You establish that you can indeed summon and bind Class 2 entities in the Prague State Opera's attic, by taking your time to calculate and draw the proper geometry curve. In order to draw the entities, a blood sacrifice will be required from one of you .
It's uncertain if that will have effects on your life expectancy, but you don't have a good feeling about that.
"Hm. I am not one for much physical exertion, and I am already... aging." Tomasz says, not quite willing to call himself 'old' yet. "It would seem that I am the best candidate. I only hope that it is worth it."
So saying, Tomasz picks up a piece of charcoal and begins drawing... something. Lines within lines; a warped geometry of guarded currents and tension ready almost to burst held back only by their distorted shapes. Energy, lost and looking for a home.
The diagram, pulsating with an impossible amount of information, stands ready, and eyes looking at it too long start watering. It only requires a name, some basic rules of behaviour and a drop of blood.
Leo sits back and lets Tomasz work, picking a perch amongst the detritus nearby and going over each step as Tomasz completes them.
Tomasz makes a few clucking noises with his tongue as he works. "The rules, the rules..."
"Firstly... hm, intelligence, it will not be a priority for this thing... obey our orders. To the letter. If we speak poorly, it is our mistake."
"Secondly... attack none who do not wear the Swastika."
"Thirdly... in one month, your service is done. This world you are to leave, and return to a place of stranger curves."
"Anything I am missing? Do you have a name you'd like?"
In thirty years, a compatriot of his by the name of Benoit Mandelbrot will create the word fractal to describe the sort of self-similar, recursive curves that lies on the ground, traced in charcoal and inlaid in copper wire, but for the time being you stick to the old name of summoning diagrams. Colonies of parasites will be drawn by the electrical current once the circuit is powered, attaching themselves to the first semblance of host that they can find: the Golem.
You carefully analyze the rules you wrote, looking for loopholes before writing them inside the creature's skull.
Tomasz busies himself helping Leo - the strange man's grasp of languages being much greater than his own.
You manage to close a loophole that would have allowed the Golem to attack anyone wearing a Swastika unless you explicitly ordered it not to, and to carefully define the length of a month and the banishment formula, ensuring that the parasites will return precisely from where they came.
"Hmm, how about Kleiner?" Leo asks, mildly amused with himself for a moment.
The final link of the summoning diagram is closed, and a host of entropy-hungry creatures delve into it, finding a Hamiltonian path through it in polynomial time. As they return to the starting point and close the circuit, the information cuts off, forcing them to link to the closest information source: Tomasz's blood, smeared at the base of the Golem's skull, next to a binding formula derived from Elias' notes. The blank face of the clay creature morphs into a plain, unremarkable face that looks like how an inexperienced sculptor would draw a human face. Kleiner moves, testing the limits of its body, then turns to Tomasz, his clay face expressionless.
From Pierce's face pops from the trapdoor. "I have concluded my examination. Agent L's brain is irreparably, in what looks like an impressively rapid onset of K syndrome. And Miss Korematsu appears to be internally bleeding from the earlier blow, I suspect her spleen is ruptured. I'll bring them to the rooms we rented, but it'll take most of my time to care for them. Do you think you can keep up on your own until the assassination attempt?"
Leaning heavily with one hand on Elias's desk, the other on his now-fluttering heart, Tomasz takes the news with a panting frown. "I suppose we must. Back to the ghetto, we should go - and quickly. This Kleiner, I do not wish for him to be seen above ground in the sunlight."
"You speak like you don't want to cause a large-scale panic, mon frère," Leo said with his typical wry grin. "Kleiner will not go anywhere and as long as the ward stays up on the building, I doubt he will be found while we get our wounded somewhere safe."
"If the pyre-fire does not spread." Tomasz says. "I do not like the idea of leaving this thing alone. We are responsible for his actions, and should some Hitler Jugend be adventurous..."
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An analysis of the situation must follow, but at the moment your priority is the short girl pointing a pistol at your face. "And what business would you have here?"
The room you are in is a dark, small, fish-smelling entry leading to a flight of stairs, with the only commodities of a rickety table and two crates acting as chairs. On the table are a gas lantern and playing cards, and on one of the crates is a scrawny man with a WWI-era handgun, trained on you.
