"So not only was it a poorly thought out plan, but it was a poor execution of a poorly thought out plan."

  "Shut up!"

  "I have no idea why you thought that engaging a fully armed and alert city watch in direct combat was a good idea."

  "Well, it's not like you had any better ideas."

  "And now we're stuck in a prison cell with no hope of escape. You've got some magic back, so you could've cast spells, had you not been restrained with those magic-sealing cuffs, and the guards took your belt, which held almost all of your stuff. And they patted you down for the rest of your stuff."

  "No worries Fiona."

  "I'm well past the point of worrying at this point."

  "I got this."

  "You're planning on escaping?"

  "Of course," He scoffed, "Mages don't do prison."

  "If you had just learned a useful art, then we wouldn't even be here. Why didn't you learn brewing or something?"

  Dan looked away from Fiona scowling. His eyes roved around the cell, the only source of light in the room a dim lantern mounted on a wall on the other side of the cell's bars. The city's guard had accounted for mages, making the distance between bars far too small for all but mages with rat familiars. Rat familiars and familiars, in general, weren't too common anyway, as summoning was a somewhat overlooked school of magic anyway, given up in favour of more lucrative arts. Alchemy and potion brewing being chiefly among them.

  The popularity of schools of magic rose and fell constantly. If an extraordinarily powerful mage rose up, then many more would begin specialising in that mage's speciality, hoping to capture a piece of that mage's power. Summoning had, at one point, been all the rage when Lady Yretel of Ansel had been alive. The recent surge of interest in technological progress and development had spurred the school of alchemy. Alchemists of the royal court were paid generously and for good reason.

  Their most recent 'miracle invention' was gunpowder. The explosive powder was met with some scepticism at first, but after it was shown what was possible with it, the kingdom had begun investing gargantuan sums of gold in the further development of gunpowder-based weaponry.

  Potions, which could augment the strength of soldiers greatly, were also in high demand nowadays. Gone were the days when all you needed to win a battle was a platoon of skilled combat mages. Highly trained soldiers running off of warding, strength, and speed potions could blitz them easily.

  The only school that seemed exempt from this constant rise and fall of popularity was the school of combat magic. Exciting and providing instant gratification, the school would always be popular with young mages in training. But even that was seeming to change, as the focus in combat seemed to be increasingly less on the mages themselves, but the buffs they could provide to the common forces.

  Dan, when training to be a mage, had hoped to capitalise on the train of augmenting ordinary soldiers by studying enchanting extensively in hopes of providing powerful enchanted weaponry for the Empire's soldiers. But, while enchanting had had its time in the past, no more was it a highly profitable field.

  Truly powerful enchantments took large quantities of magical power to imbue into an object, and even enchantments of moderate quality were quite magic intensive. This lent enchanting very poorly for mass production purposes, which left it behind potion brewing. Brewing was not only undeniably effective at augmenting soldiers but also easy on the magical reserves, mostly depending on what materials you had access to, which made production far easier. This meant that enchantment, while useful, wasn't something that the Empire was willing to invest large sums of gold into, as they could only outfit a select few of its warriors with enchanted weaponry.

  Realising that he had made a poor choice in his selection of speciality, Dan had desperately scrambled to learn other schools of magic: the seemingly unshakable, stable rock that was combat magic, and the increasingly lucrative art of brewing. Both of his later specialities had yielded somewhat satisfactory results, but with all the debt that he had collected while purchasing supplies and books, and its ever-mounting interest, he was barely limping by.

  And thus, he accepted his life as a thief, his first heist being this one, on Alove's treasu-

  "I didn't ask to hear your life story. I just wanted to know why you didn't choose a good school of magic."

  "Hey, enchanting's a good school!"

  "That's not what you said when you were trying to learn alchemy. And speaking of which, you didn't 'accept your life as a thief,' you burned our house down in some cataclysmic alchemical failure and decided that 'Hey, thieving's probably more profitable than enchanting, why don't I try that?'"

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  "I have no idea what you're talking about," He crossed his arms and looked away, nose upturned, "Enchanting has always been my one true passion."

  "Which is why you decided to learn battle magic and brewing instead?"

  "Those were to support enchanting, my one true passion," His eyes glinted, "And speaking of which, enchanting is what's going to get us out of here."

  "You're still planning on escaping?"

  "Of course. I've already said it: Mages don't do prison."

