Lightcannon Week 2026 - Day Two - Spellthief!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
There Once Was A Thief Who Had A Plan…
by SuspiciousZucchini
Summary:
Notorious Spellthief Luxanna Crownguard is on her most dangerous mission yet—plunder rare magic from the vaults of the Arcanists’ Academy itself! When she crosses paths with the wannabe apprentice of the volatile Master Arcanist Ziggs, a chaotic misfit who calls herself ‘Jinx’, Lux’s elegant escape plan is about to go upside down…
The resting hours had long since commenced. Wisp-lanterns floating down the many corridors of the Academy now bobbed and drifted with their lights dimmed all the way down, followed by the one-eyed golems the students called ‘the Ol’ Peepers’, sleepy sentinels whose primary task was catching misbehaving students sneaking about after curfew.
Once they were sure there were no flesh-folk about, a few of the statues would, on occasion, animate for a quiet conversation or two. They had a lot to catch up on, after all, being incorrigible gossips. What else did one have to do with one’s sedentary (sometimes sedimentary) existence when one was a statue, after all, except spill all that overheard tea from the noisy walkers around?
Even the books rustled and whispered and occasionally swapped pages just to mess with the students. It was well known that the tomes on the ninth library floor all snored incessantly, and had been moved there together on purpose so as to no longer disturb the rest of other books…
The Arcanist Academy never truly slept. Of course it didn’t—it was more than half alive itself, as might be expected of a floating cluster of ancient wizards’ towers built over the ruins of an even-more-ancient forgotten city built by primordial demigods whose culture, origins and indeed existence was a subject of ferocious academic debate, built over a nexus of ley-lines and their accompanying arcane energies, after all…
No wonder the greatest wizards, witches, warlocks, sorcerers, thaumaturges, enchanters and evokers, arcanists and artificers, magicians and mages from all over flocked here to study! Here one could learn from the most venerated philosophers and practitioners of magic in the entire world! Here were endless libraries, repositories and vaults filled with the rarest books and artifacts of mighty power and mystery…
And wherever there were a great deal of spellcasters, of course, it followed naturally that there were a great deal of spells.
Luxanna Crownguard was here to steal them all.