Three days later, you are standing outside the Prague State Opera. Your feet are aching from methodically walking through the city, looking for unusual entropy to signal where magic is being used, but finally an aura flared in your field of vision, pulsing painfully with the stench of necromancy. Something is happening inside that theatre, something eldritch.
Their hideout turns out to be the walled basement of an abandoned shop. Dusty barrels have been replaced by makeshift beds for the dozen people who found refuge here: a married couple with decidedly Semitic traits, a Rom with longing black eyes, a Slavic young man locked in a strange mix of melancholy and rage, and a family with three children, the youngest smiling in a childlike expression despite being at least six.
In front of them all, however, there are Jan and Jozef, a rifle and a handgun trained at your head as you crawl through the hidden passage leading to the basement. "Máte pět slov, abyste vysvětlili, proč jste tady." says Jozef menacingly.
"Good morning, Ada." The smile of your reflection is the stuff of nightmare, ravenous with hunger and emptiness behind a thin mask of politeness. That it's coming from your face just makes it even more terrifying.
"You know of Reinhardt Heydrich, don't you? He's known as the Hangman, holds a high position in the Ahnenerbe, practices ritual human sacrifice, and genuinely likes Wagner. All-around unpleasant chap, you'll agree. Anyway. Heydrich is in possession of an item that must be removed and brought to the Laundry. Now, I could tell you what it is. But I won't. Knowledge of that thing is dangerous by itself, the less you know the more you will be safe. Just know that if you use it, you're likely killing yourself, and if it's not out of the Reich's grasp soon, everyone in this reality will die. No pressure."
The reflection's head leans to the right, and its smile is wistful. "Yes, this career is awful. No, there's no way things will ever be simple or normal anymore. I know. Scream, cry, curse all you want, but do it while you're getting the job done. After you're done, you can get drunk and unwind as you please. Everything clear?"
"I was just looking for something." Titus said, keeping his hands where they could be seen. "Honestly, though, it's looking like something of a lost cause at the moment... so how about we work this out like decent people instead of doing something I'll regret?" No need to start throwing names out, especially when he suspected these people wouldn't like what they heard... he was pretty sure he could escape if need be, but why make enemies when you didn't have to?
A smile spreads across Richard's face as he raises his hands to show he is unarmed. He says in German, "My, isn't this an occasion? The Laundry sent me here, said that you two could help me."
Well, a theatre isn't exactly the oddest place I've been sent, Katherine considered as she moved towards the building. She'd been sent from bordellos to embassies to clean messes the Laundry and most places between. Well...technically she hadn't been sent here, specifically. She'd merely been sent to Prague. But this seemed like a suitable place to spend some time.
Well...if nothing else she could stop by, see a show, and maybe stop some kind of horrible necromantic ritual during the intermission. The building looked quite nice. With a little luck she wouldn't have to burn it down.
She examined the itinerary for the day to see if there was any hints or any shows that might be suitable to visit. And she scoped out the front as well, to see how it was protected.
The girl's English is good if heavily accented: she had addressed you in what you assume to be Czech before finding common linguistic grounds. "If you know this place, either you have a really good reason to come here, or you won't make it out alive."
She carefully pats you. She raises an eyebrow when she finds you unarmed, but that appears worry her even more. Without moving her gun, she picks a small notebook from the breast pocket of an old military coat.
"Swear that no violence will be brought against anyone in this community. Swear that and I will bring you to Melchisedec."
There is a subtle vibration in the air. Her first sentence carries a minor, amateurish but still effective geas, binding you to that course of action.
Jan leans in, whispering something in his compatriot's ear.
"You mean the help from the British? Why should we believe you?"
Richard switches to English, his proper British accent carrying through effortlessly, "Can you understand Enlgish?" If they can, he carries on in English, if not, he switches back to German, "Merely a codename for an...intelligence agency that I am a part of. I am to understand we have a common enemy in the German Reich. If you need more proof than my British English, I do have my British passport."
