The extraction car lunges forward, steel wheels screaming over the rail joints. Snow hammers the windows, and the artifact in Archer’s coat answers with a sickly pulse.
Behind them, dark shapes race the train line with impossible speed, their thrumming vibration shaking the whole car. The protective shield around the coat flickers under the pressure.
The Operative
Keep moving! They are on us!
The Operative leans out the rear window and fires into the whiteout. Muzzle flashes strobe the interior while Mallory braces at the door and Agnes Bell clutches the dossier page tight against her chest.
Agnes Bell
If the beacon keeps pulsing like this, they will track us all the way out.
Sharp Archer
The pulse is strongest when the car hits the bends.
The driver floors it, and the car strains harder, gaining speed at last. The occult pursuers fall in behind the spray of snow, but they do not break off. The artifact’s glow sharpens, marking this car as the road to safety, and the road to more trouble.
✓ Quest Accepted
Stabilize the beacon's pulse
“I pour as much magical energy as I have into shielding the beacon. Exhausting me incredibly.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Arcane ballistics, rolled +0)
Sharp Archer plants his boots wider and drives both hands to the coat. The pulse vanishes under a hard, invisible press, and the artifact stops calling out through the car.
Sharp Archer
The shield holds. Barely.
The price lands at once. His knees dip, his breath catches, and a thin line of blood slips from his nose onto the metal grating.
The Operative
That is it, keep it down. I can feel the line losing us.
Agnes Bell
The page has gone still. It is not answering them now.
Mallory glances from the deadened coat to the rear glass. The snow outside is still full of black shapes, but their throb is fainting as the car tears ahead.
Mallory
If it slips again, they will hear it from the next county.
Quest Complete
Stabilize the beacon's pulse