The warm, scented water of the bath had soaked away the grime and fatigue from his muscles, leaving behind a clean, humming alertness. Dressed in a well-tailored but subdued suit of charcoal grey—a conscious step down from the peacock brilliance of his James Morgan uniform—Lutz felt prepared. He checked his newly acquired heavy golden pocket watch. 8:03 PM. The hands seemed to pulse with significance.
The Garden is open, he thought, a thrill of anticipation cutting through his calm
He found Eliza tidying the drawing-room. "Eliza, I'm heading out. A soiree at the Hallbrook estate," he announced, layering James Morgan's breezy nonchalance over his own sharp focus. "Don't wait up. I may be quite late."
"Of course, Mr. Morgan. Have a lovely evening," she replied, bobbing a curtsy, her expression one of simple belief.
Lutz mused as he stepped out into the cool night air of Vesper Lane. A party with the city's mystique. He hailed one of the few night-carriages that plied the respectable districts, its driver hunched in a thick coat.
"The Winter Garden Salon," Lutz instructed, his voice firm.
The driver, a grizzled man with a nose like a cauliflower, gave him a sidelong glance. "Fancy spot that. You a member, sir?"
"Something like that," Lutz replied, settling back into the leather seat as the carriage clattered into motion.
The journey was a transition from one world to another. The wide, gaslit streets of the merchant districts gradually gave way to the more discreet, elegant avenues where old money resided. The Winter Garden Salon was exactly as Saratov had described: a façade of impeccable taste, all marble, nature and muted gold, suggesting a private club for the aesthetically wealthy.
He paid the driver and ascended the steps, pushing through the heavy, polished doors into a lavishly appointed foyer. The air smelled of beeswax, and a faint, floral perfume. His eyes, sharpened by his increased perception, scanned the room instantly, bypassing the plush chairs and tasteful art to land on the far wall.
There was the faint melody of a piano and violin being played as clearly wealthy people either danced in the middle of the salon or sat in the couches, talking to each other while drinking the beverage of their choice.
As he walked through the salon, on wall in the corner, there it was: a grandiose, breathtaking mural of flora, rendered in such exquisite detail that the flowers seemed to tremble in a non-existent breeze. And flanking it, two men who looked less like doormen and more like cathedral gargoyles given human form and expensive suits.
No subtlety there, Lutz thought, a smile touching his lips. They might as well wear signs that say 'Something Important Is Behind Here.'
He walked towards them, his footsteps silent on the thick carpet. They didn't move, but their eyes, flat and assessing, tracked him with the impersonal focus of predators. He said nothing, simply producing the green, leaf-shaped insignia from his waistcoat pocket. He held it up, the strange metal cool against his fingers.
One of the guards gave a microscopic nod. The other, with a hand that could have crushed stone, reached out and pulled a part of the vines that adorned the floral mural, there was an entrance on that section of the wall, perfectly disguised, revealing a dimly lit corridor beyond.
First gate, passed.
Lutz stepped through, and the guard let go of the vines, plunging him into a dim darkness. The corridor was long, its walls plain stone, leading to a dead end. But as he approached, he saw it wasn't a dead end at all, but another chamber, this one circular and devoid of any furniture. The floor was a masterpiece of inlaid marble, carved with an intricate, sprawling pattern of flowers, vines, and leaves that mirrored the mural outside, but with a deeper, more arcane complexity.
This gotta be it.
He stood in the center of the room, the insignia held firmly in his palm. He took a breath, recalling the single, guttural word Saratov had drilled into him. He focused his will, feeling a strange, responsive tingle from the metal leaf in his hand.
"Open," he commanded, the word spoken in the ancient, resonant tongue of Hermes.
The effect was instantaneous and magical. The carved marble beneath his feet didn't simply move; it transformed. The stone vines writhed, becoming pliant and verdant, the flowers bloomed with soft, ethereal light, and the leaves unfurled, filling the air with a fresh, green scent. The entire section of floor he was standing on detached itself from the rest and began to descend, a platform of living botany carrying him smoothly down into the earth. He watched, mesmerized, as the ceiling of living marble sealed shut above him, the vines and flowers hardening back into immaculate stone, leaving no trace of the passage.
The descent was silent, profound. Then, it stopped. He had arrived.
He stepped off the platform into a cavernous space that stole the breath from his lungs. This was no mere "market." This was the Winter Garden.
The name was perfectly literal. He stood in an immense, underground grotto, but it was alive. The walls and high, vaulted ceiling were a tapestry of glowing vines and bioluminescent flowers in shades of soft blue, ethereal green, and muted silver, providing a gentle, moonlike radiance that illuminated the entire space. The air was cool and carried a complex perfume: damp earth, night-blooming jasmine, ozone from mystical energies, and the faint, metallic tang of alchemical reagents.