"You don't want me to promise that." Titus said, keeping his hands free and, as always, really appreciating that he could store all of his things in a place nobody else could reach. It made his infiltration work so much easier. Meanwhile, in the back of his mind, he could feel the presence of his grimoire scoffing at the amateurish geas. Hey, be quiet, you. The last time you wanted attention, you turned humanoid and the hotel staff walked in on you. We almost got arrested over that one - let's not do it again. "That's just asking for a threat to come in, and then I wouldn't be able to help you stop it. What I can promise is that I won't hurt anyone unless they give me good reason to - like, y'know, being a Nazi or hurting innocent people. And hey, I'm not carrying any weapons, right? Don't you think I'd at least have a knife if I was planning to cause trouble?"
Ada stares blearily at the mirror, then closes her eyes for a second, fighting the urge to leave them closed. ’Just when things were settling down into something at least approaching routine I get a call at stupid o’clock in the morning about the fate of the world! I haven't even had my coffee!'
On one hand, this was good news; a literal "fate of the world" mission suggested my misadventure in England was forgiven - even if not forgotten.
One the other hand - or tentacle - this mission had "test" written all over it.
Was I supposed to ask for more information, or work it out for myself? On one hand not asking for obvious information you were supposed to have made you look stupid. On the other hand asking for things you should be able to find out suggested you weren't competent enough. I couldn't really afford another black mark on my record.
If it was to be taken back to the Laundry, instead of home, that suggested that the Laundry was already aware of it. That in turn suggested there was already a team in situ.
Everyone in this reality dying was exactly the sort of thing that was turned up by Foresight - normally the trouble was finding out about something that didn't impact the seer personally - but the window was usually about a week. Which meant probably - **** - everyone in this reality was dead in a week. If this was a test that probably meant there was a backup team ready to bail me out, which meant I had less. Three days? Four?
It was implied I knew of this Hangman, and the name was familiar, but given I was pre-caffeinated my brain was refusing to play ball and actually serve anything up. Adrenaline was serving to wake me up quite admirably, but I didn't need 'fight or flight' I needed 'figure stuff out'.
With the knowledge that my soul - and worse, my career - was in danger I decided to try to hedge my bets and try to get more information subtly.
Ada opens her eyes. "Reinhardt Heydrich, Ahnenerbe. Ritual Sacrifice. Hangman. Item. Laundry. Fate of the World.” deep breath ”Does this mission have codewords? Will the Laundry be expecting the Item?” ...Or do I have to smuggle it into their bloody HQ? ”I understand you cannot safely tell me about the item, but I need to know a certain amount about how to transport it. Can you tell me - is it bigger than a breadbox?”
Well, it was probably too much to hope for that the city would be showing a decent show in this climate. Able-bodied men had better places to be than on stage. Able-bodied women, too, although many would disagree.
Still, she was a pretty girl and it was a theatre. It shouldn't be too hard to pass off being found here as a silly girl looking to be rich and famous in the theatre and trying to get an audition.
And if things went too wrong she could set the building on fire and consider the job done for now.
For a spy, she wasn't especially good at actually sneaking without her magic, so she simply wandered towards the magic she was sensing. It was a little blase if the people here were looking for sacrifices, but it usually worked.
"Very well, shall I 'borrow' us a truck?" Leo offered, his features rippling into a facsimile of something more normal.
She's visibly conflicted, but her gun hand is steady. "You didn't lie, though. I'll go against sense and reason and let you in to the old man, but if you try anything, anything against him, I don't care if I die to take you down, I will."
At the end of the stairs lies a heavy, old metal door, which gets opened from behind after the girl identifies herself as "Hannah".
The complex beyond the door and the following corridor must date back to the Renaissance, if not earlier. Corridors with a low ceiling open in several small halls, walls covered in limestone. Some appear to be used as storage, some as dormitories, some as common areas. Moving forward you estimate that more than a hundred people must live here, and that's excluding any parts of the complex you may have not seen. Finally, Hannah leads you to a rickety wooden door and opens it gingerly, keeping the gun out at all times but no longer pointing it at you. "Rabbi, I'm coming in. Another one found this place."
In a bent cot lies an old, bald man with bushy white eyebrows, looking ill and feverish. With considerable effort he opens his eyes and speaks slowly. "Thank you, d-dearest. You, young man, you are the... second visitor in a few days... we must move if we are to... to be found so easily. What- what can an old man do for you?"
"No codewords for you. But you should know that there are REVERSE CHARLEMAGNE agents in the city, carrying their own mission, classified ANTHROPOID AFFILIATE. You might want to make contact with them."
