Your work there isn't done, so you text Elton in the morning. He tells you to bring dinner, so you log in a long day cleaning the inside of Gorsky Manor's industrial dishwasher, grab an aluminum foil tray of lasagna, and arrive at the bookstore where Elton works at the end of his shift. The air grows electric as you enter. Elton radiates only a dim aura of Rage most days, but the two of you together put the browsers on edge. Elton nudges you into the back office, where you contemplate how badly you want to kill people or tear things apart. Not that badly, you think. So what's everyone's problem? The bookstore cats seem to like you, at least. Their names are Clorinda and Tisbe, and they want to lick the aluminum foil covering your lasagna. Perhaps they've acclimatized to Elton, because they lack the instinctive fear of Garou most domesticated animals possess. Or maybe they just really want that mozzarella.
The bus stops outside just as the two of you finish eating dinner; you race outside into the cold late-winter air.
"So what are we looking for at the site?"
"Is the water still corrupted? How are we going to start healing it?"
"I wish we could do this when it was a little warmer."
"Any word from that Glass Walker about us fulfilling our sacred duty as Garou? I'm not sitting around waiting for an elder's decision."
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"Ms. Clear isn't being officious for its own sake," Elton says, hoisting his old-fashioned bike onto the bus's bike rack. "She needs to…well, there's no polite way to put it…cover up two murders. Yours back in New York and mine not far from where we're going this evening. And though she wants us to believe that her Glass Walker spirit magic lets her conjure digital miracles, it takes time to hide our tracks. Still, I am growing impatient. I'll lean on her again tomorrow."
The bus drops you off at the Veterans Hospital. From there you follow Elton as he wheels his bike through the woods until he finds an old trail once used by the Broad Brook Garou. It's easy from there, and in less than fifteen minutes, you're in the heart of David Banicki's factory: a festering marsh of slushy, half-frozen water, full of broken concrete, twisted rebar, and the carcasses of the animals he ruined. Scraps of shapeless plastic float in the ooze or hang from the twisted oaks. Elton's breath steams with Rage as he looks down on the defilement; he pulls his frock coat closer around him as if to ward off a chill, though an unnatural warmth still lingers in the air. The sun is a red stain on the western horizon, half-hidden by dead black trees.
"The healing begins today," he says. The theurge climbs onto a pile of broken concrete that was once David Banicki's workshop and closes his eyes. The air grows thin and cold mist swirls over the filthy water. But Elton is just one theurge and he can't do this alone. You spent time helping Black Tarn maintain her little garden, and you think about where your skills lie, and how you can help without this land draining your vitality to restore itself.
I handle the hard physical work, physically moving blocks out of the way to help both water and spirits flow easily.
I close my eyes and concentrate on subtle shifts in the air to find knots of corruption.
Well-educated in the spirits, I combine my occult lore with Elton's by naming the spirits of this place.
I open myself to the natural world, composing myself and meditating on each species of plant and animal in this once-great place.
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