Chapter Text
The first thing Riz hears upon entering the Thistlespring Tree, is an interrogation.
‘Cut the crap, Gorgug,’ Fabian grumbles from the upstairs landing, ‘that’s not a paper cut, what happened?’ His shadow shifts from between the banister and disappears in the direction of their barbarian’s room.
Riz misses whatever hushed response Gorgug has, shutting the front door silently behind him with a click. The house is quiet, most of the lights off, which makes the soft orange pouring from the upstairs landing all the more obvious. There’s an unease to the place, and when he looks harder he can see things out of their usual place. Not enough to be concerning necessarily, just a table slightly to the left, the shoes knocked out the rack, and bowl of fruit up turned on the kitchen table.
But Riz has gone through enough things in his life to not think of this as evidence straight away. A crime scene.
Someone’s been in here and it wasn’t the Thistlesprings.
It’s nearly two in the morning, and Gorgug had texted the boys chat with a very simple, and concerning I’ve got a paper cut. It’s kinda big.
After a healthy round of teasing, and a single grumbly voice message from Fabian saying frankly he’ll show the half-orc a real paper cut if he texts this early again on a Tuesday, Riz cottoned on to the between the lines of the message. Gorgug, for all his bluntness, never was one for explaining the whole picture.
I’ve got a paper cut. I’m injured.
It’s kinda big. It’s bad.
After calling the half-orc out, and getting no response, both he and Fabian rushed over.
There’s a clatter upstairs, and the sound of someone hissing in pain. Fabian’s muttering quiet swears and Riz figures this is a good time to announce his presence. He clambers up the stairs and comes to a stop in the half open door frame of Gorgug’s room.
And Fabian is so right. That’s not a fucking paper cut.
Gorgug is sat cross-legged on the bed, looking far too calm with brilliant ruddy red blood pooling in his lap from a jagged line wrenched into his right arm. It’s deep and irritated, a dark sore-looking green around the edges, and there’s bruises on his wrists and cheek, a worryingly dark yellow green already. He’s in his pyjama trousers, and a worn grey tank that’s also speckled with blood. His hair is sweaty, stuck to his forehead, and his eyes look only half awake, gazing disconnected over Fabian’s shoulder. They catch onto Riz in the doorframe briefly, before sliding right past him and on to the window beyond.
The window, which is broken, Riz notes unhappily.
Fabian spots him too. He’s a little more clothed, with tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie, motorcycle gloves still on his hands. He’s holding Gorgug’s injured arm gingerly, and when he spots Riz gives him a look of controlled alarm.
‘Hey the Ball.’ He says, and Riz can hear the undercurrent of confusion in it, ‘You bring bandages?’
Riz wordlessly holds up the first aid kit pilfered from Gilear’s kitchen cabinet.
Fabian takes it and begins shuffling through for a bandage, whilst Riz climbs up onto Gorgug’s desk chair and perches in it. It swivels a little, and he has to manually still himself in it, ignores the amused snort from Fabian.
Gorgug’s vacant stare watches him, but when Riz waves his tail in the half-orcs face, he doesn’t react beyond a slow confused blink.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ he whispers, and barely notes that all of them are awake, so there’s no point.
This feels like something that should be whispered though. It’s still too loud.
‘Hell if I know.’ Fabian rips open the plastic bandage packaging, and frown at it when the bandage rolls out onto the floor. It knocks against a broken picture frame with a picture of Gorgug and Fig from a band gig last month.’he’s been like this since I came in. I had to hunt down their spare key even, he wouldn’t answer the door.’
‘That’s…concerning.’
‘Yeah. That and the window. Hey Gorgug, dude, you with us?’
Fabian raises his voice a little and waves a hand in Gorgug’s face, but still no response. He looks dazed, as if he’s been hit by some spell. But Riz can’t smell any obvious magic hung in the air, and there’s no evidence of any spell casting in the room at all. Thought the room has clearly been broken into from the outside. And the more Riz looks the more he realises there’s been a struggle.
Not a fight he notes disturbed. The only things broken are near the window frame, and Gorgug just barely fits into his room, if he had fought even just a spider there would have been more damage. And besides, and injury like that, there should be some retaliation shown somewhere here, Riz knows how their barbarian fights, and it’s not with restraint.
But the only evidence of damage is seemingly on Gorgug and the things that lead to his bed.
Which means someone broke into Gorgug’s room and attacked him specifically. And came prepared.
What the absolute fuck.
‘Hey man,’ Fabian is saying, ‘I’m gonna bandage that up, so don’t like, punch me or anything.’
Gorgug stays silent.
Riz hates it.
