Secret of Peregrine Platform

A single tug was enough. The line shot up, up, and up, nearly the entire height of the tower to deliver the snared fish to the tower's master, Crime Sage Rykel.
"A promising trial, but you're a bit small," he told the fish as he unhooked it. He dropped it so that it fell neatly in the little pond he had created for the experiment, not out of mercy but as a demonstration of skill. "Now I need only take over the Peregrine Platform and hover it over some filled pockets."
The Peregrine Platform was one name. Every region had its term for the strange object which traveled through the sky without evident purpose. Never had anyone boarded it so far as was known, but in no previous era had Rykel lived. With consummate technique he made use of a catapult to lob a likeness of himself aboard and then used his magic. As easily as that, he and the figure swapped places.
From there he moved to take control of it, but what was it? He discovered then that what men had long seen from below was the foundation of a grand mausoleum. Reasoning the source of power likeliest lay in the center, he approached the great portal, but he was not welcome there. Curses buffeted him and were repelled by skills that were eldritch, modern, and wholly his own. He reached for the door but saw it recede before him in an impossible movement he arrested with his guard-freezing spells, and the doom of death which fell on those who dared enter the ancient tombs shattered one of his twelve statues in his tower. Hostile forces opposed every step, but for nothing. He reached the center and purified it with borrowed holy power.
"Great sage!" A ghost appeared, which was nothing unexpected. "You have freed the kings of the Sky Tombs of Ganceras from our travails! Ages ago, we were overcome by the death-wizards of Alaonir and trapped as fuel for their magic, aware but impotent. Our fury however had its own force and struck continuously their lands, and does so still. Now we are released, and we release too the Alaonir Plain."
Rykel swapped with his effigy, leaving it to take the fall from the Sky Tombs which were even then dissolving. "My purse-fishing plan, ruined! But it must have been the Ullonik Curse-Storm that he meant. If that is truly gone, a route undiscovered by security is opened to the Eight-Tiger Vault. Off I go!" The kings of Ganceras watched him and rejoiced that the world yet had such sages in it. They departed then, and what befell them is not for mortals to know, but about the Vault and that the Crime Sage failed to rob it, all men learned it later.
Finis

Secret of the Well of Secrets

Outside the town of Dugnix was a well, and tradition held that if one whispered a secret into it, that secret would forever be kept. A harmless custom until Crime Sage Rykel heard about it.
"I will employ my new water-breathing magic for the purpose of gathering blackmail material," he told himself. No one else wanted to talk to him. He traveled alone to Dugnix and lowered himself into the well.
"Now there is nothing to do but wait," he thought, and what a long time he had in that, for the townsfolk did not accrue secrets so quickly as that. Bored, Rykel sank lower into the water, lower, lower, till he detected a powerful presence when it yelled at him.
"I am the Eater of Secrets Guzabansh! Get out of my well! It's at full capacity!"
There began a ferocious battle of magic and monster. Unquestionably Rykel had earned the sobriquet of "sage" through his superior ability, no matter how unscrupously he applied it. The monster however was a powerful thing not easily vanquished, and hideous as well. Rykel was glad he was unable to see anything down there.
Ferocious power burst forth from Rykel and destroyed Guzabansh along with the well. The townsfolk came to investigate, the braver ones first.
"I am Rykel the Crime Sage, and since it's come to this, tell me your secrets directly so I can blackmail you!" Drenched as he was, he looked less intimidating than he might have.
"We can stop feeding that terrible Guzabansh? Hurrah for Rykel!" The townsfolk demurred when it came to blackmail, but they threw Rykel a banquet, bestowed on him the honor of civic hero, and gave him a discount on purchases at all local vendors. He had to be content with that.
Finis