Your reflection twirls a lock of hair around its fingers, wistfully. "They won't be expecting the object, but they'll gladly receive it from you. As for the size... It's marginally smaller than a breadbox, made to be carried in one hand."
<"Honestly, I think the important question is what I can do to help you."> Titus answered in reasonably proficient Hebrew, feeling like a rabbi would find it more comfortable to speak in his native tongue. <"Hold still for a moment and let me help you - and the little lady knows I'm not going to try anything funny because I know she'll shoot me the second I do. Also, I feel like things will work out a lot better for everyone if I do something to earn your trust, rather than simply asking for it. Besides, if you want to move around, we need to get that fever of yours under control.">
"I seek to take on Reinhardt Heydrich. The British have told me that you two have a similar goal." Richard begins to fidget slightly, tapping his foot against the ground as he tries his best to withstand his mad urges.
"Please. With our newest friend, I will wait here." Tomasz says, pulling up a chair. He draws his gun and sets it on the table next to him, before pulling more of Elias' notes closer - ones more theoretical, likely from earlier in the process before he began to rush and panic. They were interesting reading.
There are three fears involving mirrors; catoptrophobia, spectrophobia and eisoptrophobia. I, like many in my family, suffered from all when younger. Overcoming those phobias took a small miracle - not a figure of speech - but had to be done. One of us with a fear of mirrors is a little like aquaphobia in a deep sea diver. Mirrors are simply too useful a tool to be discarded, but to this day I treat mirrors with the respect an electrician treats a high voltage mains wire, and for much the same reason.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t shudder when my reflection twirled a lock of its hair. That’s one of my little habits. It’s not just creepy to see it used like that, it suggests a level of study that is terrifying in it implications.
Undoubtedly I should have asked any number of other things, but at that point I decided I’d had enough. I told myself I was showing independence and intiative - but I wonder now if I had just had enough.
I signed off, degaussed the mirror, and pulled out my memex. Three hours later I had a plan, some preliminary preparations, and a glimmer of hope I wasn’t going to look like an idiot.
In a jar under my bed I had a collection of 10 and 20 haléřů coins. The Nazis had stamped these out en masse when they established the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia back in 1939. While new coins were stamped later, the establishment concentrated more on banknotes than coinage, and even pure zinc coins don’t wear too badly in three years. That left a unique opportunity.
While the opportunity is unlikely to happen again, I’m proud enough of thinking of it that I’m going to document it here in the hopes that whoever is reading it can take a moment to appreciate why I was once a contender for Strategy.
Two maxims I learned when I was still a child; “Things made from the same material invoke the principle of contagion” and “Things that look similar invoke the principle of similarity”. Those two principles linked the coins together. The coins in my jar were connected to all the other small change - whether stored in jars, wallets, loose in pockets or just fallen between cushions. Any halfway competent conjurer could draw on that connection to transmit sound between coins - the trouble was limiting it to particular coins. All you were likely to get was a maddening hiss of white noise, like trying to pick out a conversation in a cafe with half a million people - and even then only what was being said at that time. The issue was not getting the information, but processing it. I happen to be very, very good at information processing.
Also hidden in that jar was a large diamond, and a small clockwork that used to be a nice watch. The clockwork transferred information in from the coins, and stored it in the molecular structure of the diamond.
I like diamonds - they’re quite useful, and not particularly expensive, though a friend of mine in Foresight dropped a tip prices might suddenly rise in the next few years, so I suspect the South African mines might be starting to dry up. If you’re reading this in the future and hoping to duplicate my idea it might cost you a fair bit more than it did me.
So now the information is stored in a way that someone with the right equipment could retrieve it in a way that might actually be useful - if they can do so fast enough, as information retrieval is a lot harder on carbon than information storage.
“But how” my hypothetical reader asks “can you process the information fast enough to find anything useful?”. That, dear hypothetical reader is where the codeword restricted information comes in. Suffice it to say that it is possible to enhance the sensory portions of the mind and also possible to produce a small algorithm that can automatically classify - badly - information based on a series of criteria. A desperate enough practitioner with a strong enough will, a cold enough environment, and a copious supply of pain relief medicine can process a truly astonishing amount of information during the period it takes a diamond to burn.
