The climb up the tower had been excruciating, and Mynna had the bruises, lesions, burns, and most recently, goo-soaked attire to show it.

Even though she shook as much of what remained of the slime-sentinel from her boot as she could, the noxious smelling goo still clung to the leather. Worse still, as she dispatched the thing with an exploding vial of alchemical fire, it had flung its remains all about the private study’s antechamber, and Mynna herself, causing foul slime to coat every inch of Mynna. Even as she entered what had to have been the private study of the tower’s former resident, she could feel her feet squish inside her boot, and the cool gel seep into gaps in her clothing and leather armor. She just hoped the stench could be washed out.

She hoped it would all be worth it. The lower floors of the tower, each magically more spacious than the narrow structure should have allowed for, were almost barren of valuable goods. The mage that had built the place had been, as most mages in Mynna’s experience were, an annoying combination of extremely spartan with material goods and extremely paranoid anyway. A scholar had once told her that the riches a mage possessed lie in their books, or in their own knowledge, but neither of those could be sold easily or safely to Mynna’s normal fences. Besides, the one time she had pilfered a few mage’s tomes, he had come looking for one, and the other turned out to be a collection of Northern stew recipes. No, in order for Mynna to break even on this venture, she would need to find something of value that she could sell off to someone who didn’t have a vested interest in the arcane arts.

That hope was quickly dwindling as the topmost floor of the tower, a private study, seemed to be bereft of any such loot. Not nearly as spartan as the rest of the tower, the study still lacked anything that shone with immediate value. The only furniture, a bed, a lounge, a desk, and a chair, seemed comfortable enough, but also heavy and not particularly valuable. There was a bookshelf, overflowing with books, but Mynna immediately pushed it to the side in her mind. That left only the contents of the desk as potentially worth her time.

The room was smaller than the others, and given the level of security it boasted outside, Mynna was relatively confident in the safety of the room itself, but that didn’t mean that a wizard wouldn’t have an enchanted desk, so Mynna approached the workspace with characteristic caution. On closer inspection, the desktop revealed a disappointing assortment of mundane-looking effects. Quills, inkwells, papers, books, an oil lamp, and a small keepsake box seemed to be the only things of note on the bare wooden surface. The books, paper, and writing supplies were likely worthless to her, which left an oil lamp that apparently had centuries of wear on it, and a keepsake box of plain, dark wood, and plain dark metal. Mentally marking the oil lamp, dirty and worn with years of use, as a last ditch effort to make some copper, Mynna focused instead on the box.

Mynna approached the box slowly, very slowly. Although it didn’t look like the banded treasure chests most mimics chose to imitate, one particularly nasty encounter with a watch that bit had taught Mynna to be paranoid about even the most mundane objects. As she drew closer, the dark box did nothing to indicate an aberrant creature hiding in plain sight, but neither did the box show any signs of being worth anything. Near as Mynna could tell, it was unfinished wood and untreated iron.

Her hands extended, fingers clenching and unclenching as she reached toward the box. Her lips felt dry, her eyes hurt from staring, her heartbeat, although slow and very much under control, still thundered in her ears. When her fingertips finally touched the wood, and nothing jumped or bit, Mynna let out an exhale of relief, a held breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

The box itself was miserably banal. Even picking the box up, Mynna was disappointed. the immediate tactile response was apparent, and singular. The box, for whatever it held, held only one thing inside. A simple latch was all that secured the box’s lid, and even that was disappointing. Mynna flipped the latch and, cautiously holding the box at arm’s length away from her turned-away face, she used her thumbs to throw the lid open. When nothing erupted or leapt out at her from the box, Mynna unclenched her everything and brought the box close to inspect its contents.

The inside of the box was significantly more ornate than its exterior, as it was lined with what appeared to be a thick, velvety, purple cloth, over what seemed to be thick cotton padding, and in the middle of the padded cloth, a small draw-string bag of similar substance, tied tightly shut at the top, and, most notably to Mynna, squirming.

Resisting the urge to chuck the box away, Mynna instead brought the undecorated chair to the desk and sat down, setting the box down on the desk to facilitate easier inspection. Now open, and free of the box’s heavy insulation and padding, Mynna could make out noises coming from the small sack. Mynna turned her head and recognized words, in heavily accented common-tongue, spilling out of from the cloth, mostly profanities and hateful threats.

“Hello?” Mynna asked, unsure of who, or what, she was addressing.

The squeaking obscenities paused momentarily, before switching to a tirade of new, slightly different obscenities, punctuated with demands for release and freedom. Mynna considered her surroundings for a moment. Even here in the sanctum of the architect of the tower, dust coated everything, including the exterior of the box. The owner of this tower hadn’t actually been in the tower in years, maybe even decades, but the box contained a tiny, hateful, vocal thing that spoke the tongue of men. Mynna considered, very briefly, simply shutting the box, re-latching it, and walking away.

