Echoes of Invasion: After Party | Scene 12

Tric lines up his next shot while Lowrie tugs at his legs and looks around for the source of magic. “You may not have guessed it, but I’m opposed to burning any kind of wood,” Tric calls out, drawing attention to himself rather than Heppa, “be it made into a house or a tree still living. That roof looks alive, though.”

“The grass up here is as dead as you’re going to be,” Lowrie shouts back.

Tric fires arrow after arrow. Some nick the lead Rat, but a couple thud solidly into him. With a roar, Lowrie yanks himself free of the thatch and lurches behind the chimney. Tric sees the man pull something from a pouch—perhaps a potion—and lift it, but then he loses track of him in the shadows. Tric continues casually peppering the area with arrows, letting his voice and the plink of metal on chimney stone infuriate the man.

Heppa, meanwhile, is still focused on the bundles of longstraw that make up the roof, expanding her control of them to grab at the other thugs she can still see… the ones now charging up the roof towards her and Tric. The grasping stalks—and a swooping magpie—slow them down, but the revivified thatch does not manage to thoroughly entangle them until after they have gotten close enough to Tric to land a few solid cudgel blows. Suddenly, a section of thatch swings upward, and another thug climbs out onto the roof. Mate veers away from the threat. 

“This could get out of control!” Tric shouts as he backs up, downing two of the thugs with his arrows as they struggle to get free of the thatch. He wonders how many more enemies are below waiting to surprise them. Fortunately, Heppa’s magic catches the new arrival while leaving Tric alone. These stalks are easier for her to control than the thorny vines in the Heart Mountains that accidentally snagged Ash too. One of the thugs screams and disappears into the thatch as if sinking in quicksand.

Heppa yanks out her light vial again, wanting to better see what is going on. “Did they hit you?” she asks her cousin as she releases it to dangle against her chest.

“Yeah, but I’m fine,” Tric assures her. He scans the roof, trying to locate Lowrie. He’s setting up an ambush… “Mate! Find that other fellow!”

The magpie circles above the building, yodeling just behind Heppa. The elves turn in time to see several flashes of light on metal. One of the quickly thrown knives clips Mate, and with a squawk, the bird falls to the roof. “You’re asking for trouble now, pal,” Tric growls, bringing his bow to bear.

The next set of flashing blades flies at Heppa. “Alric’s pet elves aren’t going to take us out,” Lowrie shouts. The small, sharp knives sink easily through Heppa’s leathers, and she feels a burn spread from each wound. 

There is a roll of thunder, and the clouds that have recently hidden the half-moon finally release their burden. The thatch grows more slippery as rain pelts down, but Heppa optimistically reflects that this should help the fires—provided lightning does not start additional ones. She pours more energy into the roof, hoping to ensnare Lowrie again, but the longstraw is getting exhausted and so is she. It seems to her that this is from more than just trying to do too much too quickly with the thatch. The burning in her muscles reminds her of what Heledd described after her fight with Sleidr. It would make sense that Sleidr’s boss also has cuttlefish venom on his knives.

Tric looses arrow after arrow at Lowrie, stalking one step closer to him with each shot. With Mate seriously wounded for the first time ever, Tric is oblivious to everything else happening on the roof: the thugs wrenching themselves free of the thatch, one of them screaming as he then falls off the building, the clash of the other one charging at Heppa. “You. Hurt. Mate,” he grinds out. Full of arrows, Lowrie’s body crumples on the roof and rolls to the edge. Tric continues forward. He fires an arrow into the body again and then unceremoniously boots it off the roof. Another Rat falls to his death, just like Sleidr did. The body lies still below, but Tric looses one more arrow into it. He stares down, the rain flattening his curls against his head. Uncharacteristically silent, he pulls his hood up against the elements.

The clatter of sword on cudgel snaps Tric back to attention. He turns to see Heppa dueling with the remaining thug. His cousin looks exhausted, like she is just barely holding the man at bay. Rather than pull another arrow, Tric folds the fingers of his empty hand into a fist and charges recklessly up the incline, throwing himself into the fray. He tackles the thug, and they crash into the roof together. The thatch here is thin from all of Heppa’s magic, though, and before he can pummel the man, the roof gives way underneath their combined weight. Together they plummet to the floor below, smashing into a table that flips up over them. The Rat cushions Tric’s landing.

