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Malia — Thousand-League Boots

Cohost writing prompt: @Making-Up-Adventurers — Adventurer who is going to find out why the "1000 League Boots" have a "Not for Indoor Use" label

"I don't think it's a wizard you need, so much as several mops and buckets," the archer says miserably, covering her mouth and nose and trying to breathe as little as she can.

The guard sergeant sent to rouse and hire them tries not to look at the mess, face pale. "Just to make safe the artifact that did it," she says queasily.

"Oh, easily done," Maila says, unruffled. "Boots, aye? Bought them from some other fool who hardly wore them. Nobody ever uses them much." She stoops, picks up a flindered chair leg, and uses its splintery end to turn over a few other pieces of wreckage. "Aside from the...trouble with obstacles," she gestures around with the stickily stained wood, "hardly anywhere is a neat number of leagues apart, aye? And aiming precisely is bad enough at the traditional seven leagues, never mind more; they have to sell them, new, with a full surveyor's kit and a book of maps. More expensive and less use than anyone expects. A hair off target and you're in a lake, or a wild briar-patch no man's ever seen the inside of before, or sealed in the treasure-chamber of some rich man who'll think you a burglar, or his concubine's bedchamber so he'll call you a ravager—"

"Malia," the archer says, "Malia. This poor lamb's like to throw up, she doesn't want your professional disparagement. Just — say if you need a hand finding the boots in all that, aye?"

"No, no." The wizard waves her off. "Just hand me the that's what she said—"

"The what?" the guardsman croaks, and the archer rolls her eyes, hefting the wizard's satchel.

"Magic bag," she says, in the long-suffering way of someone who's been made a part of telling a particular joke, more times than they ever wanted, and simpers theatrically: "Oooooh, Magus! You've managed to stuff more into there than I would ever have thought creditable!—"