A quick tabulation of the costs she’d incurred ascending the tower prompted her to, instead, begin working at the knot fixing the bag. Her disturbing the bag seemed to only intensify the squirming within, but having it within her grasp brought into stark relief the potential size of whatever was in the bag. Even if it was malicious, it would fit in the palm of her hand easily. The knot itself was nothing special, another disappointment in a tower of them, but it was securely tied, and tightly drawn, resulting in a concerted effort for Mynna to undo the knot, but it came undone.

“I’m going to let you out.” Mynna said. “I’m trusting you don’t bite or sting or something.”

What followed a brief silence was a collection of some of the most vitriolic insults and rage that Mynna had never heard from something so small, or, in fact, from someone she had not either stabbed or robbed.

“If you’d prefer, I can re-tie the knot, shut the box, and chuck the box into the moat on my way out of the tower?” Mynna offered.

She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back in the chair while the bag grew silent and still for a moment.

“No! Please! Don’t leave me in here! I’m sorry, I thought you were the witch!” Came the bag’s voice. “Please get me out of here!”

“No biting or stinging?” Mynna asked for clarification.

“No biting!” The bag assured, and then after a brief pause remembering. “Or stinging!”

“Okay, but if I think you’re about to be some kind of little shit, I won’t hesitate to put you back in the box and leave you there.” Mynna threatened.

The knot already undone, Mynna had simply to reach in with the tips of her fingers and dilate the bag’s opening. Fearful of a dishonest creature within, she immediately drew her hands away and sat back. After a few seconds when nothing happened she returned to the bag and, still wary, grabbed the base of the bag between her pinched fingers, and turned it upside down. Sure enough, something tumbled out, but what exactly shocked Mynna.

Now deposited onto the plush cloth of the box’s interior, bound at the knees, ankles, elbows behind his back, and wrists, with an intricate network of ropes connecting them all, was a tiny man, naked except for the ropes restraining his movement. With the notable exception of an unkempt mane of blonde hair and a matching wreath of a beard, there were no discernable features on the man.

“What in the thirteen hells is going on here?” Mynna said, leaning in to get a better look.

“Get me out of these binds, y’ filthy-wet whore!” Shouted the tiny man.

Mynna’s eyes narrowed. Before the man could say anything more, she reached over and slapped the box lid shut, making more noise than anything else in the sanctum had since Mynna had entered the room. She picked up the box, relatched it, and then proceeded to shake it, gently enough to her, but she could feel the man bounce off of the interior with each jostle. Even through the thick padding, she could also hear his profanities as she sent him ricocheting about his padded cell. When she felt his attitude may have been tempered, or at least his energy exhausted, she set the box back down and flipped the lid back open.

“Would you care to try your request again?” Mynna asked.

“I’ll gut ye’ like a rotten fish, ya’ sodden thrice-damned… no, wait!” He didn’t get to finish before Mynna slapped the lid shut again.

“You’ll get one more chance, you little shit!” Mynna yelled toward the box.

This time she picked up the box and shook it like it contained a pair of dice on the bet of her last copper piece. There was no screaming from inside the box, Mynna didn’t give him the chance, instead turning his world into a well-contained, personal catastrophe like nothing nature could match. By the time it occured to Mynna that the hellish shaking could break his tiny neck, Mynna had spent almost a full minute treating the box as violently as she could. She set the box back down and flipped the lid open immediately, a bit relieved to see the tiny man still breathing if even more disoriented.

“Well?” Mynna asked.

“Please, no more.” He begged. “No more…”

“If you don’t want to go for another ride, I’d suggest you try again, and politely.” Mynna ordered.

“Gods! That was worse than that knife-eared bitch!” The shrunken man said.

“Who are you?” Mynna asked.

“Would you, with all the gentleness ye’ can muster, free me from these bonds?” The shrunken man dodged the question.

"Answer my question." Mynna insisted.

When it became apparent that the shrunken man in the box was near another expletive laden tirade, Mynna pulled her camp knife from its sheath at her belt and made sure the tiny man could see its shine.

"Kor!" He shouted. "My name is Kor, of the Unblemished Order! I am here to kill this bitch of a wizard for her part in the sack of Ur!"

“Ur? How long have you been in there?” Mynna asked. “Hold still.”

She began to bring the point of the knife down toward Kor’s bound form, only to be forced to pause as he began to scream as the glint of the knife came closer, and struggled, squirming around in the box.

“I said ‘hold still’, are you deaf or just as stupid as you are small.” Mynna said with mounting frustration.

She reached into the box and plucked him free of it, more roughly than she needed to, but quickly slapped him down onto the desk, and pressed him onto the wood to keep him still. He still squirmed under her hand, but she didn’t care. With the precision of someone who had too much practice with the knife, she slid the tip of the blade into the extremely small space between where his knees were bound.

