Hugo kept an eye on the mana clock in the distance. He checked around to make sure everyone was in position. Once it hit tenth bell, he took a big breath and jumped off the roof.

The two story fall didn’t even phase him at this point. His strength and dexterity made it feel like a five foot drop. He quietly landed and strolled forward. With a casual air, he hiked up his bag and glanced around. His part wasn’t until later, but he needed to verify that the others were doing their job.

Reval was his hometown, so it was easy to quickly assemble a team of people who would do anything for money, no questions asked. It was honestly a little sad. He had a rough childhood. Thankfully, the part of his life surrounded by criminals was almost over.

Two blocks away, he saw a shimmer corpsman following a smiling flirty girl. She pulled him into a nearby apartment building. Excellent. The sleeping potion he had bought her would take care of that one.

Next up was the distraction. An explosion rang out six blocks away. Right on time. Hugo couldn’t see the plume of smoke in the dark night, but he knew it was there. A few moments later, one of the shimmer knights guarding the warehouse flew away to check it out. His shimmer backpack left sparkling clouds as he flew. Two squires followed him on foot.

They wouldn’t be returning.

Hugo had armed Markus and tasked him with keeping the responding shimmer corpsmen busy. His dad’s old friend was an accomplished barrier mage, which meant that he could block a shimmer shot or two. That would be enough time to use the canisters he had created for this heist.

By Hugo’s count, that left two shimmer squires guarding the warehouse. One inside, the other outside. He slipped his hand into his bag and pulled out a pair of canisters. The squire outside was standing on the roof of the warehouse. Normally her perch was hidden, but the woman was standing now, looking towards the growing fire in the distance.

Making sure that he couldn’t be seen from the windows, Hugo solidified steps and walked up to her. He was as silent as he could be, even holding his breath as he got close. Something must have tipped her off though, and she turned towards him as he was ten feet away.

Hugo tossed the cylinder towards her just as she brought up her shimmer caster and fired. With a mental flex, Hugo solidified an extra strong barrier and blocked the shot. At the same time, his canister hit the roof near her feet and activated. A sticky mess of spider silk shot out and quickly wrapped her up. The silk contracted as it hit the air, and pulled her down. She was now firmly attached to the roof.

With a dagger in hand, Hugo slowly walked towards her. She had one eye open and she tried to scream as he drew closer. The muffled terror grew more frantic as Hugo reached down and swiped his dagger across her face.

She took a deep breath in. The air hole he had cut in the silk was enough to let her breathe, but not yell. Hugo made sure she was secure and then turned around. He recycled his barriers and hopped down to the ground.

Next step was getting inside. The last time he had done this, he successfully avoided the traps on the door and went in through the window. But the last time he was chased into the sewers as well. He suspected he had triggered a ward in the window, which alerted central command.

This time would be different.

He set his bag down and pulled out a contraption he had spent a few days getting right. It was a large metal circle with five inscribed knives affixed to the edge. They were all pointing forward and Hugo slammed them into the wooden wall of the warehouse. The sharpness runes on the knives allowed them to cut through the foot thick wall like butter. It was beyond what a normal sharpness rune could do. He had discovered a way to supercharge the runes with a crazy amount of mana. He turned the contraption and the knives continued to slice, creating a hole in the wall.

Hugo pulled it back and the plug came with it. He gently set it down, careful of the knives. They were starting to smoke and would slag themselves shortly. Hugo knelt down and peeked into the side of the new hole. His method was quiet, but not entirely soundless.

A shimmer blast greeted him, but his caution meant that it passed above his head. He quickly gave himself a barrier suit and scrabbled for his bag. The shimmer corpsman was good at his job, and immediately shot twice more through the wall. His aim was good. The first shot removed Hugo’s protection, and the second hit his right arm. Hugo had been holding himself up with that arm and collapsed to the ground.

He flipped himself over and gave himself a trio of new barriers. One of them was immediately stripped off. Hugo stopped moving. He held his breath as the shimmer corpsman carefully walked towards the hole in the wall.

The shimmer knight fired his caster again as soon as he saw Hugo’s shields were still active. By then it was too late for the man. Hugo threw his spider silk canister at the knight as soon as he was visible. The knight managed to shoot it in the air as it flew, which was impressive. It was also ineffective because the explosion of silk didn’t rely on magic. The knight went down in a mess of sticky threads.

Hugo threw another canister at the man to make sure he was really down. Once the silk was hardened, he stepped into the warehouse and made sure he could breathe. He didn't really care if they lived or died. The only reason he was being so careful was so the response to his theft wouldn't be so drastic. There was a difference between shimmer corps searching for a thief, and avenging their fallen brethren.

