The rest of the meeting with Saint Aiden was...boring. The guy was nice, but ultimately not very interesting. He was almost uncomfortably nice, not like Jessie nice, but like, an overwhelming amount of cheerful and upbeat that honestly made me want to leave his presence. Still, weirdly cheerful or not the man was definitely helpful, and I appreciated the assistance. He got us a list of symbol locations within minutes. Most of them were on the map, though one or two weren't, and he pointed out a specific symbol when he got the list.

He seemed excited to share, though in a sort of mellow way that managed to make the whole experience ever so slightly less offputting. "This one is probably your best bet." His excitement cooled slightly, his expression becoming somber. "That area is a well known spot where people often go missing. If you go there be sure to be careful, however. It's not a safe place. I only tell you this because you seem to be able to handle yourselves and are traveling as a group. I'm sure you can watch out for each other."

We decided to take his advice and headed out soon after that, though not before he plied us with shortbread cookies and some of the sweetest tea I'd ever tasted. I approved of the stuff, I'd always been a fan of drinking my tea sweet. Once we were out we headed for the spot he had indicated, but we took our time on the walk. We didn't want to get jumped, so we kept our voices low when we talked at all and kept our Perception stats fully on the forefront of our minds as we did out best to make sure there would be no surprises.

Callie, being the one in charge and the most stealthy, helped us learn to walk softly, and I wondered if I could learn Minor Stealth before the night was out at this rate. She lowered her voice to a whisper before speaking. "Alright, we're coming up on the spot, so keep to the shadows. I'll try to give us some cover in darkness with my ability. Shadows in their non solid form aren't the best obstruction of sight, but they can be layered to create an obfuscation around us. Solomon, can you use that Mistwalking ability on us?"

I had all my charges available for today, so I did it without a second though, the mist filled the area and I put a hand on my team to help guide them, activating Seek Hidden to find shapes even as Callie layered shadow into the mist, creating a potent cover for all of use to move in. I imagined it would be obvious SOMETHING was happening, but regardless of that they wouldn't be able to see us, and I could see them, so if anyone tried to sneak up or find us we would be much more prepared than they would.

We crept slowly forward towards the site where the symbol was, keeping an eye out for shapes. To my surprise, one entered the mist pretty quickly. It banged into a wall with a quiet hiss, reorienting by stepping out and back in as it quickly hurried in a specific direction. The big form was pretty familiar, and I was able to recognize Cark from his hair and build. I was about to call out to him when Callie squeezed my arm. She had clearly noticed someone was there too, maybe able to see with her shadows somehow.

She pulled herself in close. "Don't let anyone know we're here. He's moving fast, I think someone is chasing him." I squeezed back to let her know I understood and would play it cool. We lay in wait for a few minutes, and sure enough, another, unfamiliar shape entered the fog. I squeezed Callie's hand on my arm and she nodded, her gesture obvious in Seek Hidden's vision. We moved after the form slowly, trying to track down the shape that had moved ahead of us without revealing our presence.

Whoever it was clearly wanted to catch Cark pretty bad, because they didn't even pay attention to the power based fog around them except to use the same method of stepping out and back in to orient. We trailed behind them as the headed in the exact same direction that Cark had been. Since they couldn't have possibly seen him they either had a tracking skill, or they knew EXACTLY where the man had gone, or rather, where he was going. It seemed like our stalker was following Cark somewhere he had been before.

I had a pretty decent idea of where too. Cark had been looking for a fight club where his sister might have ended up when we met him at the Bad Night Moon. This was probably the way there, which made the stalker either someone from the fight club or someone helping take kids. I personally didn't care. Either way they were scumbags. I'd been wanting to help Cark since we talked to him anyway so I slowly and carefully stalked the stalker,hoping to intervene if they attacked and if not show up to offer Cark a hand.

Whoever they were, I suspected after a bit that they were using some kind of stealth skill like Callie had. Luckily I could penetrate it with Seek Hidden, at least I could penetrate this one. My assumption was that stealth skills worked on Fantasy or something, and the Perception was their weakness. Given my fairly high Perception I guessed it made sense to be able to see through a low level stealth skill. I also figured Seek Hidden had a natural advantage over stealth abilities because of it's nature.