The knife made very quick work of the miniscule ropes holding him fast, but it didn’t stop him from screaming as it passed by him, the blade bigger than he was slicing through his bonds one at a time, with the methodical precision of a surgeon.

“There, now, don’t try anything.” Mynna said. “How long have you been here?”

The shrunken man took his time standing up, every motion seemed to be both labored and unfamiliar as he climbed to his feet. More than once, Mynna half-expected him to tumble over and onto the floor. Through a combination of flailing limbs, steadying himself against the box that had been his prison, and cursing, he managed to stand on two legs after a while.

“I had only just arrived when that wizard’s nefarious spells ensnared me!” Kor replied. “I had crossed over the moat and into the tower where there was this blinding light! I awoke at the mercy of that wizard as ye’ see me before you.”

Mynna really wanted to mention that the daze trap he’d triggered had been the absolute earliest of the tower’s defenses and among its most gentle. She wondered if he’d have even survived many of the other traps and spells she had disabled on the way up here.

“That still doesn’t answer the question of ‘how long’, why would you be avenging Ur?” Mynna asked.

“What sort of half-brained question is that, you daft…” Kor stopped mid-sentence as he saw Mynna’s expression darken. “I mean, what else would y’ have us do? Them knife-eared bastards laid waste to the entire kingdom! Murdered the royal family! Burned everything in unholy arcane fire! And she! She was the one who made it all possible!”

Kor continued to rant and rave on the table, his rage and hate seeming to fuel his tiny body as he recounted the specifics of the sacking of Ur, but Mynna was only half listening, her own mind running through horrific possibilities. The shrunken man in front of her was recounting the sack as though he had lived through it. He noted specific people, humans, in the defense of the city-state, he recalled specific defenses mounted by the city against the elvish empire, and he even seemed to know key members of the histories. What he seemed to be unclear on, however, was the fact that those histories were almost twelve hundred years in the past.

“Shut up.” Mynna said, interrupting Kor’s raving. “Are you telling me you were at the sack of Ur?”

“Aye!” Kor said, exasperated. “Why d’ y’ think I’ve been talkin’? To hear myself be exhausted? Those forest fuckers destroyed my home only a fortnite ago and I mean to get some measure of revenge! But then that wizard caught me, and thrice-cursed me!”

Again, Kor became lost in his tirade, while Mynna’s mind occupied itself with possibilities, this time profitable ones. It was suddenly possible that this trip might yield something sellable after all. She knew of at least a dozen scholars who would murder each other to have the opportunity to actually speak with someone who had been at Ur, and most of them would happily pay her for the opportunity. Then there was the possibility of fencing the shrunken man to some power-hungry mage looking to unravel the secrets of time, surely a human who had been alive for centuries on centuries would be of immense value. But two words Kor mentioned bounced around in Mynna’s mind.

“What do you mean ‘thrice-cursed’?” Mynna asked.

“That leaf-lover shrunk me, y’ blind…” Kor restrained himself. “She cursed me with three distinct hexes, she took real joy in them.”

“Shrinking’s only one of them, right? What else about you is amiss, other than your attitude toward your savior?” Mynna pressed.

“Aye, I should be ‘appy to see someone other than an elf.” Kor said. “She cursed me to live, and to not die.”

“Immortality doesn’t sound like much of curse.” Mynna said, although she immediately recognizing why it would be. “Unless that left you prey to her less-than-savory behavior.”

“Aye, it did.” Kor responded. “I think I had been here maybe a week and I’ve endured all the torments the thirteen hells could conjure and then some novel ones too. I suspect if you had not found me, she’d have returned and added some fresh villainy.”

“And the third?” Mynna asked.

The shrunken man paused, his eyes suddenly widening, and for what seemed like the first time since he began spewing obscenities from inside the box, he fell silent. His eyes, previously unfocused as he ranted and raved slowly turned back to Mynna.

“I… uh… I forgot.” He said, in what Mynna could only describe as the worst attempt to lie she had ever heard.

“Well, I wonder…” Mynna said, picking up the knife she’d used to free him. “If there’s anything I can do to help you recall your third curse. You seemed very keen on the defenses of Ur, perhaps some prodding would help you remember.”

With a thunk, Mynna buried the tip of the blade into the wood of the desk, narrowly avoiding Kor’s shrunken form. To his credit, he didn’t scream, or run, instead, paralyzed with fear, just pondered the dull steel blade many times his size suddenly in front of him.

“Aye, yer’ right.” He said, his eyes not moving from the blade. “I ain’t forgotten it.”

“Well?” Mynna pressed.

“The third curse was to be as a spirit to all that lived, save for those that possessed a cruelty of a kind to her own.” Kor said, finally turning back to Mynna.

