Midnight in the Emerald Isle felt less like an hour and more like a state of being. The public floors were still a riot of light and sound, but the descent to the high-roller vault was a journey into a different kind of wealth: silent, heavy, and guarded by more than just thugs.
The vault door was a masterpiece of paranoid craftsmanship. Twelve feet of brushed steel, etched with interlocking Celtic knots that glowed with a sullen blue light. It wasn't opened by a key or a code, but by a complex series of gestures Seamus performed with his gold-tipped cane, tapping specific knots in a rhythm that sounded like falling coins. With a deep, hydraulic sigh, the door recessed and slid aside.
The vault was a circular chamber, its walls lined not with safe deposit boxes, but with floating, shimmering orbs of light—captured luck, condensed potential, the casino's true treasury. The air was thick with static magic, making the hair on Alistair's arms stand up and drawing a low hum from Kassy's sheath. In the center of the room, on a simple pedestal of polished black marble, rested Excalibur's scabbard. Its jewels drank in the ambient light and pulsed gently, a heartbeat of ancient power.
Seamus stood beside the pedestal, flanked by four of his pinstriped Leprechaun guards. Their violin cases were now open on a side table, revealing the polished walnut stocks of their tommy guns. The mood was cordial, but brittle as glass.
"Punctual, Dr. Finch. I appreciate that in a businessman," Seamus said, his cybernetic eye whirring as it focused on Alistair's empty hands. "You have the text?"
Alistair produced the tablet from his inner pocket. "Fully charged, indexed, and with a helpful glossary. The sacred text of the Running Count." He offered it.
Seamus took it reverently, his fingers tracing the sleek surface. He powered it on, and the screen lit his face with a pale blue glow as he scanned the contents. A slow, gold-toothed smile spread across his features. "Excellent. The potential… it sings. The bauble is yours." He gestured grandly to the pedestal.
Alistair took a step forward, but a sharp, mental voice like a scalpel sliced through his focus.
"Stop."
It was Kassy. Her tone held none of its usual sarcasm. It was pure, cold warning.
"This feels too easy. Leprechauns are contract lawyers by nature and fairy tricksters by blood. Check the pedestal. Not with your eyes. With your second sight."
Alistair didn't hesitate. He let his gaze soften, shifting his perception to the magical spectrum—a skill honed in a hundred cursed tombs. The room exploded into a riot of auroras: the seething gold of the luck orbs, the cool blue of the security wards, the oily green of Leprechaun magic. And there, at the base of the black marble pedestal, etched so finely it was nearly invisible, was a single, intricate rune. It burned with a deceitful purple light.
A Fairy Contract Rune. Not a protective ward. A snare. The terms, written in the magical syntax of the Fair Folk, scrolled through his enhanced perception: "By flesh touching stone where this mark lies, the toucher doth agree to bind his soul, his service, and his sundered sighs, to the Syndicate until the stars grow cold."
The fine print. A lifetime of supernatural servitude for the price of a grab.
Alistair's cheerful mask didn't slip. He simply stopped three feet short of the pedestal, clasped his hands behind his back, and tilted his head. "The fine print, Seamus? Really? 'One soul, lightly used, eternal terms and conditions apply?' I have to say, for a binding arcane contract, the clause about 'sundered sighs' is a bit melodramatic."
The atmosphere shattered. Seamus's genteel façade evaporated like mist. His face twisted into a mask of avaricious fury, his cybernetic eye clicking and focusing with lethal intent. "The knowledge is ours!" he snarled, his voice losing all its cultured lilt. "The prize stays! Take him, lads! But keep the head intact! I want his mind picked clean!"
The guards moved with terrifying, coordinated speed. The Clurichauns by the door lunged, but it was the pinstriped Leprechauns who were the real threat. They raised their tommy guns, not with bullets, but with barrels that glowed with concentrated, molten-gold light.
"Solidified Bad Luck," Kassy hissed in his mind. "Get to cover!"
Alistair was already moving. He didn't run away; he dove laterally, towards a cluster of deactivated high-stakes slot machines. He moved with a fluid, academic grace—the product of years navigating unstable ruins and avoiding triggered traps. It was part parkour, part archaeological precision.
The first volley of golden blasts seared through the air where he'd been standing. Where they hit the steel wall, they didn't scorch or dent; they caused the metal to instantly rust, crack, and flake away as if decades of entropy had hit it in a second.
Alistair rolled behind the bank of slot machines just as another blast turned the carpet beside him into a threadbare, moth-eaten rag. He yanked Kassy from her sheath. The blade rang out, a clear, sharp note that cut through the magical haze.
