Just Another Job

"It was just another job," Kraspyn told himself as he paced back and forth in the dark, damp alleyway. The moon was blank in the void that was the night sky, the only source of sickly light was from a fading arcane lamp far at one end of the narrow strip of street.

Baldur's Gate was hardly a place to call home. Rife with murderers, thieves and worse, it was the kind of place most would avoid even talking of if they could. Not a day went by that Kraspyn wasn't afraid he'd get stabbed for looking at the wrong Nobel or walking past the wrong doorway. Hell, he'd even been stabbed for doing the right thing. His Tabaxi heritage didn't help much either. It made him stick out like a deer painted red in the forest, within these streets swarming with Human. But everyone needs a place to call home.

His ear twitched as he heard footsteps approaching from the thick dark of the alley. Frond, his usual contact was shuffling towards him, his short portly figure and long, thin, greasy hair doing its usual job of making Kraspyn need a bath himself. But he couldn't say no to the man. He had saved his life way back then. When Kraspyn was new to this cesspit of a city. Though part of him wishes he had left the young Tabaxi to die where he lay, bloody and beaten.

"Mmmmh," Frond grumbled, his loose jowls shaking as the sound left him. "This one looks easy enough for your light touch, Cat." He held out a small piece of parchment, a singular letter too dark to see covered most of it.

Kraspyn made no move to take it. "That's what you said of the last one, ape and I've been walking with a limp all week!" He growled.

Frond threw his arms up in mock defence, though a smile widened on his round, smooth face. "Oh come now. How was I meant to know they hired a diviner." He lowered his hands and offered the piece of parchment again, raising his thick eyebrows. "Still got paid, didn't you?"

Kraspyn snatched the paper from his hands and shoved it into his pocket. "Fine, but this one better be worth my time!" Before taking off toward the main streets.

"Oh this one will my little kitten, this one will." Kraspyn could hear the smile in his voice. He never did trust that man. But who did he ever trust?

"I told you to stop calling me that!" Kraspyn shouted without turning, before throwing his hood up and entering the bustling night streets of the Lower City.

Kraspyn sat, crossed-legged in the middle of his house. That's if you could call it a house. Sure it had four walls and a roof, but that's all it had. The door was crooked and had to be lifted to be shut correctly, part of the floor sagged in one corner and the roof had more leaks in it than a boat caught in a reef. But it was all he had. It was the most he'd ever had come to think of it. He came from nothing and hadn't really made it very far from there. Not with the Flaming Fist taking a liking to beating him, the Watch not letting even get close to anyone under their charge, and most crews finding it an insult for him to come knocking anywhere.

He stared blankly at the folded piece of parchment that lay on the floor in front of him. The letter C was now clearly written in rough ink on one side. Great Kraspyn thought to himself Another one of Caldwell's museums. It had been the fifth one in as many weeks. He turned the paper over. It had been folded in such a way that it had to be torn to open it, as usual. Kraspyn gave a sigh as he slid a claw under the thin strip that was holding it together and began unfolding it.

The paper revealed the image of an arcane disk, one similar to what he had seen on a job before. Intricate, concentric circles, engraved with arcane symbols from all manner of magics and languages. Kraspyn had never bothered with learning the arcane. He had neither the patience nor the knack for those types of intricacies. However, whatever this disk was, it looked important and powerful. What he did know was that this was going to be well guarded and he was going to steal it. Not because he wanted to. Because he had no other choice.