Chapter 0 - Pilot: Don't Claim You Can Handle Anything...

"This isn't going to be a normal job, Trailborn." The guild master was counting coins again. The master was cloaked in fine silks and soft furs. Given the temperature inside, most people would think the man, if the master were one, to be mad. Jaxus Trailborn knew little, had experienced much, and seen plenty to understand that the master could do whatever he wanted and get away with it. If he felt like piling on the plush in the middle of the Summer months, he did.

It kept people guessing, which made them off balance, and all the other thief-like mantras that go with it.

"Amazons are people like anyone else. They have weakspots, blindspots, schedules, and lapses." Jaxus's voice was a mix of devil-may-care and casual professionalism. He'd stolen from Amazons once before; ONCE. But it was enough to realize it wasn't going to be any easy mark. "You wouldn't come to me if you didn't think I could handle the job."

The guildmaster was silent. "If you say so," he chuckled after a moment.  He pushed forward a stack of papers. "What we've been told by the client. Use it, ignore it, act as you will. Take what you see. Carry what you can. Deliver what you must." More mantra.

"Then I'm off."

----

Fifteen years a thief. Since he was old enough to pinch a necklace, but young enough to pass for a girl.  He'd always had a slim frame and never kept what peopled called a 'diver's body.' Made sense, living on the wharf. If you can't swim, you die.

The papers told a daunting tale, and after brief scouting had further legitimacy in Jaxus's eyes. The buyer wasn't underestimating the mark, and it spoke of the item's value. A bauble, but a brilliant one, and part of a pair; apparently. A necklace of brilliant hues and rare gems. 'Know it when I see it' the buyer wrote 'further description a risk'.

So the buyer was probably another amazon who had no business knowing this necklace was there at all.

Great.  Maybe he could get hired to steal it back from her from the original owners, make it a career stealing the same necklace from different people. That was the kind of dream gig most thieves dream of.

He sat on a box on a flat top roof, over looking the sunset. If nothing else, it was a lovely night for crime.

----

Amazons are just like everyone else. They have territories and government. They have castles, keeps, guilds, and embassies. They had their similarities to their neighbors and their differences. That all their citizens were women, and you weren't considered a person on their land if you didn't have breasts and a cunt, was just one of those differences.

Like how the Magnate of Cruthal considered all women property and incest was okay. He shuddered. Well less like that. Amazon's were sticklers for how they bred. If a male wanted to prove his worth he needed to have pedigree or proof of ability, resolve, strength.

People said it would be easier to convince a Duke to let a Bastard marry a Daughter than to impress an Amazon.

People also said that there was only one moon, and that the dragons were all just big flying birds; so what the hell did they know?

He was naked but for the paint on his skin and in his hair, the hammock that held his manhood in check, and the belts and bands that held his tools. Amazons could smell metal so he'd had to pull out his glass and ceramic tools.. His piercing blue eyes cut through the dark. Saw the movements of the guards, and time with their steps, pauses, turns and paces; he closed the distance and gained access to the building.

---

Building, a nondescript term for a nondescript structure. After the first window he found thick fur wall covers hung up around him and from the ceiling, and covering the window he'd slipped through. They filled the room and he slipped through, sweat beading on his chest from the heat built up by the thick furs and his ears perked at the muffled sound. 

He reached a door and slipped a narrow mirror filled tube through the keyhole. Lenses and a touch of alchemy let him see a bustling market beyond a catwalk. They had removed the ground floor and opened the foundations up to make a multi-tiered bazaar. He paused at the sights he could glean. Naked flesh and writhing bodies made up most of what he could see.

Sex parlors weren't illegal in the Wharf-District, and they certainly weren't frowned on. So why the secrecy? He shrugged and checked above and beside the other side of the door. Clear, he opened it and followed the path described by the buyer. Trusting the people your working for is a risk, but so far everything was matching up; and that was raising the heckles on his neck more than the moans and screams of bliss from the floor. 

His eyes were open and he saw guards, he clung to the shadows and thanked the pitch and paint that he blended in so well, so completely.  A hundred paces to the target room. There was some kind of floor show going on and it was drawing the attention of the guards who were in his way. He looked, not out of curiousity but need. He needed to know how interesting the spectacle was and how much time it would give him.

His jaw nearly dropped at the sight of the ogress standing in the center of what looked like a fighting ring, except in the stead of a hard fighting mat there seemed to be colored silk mattresses linked to form a design. However the center of the show was the towered, naked, mid-fuck, ogress. Her purple-pink skin had a healthy sheen from it. Her massive  breasts were shaking and flopping with the rocking of her powerhouse hips, and her cock -thick as Jaxus's arm- was fucking in and out of a man no taller than Jaxus, himself. Surrounding  the pair were a group of others, some with collars around their necks, some without, all worshiping what they could of the ogress's flesh with their lips and tongues.

Jaxus saw what he needed to see. Judging by the number of participants, the ogre would be done fucking through them in less than an hour. Not for lack of stamina, but for the sake of not killing them. For all the incense and sex Jaxus could smell, the scent of blood and metal was decidedly absent. He picked the lock to the room in question and slipped inside and closed the door, relocking it behind him.

He didn't stand, but crept through the moonlit room. It was a suite, meant for a guest or a high-ranking employee. There was an elven style to the furniture, so perhaps the Amazon's mother bred with an elf to conceive. Good to know. Jaxus' spoke enough elven to get himself out of, and into, trouble.

He smiled at the thought. Years ago he'd pinched a brilliant bauble from a little blue haired amazon teen who had been strutting all proud through the streets like she owned the place. The bauble had been in a pouch she'd been clutching so obviously. All it took was the right series of bumps and stumbles to put the girl on edge, then he quietly slipped behind and took the glittering line of gems.

He hadn't sold it. The little line of gems were too pretty to just pawn. Under the black bands on his left wrist, the gems still clung to his wrist. The string had expanded with time and honestly, Jaxus's had rarely taken it off, or felt the want to, the first time he had, he'd been pinched and nearly lost the very hand he wore the gems from. Never again.

He found the desk spoken of in the letter, picked the lock of the approprirate drawer. He slid it out slowly, checking from all angles for trips, wires, or even tags that would trigger magic. Nothing. He stood slowly, wary of the window in front of him, and looked into drawer. 

He saw the gem bracelet he'd stolen as a child. His eye bugged in their sockets. He pulled the black covering from his wrist and saw the gems still tight around wrist. Tight. They'd never been tight before. Snug maybe but. They felt tight, and started to glow.

There was a rattle, from behind Jaxus's, then a clatter from the beads. He stepped aside as a closet door opened and a woman with brilliant blue hair stepped out from the darkness. The gems in the drawer leaped up and flew to her hand, slipped on, and the glow from both sets of gems lit up the room.

"Hello again," The woman's smile was ice, her eyes a stormfront of long brewing fury, "My chosen."

//Just a start, going to do a second chapter soon!//