Thievery

She was a sorcerer, but also a ninja. Which in a nutshell is where the problem arose.

Because I knew one day she’d come. She wouldn’t be able to resist the treasure to be had.

The ancient tome had been in my family for generations, you see, handed down from father to son, and from it I’d learned my own dark majiks. I’d learned to control the elements, and to shape time and space itself to my liking. I’d learned to prolong my life and to heal the wounded and sick, and I hoped one day to learn mastery over even death itself.

But what I’d not learned was vindictiveness, nor how to maintain a clear conscience were I to punish an innocent for crimes she might one day commit. So, although I knew she would inevitably attempt to steal my rightful prize, I could do nothing until the day she actually tried it. And so, my hands thusly tied, I was simply forced to wait for her to come and make her attempt on what was mine.

And come she did, in the night, as I slept.

And I didn’t even wake up. I had to watch security footage after the fact.

My locks were nothing to her, as she came in through a skylight, and the security alarm I’d paid so much for meant equally little as it’s power had been “mysteriously” cut before she’d even begun scaling my walls. I had guards, but none had any inkling that anything was amiss. I had tripwires, but not one tripped. Protective runes were placed around my stately home’s library, but she knew the counters to each and every spell. She breezed through my security measures as though they were nothing at all.

And yet the cameras kept recording.

Oh, they were no longer being routed to the private security firm I’d hired to maintain continuous surveillance, all they got was a loop from a previous night that implied that all was well. But they were recording, and storing video of her feats of subterfuge that I might view them later. Because she didn’t simply want to take what was mine, she wanted me to know she had it. She wanted me to know she’d beaten me, and that with the knowledge contained in the tome at her disposal there was nothing I could do about it. It wasn’t enough for her to violate me, to violate my family. I also had to watch.

Humiliating.

As humiliating to me as I imagine it was to her when she got home, opened the book and found that it’s every page was blank, though sadly I have no similar footage of that moment. What I wouldn’t give for THAT video feed.

If I had it, I’d keep it on the laptop onto which I scanned the pages of the tome eighteen months ago.

Because I’m also a sorcerer, and while I’m not a ninja I am a man willing to live in the modern age. And I’ve found a Kindle to be so much easier to carry around…