Opening Up

At twelve my father had offered me to a nearby abbey. The monks there worshipped a dragon they called Lumikal; warriors of the faith trained in isolation for years before being unleashed onto the world as sanctified bounty hunters. Seekers of vengeance. To give what little credit can be given to my father, my siblings got to stay home working the farm with the coin he made from my sale to the lumikalites.

Who would I have been to deny my siblings a life of peace?

Armored conditioning, weapon mastery, horsemanship, repair and upkeep of arms, the recitation of divine incantation, advanced wilderness survival, and the legal boundaries of the nearby realms were the subjects of study in my youth. Lumikalites were given a ceremonial degree of extrajudicial flexibility in most nations, but Lumikal himself had told the abbey so many centuries ago that its warriors were to be the greatest champions for the laws of the nations they visited his justice upon. It would not stand for a vengeance-seeker to act outside the law.

I had been with my current company for near on three months at that point. Each of us had come to blows with a mark responsible for the murder of three. Each of us had managed to collect our wits enough to combine arms. He had evaded all of us individually. Together?

Together we were brought together in front of a small lockbox. Steel, with a poisoned needle in the face of the lock that would be hard to brush up against on accident.

"You'll have to pick it, I think." I snapped my eyes to her own. Deep, brown eyes, almost black; eyes like still-warm charcoal.

"Hah!"

"Hah? What do you mean hah?" Her black hair was thickly curled, her skin oaky.

"I'm not putting my hands anywhere near that."

"Why not? Matilde can neutralize the poison." I jerked my towards Matilde. Her face was obscured by the comically large brim of her hat. It appeared that she was allowing me to handle this particular endeavor, while her quill dragged unseen ink onto the pages that had her focus.

"Right, once it's in me. What if it eats flesh?"

"You think he put a flesh-eating poison on his own lockbox?"

"We already know'e poisoned the lockbox. The kind of poison is the problem."

"I—... Suppose." Most of her hair was obscured by a coif, overtop which she wore a sun-bleached red hood.

"So I'll teach you, then." She leaned close, smiling with an unrestrained whimsy. Her long tunic was burlap with laces tight on the overlong sleeves to keep them out of the way, her short overtunic was deerskin. The jute breaches she wore had ties at the ankle and calf similar to those on her sleeve. She was in my personal space.

2.

"I cannot possibly pick the lock. I have not the manual dexterity for it."

"Yes, y'do." Quickly she overtook me, pressing against my back and tangling up her limbs in mine. At some point in the maneuver she had reached into her pack and retrieved the small locksmithing kit she carried with her.

Matilde lifted the brim of her hat with the edge of her grimoire, laying one blue eye on myself and Abernathy. I had a sense she was amused, sitting there hidden beneath her all-navy Arcane University uniform.

Abernathy placed a piece of metal shaped like a lightning bolt in one hand and a small prod-hook in the other. She was gentle, despite my armor. My own hands were covered well; thick leather gloves acted as the base layer, with steel gloves which covered only the tops of my fingers and hand and attached to a circular element on the wrist. She took her fingers carefully along my covered knuckles, drawing an invisible line between them and the needle barely visible on the lock.

"Your gloves will keep you safe." Her ear was close enough that had she truly spoken she would have blasted my eardrum. Instead, her words were barely air. The hairs on my neck stood.

"What do I do?"

"This is your tension tool." She gently gripped my left hand and pointed at the thing in it.

"How do I use it?"

I felt her smile against the back of my head, peaking down at our work. "T..."

"...ension." Her smile broadened further. Her legs settled more comfortably behind me, and I quickly missed the presence of her head against the back of mine. Instead, she was resting the side of her face and much of her bodyweight into my upper back.

"If you are going to play games then we should just smash the box open. I should not know how to breach such things— it is still a crime to break into even a murderer's things, you know— and you are just the sort of person best suited to breaching them even if you need to borrow my gloves!"

