Breathe: To inhale and exhale in the process of respiration to respire

Stinter: One who or that which stints

Struthiones: Genus of ostrich

—–

‘What are you doing now?’ hissed Jez.

‘Having…’ there was the satisfying click of locks singing in unison, ‘…patience,’ concluded his partner.

Jez hadn’t asked his name, he didn’t even know where the boss had found the guy. But if he was good enough for the boss, then he was good enough for Jez. Still though, there was something off about him, although quite what exactly, Jez was having a hard time putting a finger on.

His partner eased open the metallic slab of the vault door, thicker than a man yet swinging open in silence as though it didn’t even exist. Never the stinter, Jez eagerly craned his head forward, looking beyond his partner, and his eyes bulged. Gold bars stacked in ordered piles, tightly packed like bricks and gleaming like some kind of futuristic metropolis. Both men had to remind themselves to breathe.

‘H-How on earth are we going to move all this lot…?’ stuttered Jez.

His partner strode forward and grinned. It was unnerving. Jez had never known anyone to act so, so, so relaxed in the middle of heist before. Let alone one that involved somehow evacuating several hundred bricks of gold from the basement of a bank without being seen.

‘Doesn’t matter. Say, did your benefactor explain to you my particular set of skills?’

Jez shook his head.

‘Ah. Well, this next part might become confusing then. See…you’re going to have to stay here, I’m afraid.’

Jez stared at the man. ‘What? What the hell are you talking about?’

His partner’s eyes were the glacial blue of an Icelandic spring. A faint smirk sat upon his lips.

‘See, Jez, you need to stay here, because I’m about to do this-‘

The man suddenly raised his hands, fingers arched, and started murmuring under his breath. Jez’s arms and legs fell numb. He tried to yell, to scream but was unable to do so. He was frozen in place, the head of a struthiones stuck in the sand.

Slowly, the bars of gold began to rise up and float towards the stricken Jez, eyes bulging, now from fear instead of greed. The bars slowly entered his body and began to fill him up, brick by brick.

When Jez was full of gold, his partner lowered his hands.

‘What…have…you..done?’ stammered Jez, his voice strained and distant, his body stacked in rigid towers across the floor of the vault.

‘I’ve swapped you with the gold,’ replied his partner. ‘A simple spell, but a pain to get right. See I’m just going to walk out the way we came in, with the gold walking alongside me! As for you my friend, you have to stay here in the vault.’

‘Like…this…?!’

‘Yes, like that I’m afraid.’

Jez’s pleading finally ceased when the vault door clicked back into place. As he left the room with the gold following just behind, the man couldn’t help but mutter to himself ‘I did tell you that I have a very particular set of skills…’