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 quiet response Gorgug has, shutting the front door behind him with a soft click. He drops the spare key into the trinket dish, blinking when it makes no noise. His shoes go in similar silence when he kicks them off the side by habit. Fabian’s are there already, neatly stacked next to a matching pair of gnomish clogs.
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 was 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 bad.
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 bad. Help.
Then, halfway through the teasing, another message came through. Come.
The demand afterwards is unusual. Uncomfortable in its authority and sounds so unlike Gorgug Riz can’t help but blink wide awake staring at it. Come.
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 glistening red blood pooling in his lap from a jagged line wrenched into his right arm. 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. It’s surprisingly well stocked and has a special pocket for baby wipes labelled ‘the yogurt pocket’ in Gilear’s looping handwriting.
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, the creaking squeaks that usually accompany it suspiciously absent.
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 too loud in the nearly silent house. Even Fabian’s rustling through the first aid kit is muffled, too far away.
‘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.
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, an 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 on Gorgug and the things that lead to his bed.
Which means someone broke into Gorgug’s room and attacked him specifically.
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. He clicks his fingers sharply in front of him. Gorgug’s eyes slide away from Fabian and settle on Riz. Empty.
‘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.
‘In the middle of the term?’
‘Some energy sources conference, out near Harroway. 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 again. It 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 five minutes.
Fabian ties off the bandage with a flourish, and manoeuvres 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 its 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. There are some blueprints that have been trampled, a muddy print of a boot off the edge of one. Riz picks it up, holding it out to the lamplight. It’s medium sized, not Gorgug’s or his parents, but otherwise it's just a boot print. Standard, the kind that could match any work boot from any show store.
Unhelpful.
Most importantly there’s a stone in the middle of the floor. Big, rough, and the perfect size to break a window. Riz doesn’t touch it, skirting instead around it on the floor like it’s radioactive.
‘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 he’s seen this before, but he has no idea where. He peers out the window at the darkened
Whilst Riz spiralled 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 got 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 is not on the side table 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. I’ve got a paper cut.
Gorgug’s message suddenly makes too much sense. His bleary gaze and heavy limbs, the way his chest heaves up and down at odd intervals like he keeps forgetting how to breathe. Gorgug has no idea what’s going on. Riz can see it already, the barely there coherence to message the both of them. It’s bad.
Come.
That wasn’t Gorgug. Gorgug never messages in short words, never demands things with so much bite. Sometime between the second and third message Gorgug’s phone was taken from him and used to lure the two of them here.
Gorgug is just the bait.
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. It’s the first sound the house has made since Riz came in, shattering the faux calm that has settled in the bedroom.
His chest stutters the next breath, and Fabian notices. Goes to ask him what is 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 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.
He thumbs the power button of Gorgug Thistlesprings phone. It’s got a hard case, the kind of full protective cover he expects from someone of Gorgug’s class. There’s blood smeared on the corner, a little bit dried and rusting off as his thumb rolls over it again and again.
Upstairs he hears the other two boys shuffling around. Murmured voice, confused and lost and so so stupid. He pockets the phone, rolls his wrists out and twists the sharply back.
The shadows rush to him.
His final act.