Before him stretched a sprawling bazaar, a city street carved from a dream. Stalls and more permanent-looking shops lined winding paths, their structures built from polished driftwood, living trees coaxed into archways, and crystalline formations that pulsed with inner light. The crowd was a tapestry of the extraordinary. A woman haggled over a jar of swirling, iridescent smoke. A man examined a rack of blades.
Holy shit, Lutz thought, his analytical mind struggling to categorize the sheer sensory overload. This is it. The heart of it all.
He forced himself to start walking, his instincts kicking in, shifting his gaze from wide-eyed wonder to sharp assessment. His mission was clear: find the tools for his lab and ingredients for his potion. But first, he needed to understand the economy.
He passed a stall selling preserved creatures in jars—a tiny, winged lizard with scales like opals, a beating heart suspended in a clear fluid, a cluster of eyes that all swiveled to follow him as he passed. Another displayed weapons: a whip that crackled with lightning, a bow strung with what looked like a beam of light, a dagger whose blade was a shard of perfect darkness.
"Eyes off the merchandise unless you're buying, kid," grumbled the vendor, a man with a beard braided with copper wires and a face like a weathered cliff.
"Just admiring the craftsmanship," Lutz replied easily, not breaking stride.
He saw books bound in what looked like lizard skin. He saw vendors offering charms, talismans, their auras feeling like a greasy smudge on his senses. The place was a symphony of the bizarre and the dangerous, and he was the new, unnoticed note moving through it.
His first target was an alchemical supplier, a shop built into a natural alcove and fronted with a counter of polished obsidian. Glass vessels of every conceivable shape lined the shelves behind it, filled with powders, liquids, and gases of impossible colors.
The shopkeeper was a tall, slender man with an unnerving stillness and eyes the color of mercury. "You are new," the man stated, his voice a soft rustle.
"Is it that obvious?" Lutz said, offering a slight smile.
"To me, yes. What does the new blood seek?"
"I'm setting up a laboratory. I have the basics. I need the specialized pieces. A spirit-channeling condenser. An aetheric separator. And the glassware to handle high-grade ethereal reagents, at least that's what the book said, haha."
The mercury-eyed man's expression didn't change, but Lutz sensed a flicker of interest. "A serious practitioner. Not a dabbler. The condenser is a complex piece. 32 Hammers."
Lutz didn't flinch, though the price was staggering. James Morgan might have gasped; Lutz Fischer simply calculated. He reached into his inner coat pocket and withdrew a heavy purse, counting out the coins with a calm efficiency that seemed to earn him a modicum of respect from the shopkeeper.
"The separator will be twenty more," the man added, watching him closely.
Lutz met his gaze. "I'll take it. But I'll need a guarantee of their quality. And I'll need delivery to a discrete location in the city."
"Discretion is the only service I offer," the man said, a thin smile finally touching his lips. He produced two objects from beneath the counter. The condenser was a spiral of crystalline tubing that seemed to hold a captured mist within it. The separator was a deceptively simple-looking funnel of smoked glass and silver filigree. They hummed with a low, potent energy. Lutz handed over the rest of the coins.
There goes a small fortune, he thought, a familiar, reckless thrill mixing with the pragmatism. But now, the laboratory is complete.
As the shopkeeper wrapped the items in dark velvet, Lutz pressed his luck. "I'm also in the market for information. I'm looking for an Artisan. A woman named Lorelei, Black hair, gray eyes. She would have come to the city recently."
The shopkeeper's mercury eyes seemed to swirl. "Names have power down here, stranger. And information has a higher price than glass. That said, I have not heard this name."
"Thank you," Lutz said. It was a lead.
He left the shop, his mind racing. He had his tools. Now, for the potion. He needed the main ingredients for the Swindler potion, the ones beyond the basic complements he already possessed. He moved through the crowd, his eyes scanning the stalls for the specific, rare components listed in the formula he had memorized.
The Winter Garden was more than a market; it was a living entity, and he was just beginning to explore its veins. Somewhere in this glowing, subterranean world was the key to his next step in power.
The drastic lightness of his coin purse occupied Lutz's mind as he navigated the glowing, murmuring lanes of the Winter Garden. A quick, mental tally was sobering. He'd brought 120 Gold Hammers, a small fortune by any common measure. The condenser and separator had devoured 52 of them in one gulp.
Sixty-eight left, he thought, the number a stark reminder of the inflationary economics of power. Enough for the ingredients, if I'm shrewd.
The ambient light from the bioluminescent vines cast shifting, liquid shadows across the path, illuminating stalls that seemed more like fragments of other worlds. He passed a vendor selling little spirits trapped in glass bells, and another whose wares were intricate clocks whose hands were made of solidified crystal. The air was thick with the hum of latent mysticism.