Mynna almost spat. She could handle being called ‘cruel’, that was fine, but if the shrunken man before her had any value as a commodity, the buyer would need to be at least as cruel as the wizard who had shrunk him, and that might put her in some decidedly unpleasant company.

“Look, I ain’t got nothin’ against ye’.” Kor said. “Just help me get out of here, we can travel west to the Songmere barony, I’ve friends among the barons men that can shield us from these fuckin’ knife-ears.”

Mynna had almost had enough, very aware of his second curse, she snatched him off the table with as little regard for his comfort as she could manage. She brought him up to her face, squeezing him tightly in her grip, preventing any noise from him save for the occasional cracking of bones between her fingers. And when he was looking her in the eyes, she pulled her hood from her head.

It was a little satisfying to see his horror and comprehension, even through his pain, at the sight of her ears. Although not nearly as long as a true elf’s, they were a clear indicator of her elvish parentage, and moreover the very object of Kor’s malice.

“Well, I think we’ve established that the first curse holds true.” Mynna said. “You’re as tiny as a mouse. And the second seems to be as true, since you’re still suffering. But let us see if we can put that third curse to the test. I wonder if I really am as cruel as you suggest.”

She didn’t give the shrunken man a moment to respond as she opened her grasp, marveling a bit at how his body snapped and cracked back into form, looking to be as painful as the act of mangling it in the first place. Before he could draw a breath, she brought her other hand to bear and used them to compact his form between them. Like crumpling parchment, she crushed and squeezed the shrunken man into a tighter and tighter ball, until he felt smaller than a sling stone in her hands. She clutched him in one hand and let him drop back to the table. By the time he his the wood, his body had uncrumpled and he screamed as he landed.

“I suppose now is as good a time as any to tell you.” Mynna said, as she reached down and began to slide off her right boot. “I came to this tower to rob it, and near as I can tell, the only thing of value worth selling is a shrunken little shit who might be of interest to some evil historian.”

“No! No, please!” Kor said, barely able to stand.

“And, although I don’t suppose it matters much, but the sack of Ur didn’t occur weeks ago.” Mynna said, finally pulling her foot free. Almost immediately the awful stench of the slime she had destroyed began wafting through the room. “It fell twelve centuries ago, and I’ve never heard of that barony.”

Kor’s pained look was replaced by one of confusion.

“Please!” Kor pleaded as she picked him up between her fingers.

“And now, for the last bit of bad news.” Mynna said. “I doubt I can trust you to stay peacefully in one of my pouches, so you’re going to need to go somewhere… else while I get you to a buyer.”

“No! Please! I’ll do anything you ask, lass! I’m sorry! I meant no offense to you!” Kor begged.

“Well, it sounds like you pissed off the two worst possible people; the wizard that did this to you…” Mynna said, letting Kor fall from between her fingers.

He screamed as he dropped from where she held him all the way to where he hit the inner sole of her boot, making a splat in the goo that still soaked the boot. She caught a glimpse of Kor’s body rolling deeper into the boot, but was still visible from where she sat. Mynna held her foot over the boot, clenching and relaxing her toes, still dripping the slime that seemed to be everywhere in and around the boot.

“And me.” Mynna said, sliding her foot back into the boot.

As uncomfortable as the cool goo was, and as bad smelling as it had been to her, she could only imagine the nightmare Kor was enduring as she felt him roll under her foot, and be pressed into the boot’s sole. The boot squelched as her foot slid into place, and her heel came to rest on the insole. It took her a moment to adjust her foot, to feel comfortable in her own boot again, but mostly that was because of the slime suffusing the thing, and less because of the body being compressed under her bare, stinky foot. A quick re-tie of the laces, and a quick re-buckle of the two straps and her foot was as secure in her boot as it had ever been, with a new passenger unable to move, and to Mynna’s estimation, probably wishing he was back in the box, bound by fine silken ropes, and kept in a velvety bag.

Mynna stood and spent a few moments shifting her weight on the boot, working out how the addition of Kor’s body would change her gait or her stride. She tested rolling her weight back onto her heel, to an even distribution, the ball of the foot, and then even standing on her toes with just the one foot. Even as she could feel Kor squish and break under her, every time she let up on the weight she could feel his body return to a semblance of its former shape. With a quick hurdle-hop, she was satisfied that his presence wouldn’t impair her movement much if at all, since she didn’t need to consider his comfort or safety.

“I’d say ‘I hope you’re comfortable’, but I don’t really care.” Mynna said, making her way to the sanctum’s window. “We’ve got three days of travel over easy country, and two over the mountains, so you’ll get plenty of time to get used to it.”

Mynna secured her rope to the window’s edge, and began the first hop out, descending down the tower, leaving the sanctum slightly more smelly, and bereft of a shrunken man.