Done By Hand

The wizard who fancied himself “The Master” sat in his sanctum pouring over the tome of dark arts he had “liberated” from the protected section of the Grand Wizard’s Library. A cool metal tube pressed against the back of his head.

“Don’t move,” a woman’s voice commanded.

“You fool! You think you can ent–” his rant was cut short by a sharp blow to his head.

“Shut up.”

“Ow, did you hit me?!” he asked turning to face his intruder.

“I said don’t move,” she said again before thwacking him again with the butt of her gun. She smiled watching him hold his head in pain.

“I don’t understand. How did you get in here? My sanctum is warded against teleportation, portal spells, shadow walkers, time distortion, space hole rips, and intangibility.”

“Yeah, well you have shitty locks on the windows and a shitty security system.”

“You came in through a window?”

“Yep, really wasn’t hard to break in. The hard part was scaling the outside of your absurd tower. If you want to hide something or make it secure, you don’t put it up in the sky where everyone can see it.”

“It doesn’t matter if everyone can see my sanctum! I am protected by the strongest magics in the world!” he stood up as he ranted. The intruder raised her gun as if to strike him again and he fell back into his chair, hands raised. She laughed.

“You magic types are all the same. Magic this and magic that. Sometimes you just have to do things by hand.” She panted her feet shoulder wide, extended her gun arm, braced it underneath with her other hand, and took aim at The Master.

“Is that an enchanted gun?” The Master grinned.

“Nope,” she said. His grin faltered.

“Are the bullets silver or blessed or inscribed with runes?” he asked desperation in his voice.

“Nope. Just plain old lead.” She squeezed the trigger twice, took aim again, and fired twice more. After waiting a few minutes to be sure he wouldn’t immediately resurrect, she snapped a polaroid and pressed his hand on an ink pad then a sheet of paper. Proof of identity was necessary to collect on the bounty.

The magic book he had been reading she carefully wrapped. The Grand Wizard would be less than happy about the blood and guts sprayed inside but her job was to retrieve the book not clean it. She exited the tower by the same window she entered.

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