We crept down the street, bringing the fog with us as we went. We didn't stay in the middle of the stuff, but rather near the back edge, pushing it as far ahead of us as possible to cover more of the road. By doing it this way we were able to avoid someone deciding to try to track us by finding the center of the cloud. We followed behind them for about twenty minutes, and I realized that I had misunderstood the situation.

Cark wasn't running from the pursuer, he was hurrying TO wherever he was going. He didn't know he was being followed at all as far as I could tell. Which was...interesting. I wondered what the stalker was trying to accomplish here. He clearly knew where Cark was going, so why follow him? Was he reporting on his movements to someone? The people who owned the fight club maybe? Whoever it was I doubted they had good intentions.

I expected to have to jump in and stop an attack, but knowing that the stalker was just observing we reached the fight club pretty smoothly, with zero attacks or derailments. We reached the location without incident. Just like the big green guy had said the Bleakest Depths (or what I assumed was the Bleakest Depths anyway) was hidden under an old scan ring service station. The entrance was at the bottom of a flight of stairs, and there were a pair of men at the top guarding it.

As we approached we turned a corner and let the smoke fade once we were out of sight of everyone involved, before coming around the side of a building like we had been walking on our own. As we came into the open I waved to Cark. "Hey! Good to see you man!" I called out loud enough for my voice to carry, and Cark's face was surprised when he saw us. I walked up to him and held out a hand, pulling him in to clap him on the back so I could whisper something under my breath.

My shoulder bumped his and I clapped him on the back. "You're being followed, be cool, we can talk more inside. I doubt the guy can stick close enough to hear in a confined space. He'll probably wait outside." I wasn't sure if he would believe me, I'd met the guy for like twenty minutes tops, but still I felt like I had to tell him what was going on.

He pulled back with a forced smile on his face. "Hey! Good to see you guys again! I was actually looking for you, I found something about that rare material you were looking for." I froze, that was unexpected. He knew we'd been looking for a symbol, which implied that not only had he found it, but that like me he couldn't talk about it here. That was...very interesting to hear. "Anyway, why don't you guys come in with me and check the place out! Should be a good time for everyone."

It was clear he was playing the part of an excited patron, and I decided to follow along, gesturing the others forward as we walked up to the guards at the steps. "Hey guys, I'm back again. Brought some buddies with me, hope that's not an issue. I'm sure you gents have better things to do than make trouble for some tourists." He slipped one of them a few G ranked chits and the guy split them with his friend, nodding to us all to go in.

I had to chuckle at that, bribes were a universal language. Everyone liked getting paid. We headed down the steps and turned off into a side corridor, stepping out of range of the guards hearing. Cark made to speak but I help up a finger, triggering Seek Hidden again. There were no nearby shapes. I turned to him with a sigh. "Ok, we're clear, sorry, but the guy following you had a stealth skill. I'm surprised you're still around this place though, I would have figured you'd have moved on already."

The frustration was evident in his eyes as he growled out. "No. I haven't. In fact I can't. I haven't managed to track down any legitimate information yet. I'm waiting on a specific fighter to show up. I've managed to connect him to the disappearances a decade or so ago, so hopefully he can help, but he almost never shows up here so it's been a long wait. Until then I just have to play the rich idiot who comes to watch. Been eating a hole in my fucking savings though, this place is not cheap."

My sympathetic wince got a chuckle from the man, but I moved onto asking about what I really wanted to talk about. "You mentioned a material, I'm assuming that was code for telling us you'd seen the symbol around here. I'm surprised you found it, I got the impression they were out of the way of general traffic or smaller than most people would notice. Where exactly did you see it?"

He shook his head. "It'll be faster to just show you, come on." He turned and walked back into the main hallway and down to an opening that led into a huge open cement room lined with steps for people to sit on. Nothing fancy, not even as nice as the bleachers at the golem battledome. The seats were packed with people, mostly sitting on blankets or pillows they appeared to have brought with them. Cark pointed up. "That's where I saw it."

I froze in place as my eyes panned up. I'd been expecting a small sigil on a wall or hidden behind a door or something, but I hadn't been ready for this. The Bleakest Depths must be more secretive than I had expected since neither of my sources had mentioned them to me, but they were definitely related to the Heartripper Society. That was made entirely obvious by the massive hanging banner above the fighting pit showing a symbol of a black skeletal hand clutching a stylized heart. My enemies were here, I just hoped that they hadn't realized I'd come yet.