Ada looks at the bath, and swears the bath looks back. Filled to the brim with water she can see ice crystallizing against the side, and a thin veneer of ice on top. She kneels next to tit, swears, takes a deep breath and pushes her head deep into the water.
They say you only use 10% of your brain. That’s not exactly true, but it sort of is. When your brain works it turns energy into heat. No energy is bad, and too much heat is bad, so your brain only works as hard as it has to. Unlike our Savannah ancestors we can get around the energy (to a degree) by drinking three litres of iced tea so sweet the sugar actually precipitates out as it cools down, and hyperventilating enough to pass out. Just like our Savannah ancestors, though, too much heat leads to dizziness, delusions, unconsciousness and eventual death. No chemical brew is going to help with this.
It is possible to counteract some of the heat mechanically, though. Hypothetically it would be possible to counteract additional heat with additional cold. For example, someone could lower their body temperature by wearing insufficient clothing in a prague morning in a dark cold room with a giant ice block. They could (if truly insane) also immerse their head and neck in a basin filled with water at as close to zero degrees as possible. The intense pain would cause their body to quickly contract all possible veins though, in a forlorn attempt to stop hypothermia. If one truly, truly needed to resist the effect of something such as, for instance, triggering a spell that brought death via heatstroke in a one minute period one could open one’s mouth and breathe in through the nose, flooding the sinuses right next to their brain with icy water.
The effects are spectacular. The headache is intense, a spike that rises straight through the brain and triggers every mammalian panic reflex. The sensations would be so intense that the victim’s heart would likely stop, at least momentarily. Blood vessels all throughout the sinuses would pop like balloons, giving the mother of all blood noses. Drowning is more a probability than a possibility.
Lying on the tiled floor afterwards, desperately coughing the water out my lungs as I drew in deep breaths, feeling the heatstroke struggle against the ice headache, and watching blood drain from my nose like I’d punctured a vein are not memories I am likely to forget - at least in part because the spell I was using heightened memory as well as perception. I also remember the feeling of victory.
It would have taken weeks - if it succeeded at all - to have gathered as much information as I just did through my little stunt. Even through the filters I processed hundreds of hours of rumors and gossips looking for my ‘friends’ from the Laundry.
The Rabbi's breath eases as you apply a dose of camphor to his chest and slip him two aspirins under Hannah's careful look. <"Thank you, young man. Although I fear my walking days are mostly over."> His voice is still weak, and he doesn't sound like a man who's long for this world. You feel a touch on your mind, like the faintest, weakest echo of a probe, enough to resonate with your wards but not even an attempt to force them. <"Ah, I see, you too must be after the Golem. But it's something dark and dangerous, young man, best left forgotten. And you may be late.">
Most of what you are looking for is kept carefully under wraps, but you piece together bits and pieces from across the town, and slowly the pieces of the puzzle start fitting into places, around someone who has been in the city for quite a long time. You follow every time a person has thought "Hey, who's that guy?", drawing a map that superimpose itself with Prague, focus on their appearance and are left astonished at the skill with which this person is eluding surveillance. You can't get a clear picture, let alone a clear face, and you are left wondering whether you are following one agent or several.
However, one detail is clear: four men and a woman were seen entering the Prague State Opera in the early morning, despite it being closed. And very recently, in the last hour, another woman followed. Out of curiosity, you search for details about the theatre, and you find an unusual lack of interest. It's like most people forgot the theatre is even there.
As for your pondering, you imagine that the group in the theatre is either part of the Laundry or the Ahnenerbe-SS. If they are planning to either eliminate Heydrich or retrieve the artifact that is your quarry, Laundry agents will likely be searching for a way to get magical superiority: quite possibly, setting a trap.
Reinhardt Heydrich, known as The Hangman, had a brilliant military career truncated due to the scandal coming from an illicit relation with the daughter of a superior officer. After Hitler came to power, Heydrich ascended rapidly the ranks of the SS, and now he's the Grand Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, and one of Himmler's most important men. His location is not known, but it's certainly a way out of Prague. On the 15th of May, there will be a mass hanging which he will oversee, followed by a concert at the Wallenstein Palace: Heydrich himself, a talented violinist, will play some pieces himself. Wagner, obviously.
