Ney,Frothy,Rumar

20

Yes, it's time to follow that…glass wire? Spirit trail? Energy…? Okay first you need a term for it.

Your phone buzzes.

CrestFolder180IQ They're called Pattern Lines.

CrestFolder180IQ And you're in over your head.

Good morning, Ms. Clear.

I don't care if you're my elder, you can't snoop on me like this

Whatever they are, they're corrupting the spirit world

I'm willing to let you condescend to me if you're willing to help me out

Next

CrestFolder180IQ There's not much left of the "spirit world" to corrupt.

CrestFolder180IQ The Umbra is a wasteland, the Digital Web a skein of rotting data.

CrestFolder180IQ Meet me at 42°25'50.3"N 72°40'49.3"W at 10:30 PM.

Say what you want about Glass Walkers, they're precise. You use your map program to determine the exact location Ms. Clear means. You stop at Forbes Library to print out physical maps, then shift into your lupus form and lope out of town. The journey takes you north through pitch-black woods, as clouds hide the crescent moon. The night air is cool. Translating GPS coordinates into nomad wolf vibes isn't easy, but when you Change back into your homid form and check your phone, you're within a quarter-mile of your target destination. It's so dark that you flick on your flashlight to walk the rest of the way.

The attack dogs are waiting for you.

Next

"Relax, they're harmless," Daphne Clear says as her servants flank you. The sleek Dobermans watch you with cool intelligence, ranging back and forth, moving with eerie coordination. Then they both stop, as if from a command you didn't hear. They've calculated the ideal range to attack from before you could Change. Their eyes watch you like cameras.

"Well, mostly harmless," Ms. Clear says. "Thunderhoof, please meet Thivai and Abhor."

"Forgive me, Ms. Clear, but isn't building cybernetic murder dogs a violation of the Litany?"

"Hello, new friends."

"Please keep your attack dogs away from me, Daphne."

"Cool." I'm pretty sure the Litany says you shouldn't make cyber-hound combat units, but…cool.

"We're here to do a job. Where is the Pattern Line?"

Next

"While the other tribes carve patterns into rocks," Ms. Clear says, "we confront the world as it is today."

You wonder if you could join the Glass Walkers and get your own robot dog. As if she understands your interest, Ms. Clear says, "Thivai and Abhor took years to perfect. Or rather, my ability to command them took years. I assure you that they're entirely natural dogs, from a reputable breeder in Atlanta. It's the work—what your occultist friend Elton would call a rite—that allows me to get so much out of them. Even if you swore yourself to Spider, it would take years for you to recreate my work."

"So, not cyber dogs?" you say.

"Just meat and loyalty," Ms. Clear says. "What more do you need?"

It looks like the Glass Walker drove here, as her Polestar is parked on the gravel. Eschewing her ordinary businesswear, Ms. Clear wears a black sweater, gray tactical pants, and gloves. She has some kind of sidearm strapped to her hip, but the sweater covers it. Before you can inquire, she dons a pair of mirrored sunglasses and shifts so you're behind her and to her side. Through the glasses, you can just barely catch a glimpse of a shimmering glass tunnel across the night sky.

"This Pattern Line is corrupt," Ms. Clear says. "Other Garou would say it stinks of the Wyrm. The data and/or power flowing through it—and to clarify, in the spirit world, knowledge is power in a real and literal sense—has been made to serve the Wyrm. Nonetheless, we should be able to follow it."

"To what?" you ask.

"Maybe the ruins of the Broad Brook caern," Ms. Clear says. "Maybe something worse. That's why I brought Thivai and Abhor."

That makes sense, so you follow Ms. Clear, sketching the Pattern Line on a physical map, while she scans the treetops and Thivai and Abhor range through the woods, hunting for threats. The problem starts when the Line branches.

Since you can't track the Pattern Line on your own, Ms. Clear turns to her dogs.

"Thivai, Abhor, patrol pattern gamma. I'll need to keep my eye on the sky, Thunderhoof, so you keep your eyes on the woods. And your hands on that Banicki blade of yours."

You draw the hatchet and follow Ms. Clear for almost an hour, up hill and down dale, until she stops and grits her teeth.

"What?" you ask.

"It splits again. Okay, I've marked this point. We'll scout the lefthand line to see if it terminates."

An hour later, the Glass Walker stops again. "It splits in three here," she says, panning back and forth.

And so it goes. You track the lines on your paper map as they divide and spread, forming an elaborate network. By the time you're done, you and Ms. Clear have covered almost twenty miles, and the stars have vanished from the eastern sky. Ms. Clear stops, takes off her glasses, rubs her temples.

"We have to keep going. We'll take a break, maybe get some breakfast, then come back and map the whole network."

"This is hopeless, isn't it? It's bigger than we can map."

"Can we use our human allies to map the whole thing? Get Hobland and Lucinda out here?"

"There must be a spirit we can summon or a rite we can perform to reveal the whole network."

Next

"Humans?" Ms. Clear says. "Maybe the Glass Walkers are closer to humanity's creations than other tribes, but we're not closer to individual humans, because individual humans are damn near worthless. And those old hillbilly families can't do anything."

"But can't—"

"And whatever we do," Ms. Clear says, "we're not doing it tonight. Or this morning, I should say. Let's get back to the car."

You're back to the car in a little over an hour. You scan the woods one last time, then glance at Ms. Clear, who is scowling ferociously at her phone.

"What?" you ask.

"My maps don't match," she says.

You pull out your paper map.

"No, no, that won't help," she says, showing you her phone. "Look: these are the lines I tracked as we went into the woods." They appear in red over the map. "And here they are going back." These appear in blue. They don't match. Or, rather, a few of the nodes, where they split up, match, but the lines themselves…

"They're moving," you say.

"This isn't a matter of a few days or even weeks of scouting," Ms. Clear says as she gets into her car. The Dobermans hop in the back, as excited as any other dog to go for a car ride. "Elton could summon every Stormcrow in the arsenal of his Patron Spirit while I sent Pattern Spiders crawling through the woods like an invading army, and I don't think we'd crack this. s**t! I'm sorry, excuse my language. This is frustrating. We need some way to narrow down the search area. If we can do that, we have a chance. But not until then."

Her expression is fixed in such a ferocious scowl of concentration that you don't dare interrupt her all the way back to your cabin. But when she parks out front, she says, "No, I don't see a clever hack that will make this easier. I'll look for one, of course. And so will our Bone Gnawer friend, I have no doubt. But I don't think there is one, except to narrow down the search area."

You nod, then crawl inside and immediately go to sleep, exhausted from your travels.

Next