Next he walked over to the crates that hid the mana core inside. It was warded and trapped with deadly countermeasures. Last time he had climbed down from the ceiling with a cable tied to the beams above. This time he just walked on air towards the crates. He grabbed a set of gloves and a jar with a screw top from his bag. Carefully, he opened it and tilted the lead paint onto the magical protections surrounding the cage. Protections fizzled and popped as the magical pathways were disrupted. Hugo dropped the jar and the gloves near the cage. Then he fabricated a large metal garrote and went to town on the bolts holding it in place. It created a loud screeching sound that reverberated through the warehouse.

The guards were tied up at the moment, so no one came over to check on the sound. A few minutes later, the mana core was free of its metal cage. Hugo carefully pulled it out and placed it in the lead lined box he had in his bag.

As he walked out, he wondered what the shimmer corps had been thinking when they set up this trap. They were trying to bait out the fox gang, but their protections were woefully inadequate. He had been able to steal the core both times, and he was basically alone. If a large enough group of mundanes came in here, they could just overwhelm the defenses. There would be casualties with that plan, but mana cores were worth an obscene amount.

A sound roused him from his musings, a kid loudly yelling outside, “Hey mister corpsman! Did you see that monster? It was like a spider monster or something.”

Hugo smiled. That kid had earned his gold. He changed directions and sprinted for the far wall. Time for plan B. There was a door on this end of the warehouse that faced the wharf. It was trapped and warded, but at this point Hugo didn’t care about alerting the shimmer corps. The kid had been talking to them already.

He heard shouting from his hole in the wall as he reached the far door. That was another reason he had used the spider silk and left everyone alive. The other shimmer corpsmen would be slowed down rescuing their compatriots. Hugo gave himself a blue gauntlet and yanked the door open. The handle sparked and buzzed in his hand, but didn’t hurt him.

Making sure he wasn’t being followed yet, Hugo raced down the alley way and ducked into the lobby of a nearby apartment building. He slid under the stairs and undressed. He strapped the lead lined case to his belly, making sure that the rounded end was correctly aligned. He snatched a wig, padded bra, and a dress from his bag and put them on.

He strolled out of the apartment building as a pregnant woman. Admittedly an ugly woman, but he didn’t have the time or talent to improve his disguise any further. He would just have to make sure no one got a good look at him.

Hugo slowly made his way uphill, towards the train station. As he walked, he saw shimmer corpsmen dashing up and down the streets. He continued to plod along, not drawing attention to himself.

After a half hour of his pregnant waddle, he arrived at the train station. It was a hive of activity, with every person boarding the train getting checked out. The shimmer corps were accompanied by a few sentinels. They were carefully scanning the luggage with glowing yellow eyes. Light mages.

Hugo turned and walked away. This was unfortunate, but he had planned for this eventuality. The shimmer train came into the city through one section of the wall and left on an other. The tracks ran by some of the poorest parts of town, only surpassed by the narrows. Hugo walked into a rickety apartment building near the northbound tracks. He slowly walked up the stairs and unlocked the door to the roof. Once there, he sat down and waited.

Twenty minutes later, and after the scheduled departure time, the train got going. By the time it passed the apartment building Hugo was sitting on top of, it was going a quarter of its full speed. That was still pretty fast.

Hugo solidified a rod of mana ten feet above the train and anchored it to a train car near the back. When he jumped off the apartment, he aimed for the bar heading his way. His twenty nine points of dexterity paid off as he caught the bar and swung up. Once his momentum was bled off, he gave himself little stairs down in between a pair of train cars. There was a small walkway between the trains and a sliding door. Hugo slipped inside the rear train car.

He quickly sat down at the nearest unoccupied seat and faced the window. He took out his ticket and placed it on the seat nearby. He was glad he had bought one ahead of time. He pretended to sleep when the conductor came by, checking tickets.

Soon enough, he was back in Tembisa. No one gave him a second look. He headed for the Gilded Lily, allowing himself to walk a little faster. In the hotel, he got a few strange looks. His disguise was even worse in the bright lights. Thankfully, no one said anything and he headed straight up to his room.

He did it. He had gotten a second mana core. One more heist to pull and everything would be golden.

The next morning, he got up and made sure everything was packed up. He wouldn’t be returning here. After a quick trip to the bank, he sent a few pulsenotes to Paarl, setting everything in motion.

...

“Can we get things moving here?” Hugo shouted.

His cry was echoed by the delivery men and women in front of him. Hugo was sitting in line behind five other carts. The nox in front of him were pulling handcarts full of merchandise, but Hugo was driving a mana cart.

Learning how to drive had been surprisingly difficult. He had incorrectly assumed that his high dexterity would help him quickly learn how to use the two stick controls of the mana cart. It helped, but not quickly. There was an art to it, moving the sticks forward at a steady pace while paying attention to the surroundings and remembering how long the cart was.

He was just glad that the master of the house hadn't seen him practice in the driveway before he headed out. The servant that gave him the mana key had clearly not approved of his jerky control of the vehicle, but he didn’t have the authority to stop him. He had rented the mana cart from a Paarl royal for a platinum and a half. He could have bought his own kart for triple that, but he had been running low on funds by then.