  "Or, and I'm just throwing this out there, or," Fiona leapt onto Dan's lap and looked up at him, "You could tell the guards that you're somewhat talented in brewing, and then work off both your debt and your prison sentence doing honest work as a low-tier potion brewer in the royal court? That way you'll both have a steady income and a stable home in a room paid for by the Empire? Please?"

  "Oh, Fiona, such ridiculous ideas," His hand moved to scratch her ears, but immediately backed away when she hissed and gave him a withering look, "Where's the adventure? The excitement?"

  "I think escaping an alchemical fire, attempting to rob a city's treasury, and being thrown into the city's prison is excitement enough for me."

  "Don't be ridiculous, Fiona," He waved his hand, magical chains clanking as he did so.

  "I'm being ridiculous?"

  "Besides," Dan took on a rare serious expression, "The guys up at the royal court are a bunch of right old bastards. I can't deal with all the bureaucracy and backstabbing there. I got enough of that crap back at mage school."

  "It'd still be a more stable sour-"

  "Now watch as I make an exciting escape! Using enchanting! It's not useless!"

  ...

  "The hell are you doing?"

  "Escaping."

  "You're taking your trousers off."

  "I'm escaping."

  "Escaping the confines of your clothes?"

  "It's a work in progress."

  "I can see that," Fiona gave him a bland look.

  "They might've taken my belt. And my dagger. And my dryad porn stash. Which was in my belt, actually. Magically locked pockets are the best."

  "Your what?"

  "But they didn't think to take this."

  Dan had taken his underwear off, proudly displaying the runes that had been sewed into the inside of the undergarments.

  Fiona was speechless.

  "The benefits of using a relatively obscure art," He smirked, "They never check too deeply. They'll pat you down and scan you for potions. They'll put restraining cuffs on you to inhibit traditional spellcasting, but nobody scans for enchanted gear anymore. At least they don't use magic scanners powerful enough to pick up on lightly enchanted gear. They took my enchanted belt because they found potions in it, they took my cloak and my dagger 'cause they had powerful and obvious enchantments on them. But they didn't take this."

  Fiona had to concede that point. One of the very few strengths of enchanting, she guessed.

  "What's it enchanted with?" She asked.

  Dan inspected the runes, "You know, I actually forgot."

  "Really?" Fiona was unimpressed.

  Dan ran his fingers around the runes, examining them closely. After some time spent examining them, he reached a conclusion, "I suppressed the enchantment purposely, I guess to hide it from scanners. We need a little magical pulse to start it back up," He gave her a nasty grin, "If you would."

  She wrinkled her nose. While Dan was limited by magical cuffs, and as such, couldn't activate the runes, she was not restrained in the same way. Normally, familiars, with the exception of particularly old and powerful ones, partners of similarly old and powerful mages, didn't have magical reserves worth speaking highly about. Perhaps enough for some limited spellcasting, but nothing high risk. And certainly, nothing that could get them out of the cell.

  But this was something different. The undergarments held a dormant enchantment that was restrained purposefully. They required a magical pulse from a recognised source, and as Fiona was, by technicality, an extension of Dan's magic, her magic would be serviceable in jump-starting them.

  Fiona reluctantly placed a paw on the runes and-

  "Lunchtime, maggots!" A booming voice called.

  Fiona and Dan both jumped, Fiona leaping quite a distance in the air and landing on Dan's lap.

  The guard slid a meal through a tiny opening at the bottom of the cell's bar, "Eat up, you filthy mage basta... ohmygoodness."

  It certainly painted an interesting picture, Dan with his trousers down, with Fiona perched on his crotch, her being the only thing preserving his modesty.

  There was a moment where the three of them didn't quite know what to do or say.

  The guard coughed, "I'll just, ah, leave you two to it, I guess?"

  "Ah, it's not what-" Dan tried to speak up.

  "Don't worry, lad. I was young once too," The guard turned away, muttering, "Fuckin' weirdo mages. Don't get paid enough for this..."

  There was a solid minute where Dan and Fiona stared at each other, unmoving and unblinking.

  Dan coughed, trying to clear the awkward air, "Alright, the enchantment?"

  "Ah, yes. Of course."

  Fiona's paw glowed slightly as she sent a small pulse of magic into the runes, which lit up with a soft red light. The undergarments crumpled into a ball, which stretched out, liquified, and then solidified to form-

  "A potion?" It was a vial containing something glowing, "Wouldn't the scanners have picked up on that?

  "It's not a potion," Dan grinned as he picked the vial up, "It's bottled magic."