1–7 January, 848 IE - Charterhall / Six Towers
The Wormwood Bridge guards saw them at the same moment the crew saw the guards. One of the men—Cam recognized his face from an alley fight that had gone equally badly—reached into his coat and pulled something out. He glanced at his palm. Then he looked directly at the crew, across a hundred feet of lamplight and dark water.
He pointed.
They ran.
Below the Street
The old storm drain was still open where they had left it. They went down in a rush, the manhole cover dragged in after them, Nyx already fishing through her coat. She had a vial of tear gas ready before the last person cleared the ladder. It shattered against the stone beneath the opening, and the crew plunged east into the dark.
The tunnels beneath Charterhall were Echoes territory—they knew every junction, every low arch, every branch that led somewhere useful. What they did not know, and what became clear within the first few minutes, was that the men above knew precisely where they were. The distance between the sound of boots and their own footsteps closed and opened and closed again in a way that bore no relation to any mistake or hesitation on the part of the pursuers. They were being guided. By what, no one yet knew.
Boo drew her spirit mask from her coat as they ran.
The Chase
For a quarter of an hour they moved through the dark—east under the Tolewater canal, into the passages beneath the university, into the old sub-basements that marked the edge of Glasskeys territory. The Reclaimers were not the only hunters. Cam caught glimpses of faces she didn’t recognize—local toughs, not Circle regulars—at junctions behind them. The Reclaimer’s Circle had spent money again, hiring bodies off the street to fill in for the members they no longer had. The operation was costly and clear-eyed, and it was working.
They were still running when they crossed the border, barely a step ahead.
Something in the Ghost Field
Cam found them a bookshop—ground-floor entrance off a tight alley, a trapdoor in the cellar, a door to the street. While Nyx dropped smoke down into the passage and Cam stood guard over the trapdoor with her hand on her pistol, Crow and Boo went very still and went to work.
Boo put on her mask and looked.
What she found were tethers—spirit-lines, thin as thread and bright as wire, running out from Freakshow and Eidolon in pairs. Two sets. Two separate trackers, not one. Whoever had placed them had not relied on a single point of failure.
Crow reached into the ghost field alongside her and found Freakshow’s lines first. He wound them back, scattered the pattern, unmade the connection with the methodical care of someone who had studied such things at length. Then he said okay and Boo took Eidolon’s.
The room went cold. The temperature dropped fast enough that breath became visible. Boo’s hands moved. She found the tethers, understood their shape, began to work.
Then she screamed.
The backlash hit her like something physical—a thing that threw her backward and left her sitting against the wall with blood from her nose and smoke, or something like smoke, curling from behind her ears. Her hands were still raised. The work was done. She had finished it. But the ghost field had given back as hard as it had been pushed, and she sat there shaking, eyes unfocused.
The trackers were suppressed. Crow estimated they had until nightfall, perhaps longer. Enough.
The Carriage House
They crossed the Fogwater canal on foot and entered Six Towers just before two in the morning, the remnants of the New Year’s revelers still thick enough on the streets to provide some cover. Half an hour of careful movement brought them to the estate—Lancaster’s old grounds—where the ward-covered carriage house still stood quiet, still hidden, still intact.
The wards did the rest. As long as Freakshow and Eidolon remained inside, nothing could track them.
Crow left before sunrise to find Quellyn.
The Witch’s Work
He brought her in blindfolded—a precaution, not an insult, he explained, and she did not seem to mind. Quellyn was professional about most things.
She looked at what clung to Freakshow and Eidolon, made a quiet sound of recognition, and spent the rest of the day on it. Boo—still sore, still slow, nursing her injury—watched every move. By the time Quellyn finished, the trackers were gone. Permanently.
Before she left, Crow asked how such a thing was done in the first place. She explained without drama: it required almost nothing. A discarded mug. A photograph. A few strands of hair left on the back of a chair. Anyone who knew where Freakshow went to lose himself for an evening, or where Eidolon spent his nights, would have had ample opportunity to gather what a capable ritualist needed. The crew absorbed this in silence.
