Harlow leaned on an iron gargoyle, its rusted talons digging into his coattails. The sprawling cityscape of Araya stretched like a leviathan asleep in a smog-choked cradle.
Gaslight bleed painted the iron towers, and the incessant groan of steam engines was a lullaby to the night's machinations. He tugged the collar of his coat higher, concealing the jagged scar that bisected his jawline. His eyes, silver chips in the inky darkness, scanned the labyrinthine alleys below, searching for their entry point.
Tonight, Harlow was not on a mission of plunder or sabotage. He was here for recruitment. Tonight, he sought to even the odds, the Resistance could see him coming a mile away, but he needed to be more calculating with his approach.
He let the urgency of his condition cloud his judgment, he had been doing things the church's way, and that failed multiple times, so now he was going to do it his way.
And he knew the church wouldn't approve of him outsourcing, but he needed fresh blood on his side. He had been keeping tabs on the streets and had a few persons of interest that would be perfect.
Prodigies.
People with a natural affinity for magic that never got entangled with the church, leaving off the streets and dealing in black market stuff. He was from these streets so he knew.
The church was too snobby to bother themselves with orphans and miscreants. Not Harlow, though he knew the potential of the castaway cause he was one.
Young prodigies with magic as venomous as his own were what he needed.
The first stop: a rickety alchemist's den tucked away in the Underbelly, a warren of shadows beneath the city's steel belly. Harlow slipped down a rickety fire escape, landing in the cluttered courtyard with a cat's grace.
The stench of brimstone and burnt metal assaulted his nostrils, mingling with the sickly-sweet waft of decay.
A cackle erupted from inside the broken-down apothecary. Harlow pushed open the warped door, stepping into a chaos of bubbling cauldrons and swirling vapors.
In the center, hunched over a workbench cluttered with vials and bones, was a girl no older than thirty-five. Her raven hair was woven with strands of glowing copper, and her eyes, the color of tarnished silver, gleamed with manic glee.
"Ah, a harbinger of death graces my hovel!" She shrieked, a twisted smile contorting her youthful face.
This was Lyra, rumored to be able to weave nightmares into reality. Harlow met her grin with a sardonic tilt of his own.
"A pleasant evening, Lyra. I trust your experiments are… explosive?"
Lyra tossed a bubbling vial into the air, catching it with a laugh as it rained fireflies that vanished in a puff of acrid smoke.
"Oh, they're delectable, darling. But enough chit-chat, to what do I owe this illustrious visit?"
Harlow leaned against the workbench, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial rasp. "I'm assembling a little… team, of sorts. Talented individuals with a taste for blood and a knack for causing constructive mayhem."
Lyra's eyes lit up like a furnace. "Mayhem, you say? Now that's music to my ears, Harlow. Spill it, what infernal game are we playing?"
"I can't tell you everything but I do promise it will be a lot of fun." He said, knowing exactly what parts of lyra he could appeal to.
Lyra laughs a twisted laugh almost mocking the way Harlow formed the sentence.
"Apart from fun, what else is in it for me?" Lyra asked, withstanding the temptation.
"How about new formulas? The Church's grading of standards. I'll give you 2." Harlow offered. He had quite a bit of alchemy formulas with him. After years of torturing the enemies of the Church, and raiding them, it would be an insult if he didn't take something for himself too.
"Ouu, rare formulas? Or just a variation of what's already in the market?" Lyra, obviously piqued, pushed on.
"One rare formula and the other will be a variation."
"Well, what do you need me and my twisted mind for?" she then asked, agreeing to join Harlow.
Harlow outlined his plan: a series of coordinated strikes on the remaining two Resistance outposts, he wouldn't make the same mistakes he had made earlier of going in guns blazing.
Lyra's grin widened with each detail, becoming a macabre crescent moon across her face.
"Exquisite! We'll leave them choking on their ideals, drowned in their righteous muck!" Lyra didn't care for either the church or the Resistance; she just wanted to hone her skills and test her experiments.
Her mind was broken in the best possible way that let her wield magic in the most unconventional ways.
With a snap of her fingers, Lyra conjured a shimmering contract, the words writhing like phantoms on the parchment. Harlow read it with narrowed eyes, it was a binding contract to ensure that there was no betrayal on his part, Harlow was growing weary of contracts, vows, and pacts but there was a flicker of respect in his gaze.
She was cunning, this one, as ruthless as she was brilliant.
In many ways she reminded him of himself that desperation to survive no matter what, damning the world and taking what was yours.
He dipped his finger in a bubbling vial, signing his name in shimmering quicksilver. Lyra mirrored his action, and with a puff of sulfurous smoke, the pact was sealed.
The second target was a stark contrast to Lyra's manic brilliance. Elias, a man in his early 20s, resided in a palatial estate on the city's gilded heights.
Harlow infiltrated the heavily guarded mansion with practiced ease, finding Elias in a private library, bathed in moonlight streaming through stained-glass windows. He sat curled in a plush armchair, a tome crackling softly in his lap.
His youthful face was pale and serious, framed by jet-black hair that seemed to drink in the moonlight.
Elias looked up, his eyes the color of storm clouds, and Harlow felt a shiver run down his spine. This boy, seemingly lost in a world of ink and parchment, held a power as vast and untamed as the storm in his gaze.
Lord Elias, the bastard nobleman of a prominent house in Araya, stayed locked away from the world at the behest of his father.
There were rumors about him being able to wield magic and the elements. His father locked him away because of the scandal a child out of wedlock would cause, he however still cared for him and made his "prison" as shiny and comfortable as possible.
His father had brought him to the church a few times so Harlow was very aware of his existence. The church had not been able to recruit him because of his father's influence.
"You're from the church aren't you?" Elias asked, his voice a velvet rumble. "What brings you to this gilded cage?"
Harlow bowed, a mockery of courtly manners.
"Elias, I come not as a predator, but as an admirer. Your potential, young Magus, is as boundless as the night sky. And I offer you a stage upon which that potential can truly ignite."
Elias set down the book, his gaze unblinking.
"Enlighten me."
Elias tilted his head, a smirk playing on his lips.
Harlow stared into the boy's storm-gray eyes, meeting the challenge with his own.