A month later, Remedy is in a cramped cafe, rain ticking against the window. Tanner drops into the chair opposite her, wild-eyed and out of breath. Chuck stands beside him, jaw tight, as if he has run here instead of driven.
Tanner
Remedy, look at this. Right now.
He slides a tablet across the table. The screen fills with seismic lines, stacked in repeating pulses that match the readings from beneath Vervoless.
Remedy
Those spikes match the ruin signal.
Chuck
It is not just the lower route anymore. The pattern keeps going, deeper than the maps show.
Tanner
If the mountain is routing defenses through the buried city, then the path we found was only the start. We have to go back.
Chuck taps one cluster on the tablet, then another. The same rhythm repeats under the mountain, like a hidden system waking up in layers.
Chuck
And if Bruce was feeding us the wrong way on purpose, we need eyes on him before we walk into the next trap.
Tanner looks straight at Remedy, desperate and certain. The next descent is not optional anymore, it is the only way to reach Galgok before the mountain seals the route shut.
✓ Quest Accepted
Return to Galgok before the route seals shut
✓ Quest Accepted
Learn what Bruce is doing
“"This Bruce guy is really starting to piss me off. We have to get rid of him before he gets one of us killed."”
SUCCESS (Superb Diplomacy, rolled -1)
The table goes quiet after Remedy lays it out. Rain clicks harder on the window, and Tanner stops hovering over the tablet.
Tanner
I agree. Bruce is a liability. We do not drag him into this again.
Chuck
He has already cost us enough time. If he is hiding anything else, I want it out of the equation now.
Chuck pulls Bruce’s hazard note from his jacket and flattens it beside his own pages, like he is sorting evidence for a case.
Remedy
Drop Bruce. We move with the notes we can trust.
Tanner exhales once, sharp and relieved, then starts deleting Bruce’s contact from the expedition thread.
Chuck
Good. Then this stays between us, the seismic data, and whatever is waking under Vervoless.
His phone screen flashes as a new message comes in from an unknown number. One attachment previews as a blurred photo of the mountain, with a thin blue pulse cutting through a crack in the dark rock.
“I text Bruce to meet up with me in the quiet woods outside of Galgok alone”
SUCCESS (Great Agility, rolled -1)