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Duke liked to think he was a community minded person.
Donald Jacobson was not.
He managed the hedge fund for the Premise Financial group. There was a $1M minimum to invest, well over a hundred investors involved, and he charged a 2% management fee. He made bank.
Hedge funds existed for wealthy investors to pool their money for high-risk, high-reward trades. All the thrill of gambling and none of the stigma, catered to the uber wealthy.
Now, Duke was a powerful magic user. Very powerful, even for a fairy. He was particularly skilled with light and illusion magic. If he were a human, he’d be called a wizard.
So he had cast an illusion of himself, but different. A human version of himself. Still a seventeen-year-old, yes, and keeping the same general appearance-- with a few surface level changes. His skin was tacky with days, weeks worth of dried sweat, and he had a strong enough smell to match. His hair looked like it hadn’t been cared for in months. He wore old and worn clothes, thin with age.
He sat on the sidewalk just outside the Premise Financial building for a week straight, from sunup to sundown. Or, well. His human illusion did.
He made $90 that week.
Donald Jacobson walked past him fourteen times that week on his way to and from work. He didn’t give the illusion a single cent. Not even a passing glance.
Duke decided to up the ante.
On the eighth day, he looked up directly at Mr. Jacobson on his way into the parking garage. His illusion stood up smoothly and did his best to look pitiful.
“Please, sir,” he said. “Do you have any change?”
Jacobson huffed. He kept walking towards his car.
“Please!” the homunculus said. “You come here every day! You drive that fancy sports car! Don’t you have at least one dollar?”
“Walk away from me or I call the police.”
Duke made the homunculus appear devastated. He let the illusion falter, linger, and then slip out of the parking lot. It ceased to exist as soon as it turned the corner.
There were lots of different myths about will-o-the-wisps from just about every corner of the world. All of them were slightly different. No culture could agree on whether will-o-the-wisps were good or bad. Whether they led people to their doom or to treasure, to safety or danger.
Duke, personally, decided where he would lead humans on a case-by-case basis. He was an Unseelie fairy. Humans misunderstood that label. Unseelie was a political stance.
Duke was just a bit tougher on humans, is all. He believed in testing them. Putting them through the wringer a bit.
Jason was Unseelie too, and Duke owed Jason his freedom.
It had been a radicalizing experience.
To be clear, Duke didn’t kill humans.
He led them into fairy circles, and whatever happened to them in Elphame, happened. None of Duke’s business at that point.
He was a fairy in the human world, so they could be humans in the fairy world. Fair’s fair and all that.
He stood as his true self in the parking garage, inches from the bumper of his orange Maseratti.
He let his magic shine.
Duke glowed so bright he looked nearly like a ball of fire. Pixie dust poured off of him in infinite waves, glittering all around but disappearing before it ever touched the ground.
His features became indistinguishable, lost within all the light. The only aspect of himself still visible was his silhouette-- nearly six inches tall, two arching antennae, and translucent, sparkling wings.
Mr. Jacobson stood no chance of recognizing him. No one ever did.
He levitated, inches above the ground, and waited. Mr. Jacobson left the office twenty minutes later. Spotted him quickly.
His eyes lit up and he stopped in his tracks, at first, before hurrying forward.
“Do I need the car or do I follow you on foot?” he asked.
“On foot,” Duke said, in seven layered, echoing voices and the sound of howling wind.
Mr. Jacobson nodded. Duke used his shadowwalking to vanish and reappear about thirty feet farther away.
Mr. Jacobson followed him.
Duke led Mr. Jacobson out of the garage, out of the Diamond District, out of the city entirely. Into the woods surrounding Wayne Manor’s estate, thirty feet at a time.
Mr. Jacobson was at least smart enough to keep his mouth shut the whole way and not pester the fairy who led him on a sixteen mile hike. He was visibly flagging, sure, but he didn’t complain.
Finally, they were there. Duke waved a hand and let the pot of gold flicker into visibility. It was overflowing, gold coins and bars spilling over the edge and littering the ground all around it.
It shone.
“Your award awaits you,” Duke said, in that same altered voice as earlier.
Mr. Jacobson didn’t even look at him. Just ran straight forward towards the treasure.
Stepping directly into a fairy circle on this way across.
The edges of the circle lit up in beams of vertical light. Mr. Jacobson slammed face-first into a new invisible wall. He looked around in horror.
Duke waved a hand again, and the illusory fairy gold turned back into a pile of leaves and twigs and stones.
Mr. Jacobson’s eyes finally landed on the fairy he had followed so easily, seeing him without the glow for the first time. Recognizing him.
Duke smiled.
“No,” Mr. Jacobson said. “No! You can’t do this to me!”
“Donald Jacobson,” he said, in his normal voice. The human flinched. “You did this to yourself.”
He snapped his fingers.
Donald Jacobson was gone.