As for the reasons of the mass sacrifices, that's possibly the biggest question around. That the Germans are preparing for large-scale atrocities is suspected so strongly that it's a certainty, but nobody has managed to do better than guess why. You think that the preta knows, though. It always knows. And it never says.
You make your way down the attic and through the backstage at a relaxed place. Trucks are rare, what with the fuel rationing and the war, but Prague hasn't been heavily devastated. The postal service uses small ones to send parcels and letters towards Brno at least twice a week, and there are deliveries of fresh goods to the rich areas, like the Wallenstein palace. Perhaps a high-class fish merchant could have one, to deliver fresh catches from the river.
You suddenly hear footsteps somewhere in the backstage. They are relaxed, apparently heading towards the artists' entrance.
Titus focused on the grimoire's presence in his mind for a few moments. What do you think? Is that golem one of the creatures we're after? If it wasn't, then if it wasn't going around hurting people, he wasn't terribly concerned with it. A man could only do so much to help others - and frankly, staying true to his main mission usually helped more people than getting distracted by every other thing that came his way.
Well, that wasn't good. It seemed like a very good time to use her powers for good, and to hide from whatever was doing this. Her usual methods of indirect infiltration and explosives was not really required here, but she wanted to explore anyway.
She'd have to remember go back and burn any of the limbs that escaped, though. Those things were creepy. For now she needed to find two things - who did this, and who stopped this. She continued to explore, now mostly vanished.
"A lead!" Ada exclaims aloud - and winces at the headache it brings. Desperately she grabs her handbag, mutters a control phrase ('packing problem') and proceeds to stuff the contents of a particularly large chest in, apparently ignoring petty constraints like the law of physics in her haste.
Within a minute she is downstairs in shoes more stylish than sensible, wrapped in a fur coat, desperately trying to flag down one of the increasingly rare cabs. It's not until she manages to get to the main street that a cab finally deigns to slow for her, though in this area the cabby demands payment up front, and there's little doubt as to what he thinks her occupation is, dressed to the nines in a district like this.
His smirk vanishes into sullen irritation as she orders him in German "The National Museum! Quickly!"
'Alright - I go into the museum, use the restroom, and send a projection into the opera house next door. I've got about sixty meters to play with, so I'll need to use the restroom nearest Vinohradská.'
Not the safest option. The Nazis had been cracking down on the intelligentsia for a while now. Good thing my cover was german - even if I did run the risk of getting the run around from my cabbie.
You don't run into any problems on your way out. The fresh, still wintry air of Prague is welcome to your nose after the stench of burned meat permeating the theater.
From the Key comes the psychic equivalent of a noncommittal shrug. All the grimoire feels at the moment is that its quarry was linked to Elias, and it vanished as you were growing close.
Facing away from the lingering necromancy in the main theatre hall, you head towards a weaker, but distinct area, which feels more controlled than the first, chaotic one. You follow the trail, for some miracle finding the path easily through the labyrinthine backstage, and trace the magic to an attic. A trapdoor leads forward.
The notes are meticulously collated pages of research on Slavic folk tales, theoretical mathematics and rituals in legends. Most of the math work is made of annotations on the works of Euler and Gauss, but one note is particularly treacherous, an algorithmic solution for the Traveling Salesman problem, taking up polynomial time. From there, the notes start degenerating into incoherent rambling, the name of the Lurker in Darkness repeating over and over. Going over the algorithm, for an unwarded mind, could mean opening their mind to hostile entities.
You are in the process of comparing that algorithm with the diagram that you traced to summon Kleiner when you hear, from downstairs, a slight creak of wood. It's too early for Leo to return, and Pierce already left with Sam and L. Someone is trying to sneak around.
It's nothing short of a miracle to find a cab and the price is something astronomical, but you manage to get to the National Museum swiftly: the place is open but mostly empty, as few people have the time or money for frivolities: you only run into a stressed nanny chaperoning two Aryan-blond children, who in turn look restless and bored. Some methodical exploration of the floorplans has you find a window looking towards the State Opera. From there, it's easy (as much as magic can be easy) to create the figment in the adjacent building and head to the closest restroom to focus on it.
A fragment of your mind appears in the dusty, empty backstage of the empty theatre, and through the resonance link the nauseating stench of burning flesh assaults your nostrils.
