Author's Note: Originally done on dA as a request. Part of my in-development setting City of Lights setting (wizards in modern Las Vegas), starring a plaincloak - a word meaning magical thief in this case.

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“The warehouse is large, squarish, and ugly in the way that they tend to be – warehouses, that is. The distant glint of the Vegas lights doesn’t do much to flatter the concrete walls. The roof is flat concrete as well. There are no windows, only large doors that open upwards and some skylights. It’s totally unpainted, even though the neighboring warehouses have at least been painted grey.” Isa turned the page on the notes she had taken. “All in all, it’s entirely unattractive and forgettable.”

“It’s full of gold, of course,” Janice concluded, taking a sip of wine.

“You think so?” Isa asked. Janice was the same age as her, but more experienced in both magic and thievery, so she trusted Janice’s judgment. “Why?”

“For starters, it’s meant not to be noticed – even you saw signs of that.” Janice consulted her own notes. “I checked the owner of the warehouse – it’s owned by an Adam Locke. A pseudonym, of course – he’s known more widely around the mage community as Adam the Mad Aussie, a powerful and successful warlock. I also scouted it with a few spells. The doors are unlocked, but there’s a one-way magical shield around the place. See, the thing is that the shield keeps things in, not out. Also, I hear the occasional rumor on the Mundane channels that the place has treasure inside. Now, what does that tell you?”

Isa hesitated. “He’s… trying for thieves?”

“Good. Keep going.”

“He’s trying for… Muggle thieves.”

Janice winced. “Ugh, don’t use Harry Potter terms. But you’re right. Now, why do you think he’s trying for Mundane thieves?”

“I don’t know.”

“He’s got a guard mutt.” The more experienced mage put down the empty glass and slammed her hands on the table for emphasis. “Some kind of monster. Not a dragon. It’s something he seems to think a wizard can beat but a guy with a pistol or a crowbar can’t. A hydra, maybe, or something that makes itself invisible. The spells are very straightforward and easy to see, even an untrained person with latent magical power would know that something’s up and stay away. But if you’re numb to that kind of thing, he’s inviting you in to get eaten.”

“So if he’s only designed it to be visible because he doesn’t think the actual trap is enough to deal with a mage, why are you the first to figure this out?” Isa poured herself a bit of wine for the first time. At seventeen she had begun to develop magical power, and at nineteen she met Janice in college. They were both twenty-five this year, but Janice had grown up in a family of middle-class wizards, and had developed her power at thirteen, so she was always in charge of this sort of thing. Isa wasn’t the rookie she first appeared to be anymore, though.

“Because we’re better than most thieves, of course,” Janice said with a smug grin. “Here’s the deal – we’re going to prepare some sleeping spells, and a few others, tonight, and I’ll go in solo tomorrow night. I’m not taking you because I don’t know what we’re up against.”

“But-“

“No.” Janice shook her head, seeming more sober now. “Isa, I trust you, you’re my best friend, but you don’t have the magical skills to take down a monster. You’ve only been at this a couple of years, and I’d feel much better knowing I don’t have to watch anybody’s back tomorrow night.”

Isa’s eyes betrayed that she’d been hurt by her friend’s bluntness, but she relented. “All right. So, what spells exactly will we be preparing?”

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Janice crept up to the warehouse, her car parked a good distance away. The warehouse was no less ugly in the moonlight than in the sunlight, but at least there was something of value inside. And soon it would be hers. Dressed in loose, but not baggy, black clothing that was tied tightly at the wrists and ankles, shrouded in a dark grey trenchcoat, she was little more than a shadow as she advanced across the concrete. Janice checked to make sure that her somewhat short, auburn hair was tucked into her skullcap, took a deep breath, and tried the door. It was open, just as it always was.

She stepped inside, and immediately found that she smelled the creature before she saw or heard it. She didn’t smell solid waste, more the scent of rotting meat. Tensing, she kept her eyes searching for the creature, trying desperately not to focus on any of the treasure just sitting in the room, collecting dust. Fine art, gold, silver, paper money, jewels… the room was stacked with any sort of wealth imaginable. Finally, resting on a ratty old mattress atop a set of unmarked crates, she spotted the creature.

It was a manticore, a great winged feline monster, but not the type she knew. Janice had only seen a manticore once before, at the Los Angeles cryptozoo, and it had the tail of a gigantic scorpion. This creature’s tail was serpentine, muscles rippling under mottled green scales, with a row of spines jutting out near the tip. The beast was large even reclining; it must have been a good deal taller than her standing, and at least three times that long from nose to tail. Its brown, batlike wings were large, with a span measurable in yards, but didn’t seem large enough to support it; the creature’s flight was almost certainly augmented with its own natural magic. Scales flowed into fur with a beauty that was at once natural and unnatural. The face of the creature, although beastly, had a regal, almost human beauty to it. Unfortunately, that regal, beautiful face’s feral eyes were open, and one was focused on her.

