Work Text:
Orym wasn’t exactly sure when, “it’s been a while, let’s get some drinks,” turned to Fearne bemoaning, “and I still don’t even have one of your eggs Chetney!” led to, “let’s steal Caleb Widogast’s egg!”, but he was pretty sure it was between drinks 4 and 5.
The teleport landed them in the middle of a night-darkened street. Thankfully, no one else was around at the late hour.
“Chetney, you were supposed to aim inside the house,” Imogen complained, accepting Fearne’s help standing up.
“That’s where I was aiming! This damn staff.” Chetney glared at the offending staff, which did not react.
“I think you’re just drunk,” Braius said.
“Excuse me, do you wanna use the staff next time?!”
“Imogen should have been the one to use it this time!” Laudna hissed.
“Shhh!” Dorian shushed the group. “Isn’t that their house there?” he asked, pointing a few houses down the road.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Ashton agreed.
In unspoken unison, the group crouched slightly and moved slowly and quietly until they were clustered outside the little front gate. It was a little difficult to see in the dark, but as his eyes adjusted, Orym could make out a couple little garden bed between them and the door, most of which had died off with the cold weather coming in. The windows were dark.
“Are they even home?” Orym asked.
“This will be a lot easier if they aren’t here,” Fearne said. She didn’t sound happy about it.
“This could all be illusions,” Laudna pointed out, “They’re mages! They could be watching us from the windows right now!”
“Or it could be full of magical traps,” Dorian said.
“Can’t anyone see magic? Fearne, can you?” Orym asked.
“Yes, absolutely, not a problem,” she said, moving her fingers and casting. Her eyes took on an extra sheen, like an animal caught in perpetual torchlight, and she looked toward the house.
“Okay. So! It’s really pretty, the whole place is just glowing,” she said.
“So the whole house is probably trapped,” Imogen said flatly.
“Um, yes. There are runes in the garden too. It’s like a whole light show you guys, I wish you could see this.”
“Alright,” Orym said slowly, trying to focus, “Can anyone dispel magic today?”
The silence of the quiet street answered that.
“We’re fucked,” Ashton said cheerfully.
“Okay wait. Before we do this, what are the chances that any of these magic traps actually kill us?” Dorian asked.
“I mean, probably not, right?” Imogen didn’t sound particularly confident. “They at least seem like they’d capture someone first.”
“I mean—I’ve been here a couple times before and there’s never been a problem,” Ashton pointed out.
“That might just because they like your sparkly brain juice,” Laudna frowned.
“Problem solved, we’ll send them in first!” Chetney said with a grin. “After you!”
The situation quickly dissolved from there as they all started speaking over each other.
“We’ve got to try to figure out these runes are first!”
“Why doesn’t Imogen just send them a message to let us in, and then we have the element of surprise!”
“The whole point of this is they don’t know we’re coming!”
“Are they even home?”
“That’s it, I’m looking in the window,” Chetney said, and started to walk forward before Imogen stopped him with her magic.
“No! No. At least send Pâté first!”
“To do what?”
“Wait what’s happening?” Pâté said loudly, crawling out of his house and onto Laudna’s shoulder, “What’re we doing?”
“Shhhhh! Not so loud! Just—quietly—go fly over and look in that window there and see if anyone is there,” Laudna said, helping untangle his wings from her hair.
“Got it!” Pâté whispered loudly and flew forward.
Orym had to give some credit to Pâté. He successfully made it to the window, but as soon as he landed on the windowsill, there was a flash of light, illuminating his tiny body briefly.
“Shit shit shit. Shit!” Imogen threw out her hand to try to catch him, but Pâté fell too fast (or, Orym though, maybe Imogen was too tipsy to aim. He did not share this thought out loud).
She reached out again, and this time came up with the small creature, and floated it back to the group.
A little skeletal turtle looked up at them.
“Oh, you’re so CUTE like that buddy!” Laudna preened, “Imogen look how cute!”
The turtle looked unimpressed.
Orym didn’t know whether he was too drunk, or not drunk enough to deal with this.
