The Thief's Apprentice
A Thief fan fiction by Madeeha Ahmed (written in 2004, revamped in 2014)
DISCLAIMER: All Thief and related materials, characters, missions, names, places, quotes, etc. belong to Looking Glass Studios, Ion Storm, Eidos, Eidos-Montreal and Square-Enix. I do not own any of it. Fan fiction story ideas and original characters created by and copyright of myself. I wrote this as a creative project for fun and practice. For the fans by a fan. Enjoy.
PROLOGUE
This is The City. A place ruled by disease and haunted by darkness. Where shadows and silence are your allies, and light is your enemy. A place where stealth and cunning are needed as tools to operate in the velvet night to take the riches of others so freely, and then escape into the darkness, silent as a ghost, leaving no trace behind.
Here in The City, you will come to know of a man that hears all and sees all. A man who once stole to survive, but now survives only to steal. A man seen only as a shadow, an apparition who does use stealth and cunning as his tools, one who can take the riches of others so willingly, and then easily disappear into the night without the slightest trace.
Some say he is not a man, but instead a phantom, a solitary and mysterious specter, a ghost roaming free in a city bound by chains, and known to this dark world as the Master Thief.
She silently crept down the darkened streets of The City, desperately searching for the fountain she had been told to find. The ebony night concealed her, and she was careful to use the shadows, so as not to alert any of the City Watch guards that were on duty, patrolling the disease-ridden roads of the place. Escaping the guard from the tavern to get this far was difficult enough. She could not risk another encounter.
A few civilians passed her by, taking one glance and immediately turning away at the sight of her unusual black dress and cloak. She made sure the hood of her dark cloak, which she had so freely picked up at the tavern from an unwilling stranger, was well up over her head and halfway over her face, veiling herself from any potential enemies.
After wandering the paths in the Marketplace for some time, she finally arrived in a quieter part of town, South Quarter. She entered a courtyard surrounded by apartment buildings and some small shops. There, in the center of the courtyard, was the fountain she had been seeking: South Quarter Fountain, as the gold plate indicated.
She walked up to it quietly and examined it. It was a broken fountain, one that no longer allowed streams of water to flow from its intricately designed pipes into the large bowl.
A couple was standing outside a shop, talking. She silently listened to their conversation and picked up their whispers about her. She began to feel uneasy amongst their presence.
Without further hesitation, she searched the crevices of the fountain with her delicate hands and finally felt a small piece of papyrus lodged in the cracks of the fountain walls.
She pulled the note out and inched over to a wall with a flaming torch on it. Using the light from the flickering orange and yellow flames, she unrolled the scroll and read the message:
"Hoping you will find this before the damned City Watch does. I will be outside the Shalebridge Cradle. Meet me there around midnight."
She looked up from the note and glanced around. The couple had disappeared. All was quiet. She breathed a quiet sigh of relief and folded the note, clasping it tightly in her right hand.
The night was getting cooler. The sky had darkened since she had left her place at sundown. The once bright orange and red hues that she had seen when leaving Auldale Plaza, had all but disappeared now, leaving behind a blanket of aubergine and ebony, dotted with stars that twinkled like diamonds set against the velvet sky.
The Shalebridge Cradle. A bit of a walk from South Quarter. I must get going, she thought as she adjusted her hood and left South Quarter through a dark alley on her right, rapidly making her way to meet someone who had altered her life in a single night.