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Act I – Liar
part (i)

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Opening Act

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'I am glad you are feeling more like yourself again, sir,' murmurs a black-clad butler bowing neatly at the waist.

The silver thief only quirks an eyebrow, asking, 'When am I not myself?'

'Vengeance and heroics both ill suit you,' the butler murmurs quietly.

A rare flash of a smile - a true smile, not a smirk - tugs at the master's lips.

'Touché, Gaston. I'll remember that.'

. . .

Phantom is a master actor, a one man show that has captivated the world. His life is an unending string of narrow escapes, impossible stunts, and torrid romances that make it impossible to look away – which is the entire point, really. He adores the attention and always goes the extra mile to put on a good show.

But in the end, it's just a show. He plays up the chivalrous and gallant angle for the fun of it, but the master thief isn't a hero and never plans to be. All those silly rules heroes follow – protect the weak, obey the law, and live honorably – mean nothing to him. The newspapers can argue about his heroism or villainy all they want. The reality is that Phantom simply doesn't care.

He follows only one rule: take nothing that is beyond his power to return. He does not maim. He does not rape. He does not kill. Phantom refuses to do anything he might regret and not have the power to undo. The greatest treasure of a phantom thief is a world with no limits. If he ever wants something badly enough to kill for it or die for it, then he has chained himself to it, and a thief weighed down by desires is as good as dead. He must always remember that it is only ever an act.

Ironic how, the first time Phantom breaks character is to protect the same character he has presented to the world. His cruelest theft cements his heroism and dooms him to an Empress's gratitude.

It begins with a heist gone wrong.

He knows something is very, very wrong from the moment he sets foot onto the Vicar's estate. There should have been guards, dogs, wards – he sent his calling card weeks ago – but the mansion is as quiet as a grave.

It is only when he steps into the antechamber supposedly housing the seven Pearls of Lutra and finds the display case smashed that he realizes what has happened. The Vicar lays at the foot of the empty pedestal with his throat slashed and his blood pooling on the marble floor. The guards are equally bloody messes, their corpses studded with very familiar looking playing cards. There is no time to alter the scene; the entire affair is staged and timed impeccably. The same instant the spell wards slam down on the mansion to trap him in the antechamber, the distant clamor of imperial knights breaking down the front gates reaches his ears.

But whoever staged this has underestimated the Master Thief. A four-layered containment spell and an entire company of knights are not enough to trap him. It costs Phantom a grueling crawl through the smoke vents, a dislocated shoulder, and a ruined suit, but Phantom makes it back to the Lumiere with a fake playing card cutting into his hand and a cold fury sinking into his heart.

Bounties. Slander. Ambushes. Assassins. With each successful heist, his pursuers resort to more and more desperate measures. Phantom has easily forgiven even their nastiest tricks with nothing more than a few mocking taunts. It's all just a game on his part, just lighthearted pranks on stuffy old men who take things way too seriously, even though he is the one betting his life. No one else gets hurt – that was his only rule.

Now, the words 'Nineteen Dead in Latest Phantom Heist!' are splashed across the headlines of every newspaper, followed by frenzied speculations about what made the Master Thief finally snap. Now, Phantom bitterly regrets his leniency to those stuffy old men.

They have learned to despise him, but they have not learned to be afraid. After all, though he may bleed their coffers dry, he has never drawn a drop of their blood. Maybe, if they were not so sure of their own physical safety, they would not have dared to use Phantom as a scapegoat for political assassination.

Nineteen deaths with his signet mark painted in their blood.

When he finally traces the fake playing card back to the Duke of Ossyria, he is still angry, far too angry to stop himself. Duke Krogh is a feared tyrant, one of the most powerful men alive with a reputation for utterly decimating those that stand against him. He commands enough armed forces to rule his vast territories with an iron fist and owns enough informants to subvert even one of Phantom's heists. Cunning, cruel, and cold, Krogh is a dangerous of enemy to make.

But Krogh has made one fatal mistake. He has deemed the Master Thief a less dangerous enemy than his political rivals and operates under the assumption that wealth is the only thing Phantom can steal from him.

There is nothing Phantom cannot steal. Only things he chooses not to. He is more dangerous to Krogh than Krogh will ever be to him. It's easy to win when you don't play by the rules. Phantom only ever obeyed one rule, and Krogh has just made him angry enough to break it.

The duke wakes in the middle of the night to a violet-eyed silhouette in his room, in his keep, in the most secure heart of his fortress. To his credit, Krogh does not scream. Instead, the man makes a show of demanding answers while groping for the crossbow hidden beneath the nightstand.

