Open Post: Treat

[sporesprouter]

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.

Comments

[sporesprouter]

"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."

[az_fell]

"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?"

[sporesprouter]

"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."

[az_fell]

"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."

[sporesprouter]

"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?

[az_fell]

"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?"

[sporesprouter]

"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."

[az_fell]

"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.

[sporesprouter]

"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."

[az_fell]

"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."

[sporesprouter]

"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."

[az_fell]

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

[sporesprouter]

"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."

[az_fell]

"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?"

[sporesprouter]

"I mean, she didn't seem thrilled. But the crew also didn't know about the rocks, and I needed to warn them somehow. Thankfully, she also stopped paying attention to us at that point and Charlie and I got the same idea at the same time. To see if the board she had that connected to Fort's could work both ways."

[az_fell]

"Well, it must have been able to, mustn't it? Otherwise you wouldn't have even bothered to tell me about the idea."

[sporesprouter]

She nods. "I got to warn them about the rocks, and then I noticed that the floor of the room had a map of the world on it... and I remembered something Hoid had told me. It seemed like nonsense at the time like basically everything else he ever said, but he had told me I had to bring him to my planet. It occurred to me that maybe his curse was the key to actually defeating the Sorceress. So I asked them to do their best to make sure he got there. And then I asked Charlie to try and open the door for them."

[az_fell]

Aziraphale had already been leaning towards Tress a bit, but his increasing interest is clear. "I'd been hoping that poor fellow's curse might become relevant again." In fact, he'd been assuming it would, or else it would have been a red herring, but that's neither here nor there.

[sporesprouter]

"At least I managed to say it all before she noticed us and cast a spell to... basically push me to the wall with light. But I got to watch on her screens as the crew was using my verdant cannonball designs on the metal men guarding the island. It was amazing."

[az_fell]

"Ah, the fruits of your labors. How immensely satisfying." Aziraphale pauses. "Were you rescued, then?"

[sporesprouter]

She nods. "Charlie managed to evade the Sorceress's cat by climbing into the pewter cup that I'd brought, got the door open for them, they came in, and as soon as Hoid got in the room, his curse was broken. Apparently he'd placed a bet with her? That he'd get cursed and if he managed to get it broken he'd have the same powers as she did. So he managed to stop her just as she was about to curse me."

[az_fell]

"What impeccable timing," says Aziraphale, with just a little hint of half-hidden amusement. "So Hoid was your savior after all, then."

[sporesprouter]

She shakes her head. "They were all my saviors. Every single one of them had something to do with it, and it never would have happened without any of them. So after I told the Sorceress to leave our world and she... took off in her tower? Hoid... well, he couldn't undo the curse, because it needed the requirements to be fulfilled. But he could change the requirements."

[az_fell]

"Of course. A very good crew indeed." Aziraphale lifts his eyebrows curiously. "And how did Hoid change the curse's requirements?"

[sporesprouter]

"When the curse was set, Charlie had to bring me to the Sorceress's home to be cursed. Hoid changed it so that he had to bring me to my home to be versed. So he wrote me a poem. And we headed back to the Rock after a couple of detours. Like visiting the king to get a pardon for the crew on account of defeating the Sorceress. And buying a new ship. But we got there, and he read me his poem, and he was human again."