The Research Appropriation Imperative
"I can't believe I got community service too!" wailed Svetlana. "No one is going to take me seriously as a public advocate ever again!"
"It's your fault," said Caprifexia, who was crawling over a 'brochure' that was roughly the size of a small room. "If you were a better lawyer, I wouldn't have been found guilty."
The white-with-a-streak-of-red haired giantess hung her massive head and let out a sob. A massive tear streamed down her nose and fell like a wet boulder, landing with a loud smack on the cold, icy floor.
After realising that she couldn't Planeswalk for some reason, Caprifexia had tried to make a clever and tactical retreat out of the ice palace. Unfortunately, she had been caught by another sleep spell, and when she'd woken up she'd been in even stronger magic-suppressing manacles than before.
The judge had ended up, unjustly, giving Caprifexia a total nine weeks of 'community service,' along with mandatory 'rehabilitation courses' and 'youth counselling.' For her valiant, if somewhat pathetic efforts to aid Caprifexia, Svetlana had been sentenced to seven weeks. Caprifexia's main punishment was to help the frost giants devise defences against any future Void-based attack on their warding Schema, while Svetlana's had been to 'control that tiny menace.'
They were presently in the common room of the 'Rehabilitation and Social Healing House' in the depths of the great ice fortress-city of the 'Vela Anarcho-Syndicalist Commune.' Although it wasn't called a prison, and all the staff there insisted that it wasn't, Caprifexia knew they were lying. Apart from Svetlana, who had come valiantly, if someone incompetently to her defence, all of these giants were villains, trying to lull her into a false sense of security with their lack of bars, or locks, or restrictions on her coming and going as she pleased.
Oh yes, the blue-skinned frost giants might have been bigger than the Kaladeshian blue-villains, but Caprifexia was an expert in the field of heroic pattern recognition, or 'racial profiling' as Einar called it, and they couldn't fool her - their soft, sky blue skin told her everything she needed to know.
Apart from them, there was only one other occupant in the massive common room, a kindly faced looking giant man called Sveltos who had, bizarrely, voluntarily come to the prison because of something called 'substance abuse.' He was listening to some kind of shouty sounding 'music' on a massive magi-tek device, humming along and knitting with needles the size of trees.
Caprifexia no longer had magic-suppressing manacles on. Instead, she had an ankle bracelet which shifted with both her forms and tracked her at all times. The magic involved was tricky, and she hadn't managed to figure out how to circumvent it. Well, other than melting it off, but then they got very angry with her and put another one on, and after the fifth time had threatened to add another week of 'community service' to her sentence.
It was outrageous, and exceedingly villainous, although she did have to admit the food - which per her demand was now fish for every meal - was a lot better than the last gaol she'd been in back on Nirn.
And although she was sure it was a trick, the community service, for the first four weeks at least, hadn't been that bad. All she had to do was show up for two hours in the morning to help them devise defences against further Void magic attacks on their ward-line, and then two hours in the afternoon with a very boring 'counsellor' who tried to 'teach' her about 'ethics.'
The rest of the time, she was free to peruse their library, which was full of interesting books, including ones on 'Tyrite' – the material of the axe that the demon whose name she had forgotten had used, and which, once powderised, had saved her from permanently becoming The Daughter.
Tyrite was the sap of the world-tree, which she knew, and was exceedingly rare. Her villainous captors had apparently got a sword made of it which Tibbly had been after, and which they had in a museum - the Blade of Parting. Caprifexia had been allowed to go and look at it, but not hold or take it – even after informing them that it was necessary to save the multiverse.
Truely, their villainy knew no bounds.
But that was OK. Because Caprifexia had a plan. Caprifexia was going to steal it.
Heroically, of course. Which meant that it wasn't stealing, it was justified and totally good and proper expropriation.
She had learnt the art of heroically liberating objects from Einar, back on Nirn. Of course, Einar wasn't a proper hero, even if he claimed to no longer be a villain, but in her not inconsiderable experience there was a surprising amount of overlap between being a thief and being a hero.
The brochure was from the museum that contained the 'Blade of Parting,' which Caprifexia needed for her Void Research project she had magnanimously allowed Sorbet Melon to join. It contained, in one table sized area, a map of the icy-building, which Caprifexia was studying carefully in preparation for her great heist. Her plan was to use the tools they had given her to stealthily cut through the roof after the museum closed for the evening, and then fly down and liberate the sword before anyone realised anything was amiss.