"You should have picked a better hiding place for your secrets before you decided to borrow my name for murder," the silhouette whispers before it scatters away in a swirl of cards, just as a crossbow bolt sprouts from the wall behind where its head would have been.

Predictably, Krogh goes straight to his study and unlocks the hidden drawer in his desk to make sure that Phantom's threat is empty. Nothing is missing – all the damning evidence of his less than legal dealings remain safely guarded secrets. He allows himself a sigh of relief -

A sigh that is choked off in the very next instant by a vice-like hold that is far, far stronger than Phantom's slender build would imply. The Master Thief is calm and methodical, his trademark smirk eerily absent from his face as Krogh flails. The choke-hold lasts a bit longer after Krogh goes limp, just to be sure, but ultimately, Phantom lets him go. He steps over Krogh's prone but breathing body and empties the drawer. Even this far gone, Phantom is a thief, not a killer, and that is a line he does not want to cross tonight.

Gazing down at the man he is about to ruin, though, he realizes just how fine that line is.

The next morning, the Empress finds a large package sitting on her desk with a famously patterned playing card pinned to it that tells her all she needs to know about its origins. When she has sorted through the exhaustive collection of documents and evidence, she sends her knights to the duke's estate. There, they find the man trussed up like a turkey in his own vaults with a crown bearing the seven Pearls of Lutra perched mockingly on top of his head. The rest of the vaults are empty.

On the day that the man is executed for the murders originally blamed on Phantom, the villagers of Ossyria awaken to a miracle. Bags of gold, bushels of wheat, sacks of grain and potatoes, cured meats, bales of cotton and hay, barrels of wine – everything in the Duke's warehouses – are stacked high in every town square across the dukedom. It isn't generosity; Phantom has emptied out Krogh's warehouses as a final act of spite for the man before his anger finally wanes.

The rest of the world, however, doesn't see it that way. For the first time, their praise is more than a whisper of gratitude in the dead of night or murmurs of satisfaction in a seedy bar. The danger is gone; they sing his praises openly in the streets, no matter how undeserved the praise may be.

Unbeknownst to Phantom, it is this act of supposed generosity that finally tips the Empress from secret admiration into active curiosity.

Not even a week later, word of greatest the treasure of Ereve reaches his ears. Never mind that no one has ever seen it and not even his extensive information networks can pinpoint where it is kept.

At any other point of his life, he would have laughed it off as a hoax and picked a more realistic target, but the current Phantom has not yet regained his balance after tipping so dangerously towards vengeance. Before, praise for his heroic actions only delighted him. But right now, nineteen people are still dead, and he has all but tied the noose around Krogh's neck with his own two hands. If this is what it really means to be a hero, then the burden is too heavy. Never again, Phantom decides, and sets out to remind the world that he is a thief first and a hero, never.

A hero would never rob the kind and generous Empress. A master thief, however, will find the lure of the Skaia irresistible. No one before him was capable of such a feat, and no one after him will be able to top it. The greatest thief of all time – he likes the sound of it.

He never doubts that he can find it. The Empress is famed for her kindness and generosity, but she is likewise beloved for her youth and naivety. A sheltered girl who has never set foot outside her castle in the sky is no match for a master thief whose head is wanted in every nation in world. His charm is as deadly as his cards. She will tell him where the Skaia is from her own lips, and once he knows, no power in the world will be able to keep it from him.

With smile in place and rose in hand, Phantom goes to meet the Empress of Ereve.

It is the beginning of the end.

. . .

Author's Note:

i) There's a major continuity snarl in Phantom's crew. If Phantom was frozen for centuries, his crew either had to be frozen with him, or a different crew from his original. From the quest dialogue, the majority of the crew are very clearly from the modern Maple world, and yet Gaston seems to know Phantom far too well to be newly hired. Thus, I've decided on a compromise...which means there will be some heart-breaking and heart-warming scenes for Phantom later in this story.

ii) According to the level 200 Phantom quest, 'the Truth About Skaia', you find out from Aria's diary that Skaia was never real - she made it up in order to lure Phantom into meeting with her. Hence Phantom's words to Hilla during his introductory video: 'A true Empress would know that the Skaia you hold is a ruse, a bauble, dressed up to lure the great thief Phantom out of hiding.'

Next chapter, Aria finally appears. Cue the romance.

Review and let me know what you think, or if you have ideas/corrections for me to include!