When you were left alone, both before and after your First Change, you'd sometimes make bagged cocoa. Terrible, too-sweet stuff, soupy and gritty. This cocoa is the exact opposite: creamy and flavorful, but without any aftertaste except a sense of gentle warmth. Assuming you don't die this afternoon, you're going to have to find a way to make more money, so you can keep drinking cocoa like this.
When you pay and get up, the owner gives you a doggy bag full of yesterday's pastries.
You walk due north until you notice a Massachusetts State Police cruiser in a deserted-looking parking lot. Two cops emerge from a building and one of them hesitates when he sees you.
Not good. You take a left and follow an irregular route through the 'burbs, hoping no one will call the cops. But this is a problem. You're being watched, and you don't know if it's because of something you did here or back home. As a Shadow Lord, Elton may have connections with the local police. Maybe once you learn more here, you can ask him. You force yourself to avoid major roads until you finally reach a Walmart parking lot that fronts the woods.
The day is cold and blustery, and the wind bitter. Cold mist hangs over the grim marshland around Broad Brook. The defaced standing stone rises over the mud as you check the Field Notes again and get your bearings. Then you head down the hill, between two hillocks of dead yellow grass, into the marsh.
You move cautiously, so it's over an hour before you notice how warm it's getting—so warm that you're sweating under your coat. Unhealthy-looking flowers bloom and wrist-thick vines sprawl and writhe like odalisques in the vegetal heat. As you climb up onto a low, wide hill covered in pale green grass, you check David Banicki's notebook. Remembering one of the other undamaged pages, you flip back to his battle plans and recognize some of the terrain around you. Noting his advice, you move away from the areas labeled "concentrate sniper fire here" and "grenades?" and immediately feel safer.
Climbing the gentle, grassy slope, you pass more standing stones, all defaced or toppled, before you notice an odd indentation in the center of the hill.
It's a door.
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