I spoke quick and harsh. Matilde's quill stopped dragging.

"Lumikal forsake me I just do not feel comfortable with this." Better to field an early defense than to wait for the enemy's offense. Matilde remained quiet, but she had tilted the massive hat back enough that both her eyes could watch now. Round glasses, long, curly hair. Pale, squarish features.

"Donna?" Abernathy's voice from behind. She had not moved.

"I'm scared to try it on my own."

The muscles in my back tightened sharply, and released. An exhale came with. Long.

3.

"No games then. Tension tool. Where do I slot it?"

"For this lock, high. See how the tension tool has a cross bar? And the two little cylinders?" I nodded; it did. "The cylinder is the right length to press into this particular lock. See the circle?" I nodded; I did. "Then insert it."

Her weight came off of me as I pressed the tension tool into place. I felt the needle of the lock scrape the top of my guarded knuckle. She wouldn't have even been able to start opening it.

"It is in. I can feel a slot at the back."

"Good. Push'er'in." There was an ever-so-quiet shift in the mechanism. "Good!" Her hands retreated to my elbows, then dragged up the length of my arm and to my shoulder. She was standing behind me now, leaning down over me. Watching the work with a more critical eye.

"That other tool in your other hand is your pick. Twist the tension tool clockwise as you slide the pick in. Use the pick to prod— you'll need'ta get in there'n press hard— until it's open."

"And I keep the tension on?" Abernathy's right hand cupped the side of my face from behind. Matilde's gaze remained steady.

"Yes. She'll shift as you open each progressive pin. Three pins on this one. Narrow."

The first two pins fell. Fumbling blindly around, in a lock like this for the first time with only Abernathy's words to guide me within the mechanism, was nearly fruitless. I had fought battles that made me sweat less. Every shift of the tension-hand left me evermore cognizant of the poisoned needle. Even through my gloves the wrong shift could end it all very slowly. It probably was not some kind of rot poison, but it was very likely to be the kind that took its time debilitating you. Letting your body destroy itself from the inside out. Abernathy's fear was not a poorly-placed one.

"Good." She pulled back now, squatting down next to me to get a more precise look at my hand movements and the state of the lockbox. "One left. Finish'er'up."

"It feels stiff. Less mobile."

"Rust. Tells us the box's old."

"Does not tell me why I did not just smash it open. Or why Matilde could not magic it open."

"I've a hunch, D. Play along."

It took shifting my right hand up and levering the final pin down for the lock to slide open. A tinny "chk-chk" came as the lockbox opened. Inside were some documents, sealed and marked with wax, and a small doll. Abernathy, however, was more pre-occupied with the lid. She grabbed just the lid away, slinked over towards Matilde, and the two began to chirp.

"Feels different."

"It has a different reflective index and coloration; it appears to have been made using different tools than the box itself."

4.

"Here... It's shallow. Nail's width more shallow than it should be."

"The doll and documents look compressed from over here— Donna, confirm?"

"Confirmed." The wizard shifted her weight slowly and intentionally; Matilde had the aspect of a snake about her. Instead of a rattle tail or a cobra frill she simply had an ungainly, massive wizard's had.

"Look there, Abernathy."

"Told you that Nat is... Nev— Hey... Hey, yeah! Hah!"

"Hah?"

"I was right!" She pointed the lid away from herself and pressed her thumb onto the lid's roof near the base of the lock. The whole thing immediately burst blue-yellow-gold-orange in her hands as she cast the device down into the stamped-out dirt. Fire spouted high into the air, licking wildly as if searching for whomsoever had failed to pick the lock.

Matilde, naturally, let splash of atmospheric water condense and collapse over the roaring flame. And then it was out.

Abernathy seized my attention back with those hot-ash eyes. I could see the fire embering in the reflection. She came close. Snatched up her tension tool and pick. As she retreated one hand lingered gently in mine for a moment.

"Thank you."

The rest of my reward was progress on the hunt. And her everbroad smile.