"Finally," Kassy's physical voice echoed in the chamber, metallic and annoyed. "Some action. Though I'd prefer a dignified duel to this… spray and pray nonsense." A golden bolt ricocheted towards them. Alistair brought Kassy up in a swift parry. The blade connected with the bolt of condensed misfortune. Instead of exploding, the bolt spattered away like glowing water, its energy dissipated. "I hate getting shot at! It's so undignified! It's for people with poor planning and worse swordsmanship!"
Alistair risked a peek. Seamus was backing towards a secondary door, clutching the tablet, while his guards advanced. One of the Clurichauns, over-eager, unleashed a sustained burst from his tommy gun. The stream of golden bolts went wide, striking the ceiling high above.
Mounted there was the casino's central, rotating decorative piece: a giant, neon "Lucky Shamrock" charm, fifteen feet across, spinning slowly and dripping with fake dew and powerful, if garish, fortune-attraction magic.
A bolt struck its stem. The charm shuddered, sparked, and with a groan of shearing metal, broke free. It plummeted, shattering into a thousand glowing green shards and a cloud of potent, chaotic luck-energy.
"Look out!" Alistair yelled, more from instinct than need, pulling back behind his cover as debris rained down. A large, neon-green fragment of the shamrock, sizzling with sputtering magic, landed right beside him. On impulse, he swung Kassy through the dissipating energy cloud.
The sword shivered in his hand, not with impact, but with absorption. A faint, green-tinged shimmer raced along her blade from tip to hilt and was gone.
"Ugh," Kassy groaned internally. "Gambler's desperation. Cheap cologne. The clinging stink of bankruptcy and false hope. I've absorbed its 'luck' field. It's… profoundly tacky."
"What does it do?" Alistair asked, deflecting another bolt that turned his former cover—a plush velvet chair—into a pile of dust and woodworm.
"It makes local probability… suggestible. For a few seconds. A nudge, not a shove. It's fickle. Unreliable. Don't get cocky."
A new, subtle glow emanated from Kassy's edge—not the steady light of her core, but a faint, dancing glitter, like the scatter of light on rolling dice. Alistair felt a wild, chaotic potential humming in the steel.
He grinned. Time to test a hypothesis.
He burst from cover, not away from the scabbard, but straight towards the pedestal. "The house always wins, Seamus!" he called out. "But tonight, I'm playing a different game!"
A guard, quicker than the others, stepped into his path, leveling his tommy gun point-blank at Alistair's chest. "Not another step, mate!"
Alistair didn't break stride. He brought Kassy up not to stab, but in a wide, flat parry, aiming to slap the barrel aside. As the blades connected with the gun's polished wood, he willed that chaotic glitter into action.
The Luck Field activated.
There was no blast of light. Instead, the guard's finger squeezed the trigger and the weapon made a sad, clicking sound. It jammed perfectly, a single, impossibly misplaced golden bolt lodged harmlessly in the chamber. The Leprechaun stared at his gun in utter disbelief. "But… I just had it serviced!"
Another guard lunged, tripping on a single, newly-loose gold coin that had, until a second ago, been securely mortared into the floor. He went down hard.
It wasn't overwhelming power. It was perfect, chaotic utility. The universe briefly, politely, suggesting that things go Alistair's way.
He reached the pedestal. Instead of touching the marble, he whipped off his suit jacket and wrapped it around his hand. He seized the scabbard through the fabric. The moment his covered fingers closed around it, a wave of profound, calming warmth shot up his arm—the opposite of Kassy's eager energy. This was ancient, steadfast, a magic of protection and unwavering resolve. It felt like coming home to a fire after a long, cold journey.
He held it aloft. The jewels blazed with a clean, white light, pushing back the room's murky magical aura.
"We're leaving!" he announced.
Seamus, now at the door, face purple with rage, pointed a trembling finger. "KILL HIM! BRING ME THAT SCABBARD!"
But the tide of probability, for a few more precious seconds, was suggestible. A security ward triggered early, sealing the door behind Seamus and locking him out of his own vault. A Clurichaun's cudgel slipped from his sweaty grip. Alistair, with the scabbard in one hand and Kassy gleaming with mischievous glitter in the other, sprinted for the main vault entrance.
The door was still open. He shot through it into the corridor beyond, the sounds of furious shouts and malfunctioning magic fading behind him.
"Well," Kassy said, her mental voice returning to its usual dry tone, though with a hint of exhilaration. "That was novel. I believe I just gave a statistical anomaly a black eye. I feel strangely… impish."
"Don't get used to it," Alistair panted, rounding a corner towards the service elevator. "The luck's already fading. Now we just have to get out of a casino full of very angry little men with entropy guns."
"Oh, is that all?" Kassy sighed. "Back to the poor planning, then."