Bren slips through the rear door and draws Kynes into a cramped workroom smelling of lamp oil, rope, and salt. She pulls Elira inside before the alley can betray them.
Elira, a wary middle-aged woman with a sturdy build, wind-browned skin, braided black hair, and a blue wool apron, braces herself against a cluttered table.
Elira Thorne
Keep your voices low. Vey’s men searched this place twice tonight, asking for a particular brass-bound vessel among my supplies.
Elira Thorne
I do not know why they want it. I never opened it, and I never saw the mark they described.
The sealed parchment flutters inside Bren’s coat. On Kynes’s palm, Larloch’s mark ignites, projecting black letters across the salt-stained wall: the bargain demands one future service, rendered when the Shadow King calls.
Bren
There is your answer, love. Vey is hunting the vessel because he believes it can expose, redirect, or break Larloch’s claim.
A floorboard creaks beyond the rear door. Bren turns toward it, hand disappearing beneath her coat, while Elira’s gaze fixes on Kynes and the glowing words await his response.
✓ Quest Accepted
Secure the brass-bound vessel
“" why is always my casting hand love?" I ask”
SUCCESS (Legendary Persuasion, rolled +0)
Kynes
Why is it always my casting hand, love?
Bren’s guarded posture softens. She takes Kynes’s wrist carefully, turning his palm toward Larloch’s black letters as the mark burns without heat.
Bren
Because the bargain recognized the hand that shaped the spell. Larloch’s claim is anchored there, not in your blood or your whole body.
Bren
Every time you cast, that hand carries the first intention outward. The mark catches it, reads it, and reminds the magic that one service remains owed.
Kynes
The mark answers to spellwork, not merely to touch.
Bren
That is why it flares when you use power, love. It is a tether and a signature, but it does not command you.
The black letters shift across the wall, briefly forming a second line beneath the bargain: SERVICE AWAITS THE CALL. Bren’s fingers close around Kynes’s wrist, steady and certain.
“" it was more of a rhetorical statement." I sigh once. " Any way shall we scare the shit out of the magistrate" I say with a smirk”
SUCCESS (Legendary Persuasion, rolled +0)
Kynes
It was more of a rhetorical statement. Anyhow, shall we scare the shit out of the magistrate?
Kynes sighs once, wearing a smirk as the black letters burn across the wall. Bren studies him, then glances toward the trembling rear door.
Bren
Yes, love. We will make Magistrate Vey believe Larloch has already noticed his interference.
Bren takes the sealed parchment from her coat and lays it beside Elira’s brass-bound supplies. Her eyes sharpen as a precise deception takes shape.
Bren
We enter through the front, let him see the parchment, and give him one warning in the Shadow King’s style. No violence, no bargain, just certainty.
Elira Thorne
If Vey believes the lich is watching, he may abandon the search entirely. Men like him fear consequences more than they fear the truth.
Bren
Exactly. You stay here and keep the vessel hidden. We will scare the magistrate badly enough that he remembers whose attention he has earned.
“I enter the Gilded Eel and and on my way up to the room I let sea of shadows pour forth like a non euclidian eldritch abomination”
SUCCESS (Legendary Arcana, rolled -3)
Bren leaves Elira securing the brass-bound vessel, then leads Kynes through rain-slick streets to the Gilded Eel. Its lamplit front door opens onto hushed wealth and guarded silence.
Kynes enters and begins climbing the narrow staircase. From his casting hand, a sea of shadow pours outward, folding around corners that do not exist and rising against the walls.
The darkness moves like an eldritch thing without a single shape. Stair rails bend into impossible angles within it, while every candle flame gutters toward its shifting depths.
Bren
Subtle, love. I suppose Magistrate Vey will understand that the architecture has developed an appetite.
The shadow sea climbs ahead and behind them, swallowing sightlines without touching the wood or stone. By the upper landing, its edges coil around the magistrate’s guarded door.
The spell succeeds, but Larloch’s mark ignites across Kynes’s palm. Black letters crawl into the surrounding darkness, and the casting hand locks rigid until the magic finishes echoing.
Bren
There. He knows someone has arrived, and he cannot tell whether the shadows are warning him or waiting to be invited inside.