(Your target discovers a magical artifact being sold at a pawn shop that’s actually a prison containing a minor demon. The shopkeeper doesn’t know what they have, but the demon is whispering promises of power to anyone who will free it.)

There’s a pawnshop at the end of the alley, one that’s not supposed to be there; wedged between two tenements like a secret someone dared the world to forget. Its old beveled glass windows are soot-smudged and half-covered by a tangle of dusty carnival beads and costume jewelry that sparkle just enough to catch the eye, but most passerby would wander right on by. A crooked sign in flashing, fading halogen reads Mil ‘s C ri si es, flashing intermittently. Its broad daylight, and a pair of drunk tourists stumble out of a door beneath the building next door, laughing too loud from some private basement affair, their voices echoing off the hot brick. The throb of a jazz remix can be faintly heard, but the pawnshop’s door creaks open on its own, just slightly, and a wave of dry, cool air spills out, tinged with copper.

Arachne/span, invisible, is the reason that door opens, dressed down enough to warrant herself less memorable, more like a tourist. There’s been a rumor that Milos, the unaging forty-something silver fox, has come into possession of something uniquely interesting to the Illusium Court. Of what, no one knows, only that it is worth a look at the very least. And considering the mystery, why wouldn’t the Chamberlain take a glance?

It’s a glorious day for Edward, as glorious as any is, as he brazenly takes to the streets of Fairefield.

Proverbially, at least. The streets get used a little, but Edward tends to stick to rooftops and alleyways, the spartan-suited Sixty-Third servitor sprightly springing stories upward and bounding between buildings.

Anathema of Arachne, Edward is entirely too memorable, from dress to appearance to the way he drops down unceremoniously next to the drunk tourists. It earns a surprised, stumbling yelp from the pair, who promptly fuck off further down the alley to gawk and gab too loud between themselves; from the man himself, they get an ‘apologetic’ and winsome smile that’s all too pleased with their reaction, before his queer eyes turn on that curio shoppe.

“Ooh.”

Straight in.

The bell above the door doesn’t ring. It should, but it doesn’t. Arachne is already inside when Edward enters, her fingers hovering inches from a velvet-lined case half-buried beneath tarnished halices and misstruck coins. Inside: a single glass eye, iridescent and faintly weeping something viscous and silver. Her gaze cuts sideways when the door groans shut behind him, and she doesn’t need to see his face to know who it is by the weight of his presence, by how the dust in the air dares to glitter more when he arrives. She stays still, her movements making no sound, but it isn’t as though she can mask the faint scent of her perfume, nor the malicious energy weeping off the single glass eye.

The shopkeeper, that greying, silver-haired fox glances up from his idle work polishing a beloved flintlock pistol rusted over like aged blood, smiling wanly at someone, taking in his appearance through beady eyes. “Well hello, hello!”

The bell above the door doesn’t ring. It should, but it doesn’t. Arachne is already inside when Edward enters, her fingers hovering inches from a velvet-lined case half-buried beneath tarnished halices and misstruck coins. Inside: a single glass eye, iridescent and faintly weeping something viscous and silver. Her gaze cuts sideways when the door groans shut behind him, and she doesn’t need to see his face to know who it is by the weight of his presence, by how the dust in the air dares to glitter more when he arrives. She stays still, her movements making no sound, but it isn’t as though she can mask the faint scent of her perfume, nor the malicious energy weeping off the single glass eye.

The shopkeeper, that greying, silver-haired fox glances up from his idle work polishing a beloved flintlock pistol rusted over like aged blood, smiling wanly at Edward, taking in his appearance through beady eyes. “Well hello, hello!”

The first couple steps are an easygoing strut, just long enough for Edward to pull the helmet off his head, shake his hair out — not that he needs to — and briefly survey the shop. Curious are clocked with the sweep of his strange eyes, baubles breezed past, and perhaps, just perhaps, his attention lingers where it shouldn’t. Around Arachne. Could also just be coincidence, or interest in that eye, because soon enough, his own malicious eyes are on the shopkeep, and that winsome smile’s just as quickly back on his lips. “Well, hello, hello, my good man,” he chimes back, strolling thataway.

“What do you have that’s interesting, mmm? I’m lookin’ for the real good goodies, none of that ‘Ouija board with a lil hex’ shit. Anything Astarothian or Asmodean?”

Edward considers further, airily, “Be a shame for all these fancy and pretty things to stay hidden and forgotten.”

A charred sweetness of burnt sugar unfolds into rose ash, with exotic rare spices beneath, and leads Edward’s nose directly toward the slow progression back several, silent steps to reposition Arachne’s behind Edward. But it’s the stench of death, of sulfur and something foul, that weeps from the milk white substance that oozes from the half-open slit of the glass eye. It seems to shift in the velvet-lined case, aligning itself upon first the shopkeeper, before it takes keen interest in Edward alone, the resonance churning fog of his irredeemable aura calling to it like a siren’s song.

“I will lay waste to your enemies, slit their throats and drain them dry until the streets run red with rivers of their blood. Free me brother. Free me, free me… Free me.” A hissing emanates through the air from it, a half-conscious malicious presence stirring, expending its energy, pushing out, beckoning and cajoling as images of bodies torn asunder, and Orderites fleeing into the shadows of the city like ants away from a prevailing Legionnaire of the sixty-third.

“Ooh.” Edward is like a kid in a candy store, lighting up in the presence of that malignance. Exacerbating it. Feeding off of it and returning it in gentle but palpable waves. Not just the shimmering miasma of his aura, but his very essence and presence. It might even be subconscious, the way emotions bleed out of him — he’s just wearing a crooked little smile, wistfully staring back at that weeping eye, after all.

And at first, it’s unquestioning, as Edward reaches a four-fingered hand out as though to pluck that glass eye out of its velvet-lined case… that is… mysteriously floating before him. The malicious vibes sloughing off of him just as quickly fade, as though the tap were wrenched closed. “… first off, you ain’t got a body, bud, so I’m holding the cards, and second — I don’t want my enemies dead. I want them to see.” It’s addressed to the curio itself, but perhaps he’s further enlightening the shopkeep of his preferences. Or Arachne.

The glass eye shudders in its case, milk-white tears slicking the velvet beneath. Its split pupil contracts, then dilates, straining to see past skin and soul of Edward. The whisper rises, far from anything regal or demonic, but shrill, unctuous, and fucking desperate.
line “They laughed at me! Zzhalkhar, Arch-Dreamer of the Eighth Rung! I who summoned whole cities to sleep! I who flayed the conscience from kings! They TRAPPED me in this… bauble! You, you, you… you reek of power – let me inside you, let me ride your spine, I will burn away your limits like silk in flame!!!!” It screeches the offer, and the air thickens with sulfur and singed velvet, as the silver weeping from the eye arcs unnaturally forward, aiming for Edward’s skin like a wet tongue of possession. How woefully presumptuous these lesser beings of hell can be.