The church bells rang high noon, the time that the bandit leader had instructed his men to begin.
Three of the bandits, waiting just outside the town docks, donned jesters' masks and lit a torch. The two largest men pushed a manure cart full of gunpowder; the smaller ran behind with the torch in one hand and a bag in the other carrying several lengths of yarn.
Two more bandits – a woodsman and a lock-pick – made their way to an abandoned house outside of town. Their patron had informed them of a trapdoor hidden in the house's basement; the lock-pick found it in one of the corners. He called to the woodsman, unlocked the door, and the two crawled into the passage beneath. The path grew in height and breadth until both men were able to stand and run.
The three masked bandits reached the docks. The larger two commanded that everybody within earshot drop to their knees; the smaller stuck the torch into the gunpowder and tied the middle of the yarn around the base. The small man then wrapped one end of the yarn around his wrist and walked out towards the water. He waved his hand in the air and yelled, "To all here who wish to die today: we come bearing a promise from the Clown Prince of Thieves! Should but one person try to get between us and our master's spoils, then all will here will die in thunder and fire."
One of the larger bandits ran back to the cart, tied the other end of yarn around his own wrist, and likewise raised his hand to the air for all to see. "Whereas if anybody doesn't want to die in an explosion, then you might want to stop everybody else from doing anything to get you killed. Does everybody understand us?"
The woodsman stopped running. He whistled for the lock-pick to do the same, then took a fox – almost dead with poison – out of his bag and threw it into the darkness. The tunnel echoed with the hissing sound of a fire or a windstorm, followed by that of a mighty weight falling to the ground.
The woodsman took a torch from his bag, set it alight, and took out a mirror to send more of the light forward. He advanced first, the lock-pick following behind; the two men came across the sleeping beast that had been guarding the passage.
It was a great serpent, as thick as a man and with scales ranging from blood red to golden. Its neck was spread into a hood like a cobra, but the fangs in its jaw more resembled those of a gigantic viper. The woodsman estimated that, were it uncoiled, the serpent would measure at least the length of an Imperial frigate. "How the Hell could they have found a monster like this?"
The lock-pick pushed at the woodsman's shoulder. "Will we need to worry about it later?"
The woodsman answered, "No, it doesn't seem to be waking – "
The lock-pick pulled the woodsman's head back and sliced his throat. The lock-pick dropped the knife, caught the torch and mirror as the dead man's hands let go, and ran through the tunnel himself. He came to a stairwell and ascended into the building above.
The masked bandits on the docks took more yarn and tied the torch to various objects with varying heights off of the docks. Within minutes, their web rendered safe passage impossible between the docks and dry land. The bandit not tied to the torch and the gunpowder ran into the dockmaster's building.
The lock-pick came to the top of the stairs. He set down his torch and his bag of tools on the stone floor, then threw the woodman's empty bag to the metal door on his right side, perhaps two meters in breadth and three in height. When the dead man's bag left his hand, he reached down to retrieve his own.
White and orange light burst into his eyes from the direction of the door. The room filled the roar and the stench of a fire. The lock-pick turned to the door and saw that the bag he'd thrown had burst into flames.
A shriek broke out from inside the dockmaster's building. The two masked bandits controlling the gunpowder turned to face the noise. Their companion flew out of the window, one large tendril of green light wrapped around his neck and a second tying his ankles to the inside of the building.
The tendril around his ankles went taut. His body dropped into the water. His head continued through the air.
The bystanders started screaming. The two surviving bandits ducked behind a fruit cart.
A man walked out of the building with his hands upraised and glowing green. He yelled an incantation in a language that the bandits did not understand. Another tendril of green formed around a large barrel of fish and threw it into the air.
The smaller bandit took a blowgun and a silver dart out of his pocket. The larger man whispered, "Would he be able to attack us right now?" The smaller man answered, "No, he would need to start the incantation all over." The larger man ran to the gunpowder cart and took a sling and bullet from the axle. A tendril of green wrapped around his neck and lifted him into the air. Not enough to upset the torch, but enough that the man couldn't catch his footing.
The smaller man breathed into the pipe. The dart flew across the dock and into the mage's shoulder. Sparks of blue lightning burned across the mage's body as the silver disrupted his magic.
The mage screamed and the tendril holding the larger bandit in the air evaporated. Both men screamed – the mage more strongly – and the bandit fell to the ground.
The small bandit shot two more darts, one hitting the mage in the leg and the other in the chest. The mage tried to force another incantation from his lips. No power came to him.
The larger bandit stood up. He picked his partner up by the back of the neck, closed his fingers around the man's throat, then threw him to the ground. "What are you, a bloody ogre-bastard?" As the smaller man stood up, the larger cut himself from the torch and limped across the dock to the fallen mage. He noticed that the mage was wearing a pendant, green and shaped like a griffon.
The man almost laughed. Before the crime, the bastard with the blowgun had told everybody "Look for a trinket like a griffon: possibly blue, possibly green. The Clown Prince says we'll need it to get the treasure out of the vault." The man had assumed that the Clown's emissary was referring to a key, perhaps a marker revealing the location of some hidden key.
But if they were robbing a sorcerer, then the pendant was almost certainly part of some mystical safeguard. The man cut it from the mage's neck and tied it around his own.
He worked his way down a flight of stairs to where the lock-pick was opening a door. He noticed that the lock-pick was covering his hands with a leather bag.
