Street Magic
A heavily armored military truck rolled down the street, beams of light shining from lamps on either side and illuminating the side-streets and alleyways of the beaten down neighborhood. Besides the hum of the engine, there was no noise on the street; it seemed even the rats and alley cats hid from the searching lights of the patrol vehicle.
Once the truck had turned a corner and returned the street to its darkened state, people began slinking out of the shadows, watching over their shoulders for any sign of the vehicle’s return. Together, they moved down the street in the opposite direction from the patrol, keeping near the entrances to the alleys as if waiting for another armored truck to jump out from behind a lamp-post.
After a few minutes of haste-driven walking, the group of a dozen figures of a variety of shapes and sizes arrived outside a partially constructed multi-story apartment building. The thing had been sitting half-finished ever since before the war with the Vadir Conclave had started. It sat empty and vacant all during the war and continued to crumble now, long abandoned by the construction company that no longer existed. In the days before the war, a finished building like this in Whitetower would have housed the wealthy and powerful, but now in the days of the Vadirian occupation, it only housed vagrants and stray cats.
The dozen figures ascended the tower, taking the stairs where present and climbing from beam to beam when needed. On the top floor, the walls were finished and the ceiling was intact, so no one from above or below would be able to spy upon their gathering.
Four other people were already present, standing among the bare walls and exposed pipes, waiting for the arrival of the others.
It was clear from appearances that the members of both groups came from very different walks of life. The four waiting in the apartment were well-dressed, clothed in suits, long coats, and fancy hats. They had a look of vitality on their faces and they lacked the tell-tale scars of mana poisoning that plagued a large portion of the city’s populace. These men were wealthy, powerful, and completely out of place in that part of the city. Were it not for their business interests in the area, they would have avoided that region altogether.
The twelve new arrivals were of rougher visage, and not all of them were human. A tall and sturdy orc with sharpened fangs was the obvious muscle of the group. Two elves stood near the empty window, keeping a lookout above and below. There was a felid among them as well, one of the cat-folk from a distant land. All of them were fairly young, in their late teens to early thirties, dressed in whatever clothing they could find or steal. The human who stood at the front of the group, a young man in a tattered, hooded coat, looked upon the wealthier men with a steely gaze that made it clear he was not to be trifled with.
“Hello again, Cairn. I assume you’ve kept to our arrangement,” one of the well-dressed men said, barely disguising the contempt in his voice.
“We’re here, aren’t we?” the young man responded, not disguising the contempt in his voice. “Varshka, give him the goods.”
Varshka, a half-orc whose only trace of his lineage was his slightly green-tinged skin and diminutive tusks, unshouldered his backpack and carried it over to one of the subordinate men.
The man taking the backpack snapped his fingers and a small orb of light appeared in the air above his head. He unzipped the bag and carefully pulled out a sculpture of a strange figure. Whoever had sculpted it had either been man or a genius, for the clay had been shaped into such a form that the subject appeared to be alive, but no living thing had ever looked as grotesque as the being the sculpture depicted.
“Your boss has some strange taste,” Cairn commented on the statue, “but as long as he keeps coming through, we’ll get anything else he wants. Now, our payment.”
One of the suited men placed a briefcase on the floor and kicked it, sending it sliding along the bare concrete floor to the young man’s feet. He snapped open the clasps and started examining the contents, freezer bags packed tightly with small blue crystals which gave off a slight glow. He put his hand near the bags and watched as a series of small, lightning-like discharges of energy sparked up from the bags into his palm.
“It’s good,” Cairn said, tossing the bags to Varshka who, having regained his backpack, began stuffing it full with the bagged crystals. Cairn kicked the briefcase back over to the suited men. “You know how to contact us if you have anything else on your shopping list that needs finding.”
“Indeed we do,” the leader of the men said. “Until we meet again.” The man extended his arms to the air and spread out his fingers. His followers stood close as he uttered a quick chant in Elvish. The men were gone in an instant. No flash of light, no peal of thunder, they were just gone. Men who had proper training with magic and access to high quality materials could do all sorts of wonders. As someone who had neither, Cairn knew this all too well.