“Come and get me, monster,” Janice muttered, stretching and flexing, and the creature heeded her words. In the space of a second, it had leapt from its reclining position and taken wing, soaring below the warehouse’s rafters. “Keen Senses,” Janice spoke, activating the first of her spells, and all five of her natural senses sharpened. Now she could hear the beat of the manticore’s wings and its quickening breath as it circled her; she could smell the scent of all five humans it had eaten in the last two weeks, and she could see two small circular scars where well-aimed bullets had once pierced the beast’s wings.

The manticore’s roar filled her ears as it folded back its wings and dived for her. “Cat’s Reflexes!” she cried, activating the second of her spells – she wasn’t extremely proficient with this one, but even her rendition would grant the agility and speed of a gold-medal gymnast. She sprang out of the creature’s way as it leveled off and swiped at her, dodging wicked claws. A second jump was necessary to dodge its swishing tail – if she hadn’t also enhanced her vision, she wouldn’t have seen the creature’s tail muscles tense – and kicked off a crate, getting behind the beast. “Slumber,” she ordered with a swipe of her hand, and an azure missile launched from her fingertips, catching the creature between its wings. Instantly, it crashed to the ground, succumbing to a magical sleep.

A brief explanation is required here – all creatures have some measure of magical resistance, and more can be granted by sorcery. While anti-magic spells usually take the form of an ethereal shell around the body, a creature’s natural defenses often move more fluidly with the creature. Large magical beasts like the manticore tend toward strong resistances to magic, especially those spells with effects other than physical damage, and Janice probably would not have been able to put it to sleep with a normal spell. However, in the midst of a strong charge, magical resistances are concentrated in the direction of the charge, and a weak point opens up in back. Mages who favor sleep or poison spells therefore would do well to also prepare a way to avoid strong attacks, especially against dragons and the like.

Janice carefully approached the monster, making sure it was asleep. It was – or rather, she was, as Janice could tell the creature’s gender by its almost-human breasts at this distance and angle. The creature snored softly, its blonde mane softly fluttering with each exhalation. Satisfied, she turned around and began strolling through the aisles of the warehouse, activating a spell that would warn her if any of the treasure was cursed.

Not five minutes later, Janice had chosen her loot. She wore as much jewelry as her fingers, wrists, and neck would allow, carefully hefted a Faberge egg under one arm (an enchanted one, at that), and guided with her other arm a gold idol which she had enchanted with an antigravity spell, one just small enough to fit in her trunk on the drive home. She was really thankful for Isa’s talent and skill at preparing Keen Senses; she could even tell the purity of gold with a lick while it was activated. Maybe I should start taking Isa on these more dangerous missions… she has obvious ability with spells, and what she needs now is field experience. She definitely earned her keep tonight…

“You’re enjoyin’ my hospitality, I see!” a voice exclaimed. A voice with what sounded like an Australian accent. Janice’s blood ran cold.

“How’d you know I’d be here?” she asked carefully.

“Silent alarm,” the voice said congenially. No echo to suggest magical projection, he was just out of sight, probably behind some very valuable junk. He didn’t sound particularly young, old, large or small, judging from his voice, but he certainly was exuberant. “Very best in Muggle technology, Sheila. I check out every call, even if it’s just more manticore chow. And you were a pleasant surprise; a plaincloak! I’d honor you with a firefight, but I left my magickin’ gear at home.”

Janice snorted under her breath, and not just at the Harry Potter terminology, which always bugged her. There was no way that overstated accent could be real. And left his “magickin’” gear at home? Please. He probably didn’t have any magic of his own at all, just a mundane idiot that the real Adam used as an errand boy and maybe a body double. “Then what are you going to do about me?” she called out.

“For starters, I woke the manticore up.” This was punctuated by a fresh roar, and Janice’s blood iced over all over again. It didn’t take long for her still-enhanced hearing to detect the manticore taking wing again, and soon she saw it soar over her head, its furless face gazing down at her. With her magic-detecting spell still activated, Janice saw the manticore glowing with spells, but she assumed they were minor enchantments to keep it healthy and the like, and she dismissed the truesight spell without a second thought. “Right kind of you to put the beauty to sleep instead o’ killin’ it, but you’ll need to do more than that to get out of here alive!”