Richard nods and says, ”I will do what I can. I should like to speak with Samuel and Veronica, if you’ll let me.” With that, Richard walks over to the couple and smiles, ”Why hello there. I am Richard, and I am looking for a man named Leo. We have similar sympathies, working to fight against the Reich. Jan said you would likely know where he is.”
<"Well, if the Golem is causing you problems, I might be able to do something about it. I'm something of a specialist in resolving problems like that. If it's not such a big deal to you guys, though, then I don't care too much. I'm not sure it really fits my usual job description, and I'm chasing around enough things as it is. I don't suppose you know a man named Elias, though?"> he inquired. It was worth a shot.
Leo beings in his usual circuitous way, nearly never moving in straight lines towards his destination and periodically finding a convenient alleyway or abandoned building to duck into and emerge as someone else. He knew what his skills and weaknesses were, and made a point to address the one with the other.
While some petty part of him wanted to steal from the occupation forces in the city, Leo was nothing if not a pragmatic monster and the first opportunity to come his way was that of a fishery. It was a shame but he was not going to leave Tomasz and Kleiner exposed for longer than needed.
Well, this seemed like a terrible idea, and not at all safe. If whoever was up to something here was watching the attic hatch she might be in trouble. But she wanted to be sure she blew up whoever had done all this, and thus she climbed up to the attic.
Tomasz folds the note up and slides it into his jacket before grabbing his gun. He stays seated, though, and with his other hand begins fiddling with one of his many little clockwork devices.
'About ten minutes and ten feet' Ada reflected, taking in the environment 'I'll need to... what is that smell?'.
She sniffs again, nearly gagging at the smell. 'Smells like that time that possum was hiding under the BBQ. Burnt flesh, and fur - or hair.'
There are, of course, any number of rituals that would have helped identify what the smell was - but none I could pull off through a resonance link without at least an hour's work and a kilogear clockwork. It didn't really matter, though. This was not a smell associated with a place of civilisation - it was a smell more associated with war, and death, and horrors. Little doubt something had gone down, and odds were my Laundry targets and the Ahnenerbe had clashed, lethally.
Pounding headache, short on time, not able to explore, and projecting into an occult crime scene. It seemed like my day couldn't get worse.
I worked through the angles. If the Laundry were dead or had already left then I'd lost my lead and would have to start again, or go solo. So assume they are still here and not dead. If they tried to leave I had perhaps a 3 in 10 chance of seeing them from my window, based on the angles. I might be able to use a stored procedure to track them via magical residue, but I didn't like my chances, and the longer I left it the worse it was - and I'd need to go over there in person.
So I needed to get them to come to me, or leave in a hurry. I could just call out, but in a hostile city they'd have to assume a trick.
Of course if they were dead than the Ahnenerbe were probably still here. Anything that called the Laundry was going to call them as well - and they had no reason to run. On the other hand there was very little chance they could hurt me through a projection, so I could afford to take some chances - as long as I didn't go over there in person. Which I needed to do if I was going to track the Laundry.
Therefore I needed to get whoever was here to come to me. Fast. Whatever I did, they were going to come hostile.
And just like that my day got worse.
Ada takes a deep breath - psychosomatic of course - and yells in English. Then goes silent, and listens to the echoes. She gives it a count of 5 - long enough for people startled tense to start moving
"No." Veronica interrupts her husband. "Not this time, Samuel. No secret is a secret if you tell everyone. And I never saw your face around here. Prove you're on our side."
He sobs audibly and gasps, choking back tears, before hardening his jaw and speaking again. "Find one and you'll find the other. Elias left to seek the Golem, the old legendary protector of our people. Proud, arrogant and feeling powerless, he decided to take action when I was advising caution."
"Another man came. He was looking for the Golem too. I looked for Elias, I called him through my blood, and what answered... it was not him. He's lost, I fear. Just a brush with that mind left me infirm."
The old man pauses again, as if thinking what to say. "If there's a way of saving him, I don't know it. If you do, please help him. If not... give him peace. He's in the State Opera. At least, he was"
You travel upstream to the Vltava for quite some time, confident that nobody is tailing you, searching for low-profile targets; those in the sweet spot between "too poor to affort gasoline" and "rich enough to be under German protection". The first such target is a riverside fishery by the name of Kubíček's Fresh Catches - Fish and Caviar.