Eventually, painstakingly, using a combination of Fearne’s vision of the glowing runes and Orym’s very eyes, Bells Hells made their way mostly unscathed to the house. Their casualties were Braius, whose hoof had clipped the edge of a rune and was now also a turtle (what was with the turtles), and Imogen, who had been hit with some effect that kept reversing her centre of gravity every few seconds (which was relatively controlled by her taking flight).
“Alright alright,” Chetney elbowed his way to the front door, “Watch the master at work.”
Orym did. Even drunk, Chetney was terrifying with a lock pick.
Front door unlocked, they crept through the front hallway. Orym could hear the soft clink of metal on metal coming from the sitting room off to the side, and motioned for the group to be stop.
Orym took in the scene properly.
Four different coloured balls of yarn were floating near the ceiling, above where Essek sat in a plush chair. The tails of yarn trailed down toward him and converged on knitting in his lap. Essek was looking down, carefully counting stitches on a metal needle.
There was an orange cat was perched on the back of the chair, eyeing the floating yarn in a way that immediately explained why the yarn was floating so high. A black cat sat on the chair next to them, glaring directly at the intruding group.
He motioned the group to keep moving forward, hoping the could get out of sight before Essek ran out of stitches.
They had almost made it out of eye line when those hopes were shot to the hells.
“Wait a moment.” Essek said, tone leaving no room for argument.
“Oh, uh, hi!” Orym said.
“Orym!!” Laudna protested sharply. “We could have made it!”
“Oh Essek, hi! What are you doing here?” asked Fearne with a slight laugh.
“Shush.”
Bells Hells stood frozen, wordlessly staring at each other.
Orym felt a small shift of magic as Imogen’s gravity reversed again, and she bobbled in the air, hitting the ceiling with a thunk and a whispered “fuck” before floating back down.
After what felt like an age, Essek looked up at them, opening his mouth to speak before furrowing his eyebrows in confusion at whole group sheepishly in the hallway.
Braius the turtle tried to wave at him, and almost fell off his perch on Ashton’s head.
“What’s up Essek! My man! So good to see you again in your very lovely home—” Chetney started to say.
“Stop,” Essek interrupted. “I don’t know what all,” he gestured with his needles at the group of them, “this is. I think you probably would like me to not know either.”
Essek paused and looked them all over, one at a time, an odd soft smile on his face. “If your endeavours tonight cause me to lose track of where I am in this pattern, you will live to regret it.”
He looked back down, grabbed one of the strands of yarn in one hand, and continued his knitting.
“Very generous of you.” Orym said, already ushering his friends upstairs before following them.
They were almost at the top of the stairs when Orym barely heard “I hope you’ve finished your grading, you have some visitors coming your way.”
“Shit. We’ve been made!” he called to the group.
“Yup, time to go!” Ashton yelled, and spiked the turtle into the ground hard enough for Braius to spill out in a heap, flail and armour and shield thudding loudly on the floor.
“Oh good, no need to subtlety then,” Laudna grinned, and her rib cage cracked open and her hound charged out in front of her, dripping shadows.
“I knew this was a good idea,” said Fearne.
In his periphery Essek saw Caleb come down the stairs and take his place in the chair next to him, but he waited for Essek to finish his row and look up before speaking.
“Thank you again for the warning dear,” Caleb said.
Essek looked him over. Part of Caleb’s hair was standing on end slightly, held up by static electricity, his cheeks still pink from adrenaline. Some of Braius Doomseed’s weapon’s ooze was staining his shirt. Essek sighed.
“I don’t suppose you know why did Bells Hells came to our home?”
“Well, they were trying to steal something, but they didn’t want to tell me what they wanted,” Caleb picked up Waffles, who abandoned his quest to tangle the yarn balls in favour of getting chin scratches, the scoundrel.
Ah. Well that explained some things.
“Did you give them anything?” Essek asked, picking up his needles again.
“I guess we’ll find out, I left them to duke it out with my simulacrum in the tower.”
“… Caleb Widogast.”