Blueleaf S02E03: Desperately Tracking Tom
Doctor Astrid had to attend to her actual medical job, and Dox decided to research on elven faerie tales. In their absence, Vorx and Stonks decided what to focus on next with the case, and agreed to figure out what was happening Vorx's contact, Tom Stonebridge.
Vorx met with one of Tom's cousins, Dulgan Stonebridge at a crystal shop in Hearthstone, the dwarrow community in the city. Dulgan noted that Tom had been a bit distant the past two months due to a case he was working on, and had missed his grandmothers Tourmaline Festival, which was a rather unusual thing to do. And Stonks recalled that two months ago was when the detective agency first started to investigate the Bloom case. Tom could have been infected by the Bloom, but if so, why would he need a sample?
Guessing that Tom was a fraud, Vorx tried to meet with him. Tom suggested a standing stone circle in a park, a place resonant with Wyrd energy—the power of the fae. Vorx changed the location to a river pier.
Stonks and Vorx met Tom on the pier, and Vorx noted him channeling Wyrd energy—he was a changeling! Which meant he was an infiltrator who'd hijacked Tom's fate. But where was the real Tom?
Stonks beat up Tom with a bludgeon enhanced with the Glyph of Banes, while Vorx concealed the fight with an illusion. Tom attempted to summon a fae hound, to distract Stonks, but the preserver ignored the beast and kept assaulting his foe. Finally, Tom surrendered and Vorx bound him in a contract for information.
Fake Tom admitted that that real Tom was alive, and deprived of his fate, wandering the city as amnesiac, homeless individual. He also said that his patron, a fae, wanted a sample of the Bloom to talk to it, and that his patron was called the Breaker of Edifices. And what did this mean? Why did the fae want to talk to the Bloom?
Fake Tom left, and had been stripped of his ability to use Tom's identity. Stonks used his knowledge of the city's homeless to find real Tom, and Tom spent days on the couch, eating all of the agency's food and recovering.
But what had Fake Tom done in real Tom's capacity as a Royal Venator? A member of Division E, that investigated supernatural incidents? Vorx made a contract to borrow real Tom's identity briefly and went under cover to the government office. None of Tom's colleagues made eye contact; perhaps Fake Tom had been a bit of a git at the office. At Tom's desk, Vorx noted that Tom had been researching the cup, one of the artifacts stolen from the temple.
And then Stonks noted that black clad government agents were surrounding them! "Come withi us!" a burly man said. Were they under arrest?