“You’re right,” Janice agreed, carefully setting down the idol and egg and discarding the jewelry. The manticore banked a wide turn in the air and came roaring down the aisle Janice stood in, but with a leap and a flip she had climbed atop a row of somewhat carelessly stacked treasure chests. This time the monster stopped its charge and landed heavily in front of the young thief, damaging some of the chests – and Janice realized with a swallow how quickly the creature was learning from its mistakes.

“They’re as smart as people,” ‘Adam’ called out. “Or so I hear.” The monster advanced, slowly at first. Then it suddenly pounced and tried to bite Janice. Luckily, the Cat Reflexes spell was still active, and she had no trouble evading either the bite or the subsequent claw attack.

Janice slowly backed away, judging how best to deal with the snarling, advancing manticore. Eventually she decided to try something daring. “Try this, you bitch!” Janice made a jump for the manticore, apparently trying to jump it. The manticore instinctively tried to bite at the thief, then attacked with her tail. Taking advantage of the reaction, Janice flip-kicked off the manticore’s head and, while its tail was raised in an overhead attack, slid underneath the creature feet-first. “Slumber!” Janice struck the creature between the breasts with the same sleep spell as before, and it proved just as effective the second time around; the manticore flopped to the ground in what passed for peaceful sleep.

“Not bad, Sheila,” ‘Adam’ congratulated.

“My name’s Janice,” the thief said automatically, turning around. There he was. Janice’s skepticism of his wizard status was instantly shaken when she first laid eyes on the man, if only because it would require the mentality of a mad wizard to dress that way. Janice’s eyes were instantly drawn to a jacket in hideous shades of pink, orange, green, blue and yellow, a disturbingly bright jacket that somehow frightened her more than any article of clothing deliberately designed to be threatening ever could. Along with the nightmare jacket, he wore a black shirt that wasn’t quite buttoned, shoes that weren’t quite cowboy boots, a belt that wasn’t quite leather, and cargo pants that weren’t quite baggy. The pants were navy blue with scarlet highlights, but although they were ugly, they simply couldn’t compare to the magnificent hideousness presented by the jacket.

Peeling her eyes away from his nightmarish jacket, she looked him squarely in the eyes. He was actually fairly good-looking, although he didn’t seem to do anything to work with his handsomeness beyond regular bathing. He had black hair that hung in thick locks down to his shoulders, although it actually faded to teal somewhere around the level of his mouth. A year-old dye job, perhaps? His face was angular, neither thin nor round, and smiling mysteriously. He didn’t have any piercings or glasses; the only adornment to his face (aside from the mild sunburn) was a black goatee that was slightly in need of a trim. “Didn’t I tell you you’d need to hit that manticore with something more permanent than sleep?”

Janice looked at the beast and shrugged. “It seems pretty out-cold to me.” When she looked back to the man, she maintained eye contact with him so she wouldn’t have to look at his clothes.

“Oh, izzat so now?” He laughed mirthfully. “Singe!” A fireball formed in the wizard’s hand, and he launched it past Janice and towards the manticore. She felt it crackle past her, small but intensely hot, and watched in shock as it crashed into the manticore’s flank, leaving a nasty circle of charred flesh and fur. The manticore jolted instantly awake with a snarl.

At that moment, all doubt of this Adam’s legitimacy – or his madness – vanished from Janice’s mind. “You just shot your own creature!” In another part of her mind, she was impressed that he could cast so effectively in mundane, non-flowing clothes, but mostly she was startled at how crazy he was.

“Yeah!” Adam seemed very pleased with himself. “It’s awake now, I’ll burn it like that as many times as I have to!”

“AHH!” Janice jumped away from the manticore’s lashing tail, but the spines grazed her; three of them tore through the sleeve of her cloak, and two of those three left thin, shallow cuts on her right arm. Clutching her bleeding arm, she leapt back and got some distance between herself and the beast. He’s right… I can’t keep the monster asleep as long as he’s here. And if Adam’s really this powerful, I can’t just beat him myself. Even if I could hit him, I only have one Slumber left prepared. Without speaking, she turned and ran, evading a pounce from the wounded monster.

The manticore wasn’t slowed by its wound as it took to the air after her, but Janice’s Cat Reflexes enchantment served her well once again and the flying beast was unable to gain on her. Janice focused on the door and ran for it – she had a few spells ready that would allow her to burst through the warlock’s no-escape bubble in seconds. I’m gonna make it… I’m going to make it… she thought determinedly.

