The Farm Becomes More Important Than the Quota

Elmyra tried to keep the group pointed at QUEST's item quota, which was reasonable, responsible, and almost immediately outranked by the impossible. Nick Kremp might be alive. Or someone might be wearing him. Either possibility was too large to ignore. The team agreed that Nick's apparent survival, impersonation, or stranger third option had become the priority. Gemma and Elmyra had both placed him near a farm with I.J. and P.B., and the group had enough contradictions stacked around Point Pringle, Enemy's trident, shapeshifters, and Castro to understand that the farm lead was not a distraction. It might be the center of the next knot. Elmyra cast Message toward Nick and received something wrong in return: a strange dial-up, transaction-like response rather than a normal magical contact. That mattered because it suggested the problem was not simply a person in disguise. Something about Nick-directed magic was being interrupted, redirected, or processed through a mechanism no one yet understood. The party chose the farm. The quota could wait, at least long enough to find out whether the dead were walking home.