure of understandable longing for the actual full bellies that one big haul might get them. Places like Sorcerous Sundries had burned especially bright in those fantasies. Neither of them would have actually dared to do it. Powerful wizards against two forgotten little urchins? Hardly a match, and in that case Thomas’s magical gift would have been more like a curse despite Myrri’s insistence on how useful it could be. But Tom was an adult man now, and his sorcery was, well. Still a curse sometimes. But much less so, and he’d upgraded quite a few of his special tricks. He’d also, technically, if you looked at it in a certain way, fucked with the wizards. Particularly clever use of mirror images and illusion could make the plural count, right?
…not the time for the softness that particular line of thought snaked through his heart. He was angry with its source, and besides, he needed to focus better to fulfill Myrri’s confident assertion that they could break into this place.
Inhaling softly, tapping back into that excited adrenalin as a grounding force, Thomas did a slow turn and fully took in his environment. The place most certainly had the superficials down right. The place looked almost exactly like the first mental image that had popped into his head upon hearing the words ‘magical wizard vault,’ from endless books to extravagent architecture to the essential cobwebs so thick a giant spider must have crawled through if they were real, but so far at least Thomas couldn’t sense a jot of the kind of security-related magics you might expect. Surely someone like Lorroakan would have set up alarms or safeguards that might alert him to unexpected incursions? Except no, no, perhaps he was the exact sort of someone who’d assume he’d never need to do that at all. Arrogant prick. Probably just expected he could come on down and clear up any bodies that made the mis-step he’d assume they’d make. Tom glanced down at the floor, noting the apparent drop being cut through by glittering swirls of gold, and leaned down to press a finger against it. Solid. Of course. The invisible floor burst into pretty crackling light beneath his feet as he strode over it, yet another reflection of Lorroakan’s apparent priorities.
Now, where to start? Where to truly get his teeth in? The piles of magical scrolls were an obvious take but that could wait for later, an easy swipe into a bag before leaving. There was a single door on one side that probably led to the actual hub of the place but a bare slice of stone wall was what initially caught Thomas’s eye, being peculiar in that it was the only one not containing a bookcase. The idea that it was concealing something occurred to him immediately despite being almost too obvious, and it was probably a bit much to be feeling pleased with himself when he found the (badly) concealed button for it within seconds. Pleased he felt, though, as the door slid open… and then amused, because the invisible floor surrounding the unveiled walkway glittered differently to its counterpart behind, sparking a soft blue instead. There was dust everywhere, pages all over the floor and even an old broken lamp that had obviously been so for quite a while, but so long as there was impressive and pretty magic to behold all was well, right? Never mind how few could even seen this place.
Beyond, a chamber continuing the theme of pretty but in disrepair, to the point of showers of dust occasionally bursting from the ceiling. A quick do-over brought up potions and gems, as well as some rather strange sketches Thomas decided to leave well enough alone, and the real prize sealed within a cabinet almost disappointingly easy to pop open with a regular lockpick. A book, though not the one he was seaching for… ‘The Red Knight’s Final Stratagem,’ complete with a warning that it ‘might’ contain curses. He’d encountered books that would indeed inflict such fates, but after washing his own magic over it to check as best as he was able Thomas rolled his eyes and decided it was a last minute attempt at keeping the thief at bay; that it contained power he did believe, though. Definitely taking to check through later.
He turned back, and passed halfway along the walkway before something caught his eye. Across the fake emptiness, behind another (quickly-emptied) chest, a normal looking wall that seemed. Off, in some way. Thomas couldn’t place it, but when he tried to tap the stone, his fingers passed right through.
”What sorta shit do you think they hide in the depths, anyways?” asked Myrri as they stared at the smoggy sky, sustained by fantasy as their stomachs growled. “Think any would be stupid to hide away a Wish in some magical thing without using it? Could change our lives…”
The room behind was completely barren, except for one small and very important little thing right across: an odd lamp, sat on a red cloth. Thomas stared at it, entranced for a moment. He’d heard of genie lamps, fabled items that threw both extreme potential and heavy risk at you. Wish spells, though… no, there was no way someone like Lorroakan would leave any lying anywhere that wasn’t directly on his person, or indeed, that he wouldn’t have already used it. Not a chance. But this thing being here, behind an illusory wall so easily missed… had he not been so jumped up on adrenalin and emotion he might have done the more intelligent thing of leaving it well alone, but instead Thomas thought of Karlach joking about having a ‘wish spell hidden’ in his packs, and of childhood dreams, and found his fingers caressing it before his senses could save him.
“Thank you for sacrificing yourself to save me! Such courage brings a tear to the eye!”
The mythical being rattled off an explanation that Tom could barely take in before vanishing into thin air, leaving behind a quite literal storm of panic. Golden luxury surrounded him, velvet and silk and a feast all around, but what had the thing said? Someone had to be… in here, all the time? Fuck! Fucking fucking FUCK! Plush cushions smacked around and hit the gilded walls as the wind picked up, all too ready to jump in response to his terror, and it took all too long before any level of thinking kicked back in again. Tears threatened to spring to his eyes, and, yes, he was so ready to cry, to cry hard, so much was fueling it, so much had happened, now he could admit to himself he’d needed to cry for a good long time, but this was not THE time for it! He couldn’t be stuck here, absolutely couldn’t! He’d become a mindflayer! His sister would never know! The artifact was stuck in his pockets now, so it would mean… his friends, his family, Baldur’s Gate itself… and Gale, what would his beloved but frighteningly ambitious Gale do? Right now all he wanted to do was see him again even if those pretty eyes still had the unnerving spark in them, selfish as that was. The tempest of thoughts drove the emotions ever harder, but also brought just enough purpose back into his head to level them with the smallest amount of sense. Enough, enough to do… something. Look around? Fantastic magical treasures were stuffed in every nook and cranny, but not one made him feel any better until he found a scroll of quasit summoning. And then Thomas felt a little stupid.