‘Where are Digby and Wilma?’ He recalls the kind exuberant voices of Gorgug’s parents, and can’t imagine a world they wouldn’t be helping their injured son. ‘Shouldn’t they be all over this?’
‘Holiday.’ Fabian grumbles. ‘Remember, Fig wanted to have a party.’
Fig always wants to have a party, Riz wants to argue, but keeps that to himself, more worried about the way Gorgug’s eyelids are drooping a little too often. He snaps his fingers at his friend’s nose, and jerks him awake for a moment, but no real awareness comes back. Instead, the half-orc just looks surprised to see Riz, as though he hasn’t been staring in the goblin’s direction for the past ten minutes.
Fabian ties off the bandage with a flourish, and manoeuvers the arm back to Gorgug’s side. The soft light on the landing casts deep shadows across the room, and Riz can’t help but notice more things wrong with the scene.
Gorgug’s axe is propped up by the door in it’s holster, where it always is. His other weapons, the spare things he’s been training with recently, daggers and swords and hand axes, are all in a pile by the drum set, undisturbed and clean. Nothing about the rest of the room feels out of place, but the pillows on the window seat are scattered on the carpet, and the tinkering work on his desk is ripped and thrown across the surface.
And most importantly there’s a stone in the middle of the floor. Big and dark, and the perfect size to break a window.
‘Someone broke in here on purpose.’
Fabian rolls his eyes, ‘Yeah, no shit. But what did they even want? The most valuable thing Gorgug has in here is his crystal.’
Riz nods to himself, remembering the first movie night they had at the Tree. Fig asked over the lack of personal items in Gorgug’s room and he said he didn’t like to keep anything important in there.
‘I don’t want to break anything irreplaceable. Especially after spring break, I keep waking up confused. And then I break something.’
But that doesn’t mean nothing else in the house is valuable. The Thistlespring’s are popular inventors, and work often with sources and devices most wouldn’t dream of handling. They’ve established themselves in the industry with a reputation for swift and risky projects and come out all the best for it. There’s plenty of things in the Tree and the work shed out back to pique the interest of a thief.
But then again, they didn’t go for the work shed out back, or the downstairs area with the appliances and inventions set up in the kitchen and living room. No. This intruder came straight into a sleeping teenager’s bedroom and dealt with a skilled barbarian without even a hint of said barbarian fighting back.
A horrible feeling in Riz’s gut tells him that someone came here to hurt his friend.
Whilst Riz spiraled into detective mode, Fabian had apparently been inspecting Gorgug’s bedside. He’s picking at the charging cable plugged into the wall. Riz leans into the light of the bedside lamp, trying to see what’s piqued his interest, and sees the end of the cable isn’t charging a crystal.
In fact, Gorgug’s crystal isn’t even in the room. A quick scan shows it's not on the floor or hidden amongst the bedding, and Gorgug’s fairly clean bedroom floor yields no results.
Riz sees the moment it clicks for Fabian. Gorgug clearly hasn’t left this room, the blood is kept to the area around his bed. And besides, the lack of response to any of their word’s casts doubt on the coherency of his messaging.
Which means Gorgug couldn’t have used a crystal, couldn’t even message them for help as he bled into his duvet. Which means the message Riz and Fabian got was not from their friend. Which means someone else is using Gorgug’s phone.
Which means someone else wants them here.
Riz hates mystery at 2am. It’s too damn early, and he even got to sleep at a reasonable time last night. And now there’s someone in his friend’s home, with the ability to one hit a barbarian.
There’s a quiet click downstairs. Riz’s ears swivel in time to hear the shuffle of careful foot treads on the living room carpet. The living room that he walked right past on his way up, looked into even. The thought that someone was in the shadows down there, pressed up against the dark beyond the landing light, has something cold and sharp flaring up in his lungs.
His chest stutters the next breath, and Fabian notices. Goes to ask him whats wrong as Riz’s hand flies up to cover the fighter’s mouth.
There’s someone downstairs. He mouths and watches the blood drain from Fabian’s face. His grip on Gorgug’s leg tightens briefly, and the barbarian groans at the sudden pain. Both their gazes flicker to the bandage, already showing spots of red through it, and a wash of cold dangers crawls down Riz's spine.
Text the girls Fabian mouths back. He’s getting up, very very slowly, and goes to shut the door when a shadow flits across the landing light.
All three boys stiffen at the flicker of shadows in the room, and Riz is very sure he loses a couple years off his life. His heart leaps up to his throat and stays there for a long choking moment, before sinking low into his ribcage and beating in time with his rapid breaths.
There’s something in the Thistlespring Tree.
And Riz thinks it wants to hurt them.