He did not see the hunter. Again, the masked man silently cursed the Clown Prince's emissary. Without the leg injury sustained by the emissary's deceit, the masked man could've easily defeated the lock-pick by himself; with his injury, he didn't think he could do so without the hunter's aid. "What happened to –"
The lock-pick jumped back from the half-open door. Geysers of flame shot out of the walls. The flames hitting the outside of the door reflected into the room. The masked man couldn't see the flames hitting the inside of the door, but he presumed that they were reflected into the vault.
Perhaps the man wouldn't need the hunter's help defeating the lock-pick.
The flames disappeared. The lock-pick smacked the door with his leather bag before covering his hands to open the door further. He yelled to the man behind him, "10 seconds. Each fire lasts 10 seconds, and after one ends, we can only be in front of the doorway for 10 seconds before another starts. Who the Hell constructs something like this?" He jumped back again, narrowly avoiding the next burst of flame.
The masked man removed his pendant and waved it at the fire. Nothing happened; the pendant must be for something else. "Sorcerer. Not one of those 'don't kill anyone' sorcerers serving the Crown; this one's probably in some demon-cult. Where's the hunter?"
The flames ceased. The lock-pick resumed opening the door. "Well, the patron told me to kill him after he was done with the 'guard dogs.' More gold for the rest of us, right?" He stepped back to survey his progress. The door appeared open enough for anything worth carrying out.
The masked man put his hand to the lock-pick's head. "Actually, I believe his exact words were 'one less share.'"
The tone of the lock-pick's voice warped into that of fear. "Wait, what?"
The masked man slammed the lock-pick's head against the metal door, then dropped the limp body in front of one of the flame vents. He ran through the doorway. The sound of the flames began, joined now by the reek of burning flesh.
The masked man looked around the treasure room. The metal chest was as the Clown Prince's emissary had described – grey, simple and rectangular, perhaps a meter and a half in length, a meter in breadth, and a meter in height – but the promised cart for removing the chest from the room, let alone from the building and then the town, was nowhere to be seen.
Then again, it appeared to the masked man that many parts of the Clown Prince's plan were not as he had been told. The man held the pendant to the chest to see whether anything would happen. The pendant flew out of his hand and landed on the metal. He walked over to the chest and put his hand on the pendant.
The chest lifted into the air, settling perhaps half a meter off of the ground. The man decided to test how much control the pendant granted: he willed for the chest to fall closer to the ground. The chest descended about a quarter meter. The man climbed on top of the chest. It remained in the air despite the extra weight.
The man willed the chest to float towards the doorway. He took himself close to the flames, careful to line himself up with the doorway without painfully warming the metal beneath him.
The flames dissipated. The man forced the chest to fly out of the room at great speed, then slowed down so that he could ascend the staircase.
He flew the chest out of the building. A small fishing boat had just come into the docks and was turning back to the sea. The man didn't worry: this endeavor too close to finished for any complication to cause a problem.
He saw the Clown Prince's emissary standing near the torch and gunpowder cart. Given how the rest of the robbery had gone so far, the man decided that the emissary had probably been ordered to kill him. If that was how the Clown Prince wanted this to end, then the masked man could just kill the emissary and keep the whole treasure to himself.
He flew closer to the emissary, then set the chest down on the ground and climbed off. He took his sling and bullet out of his pocket, started swinging the projectile around his hand –
The emissary whistled. An arrow fired from the fishing boat and into the would-be assassin's skull.
The sling, with it's projectile, flew into the water. The emissary cut himself from the torch, ran to the fallen mage, and searched for mystical weapons in the man's robes. He found a scrap of parchment in the mage's sleeve. On it was drawn a patchwork of snowflakes. The emissary took a knife from his pocket, cut his hand, and wiped the scrap of parchment across the blood. He closed his bloodied hand around the parchment.
The secret watchman jumped out of his boat and tied it to the dock. He yelled to the emissary, "Where's everybody else?"
The emissary reached his arm in the direction of the man who'd saved his life.
The watchman screamed as his body shattered into ice.
The emissary opened his hand. All designs on the parchment disappeared. He dropped the scrap.
As the Clown Prince's last surviving man walked to the treasure chest, the mage called out in pained gasps, "You think you've won? I would love to … tell you all of the ways that … my master is going to kill you … but it seems that your own … master will do it for him."
The Clown Prince's man untied his watchman's boat.
"Do you believe that you can … convince him to let you live? Do you believe that … you can run to a land where … he will never find you? Do you … believe that you can kill him first? What do you … believe … will happen to you?"
The Clown Prince's man returned to the mage. He knelt down, put his left hand in front of the mage's face, and spun a ring on his finger with his right hand. "I believe that the path to Paradise …"
He removed his ring. The illusion of health evaporated from his face, revealing a mouth that had been cut from ear to ear. The emissary – or rather, the Clown Prince of Thieves himself – opened his mouth to show the mage the back teeth that had would normally be covered by the flesh of an uninjured face.
The mage's face paled. His trousers gave off the bitter stench of urine.
The Clown Prince waved his tongue across his face, touching his left ear and almost his right. "… Begins and ends in Hell."
The Clown Prince dragged the mage across the wood and dropped him next to the post that his boat had been tied to. He ran back to the treasure chest, climbed on top, and flew it into the boat. He jumped back onto the dock, took the rope that had been around the post, and tied it around the mage's feet. He reasoned that the mage must be in shock to be putting up so little fight.
He turned his back to the mage, removed his jester mask, and threw it back to land near the mage's bound body. He climbed back into the boat, ducked below the mage's line of vision for almost a minute, then stood up to adjust the sails.
The mage watched as the boat pulled out of the dock.
The rope around his legs straightened in the air.
The other end of rope fell harmlessly off the boat.
The mage fainted just as town guards began cutting the web of yarn from the gunpowder trap.