The fishery is made of a currently empty dock, an uninviting cement main building for offices and treatment of the fish, and a garage. Through the garage's portcullis' window you spot a white delivery van.
As you are wondering if he somehow noticed you, you hear a woman's voice screaming in English from the backstage behind you. "WE NEED TO TALK! NOW! - I DON'T HAVE ALL DAY!"
The trapdoor lifts slightly, and there appears to be nobody underneath. The important word here is "appears". Something is slippery there, your eyes slide onto something trying to be hidden. Instead you focus on what isn't there, and a humanoid figure coalesces into your sight, although the disappearing glamour is hiding its features.
Immediately asfterwards, you hear a woman's voice screaming in English from downstairs, likely the backstage. "WE NEED TO TALK! NOW! - I DON'T HAVE ALL DAY!"
Iiiiiiinteresting. <"I'll do what I can."> Titus said, taking the old man's hand. <"It is true that dark things exist, but there is no room for them in this world of light - and they are far from the only powers that exist. If he can be saved, he will be."> Titus stood up, then glanced over his shoulder to the girl who'd shown him in. <"Where is the State Opera house? My gut's telling me this should be handled sooner instead of later.">
Humming cheerfully to himself, Leo decides to let himself into the fishery.
Richard tries to get a sense of the nature of the couples suspicion while saying, ”I have no love for the Reich. They shatter the agency of the people, grinding their spirits to dust. I seek to turn the bitter treatment of people such as you back upon the Führer and his goons. To do that, I need to find Leo. If you help me, you help yourselves.”
"Sie werden dies, bitte, halten." Tomasz says in his strongly accented German, as he throws the little blank-faced pocketwatch at the trapdoor.
The little device sits there ticking softly for half a heartbeat, then explodes in a welter of white light, harsh and somehow... heavy? Heavy like molasses, making it nearly impossible to move for anyone, or anything, trapped inside it.
Tacking on the Binding Light talent for an additional SP; if this hits she's entangled and has to make a DC 18 Fort save every round or be staggered.
Who could say no to a pretty girl? Not many, in Katherine's experience. It was amazing how easy it made some missions. She hoped it was a pretty girl, anyway, and intended to go find out.
Especially when the man with salt and pepper hair threw some kind of clockwork contraption at her head. Or the trapdoor. Either seemed like a terrible idea and she had no desire to find out which.
"Nein, trotzdem vielen Dank," she said as she allowed herself to slide down the ladder and away from whatever the device was and allowing gravity to aid her escape. Sir Isaac could be a girl's best friend on occasion.
Since she prefered ambush attacks and the figure had seen through her spell, she decided to head for the shouting woman rather than engaging the gunman. That gun was worrying enough to avoid until she had more of an advantage.
Melchisedec's breath becomes shallow again. "Thank you, for trying... Now I think I must sleep some more."
He closes his eyes, in a sleep that looks quite far from peaceful. On the doorway, Hannah is frowning but she has sheathed her gun. "I will show you out, unless there you need something more. If you do, tough luck, we have nothing."
Titus reached behind his back - and when he brought it back out, he was holding a pair of military-style MREs, one of which he tossed towards Hannah. "No, you have each other. And now food... and a friend. Don't lose sight of what's important." he said, smiling cheerfully and heading out. After this museum, eh? Well, he was good enough with the directions - this sort of thing happened a lot when you were a detective.
A fearsome looking woman leans against the wall, foot tapping. She's nearly seven feet tall and with enough scars to suggest a career in violence - including a massive scar across her face. Sighing she pulls out a man's pocket watch and mutters to herself.
"Thank you ma'am, you have been most helpful." With that, Richard strides toward the exit, conferring with Jan and Jozef just before he leaves, "I have been told that Leo is on the shores of the Vlatva. Do you know of anywhere in particular he might be?" Unless the two reveal any crucial information, Richard leaves, readying himself for what seemed to be a difficult search along the Vlatva. He makes his way to the closest part of the river before heading upstream.
By the Stone, if only I knew where this man was. The stars smile upon me with toothless maws and watch with unseeing eyes and I still cannot find one man.