His heist in Reval had cost him twenty gold, all told. That and a week of creating tools and sticky bombs. The Paarl job had been much more expensive. The back of his mana cart and all of the handcarts in front of him were full of merchandise he had paid for. A total of five different stores and ten separate deliveries were scheduled for this morning.

Hugo guessed that the first delivery or two was placed inside the family mansion. It was on the same plot of land after all. When the deliveries kept coming, he imagined that there was a bit of panic before they started storing things in the warehouse. The guards must have known that the mana cores were inside, or at least that there was something very valuable inside. But they weren’t supposed to let anyone know that, so the deliveries Hugo had scheduled for today were being allowed in the warehouse now.

The master of the house, Mr. Koppel, wasn’t anywhere to be found. The first delivery had come with a letter, and he was probably panicking and heading over to Tallinn now. The deliveries claimed to be from the tiger gang. They were having him store the stolen goods from Tallinn for a bit. The letters said he could reach them at a specific restaurant there.

Of course, having stolen goods stored at a warehouse connected to the Koppel estate was a terrible idea. It exposed Mr. Koppel in a terribly obvious way. The man was probably doing everything he could to stop the deliveries at the source right away.

“I have places to be! Do you want me to just drop the delivery on the driveway here?” Hugo shouted. A similar cry rang out from the nox carrying handcarts in front of him.

The guards had been unloading the deliveries themselves up until this point, not wanting to allow strangers inside the warehouse. Having stolen goods just left out in the driveway where anyone could see them would be much worse though. As Hugo had hoped, the guards started letting people help unload their deliveries shortly after that.

Hugo did his best not to let a smile creep up on his face as carts were let in, three at a time. He carefully drove closer to the warehouse. Fifteen minutes later, he was inside as well. He used his mana sight to park as close as he could to the mana cores. The guards might have asked him to move, but then there was a commotion outside.

He craned his neck to see that two of the carts had run into each other, and they were arguing about whose fault it was. Hugo didn’t ask them to do that, but it fit into his plans so well that Hugo laughed a bit. The guards had gone to stop the fight and left him alone in here.

With a careful application of his soulmarked strength, Hugo lifted the majority of the boxes from the back of his mana cart and placed them so no one could see what he was doing. Then he quickly ran over to where he saw some glowing spots behind other boxes. With an enhanced barrier, Hugo grabbed the boxes in the way and lifted them to the side.

The move revealed where they were keeping the cores. An enormous metal safe. It stood taller than Hugo, dominating the center of the warehouse. The steel walls looked at least a half a foot thick and the locking mechanism had three different key slots. It was well beyond Hugo’s meager lockpicking skills.

He couldn’t break into this thing, even if he had hours alone with it.

Thankfully, he had another option. Hugo untucked his knife from behind his tunic and raced forward. He pushed forty points of mana into the runed knife and plunged it into the steel door to the safe. It made a squealing noise as the thin knife cut through a foot of steel and gears.

A few seconds later, the knife slagged itself and stopped working. Hugo had to let go and step back so he didn’t get burned from the molten metal. He had only managed to cut a foot long section of the right hand side of the safe door. Hopefully that would be enough. He didn’t have any more runed knives.

He gave himself a blue gauntlet and grabbed the safe door and yanked it. To his everlasting relief, the door opened. He had cut through the three inch metal bolt and the safe quietly opened up. It revealed five mana cores, softly glowing inside.

“What are you doing here?” a guard said.

Hugo reached into the satchel by his side and took out one of the cubes Mia had runed for him. He tossed it just as the guard was raising his crossbow. The cube activated and created a purple cube of jelly, enveloping the man and cutting off his shouts for help.

Swearing to himself, Hugo swept up the mana cores with a large barrier box. It was heavy, but his barrier held. He raced back to his mana cart, scooching around the purple gelatinous cube. The boxes he had placed to hide himself hid the guard as well. He placed each mana core into one of the two lead lined boxes. He didn’t have much time until the guard was discovered, but he still tied down the boxes. He had a feeling it would be necessary.

Hugo checked that the pool runes he had inscribed on the mana cart were still full. He might need to power up the runes they were connected to soon. Much slower than he wanted to, Hugo drove out of the warehouse. Before he got to the estate gates, he heard a voice shouting behind him.

“Stop him! Stop him! He has the cores!” a guard screamed.

Hugo started to swear, but didn’t even get a word out before something hit his shoulder and knocked him forward. It was a crossbow bolt. Thankfully, he was wearing a version of his form fitting armor and the bolt was deflected to the side. Hugo activated all the runes on the armor and slammed the control sticks forward. His mana cart surged forward. He solidified a mana helmet and crouched down.

A tight beam of light shot through the air and put a hole in the dashboard to his right. Shit. They had a light mage. He didn’t plan for a light mage.