Unnoticed to her, Adam had begun a short incantation. It was in a tongue that was dead when Latin flourished, but most wizards still knew it. Loosely translated, it read, ”I call upon the bringer of light and heat, the nurturer that bites the hand, the creator and destroyer, tool of man and nature. Fire, burn that which dares oppose me.” Then, in English, he cried, “Obliterate!”

The blast rushed past Janice again; he wasn’t really aiming at her, anyway. Instead, the compacted fireball collided with a stack of assorted treasure and detonated, knocking her over with a concussive blast. Groaning, Janice raised her head and found the warehouse was suddenly becoming a fiery nightmare. Flames, rising high to lick at the walls, blocked the exit and sealed off her only chance of escape. Something red-hot struck her in the stomach, and she yelled in pain and slapped it away. It was a heated gold coin, a Spanish dubloon, and Janice suddenly found herself scrambling for cover from the bizarre rain of golden death, letting out a stream of expletives.

Not a second after the coins stopped falling down, Adam came roaring past, soaring through the air by blasting heated air out of the soles of his feet. “You’re lucky I wasn’t wearing my robe, Sheila,” Adam bragged as he dropped into a landing, skidding along the ground with surprising grace. “You’da been barbecued.”

“Not my name,” Janice said numbly as she got to her feet. He’s really as strong as the rumors say… this could be the end for me.” Her fatalistic train of thought was cut off by the thump of a manticore landing behind her – only a well-timed jump based on raw instinct saved her from the beast’s claws.

“Tell you what,” Adam chuckled, “if you can kill the manticore and walk outta here on your own two legs, I’ll let you leave with as much as you can carry.”

Dick. Guess I’ll have to break out the kill spell. Damn, I hate using that thing. Janice backflipped away from another swipe of massive paws, and the manticore charged at her with fangs bared. She sidestepped, and began muttering a quick incantation of her own.

“You’re gonna hafta kill that thing, Sheila. Do it!” The warlock grinned in his unstable fashion.

“Now, rest in peace,” Janice concluded, as the manticore charged her again. “Eternal Slumber!” She launched another bolt of magic from her hand, but this one was different. It was predominantly black energy, crackling with the blue she usually preferred, and it twisted around as it moved, snaking like some foul animal towards the manticore. The beast attacked right into the ball of energy, expecting to pierce through it. Instead, there was a terrible shattering noise and the spell slammed into the manticore’s head, soaking into the creature and hurling it back. The beast was dead before it hit the floor.

Janice shuddered as she brought her heart rate under control. Using her assassination spell always made her feel like she was covered in a thin film of slime or oil. She despised using the spell, and yet she always kept a single use of it prepared. Forcing down some bile, she turned to Adam. “I’ve killed the manticore. I’ll be grabbing some treasure and leaving.” She turned and picked up an ancient bejeweled oil lamp, although she could tell it didn’t hold a genie – genie lamps were warm to the touch, and this one was cool, made of simple bronze.

“Not just yet, Sheila. I specified somethin’ else, too, and you won’t be leavin’ on your own two feet.” Chills ran down Janice’s spine as she turned around. At first, she was relieved to see Adam wasn’t casting anything, but she began to panic all over again when the manticore’s corpse began to glow. “I’m surprised you didn’t notice the enchantments on my pet – it’s a dead man’s trigger to make sure the critter gets replaced, you see.”

“The spell sacrifices me to reanimate the manticore?” Janice guessed. Adam shook his head. “No, it’s something more complicated than that, isn’t it…” Janice began to glow as well, and the dead monster began to dissolve into gas before her very eyes.

“Actually, it turns the critter’s killer into the same type of critter, with all the same enchantments on it. Neat, huh?” Adam smiled charmingly as the horror sunk in. “You may wanna strip down real fast… on the other hand, you won’t need clothes again, so it’s no skin off my nose.”

“You sick, perverted, cheesy stereotype bastard,” Janice half yelled, half snarled, and half groaned. The room was beginning to feel very warm, and Janice was getting light-headed. She almost didn’t notice that the transparent vapors that had so recently been a serpent-tailed manticore were circling her and infusing themselves into her, entering through her nose, her ears, her pores…

Janice’s body began to swell with new, magically-added mass. Her very skeleton began to expand, muscle tissue racing to keep up with the radical changes to her frame. She pulled off the trench coat, but the strange sensations overcame her before she got any farther. It wasn’t exactly painful – more that it was incredibly disorienting. Her black long-sleeved tee was the first to go, shredded at the back as a new pair of limbs exploded outward and extended, waving hello to the world. Soft, short scarlet fur coated the membrane of the tremendous, batlike wings, quickly growing until the wingspan was almost as wide as Janice was tall. Even then the growth continued, but now it was in line with the rate at which the rest of her body grew, and was less noticeable.