The roof is suddenly quiet except for the rain. Heppa looks around herself, startled to be alone. A flash of lightning illuminates a gaping hole in front of her with a magpie slowly stirring to one side. Heppa crouches down, letting her dangling light vial shine into the dark hole. “Tric?” Water runs into her eyes and plasters loose strands of hair to her face. She hears a moan but all she sees below are broken furniture and pieces of roofing.

Tric shakes off the momentary stun of his fall and sits up, pushing some boards off himself. He looks around dazedly and absentmindedly pulls out a snack for himself. There is a flutter of wings, and Mate sloppily flops down into his lap, snatching the food from his hands. “Heppa!” Tric calls up.

“Are you all right?” she shouts down. Then she takes it back. “You know what, that’s a dumb question. You just fell through a roof.”

“I’ve been better. Oof! Those are ribs,” he groans, putting a hand to his aching side.

“Can you move?”

“Yeah, a little bit,” Tric acknowledges. He looks over at his companion in the fall. “This guy can’t anymore.” Then, seeing another pair of still legs sticking out from under the mess, he adds, “Oh, there was another guy down here! Was.” Tric lets out a long, pained sigh.

“We won,” Heppa informs him brightly. She is leery about climbing down through the hole, considering how rotten she feels from the knife wounds. “I’ll attend to my wounds first, and then come down,” she tells her cousin. Carefully, she eases each tiny knife from her flesh. The light from her vial shows the coating on them, confirming that Lowrie did indeed use a cuttlefish-derived poison. It seems weaker than Sleidr’s, though, since already the painful muscle spasms are easing. With how soaked she is from the rain, there is no point trying to apply ointment to her wounds up here. 

The knives at least removed, Heppa carefully negotiates her way down to Tric’s floor as he spots her from below. Once safely down, she helps him over to a drier location and takes a quick look at his injuries. All the bruising is going to require that the ointment really soak in overnight. There is nothing she can do to relieve the pain of those aches right now. 

The scent of the ointment is invigorating, though, and Tric shakes off the mental fuzziness from his fall. He scoops up Mate and smooths the magpie’s feathers. “It’s okay now. You’re going to get better, little buddy. Eat some more of this,” he encourages, offering another snack. He pulls out his willow knuckle dusters and lets Mate play with them. “You did really good,” Tric encourages him. Then he yodels some to the bird, making him feel better emotionally, though he cannot pull together enough energy to heal him magically. “Don’t worry, don’t worry. He’s dead now,” Tric whispers to Mate.

Heppa offers her poultice pouch, and Tric dabs ointment where Lowrie’s knife nicked Mate. Given how the bird is hopping around carefully, still favoring one leg, he must have landed poorly, but there is nothing else to be done for that in this rundown place. “Take a nap,” Tric encourages Mate. “You’ve done more than your share.” He helps the magpie into his roost and tucks a little cloth over him as a blanket. Mate pushes it away, but Tric bribes him with more jerky and puts it back in place. It makes Tric feel better to see Mate is not grievously injured. A leg injury is far easier for a bird to handle than a broken wing would have been.

“We should get back to the Parting Glass,” Tric says, slowly getting to his feet. “Lowrie’s dead.”

“I’d like to relieve the body of any extra poison he has. That’s not safe to just leave lying around,” Heppa says. “Maybe we should alert the town guard.”

“We’re in no condition to travel the streets. To alert them we’d have to go through some rough territory. They don’t just hang out in this part of town. And besides, there’s a lot on their plate right now with the fires going on. The rain won’t have put them all out yet. We should just go straight to the Parting Glass,” Tric insists. “We need to let Alric know about this. With the head Rat gone, there’s going to be a bloodbath in the underworld to fill that vacuum.”

A brilliant lightning flash highlights all the cracks in the roof and walls of the decrepit building, followed rapidly by an ominous peal of thunder that shakes the structure.