But first, she needed to misdirect her nosy lawyer.
"Yawn!" declared Caprifexia loudly. "I am just so tired!"
"Oh, OK," said Svetlana.
"I think I am going to bed and stay there for between seven and nine hours," said Caprifexia, very un-suspiciously.
"Um… OK?" said Svetlana, her white brow furrowing. "Err, sleep well Ms. Caprifexia."
Caprifexia nodded and flapped out of the enormous room, down a 'short' corridor to the ajar door of her room, which was roughly half the size of the entire Halls of Attainment, the student's accomodations back at the Winterhold College on Nirn. It had an immense bed, and a pillow large enough that she could have burrowed into it and made a respectable lair - for a whelping at least.
Sleep, however, was the last thing on her mind.
As part of her 'community service' Caprifexia had been given a roll of arteficing tools. Quite good ones too, it had to be admitted. It had taken the giants a while to figure out how to 'miniaturise' them for her, but they'd managed, and it now fit snugly in the little harness that they'd made for her that handily switched between her forms. Villains they might be, but they were passable artificers.
She doubled checked that all of the equipment she needed was there, before rolling it back up and slipping it into its slot, buckling it secure, and then taking off towards the window at the far end of her room, which looked out over a frosty garden featuring a carpet of normal pine trees and several large, clearly magically cultivated behemoths that bore apples the sizes of ships.
It was over five kilometres to the museum through the labyrinth of icy and rock. There were some frost giants moving about at the late hour, but the city was mostly quiet. For her part, Caprifexia was virtually invisible in the shadows. A tiny shape that would barely register to most giants. One day she would be even bigger though, and then they would be the tiny ones. One day.
The museum was dark when she arrived, and she flapped up, almost two hundred meters to where the roof was. The building wasn't heavily warded, just enough to help maintain its structural integrity. After all, why would it need to be heavily secured? Before Caprifexia's somewhat unfortunate destruction of their wardstones, they had, apparently, never been breached in the thousand years since they had been erected. As far as villains went, the frost giants were actually surprisingly peaceful. Although, knowing villains as Caprifexia did, they were probably just biding their time - plotting.
She landed on the massive glass dome above the main exhibition. There, below her, beneath several massive magnifying glasses that made it properly visible to the giants, was her prize. It had, according to the brochure she'd read, been forged long ago by elven smiths - who had doubtlessly intended to use it for villainy, what with them being elves. It could, apparently, open 'Omenpaths' to allow transit between the realms of 'Kaldheim,' which was like a worse version of what Caprifexia could do. It had had dozens of owners over the centuries, until the frost giants had managed to acquire it and had 'removed it from circulation for the good of the Realms.'
Caprifexia carefully unfurled her roll of tools and picked up a tool specially designed to cut warded material - a circular blade attached to a handle, which she shifted into her mortal form to use more easily.
She could have, of course, just blasted her way through the wards. But that would have been noisy, both sonically and thaumically, so she instead activated the tool and began to cut through the glass. It took quite a while, since the clear material was almost a foot thick, but after ten minutes of work a small square of glass fell away, landing several moments later with a faint shattering sound.
Grinning, Caprifexia put the tool back into the roll and re-secured it, before shifting back into her true whelpling form and flitting down through the gap in the glass she had made.
She circled lazily down, passing by the large magnifying glasses and landing next to the small cube of crystal that held the sword. She licked her lips. This one was more heavily warded with defences designed for security, and while she was sure she could and simply smashed it apart with Void magic, she didn't really want to use that power again so soon after having her hope crushed. Besides, although the axe made of Tyrite had been resistant to the Void, it had still exploded from a Void lance. She didn't want to damage her prize.
Thankfully, had a solution. A solution that the foolish villains and several trips to the museum had provided to her. They had, in getting her to design better defences against Void magic, given her full access to how the theory behind their ward schema worked. And while she knew she wasn't going to be breaking down the Wardline without Void magic anytime soon, she was reasonably confident that she could bypass the wards protecting the sword from heroic whelplings seeking to liberate it.