He also wondered if the djinni himself was a little stupid, if he’d been in here with the scroll the entire time.
Leaving behind the unfortunate creature in a flash, Thomas fell to the floor and threw-up. A good minute longer was spent dry-heaving. Why had he felt any kind of excited about this infiltration, again? Fuck, he’d fallen into the same traps that were so worrying him in others lately, huh. Hypocrite. Good for nothing… good for nothing… fucking fuck, no, no, it also wasn’t the time for falling into self-loathing. Later on, if he got out of here in once piece? And after whatever inevitably went down with Gale, because this was the day it finally happened, no more putting it off? He was going to need a solid amount of time in Halsin’s comforting company. Also, after, he’d make sure that blessing of a druid knew how important and valuable he was to their chaotic little group, because Thomas was more and more certain by the day that they wouldn’t have made it this far without his calming presence. Fuck.
Dragging himself to his feet, and taking a few moments to make the storm settle inside and out enough to not cause trouble, Thomas hurried back to the main room.
“Tell you what, Myrri… if I ever manage to sneak in somewhere like it, I’ll bring you back a memento.” Tommy paused, and then turned his head, grinning in response to Myrri’s wicked smile. “A valuable one, of course. Wouldn’t insult you with anything else.”
For a little while after that he approached it all business, doing as he normally hated doing now and shoving everything else going on in his head into a metaphorical box right down in the pit of his stomach. Another invisible wall revealed Lorroakan’s office; he took the revealing notes and diary, another book filled with potentially useful magic, more scrolls, and left. Broke open the lock into the apparent ‘restricted area’ and encountered mostly a whole lot of traps, which he dealt with via a clever mage hand spell that let him do it at a cautious distance when necessary. Flipped some switches and kept expecting worse, some great magical protection, but it never got worse than the mundane sort of protections he was confident with despite how on edge he felt about everything now. Cleared out the Elminster vault of what he felt safe in taking, and then, oh, that’d be it, the ‘Karsus’ vault…
An odd atmosphere filled the room beyond the labelled door, though maybe it didn’t, and it was all in Thomas’s head, his mood finally breaking through the dissociative haze that had been protecting him. He glanced over the multitude of enchanted weapons (too big to bother with, when they already had so much that was even more powerful) and went through literally everything else in the room before approaching the centerpiece shelf of the room where he knew his actual target would be waiting. It wasn’t enough, really. Just more magical scrolls, certainly powerful and worth taking, but the dread was finally starting to bring back the fear that was making his heart ache. Why, again, had he agreed to do this? What true benefit was he hoping to find by grabbing the book? His decision to do it had been so in-the-moment and driven by complicated feeling that Thomas couldn’t find an actual answer to the question he was certain was correct. Maybe the book would bring whatever dangerous ideas Gale had in his head to an end, but Thomas honestly didn’t think that was true even before he laid his hands on the Annals of Karsus.
The large and very clear warning right next to it, of the hubris of wizards, of the dangers of trying to equal Mystra in power, really didn’t make him feel any better about things.
Trembling despite himself, Tom flicked through a cipher that was completely unreadable before falling upon the only part of the book that was openly legible. It was just a description of the so-called ‘Regalia of Karsus,’ the ur-mage’s own names for the relics he’d created that were orb, sceptre and crown. The crown… it attracted and absorbed magical knowledge. Gave the wearer dominion over himself, apart from the weave. Sounded nice, except no, it really didn’t, if Thomas thought about it for more than a second. The Crown of Karsus was currently sat on the fucking Netherbrain’s head, giving it all of that, swelling it with more power than anything should ever fucking have in Thomas’s opinion. And it was giving him the mental image of his lover crowned as such. Gale, who had already near-destroyed himself with folly, risking such all over again. Inhaling sharply, Tom slammed the bloody book closed and stuffed it away in his pack for dealing with at a time that would be all too soon. He almost turned to leave, more than ready to abandon this trove of so-called treasures, when a glint caught his eye from the very top shelf. There nestled a very simple thing compared to all it was surrounded with; a golden chalice, with four glittering gems embedded within. Likely worth a fortune. The most basic but beloved thing that a good thief would be overjoyed to find.
Somewhere in the past, Myrri and her daring accomplice Tommy smiled at him. Poor and dirty, clad in rags, but still full of dreams for the future. Their lives would have been changed with something like this. A flicker of something he’d felt fading fast ignited his blood again, but in a softer manner. Gentler. Despite everything he was going through, every twist of emotion and building despair, Thomas smiled.
He took the chalice, pushing it right to the bottom of his bag of ill-gotten wares, ready for a new owner once he got to see her again.
And with that the moment was unfortunately gone, as was he in short order. Thomas sped out of the bloody ‘hidden’ vaults of Lorroakan as fast as his legs could take him. Daylight streamed into the office as he stumbled through the portal, affording him some small amount of time to catch his breath and sort himself out before he faced the big and frightening turning point of his life down the stairs below.
“…fuck…”
Thomas dragged a hand through his hair, leaned on the desk and wiped his eyes. That really had absolutely been a fucking terrible idea, he’d been gone way too long, and there was every chance that things were going to get even worse afterwards. Grand dreams were one thing, but at this point all the dreams he wanted for himself, for Myrri, for Gale, for his friends, for all of the city, were simple ones. Life and gentleness. Full stomachs and good company. Not the stars and not any whiff of godlike power. That was all, and he was going to make sure everyone bloody knew it.