“Yeah, I could never figure out a complicated transformation spell like this one,” Adam rambled, watching Janice’s transformation with the same rapt attention a nine-year-old boy devotes to his first campfire. A scaly tail was growing from her lower back now, forcing her to lean over with her hands on her knees as her hips widened to make room for the lashing spine extension. “I just like to blow shit up, you know?” The tail swung back and forth, passing a meter in length with ease as a row of five spikes began to blossom from the end. Suddenly, Janice’s pants, strained well past their limits, didn’t tear so much as they exploded, and the woman was left mostly naked. “No, I’m part of a gentlemen’s club of accomplished wizards. This one guy, he does revenge-trigger enchantments for everybody who wants ‘em. He’s big on poetic justice, right? We all offer our services to the whole group, so I do the fireworks and the raw magical muscle whenever it’s needed, and I get all this nice swag in exchange.”

“That must be nice for you,” Janice responded in a strained voice. Despite the transformation overtaking her, she was still half-paying attention to Adam’s babble as he sat on a crate, cross-legged, drinking from a bottle of fine wine he had pulled out of said crate. She wondered if his jacket was enchanted to mesmerize before she was distracted by clawed toes tearing through her boots. Her new paws, massive compared to her previous feet, flexed as red fur covered them, and her black claws scratched furrows in the concrete floor. Her upper legs were shortening to make room for the lengthening arches of her digitigrades feet, but she had never felt so much strength in them. It felt like she could leap tall buildings in a single bound, or kick Adam’s grinning face into next week. Another disorienting wave perished the thought before she could act on it, and she cried out as the changes crawled up her spine.

Janice’s now-naked body continued to swell, and she barely managed to stay on her feet. She gasped as her chest barreled out, a loud cracking sound from her ribs echoing out her open mouth. Red fur crept up her sides, moving up towards her head. Her breasts didn’t shrink into her chest to become teats like in most mammals, if anything, they were swelling a bit as the fur grew over them, increasing Janice’s bust a little beyond what her thin, athletic figure had shown. It wasn’t much consolation to her.

“Serpent-tailed manticores aren’t common, you know,” Adam said seriously as he took another gulp of chardonnay. Janice wasn’t paying attention; she was staring in horror as her palms began to blacken with paw pads and her fingernails sank into her fingertips, becoming black claws. “I had this one imported from home – my brother found it in the outback a while ago. You’re the first person to break the seal.” Janice whimpered as her new hands swelled up, thickening into paws until they had lost the bulk of their dexterity. Her thumb withered away entirely, and to her, that was the true turning point from human to beast. “I’m told that your weight gets added to the manticore’s, so the beastie gets a little bigger every time this happens. That’ll be neat; the one you killed was kind of a runt, for a female. Even a hundred pounds makes a difference.”

As the fur closed around her new forelegs, Janice’s former hands crashed to the floor; she had finally fallen to all fours. Her shoulders and hips realigned, locking her into a quadrupedal stance forevermore. The fur traveled up to her neck, but stopped there, leaving her sweat-soaked face bare. Her hair, meanwhile, darkened to a rich burgundy and lengthened into a partial mane that reached as far as her chest and the base of her wings. Her nose flattened to her face and turned pink before her head began to reshape entirely, her lower face pushing out into a feline snout. Her eyes repositioned slightly as her ears lengthened and grew fur. More painful snaps filled these improved ears as Janice’s cheekbones and jawline restructured, followed by the shape of her cranium.

“Wow, that was fun,” Adam chuckled, approaching his new monster as the last bits of the transformation finished – claws grew on the wingtips, the ears crept a bit higher on her head, and she grew to her final size. The beast that had been Janice got to her feet, now finding herself looking down at Adam and his ridiculously dyed hair. “I know you can understand me in there, Sheila,” he stated with a quirked eyebrow. “You won’t be able to hurt me – one of the enchantments on the manticore was some kind of Three Laws trash, and it got transferred to you. You have to do what I say, and you have to protect me, and you have to protect yourself.” Janice growled at him, revealing a mouthful of slavering reptilian fangs that could open wide enough to swallow him whole. “Quiet down now!” She did. “That’s right. You’re gonna be guardin’ that treasure now, former plaincloak, and you’re gonna be doin’ it with every fiber in your body. No worries; I’ll make sure we keep sending tasty street punks your way. Remember to dodge the bullets, ‘cause they can hurt you a little.” Adam gave a grin that Janice sorely wished she could tear to shreds. “Bye now!” Then he was gone in another burst of flame.

End