Walking further into the alley, Max and Valerie saw barrels tipped over, or rather, dumped behind a tavern or shop. One that Valerie saw was labeled: ALE-2065. She carefully stepped over the liquid that was spilled into their path.
“This is 3 years old, that’s disgusting.” She looked back at the capsized barrel.
“They need a clean-up crew in this part of town. You’d think with all the magic that can use that the unnaturals could clean up this mess easily”. Max vaulted over a crate that was littering stacks of paper onto the path.
“Yeah, maybe. I would kill to have magic that would automatically clean for me.” They both stopped in front of the wall at the end of the alley. It extended about thirty feet into the air. The line of shops had stopped and turned into a similar stone wall about one hundred feet back. The end wall and the side wall crossed perpendicularly. Max and Valerie turned and faced the side wall. Max got down on his knees and started to run his fingers against the wall. Valerie saw the sweat still glistening on his forehead.
“Are you still sweating Max?”
“It’s alright, I’m good, I’m good,” he said, still with tiny breaths in between words.
“And I’m out of shape, he says.” Valerie murmured under her breath.
Max pulled out a small key from underneath his shirt. It was silver, with a large bluish-purple gem in the center. It was strung together with a small, dark, fishing wire.
Valerie scoffed. “I still can’t believe they gave you the key, and didn’t give me one”.
Max laughed. “Maybe, they just trust me more than you. Can’t be a coincidence Val.” He shrugged and smiled.
After his finger hit an indent in the wall, he found a small hole with a tinier gemstone, complete with the same cool colors that were on the key, above it. He put the key in the small hole in the lower right corner of the wall. With a few clicks, the wall creaked and slid to the left, leaving enough room for Max and Val to get through. Max put the key back around his neck and stuffed it in his shirt.
“I can’t believe this,” Valerie said again under her breath. Val and Max squeezed past a portion of the wall that had separated, and met up on the other side. The wall began to move, and shifted back to its original position. Both watched as the alley behind them disappeared, and the wall, about 30 feet high, stood in front of them and spread as far as the eye could see. They turned around to face the pathway to the Ravenglass.
The Ravenglass was intimidating at first. Large buildings plastered with blue and purple stained glass were woven into an intricate maze. But, it was a maze that was navigable to the few people that frequented there. The pathways had shifted from cobblestone to cement as Max and Valerie continued their journey forward. The walkways opened up as they slowly crept out of the labyrinth of alleyways. The Ravenglass didn’t carry the same energy of the Oldswick, with only the occasional passerby paying no attention to the world around them. Most windows were tinted, obscuring the activity inside the few stable buildings in the area. People rarely payed attention to the two cloaked figures. Questions weren’t asked, heads were kept down and eye contact was minimal. Two young adults walking through the Ravenglass were definitely not the sketchiest thing that people had seen in the Ravenglass.
“Home, Sweet, Home, I guess”. Max took a deep breath. “I love the smell of pollution and crime in the morning”.
The sun peeked through the layers of tall buildings, giving the Ravenglass a faint glow against the vast amounts of stained glass. The largest building being a large warehouse, standing about 5 stories tall, and with few windows. However, there were two windows covered in black stained glass carved into the front of the building. Two intricately carved, iron doors were met with a set of marble stairs that led up to them. Flying objects, drones, could be seen flying in and out of the top stories, carrying what looked like packages.
The Network, it was called. A website deliberately disguised as an online shopping hub. Its headquarters stowed away in the cloud of suspicion that was the Ravenglass. Its real purpose was to bridge the gap between humans and unnaturals. Although access to magical items is illegal for humans, The Network can make humans’ wishes of owning or using such items come true. The only way for The Network to get these items without anyone becoming suspicious? Have a few people go into the Oldswick and secretly retrieve these items as quickly (and cheaply) as possible.
Valerie and Max walked into the warehouse through bulky metal doors, which both made a loud clank as they shut behind them. Lines of desks and computers filled the building and holographic images filled the empty space. Some similarly cloaked figures approached the desks and handed their materials to the person stationed at the desk. Max looked up at the current image that was flashing on the hologram.
“Wow, an Azurite necklace with a divinity enchantment, that’s pretty impressive. Whichever lucky soul has two-thousand dollars and needs a god in their corner is going to have a fantastic day.” He jabbed his elbow into Valerie, who was still coming in through the doors, and motioned her to look at the hologram.
The image flashed a label that said: Start Bidding, in green letters.The number began at two-thousand dollars, and then rose to two-thousand and five dollars, and then to two-thousand and fifty dollars, until the numbers went too fast to track. A small group of people had gathered to watch the hologram in the middle of this room, admiring the steep price it was going to be sold for. Valerie leaned in toward Max.
“Do you know which Runner actually got this? I haven’t seen an enchanter in the Oldswick who would do enchantments for less than three-hundred gold. At least, not where I’ve looked.”
Max looked around at the small group of people that had gathered around, and scanned their faces. The numbers crept up into the three-thousand’s, with scattered oohs from people in the room. The timer began to count down from sixty seconds. All the workers at their desks seemed to turn their attention to the hologram and not to their own computer screens. The numbers continued to skyrocket as the timer counted down from five. At the end of the countdown, green text reading: Bidding Complete appeared at the bottom of the display, along with an address in red text. Three-thousand eight hundred and forty-two dollars. A small cheer erupted from the crowd, and once it diminished, was replaced by a booming female voice.
“Nice work everyone, that is the biggest sale of the day.” A woman wearing a dark blue dress walked down the room, her heels clicking loudly, and stopped where the group was once standing. The heels she was wearing made her seem tall, but she wasn’t very intimidating. She had a motherly energy. She pointed to a petite, blonde haired woman working at one of the desks. “Can we get one of the Loggers to get that out right now? Audrey, can you get that shipment out right away, please?” The woman didn’t look up from her computer and adjusted her glasses.
