TIME July 3rd, 5:15pm (continuing) LOCATION Kerrick’s apothecary, Chuza
BACKGROUND:
A broken window, a shattered surprise round, and a shop full of Hammerskins in the middle of what looked like a debt collection gone loud – not the evening Raven, Krusha and Ash had planned, but the one they were getting.
WHAT HAPPENED
Through the gap, the scarred, Irish-accented gang leader had a burner already lit under a beaker on the counter, working up to something worse than talk.
“I see you make candy here too. My mother made candy. Did you know that as it boils the water off, the temperature increases further? And it sticks to whatever it touches. Burning it.”
Raven went through the hole first, straight past the curtain and into a startled Hammerskin, cutting him and stepping clear to open the way for the others.
He bolted for the back of the shop shouting the alarm as a crossbow bolt hissed out of a dark corner on the tail of a manic laugh, grazing Raven on its way past.
Ash climbed in after Krusha, lost her footing on a tipping table, and ended up spilled on the floor behind the curtain with her head, unglamorously, in a bucket.
Raven ran the fleeing Hammerskin down and finished him.
Krusha found cover behind a shelving rack and flooded the shop with KemerLexi’s light.
The gang’s leader – Mo, one hand wreathed in blue flame – assured them, entirely unconvincingly, that this was all just a routine matter of collecting a debt from Kellick.
A second Hammerskin engaged Raven while Mo traded bolts and flame with Krusha; Ash picked off the one facing Raven with three missiles in a row, and between Raven’s blade and Krusha’s flanking, Mo finally gave it up – ordering ‘Chuckles’ to drop his crossbow and surrender alongside him.
Manacled and searched, Mo turned out to be carrying some kind of magical aura, and Kellick – the shop’s own proprietor – had something similar on one hand.
Kellick, for his part, admitted he couldn’t afford to press charges against the Hammerskins for fear of what they’d do in return, and shut Mo down hard when he tried to argue otherwise. Something about ‘what to do with the two bodies’ drifted after them as they left with Mo and Chuckles in custody – probably just the wind.
Back at the Section House, Brin was wrapping up a meeting with Caleb’s parents, Lisa and Mark, as the Agents brought their prisoners in for separate interviews. He’d started reasonably enough –
“I appreciate your concern, but the persons involved in your son’s abduction are still at large. We believe for Caleb’s safety he should stay in the infirmary until the perpetrators are apprehended”
– but Lisa kept pushing for their son to come home, and Brin, uncharacteristically curt by the end of it, wasn’t having any more of it.
“And he will. Unlike the two Agents I have a memorial service to coordinate for.”
Brin, to Caleb’s parents
He left them standing there, visibly startled, and went back to his office.
The Agents brought their own prisoners in for separate interviews.
Raven leaned on Mo to give up a bigger name – McGinnan, known for extortion around Portland – and he signed a statement before being sent to the cells.
Chuckles, unable to read Mo’s own confession, confirmed McGinnan independently, adding only that McGinnan ‘finds YOU’ rather than the other way around.
Sanchez wasn’t thrilled at the plan to release both Hammerskins in 24 hours with a rumour attached that they’d turned snitch – effectively a death sentence for two men who, in his own words, were “just Skins” anyway.
A shipping manifest turned up something worth chasing separately:
two crates shipped out under Get Stuffed’s name on the 28th of June, bound for Kalitzim – potentially tied to the corpse fisher boy’s discovery, and already well on its way around the Drusul coast.
Three days’ leave finally arrived.
At the Port Inn, Pitr handed over a letter that made everyone flinch on sight; Krusha took it well clear of the others and, with KemerLexi’s protection over him just in case, opened it to find a location: 8 Potters Way.
During their time off, Raven commissioned a mithral shirt and a second silvered shortsword; Krusha treated himself to a rather flashier mace.
Both would be ready from Rhabbatt by the 6th.
The funeral for Crowe and Kowalski happened somewhere in the middle of all that – sombre, by all accounts, though nobody could quite recall the details afterward.
EXTRAS.
OPEN THREADS
- Two crates shipped from Get Stuffed to Kalitzim on June 28th – possibly tied to the drowned corpse-fisher boy.
- Mo and Chuckles, released with a snitch rumour attached – a death sentence dressed up as mercy.
- Eskobar’s den located: 8 Potters Way.