From her place on the floor, still recovering, Boo had watched every movement of the ritual. She understood, now, the shape of what had been done—and how to undo it. She filed it away carefully under the name she chose for it: Dispel Ties That Bind.
The Sisters
It was morning when the carriage arrived.
Black lacquered wood, beautiful, understated, expensive. Four great Acrosian goats in the traces. The coachman—a small, stout man in fine dark livery—stepped down from the box, noticed the crew watching from the carriage house windows, and simply stood beside the door and waited with the patience of someone accustomed to being waited for in return.
Cam went outside.
The carriage window was a lattice of delicate iron tracery, and when the shutter slid back, Cam found shadow on the other side rather than a face. A woman—she assumed—very slender, features lost behind a black lace veil, dressed in clothes of evident quality and absolute darkness. When she spoke, it was quietly enough that Cam leaned in to hear her.
“This is my sister’s territory. We have felt your rituals. We have heard your comings and goings. What are your intentions?”
Cam told the truth. They had needed somewhere safe. They had not known the property was claimed. She asked directly whether the crew might have permission to continue using it.
The veiled woman accepted the answer with cold courtesy. “If you wish to stay, we would invite you to come speak with us first.” The coachman produced a calling card—an address in Six Towers, written in a clean hand, no name—and extended it.
Boo took it.
“Very well,” said the woman. “We will speak soon.” The shutter closed. The coachman offered something that might have been a smile—they’re all like that, he said—before climbing back to his seat and urging the goats away down the road.
Downtime
The week that followed was quiet by comparison.
Quellyn’s work held. Freakshow and Eidolon spent their days at the carriage house—the first restless, the second composed—and when the crew reconvened on January 7th, both were clean. No tethers. No trackers. Nothing.
Nyx spent the days ministering to Boo’s injury with the particular attention she gave to things that genuinely interested her. The treatment was effective, if occasionally alarming to observe.
Crow passed an evening at Lady Dusk’s establishment, playing cards and asking—perhaps not quite carefully enough—about rituals of supernatural tracking. Word has a way of moving in Doskvol. The crew took the heat for his questions.
On the street, word had gotten around that the Reclaimer’s Circle had spent real money trying to pin down the Old Town Echoes in the tunnels and had come away empty. The Reclaimers were furious. Their core membership was dwindling and they were filling the gaps with hired strangers—a sign of weakness to anyone who knew what to look for. Among those watching the city’s informal power arrangements, the crew had done something that counted.
Inspector Holt did not connect the gunfight near Wormwood Bridge on New Year’s morning to the Old Town Echoes. Somewhere in the bureaucracy, the incident was recorded and closed without him.
When the crew gathered again at the carriage house, there were two things to discuss: the Dimmer Sisters, and what remained to be done about Aldric Venn.
System Notes
- Crow and Boo suppressed spirit-trackers on Freakshow and Eidolon (half-day suppression). Quellyn permanently dispelled both trackers for 1 coin from the crew vault.
- Boo suffered Level 2 harm: Psychic Backlash. Nyx’s treatment applied 3/4 ticks toward recovery.
- Boo learned a new ritual: Dispel Ties That Bind.
- Crow overindulged during downtime; crew took +2 heat from loose talk. Heat now at 2.
- Crew earned +2 rep for evading the Reclaimer ambush. Rep now at 4.
- The Dimmer Sisters made contact at Lancaster’s Carriage House; crew invited to visit their manor in Six Towers.
- Malus Thorne remains in Iron Hook (expected release: February 848 IE).
- Inspector Holt failed to connect the Wormwood Bridge gunfight to the Old Town Echoes.
- Active clocks: Nyx: Tissue Sustainer Research (7/12); On The Inspector’s Radar (1/6).