“Yeah, no problem Kassandra, I’ll do it right now”.
“Thank you so much darling.”
Kassandra walked toward Max and Valerie. She was dressed differently than everyone in the warehouse. Her blue dress stood out from the white uniforms the Loggers wore, and the black cloaks the Runners wore out in the field. Her long, grey hair was quite an attention grabber.
“Maxwell, Valerie, how did you two make out today?”
Both pulled out their small vials of showed them to Kassandra. Valerie swirled her vial up.
“I know I didn’t quite follow the request, but I tried to get a little bit creative. Plus, it was no extra charge.” Her voice rose in pitch at the end of her sentence, in turn, looking for validation from her boss.
Kassandra took the vial in her hand and examined it. “Alright, nice work Valerie. I’m impressed, and I appreciate your creativity. I also see that you, Maxwell, have a standard healing elixir as well?” Before Max could even answer, she grabbed the vial he was holding and looked it over. “Nice work, you two! I knew there was a reason I could always trust you guys!”
She gave them both a pat on the shoulder. “Now go to one of the Loggers and see if we can get those things in the system, and quickly please.” She pushed them toward the left side of desks and walked away.
Max and Valerie slowly took off their cloaks and put them on a nearby coat rack, holding the items in their hand. They walked toward the desks and sat down in the chairs in front of the desks facing the glass pane that separated the Logger from the Runner. Valerie’s Logger was a dark-skinned male in his 20’s, who seemed tired from a long day that had just started. He wore a clean, white uniform just like the rest of the Loggers. Val leaned toward the glass;
“Hey Cameron, I got something a little interesting for you to put in the system”.
“I like interesting Valerie, whatcha’ got?”
She placed the vial of thick, pink liquid underneath the pane of glass and slid it toward him.
“A small vial of Love Potion, brewed by one of the best herbalists in the Oldswick, and I managed to write down the step by step instructions.” She swirled the liquid around to show the faint glow it gave.
Cameron began typing what Valerie was saying into the computer.
“Nice work, but I’m not surprised that you managed to get that. Now, how much did you pay for it?”
Valerie put her hand up to the side of her face and her voice dropped to a whisper, “Only 5 copper”.
Cameron’s jawed dropped. “So, you paid 1 dollar for this? How did you manage to do that?”
Valerie looked at the remaining gold luster dust on her hands and flashed her fingertips to Cameron. “Just a little trick I like to call: The Moneypot. It’s a work-in-progress name. I’ve been trying to work on my ‘persuasion’ skills. And by that I just mean, trying to come up with ways where I have to talk to people for less time.” She pulled out her notebook and ripped out a page. “By the way, these are the instructions on how to use the potion. It was a bonus that I picked up”.
Cameron wrapped the wrinkled piece of paper around the vial. “Very helpful, thank you. Well I’ll put it in the system starting at, let’s say, two hundred and fifty dollars and we’ll see where it goes from there.”
“Wonderful, thank you Cameron”. Valerie put her palm-sized notebook back under her shirt, and got up from the chair and walked toward the center of the room to meet up with Max. This floor was busy; Runners coming in and out from all directions, Holograms popping up everywhere with new items up for bidding, and drones flying around the room picking up packages ready to deliver and exiting out a large window on the East side of the building. Max got up from his desk and met back up with Val toward the center of the room.
He pointed toward Valerie. “Did you get a good price for that love potion?”
“Starting price of two hundred and fifty gold. Not too bad I’d say.”
“Not too bad at all, that’ll make you a good amount of money,” His voiced lowered so only Valerie could hear, “I still wish we got a little more than half of the profits.”
Valerie laughed. “Well, at least we get paid at all.”
They made their way to the front of the building where they had come in. Max picked up a drone that had been left in the middle of the walkway. “Hey, is anyone looking for this?” A voice perked up back where they were.
“Oh, thanks Max! I was wondering where that went, the tracker said that it hadn’t left the building yet.”
Max turned around and his eyes met with a smiling, brown-haired woman. “Yeah no problem!” Max turned the drone on its back and reset it. He tossed it in the air and it headed toward the East window. Max and Valerie continued to walk toward the door and once they reached it, both took out keycards to clock out for the day. As they were clocking out, a young man walked up to them.
“Uh, hey guys,” His tone seemed nervous, but endearing, “You guys clocking out for the day?”
Max put his keycard away. The man standing in front of them had spotless tanned skin. His monolid eyes were dropped straight down to the floor. “Yeah actually, we just got done with our run and gave our stuff to the Loggers, why?”
“It’s just,” He paused and unconsciously changed his voice to a shaky whisper, “…Be careful tonight. I heard a rumor that there’s a lot of stuff going on in the Ironbrook that you don’t want to be a part of.” The man grabbed his arm nervously, then ran a hand through his thin black hair. “You guys are our best Runners and I’d hate to see you get tangled up in something nasty.”
Valerie stepped closer to him and touched him on the shoulder. “You do not need to worry about us Kane, we can handle ourselves. I appreciate you warning us, but it probably isn’t anything we will get tangled up in.” She gave him two pats on the shoulder, put her keycard in the machine and walked out the front of the building.
“Why was Kane so worried about us? It’s not like you and I are troublemakers or anything. What could be so bad in the Ironbrook that people need to worry about us? Why would people even care about us?”
Valerie shrugged. “I don’t know, but just in case, lets lay low tonight, ok?”
The skyline of large, silver and grey skyscrapers could be seen once they were past The Network building, casting a shadow over the rest of Greymont. The blues and purples of the Ravenglass faded as they walked toward the bustling hub of the Ironbrook. They walked through a small black gate and were met with a much different atmosphere
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