sporesprouter | Open Post: Treat

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Open Post: Treat

Now that the latest burst of activity has actually settled into something like calm for a few days, Tress has settled into a temporary project. In fairness, most of the temporary project took place the previous day in the out of the way kitchen that she had previously commandeered small appliances from. But today requires a bit more wandering.

So she is currently in the process of going around various at least semi-frequented common rooms leaving trays of both nut and honey balls and chocolate coconut balls. Next to each room's tray, she sets down a small card that says in careful handwriting, 'It's been a tough week. Help yourself!'

She's not putting a whole lot of fanfare into the process, but she's also not being particularly secretive about it, so she's easy enough to find throughout.

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"Creatures." Aziraphale, again, doesn't sound terribly surprised. "I see why this was to be the last stop on your journey. What an escalation."

She nods. "And she had a whole host of other defenses, too. And trying to think of a way around all of it... it was like my brain had hit a stilling."

With sincerity, Aziraphale says, "I'm looking forward to hearing your solution. I can't think of one -- but then again, I'm not familiar with your -- world.¹"

¹Gold star to Aziraphale for not saying "source material"!

Tress smiles fondly. "I have a good crew. They noticed I was having a hard time and they came with ideas of their own. Helped jostle my own brain too. So we had... some plans. Of course, we had another wrinkle come up when we still had days until we got to the Midnight."

"Tress," says Aziraphale with a tone somewhere between warning and laughter, "you're getting a bit too good at the storytelling, actually. Well-done little cliffhanger there."

She grins. "You seem to like them so much, I couldn't resist. Anyway, they found Hoid tossing food barrels overboard."

"Food? Overboard?" Aziraphale frowns. "Why on earth would he do that?"

She sighs. "He was told to by a rat, who said his mission was of vital importance."

"Oh, Charlie," says Aziraphale, fondly dismayed. "He was still trying to protect you. Miniature pirate hat notwithstanding."

"That's exactly what he was doing. But we didn't realize it at the time, of course. We ended up putting him in a cage. I thought we were going to have to turn back to resupply, but the crew just said that we could eat verdant vines for a while, so no reason not to continue. So we did continue and in fact got to the border of the Midnight before dropping anchor. Didn't want to continue at night, obviously. But the whole situation was worrisome, because the plans we had involved Huck sneaking into the tower and letting us in, which we obviously couldn't do. I couldn't help but think I was leading the crew that trusted me into certain death. So I decided to have them set down the launch and I was going to row into the Midnight alone."

This is another of those turns of the story that isn't terribly surprising at all to Aziraphale, but that must have felt incredibly monumental to Tress herself. He considers, and then says only, "Brave and foolish yet again."

"No, that was... that was just foolish. Salay tried to talk me out of it, but I took entirely the wrong lesson out of what she was trying to say. And since I was the captain..." She shrugs. "Huck, at least, managed to convince me to bring him along, in his cage."

"Oh," says Aziraphale before he can help it, with a rather moved little smile. "Poor Charlie in his cage. And what ended up befalling you two?"

"We rowed out... I was almost expecting to be beset by monsters immediately, but nothing happened for a good while. It was probably an hour or so of rowing, and we were just... surrounded by nothing but a sea of black spores. I just stopped and waited for a while. Eventually, I did see movement through the spores. It was... like a big black snake, much longer than the boat I was on, just moving through the sea."

"The Sorceress and her army of creatures," says Aziraphale promptly. "I'm also rather surprised that it took so long for you to encounter one."

"I'm pretty sure they weren't out looking for one person and a rat in a tiny little boat," she replies with a shrug. "Well... after a moment¹, it went to try and eat me. But then Huck stopped it, because he had free passage, and told it to take us to the Sorceress."

¹ A moment in which she had a failed attempt at taking it over herself, but who needs that detail?

"Oh! Well." Aziraphale pauses tactfully. "Having a duke's son in a cage in the form of a rat can be useful after all, hm?"

"Well, we got brought her tower. The path we were dragged on was... worrisome, too. The sea around her island was practically a maze of rocks. It would have been very hard for a ship to get through without running aground, and I hadn't known about them. As we approached, I could see the metal men outside that she had to defend the tower against anyone who actually did manage to make it that far. Huck had warned us about those, though. The midnight essence creatures dropped us off at the tower and we were allowed inside. Everything inside was... beautiful. It was clean and shining and... radiant, almost. Huck ran ahead and I followed him into the Sorceress's chamber."

"The famed Sorceress at last." Accordingly, Aziraphale leans forward, focusing -- although he truly has been paying good attention the entire time, he can tell a plot climax when he hears one.

"I tried to bargain with her to get Charlie back. She... Well, she wasn't interested in anything I was offering, and she wasn't even surprised by it. She had a magic screen that had been watching us the entire time from Fort's board. So she knew where we were basically the whole time anyway. But eventually she told me that I intrigued her so she'd give him back to me in exchange for the two cups I had with me. Easy as that. A door opened and Charlie walked out."

"Ah, but--" Aziraphale pauses, remembering. "I suppose you didn't yet know that Huck was Charlie. Still, even if I hadn't realized that, I'd have found this much, much too convenient to believe."

"It did seem too easy but it was also what I thought I'd been working for for so long, so I didn't want to overthink it, even though part of me was feeling... inexplicably sad. So I took his hand and started to leave. And shortly after we got out of the room, he started talking about his time in captivity and getting back to our old lives and... And he sounded just like his old self, like he hadn't changed at all. And that's when I realized what had happened and stormed back."

"Thank goodness," says Aziraphale approvingly. "Did she really expect you not to notice?"

"I don't think she thought much of me at all, really. I was just a convenient way to torment Charlie. She wasn't exactly pleased that I saw through it." A small grin creeps up on her face. "And then when I was talking to Charlie finally realizing it was actually Charlie, alarms started going off in the tower because the Crow's Song was approaching."

"Of course they came for you!" Aziraphale makes a little go on, go on gesture with one hand. "Did that displease our villain even further?"

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