She unfurled her tool and set to work, consulting some of the notes she had very stealthily taken while pretending to be interested in other parts of the museum. The warding was quite complex, revolving around thirteen-fold runic arrays that supported and reinforced each other. It was, she had to admit, on par with draconic warding in many areas - although their runic language wasn't as complex and therefore efficient as draconic. In one or two areas, it might have even, very slightly, exceeded what her people could do.
But that didn't matter, because Caprifexia had learnt their tricks over the past month, as she had learnt the little tips and quirks of Nirnian magic and used them to perfect her own, dragon magic. It would have appalled some of her family to hear her say, had they still been alive, but Caprifexia had learnt to be flexible; mortals did, occasionally have good ideas.
She carefully tripped a weakness in the fourth layer of the wards, and then the entire thing flickered and died. Perfect. She snapped her fingers and vanished the now mundane glass. The blade itself was beautiful, a shimmering blue that danced with the colours of the auroras, and it had a intricate silver handle that looked vaguely leaf-like, along with a matching scabbard.
"Ms. Caprifexia!?" came a hissed voice from behind her just as her fingers closed on the haft.
Caprifexia jerked and looked around, her eyes widening when she saw Svetlana standing behind her.
"How did you get in here!?" said Caprifexia.
"The… door?" said Svetlana, gesturing behind her. "How did you get in?"
Caprifexia's eyes darted up to the distant glass ceiling, then down to the small piece of shattered glass on the ground, and then to the door at the far end of the room. Had it been… unlocked?
Why would they leave the door unlocked!?
"The door too, obviously!" said Caprifexia. "But- why are you here!?"
"Because I went to check on you and you weren't in your room," said Svetlana. "And, well… you have very obviously been incredibly interested in the sword, and the ward-schema of this place and the ward-schema protecting the sword…" She cleared her throat. "Ms. Caprifexia, are you stealing the Parting Blade?"
"N- no!" said Caprifexia, convincingly. "You can't prove anything!"
"You're stealing it right now," said Svetlana. "Please Ms. Caprifexia, put it back - or you'll get even more community service."
"I am a dragon, I don't have to listen to you!"
The door behind the giantess crashed open, and several angry looking frost giants stormed in.
"I knew I felt something tripped the wards!" boomed one of them, a relatively young giant man with a clean shaven face and a ponytail. "Svetlana, how surprising to find you collaborating with the outlander thief."
"That- it- it isn't what it looks like!" said Svetlana desperately. "I was trying to stop her!"
"A likely story," sneered the young giant man. "I'll see you lose your licence for this, Svetlana! You'll have to… retake the bar exam!"
"No, please!" sobbed Svetlana. "I didn't have anything to do with this! She's insane! She doesn't listen to reason! I came here to try and stop her, you have to believe me Sven!"
"A likely story," said the giant man, 'Sven.'
"She's the mastermind, she put me up to it!" confirmed Caprifexia, waving her new sword around. "She- she threatened me! Said she'd hurt me if I didn't help her!"
"Threatening a three year old? Really Svetlana? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, after your violent display in the courtroom," said Sven, shaking his head. "You'll probably get six months at the rehabilitation centre for this. Maybe even… a year!"
"Noooo!" sobbed Svetlana, falling to her knees. "It isn't true! It isn't true!"
Caprifexia was only half listening to the giant's drama playing out. The rest of her was waving the sword around, trying to get it to open an 'Omenpath.' She knew she couldn't Planeswalk within the confines of the city - some kind of barrier had prevented all twenty seven of her attempts - but this sword apparently worked on different principles.
"Come on you stupid… ah ha!" said Caprifexia as the sword reacted to her channeling just a skerrick of mana into it. In front of her a tear opened in the skein of reality, revealing a passageway through what looked like… fire?
Caprifexia took one last look at Svetlana, and almost felt bad for her lawyer. She wasn't the worst, and it did seem a bit mean to just leave her here to be punished for what was Caprifexia's heroism. But then again, she was too big to fit through the omenpath, and sometimes sacrifices had to be made for the greater, heroic good.
"Hey! She's getting away, stop her!"
But they were too late, and Caprifexia stepped into the fiery path and left Surtland behind.
A.N. If you like my writing here, you might also like my fantasy novel, Shattered Moon, that is being updated weekly, or my episodic space-fantasy/horror/doctor-who-esque series, Mishka the Great and Powerful. Both of which you can find on Sufficient Velocity, Spacebattles, and the former or Scribblehub and Royal Road.