--- Kat ---
They didn’t know it, but that was the end of trouble for the night. Treant sent out a big burst of healing petals with the last of her mana... and then collapsed. It was a signal to both sides as to who had just won. The Diggers were quick to retreat even if the healing wasn’t all that significant, and the guards had to let them go. The juggernauts were injured, and they just didn’t have the people to risk leaving the defences. The area was trashed, and at the very least the tank and Cobolt had been captured.
Lily collapsed imdiately after the fight was over. The multiple instances of emotional whiplash combined with a large amount of mana usage and a night on watch ant it was imply too much for her. Perhaps if she’d taken more naps throughout the day, or been willing to nod off during the night it would’ve been different. This left Kat ’alone’ to watch everyone else, which was fine for Kat...
Less fine for Lily. Kat was worried and wanted to help... perhaps not entirely ’deal’ with the emotional issues Lily was experiencing but at least smooth so of them out before she collapsed. Kat wasn’t sure if sleep would make it better or worse but the fear and self-loathing that seed to leak through the link indicated a troubled sleep. If Lily didn’t also feel so tired, Kat would’ve woken her up to spare her from the nightmares.
Treant wasn’t unscathed either. When the ’other Treant’ showed up, she criticised her partner for being an idiot, and for spending her reserves on a ’flashy lightshow’ instead of anything useful, but said ’lightshow’ did end the combat for now so it was well worth it in Kat’s opinion. The others were also being subbed out early. At least, Titan and Storm had obviously done so while Shadowmancer... might have? Kat hadn’t seen anyone approach them, but well, Shadowmancer. They could be discreet about it if they wanted and use shadows to hide it better.
Hedera was fine. She’d needed to show off a bit towards the end of the fight outside that Kat had missed, but nothing got close enough to her. The only thing the enemy knew was that they had an exceptional archer on their side. Well, perhaps soone under an illusion noticed sothing but Hedera was on the watch for that and hadn’t spotted them sneaking up on her, nor been attacked so hopefully it was fine.
Lily was still asleep when the sun rose. Gravel and Steel were present pretty much imdiately, with Charles following behind. More there as part of Gravel’s guard then a participant in the upcoming conversation. A tiny table had been taken from Gravel’s pocket and expanded for everyone to sit around. Complete with slightly fancier chairs for the armoured guests and a spot for soone on the construction crew to sit.
With Harold revealed, the person who slid into place was a middle aged looking elf woman carrying a scar around one of her ears. Seed she’d just barely pulled her head away in ti to avoid having it sliced off. She was one of the bugger elves Kat had ever seen, though still nothing too obvious and still rather lithe in fra compared what you’d expect from a human with a similar feel.
"Alright, give a status report Mulberry," asked Gravel.
The elf nodded, "Treant protected the warehouse well. The walls are fairly intact and even the big healing blast at the end didn’t do too much damage because she had the foresight to leave the building before using it... but the healing magic in the air did slow so things down. Not to ntion that while the building was largely protected that’s not the sa as ’entirely in good condition’.
"Worse, the fight interrupted a lot of our work on the main room. It’s not quite finished even now because we have to do things in a different order because of the change in plans. We have to alternate between middle and outer sections. It won’t weaken the protections if we do it properly... but the original plan was to have a solid core we could work from, and place the device inside just about imdiately. As it stands...
"Assuming you still want to place the device there, whatever it is, the wards might not be able to properly deal with it and the defences are really weak. We’ve used a huge chunk of the kingdoms temporary defensive enchantnts at the fact that so many were used ans we probably can’t just set up more in the sa spot. Ideally, I’d tell you to scrap the project here and move it sowhere else where we can do it properly... but I take it that’s not an option?"
"Likely not, no..." admitted Gravel.
Mulberry sighed. "Alright, about what I expected. In that case we can either try rushing the enchantnts and accept the damage to the building as semi-permanent. Rush the fixes to the building and accept the enchantnts are going to need to be completely redone within the next year, maybe two if you really want to push it. Find another place, like you already shot down...
"Or we can take the ti to properly fix the building, and then redo the enchantnts, accepting that we’ve lost at least part of the day and have it all ready tomorrow morning... of course that’s assuming that we don’t have another attack, or another traitor."
"Did they do any damage to the enchantnts?" asked Steel.
"Not that I’m aware of. We were checking each other’s work quite thoroughly before the incident as we’d been warned about potential traitors. Didn’t expect you to be right or for it to be Harold instead... and we don’t even know what..." Mulberry shook her head. "Not the issue. My point is, as far as we can tell, Harold was unwilling to risk ssing with the enchantnt and getting caught out early."
"Not loving the options but we can co back to that. Titan, what’s the word on the defence?" asked Gravel.
"Good. Arguably excellent," said Titan, the wife. Her husband hadn’t yet recovered from his fight last night. "The issue is that, even with the quiet morning we’re still exhausted. The team is going to be out of commission for a bit, and the armour might even need to be looked over just in case.
"The death toll was quite low. We only lost two people permanently, though there were quite a few serious injuries. The defensive enchantnts are pretty much all a wash. They were actually on the last of them when the barrier around the warehouse ca down, which is one of the reasons we didn’t pursue afterwards. If the fight had gone on much longer we’d definitely have started to lose people.
"We also have so of the key players, and the death toll on their side was much more heavy. Not that I’m entirely happy about that last point... but from a strategic standpoint it is an advantage." Titan looked down at the table upon ntioning the last few points.
"I understand," said Gravel. "The hope was that rushing this would prevent the worst of the fighting... but as I understand it things might already be worse than we thought?" Gravel looked up to Steel.
"Indeed," sighed Steel. "Our initial thoughts were that the fires were simply a way to distract large portions of the guard from joining the fight. In truth however, we have since learnt that not only were more crops effected then we initially thought, with multiple secondary fires started after the fact, a good deal of the fields have been poisoned. Treant will need to work to purge them and it will not be a fast thing.
"It is likely the goal is to force outside trade. Things are not so dire that we’re going to starve, not in the long term... but in the short term, unless we’re willing to implent so harsh rationing we are going to run out of certain crops. They were quite targeted with their poisons rather then spreading it out amongst too large a variety of things. We didn’t realise the damage had been done until checking one of the last fields. One we think was set fire either by accident, or as a way of subtly warning us about the poisonings."
Gravel sighed. "I suppose that’s going to be another big argunt then, regarding how we allow people to travel. Even if we call them ’temporary asures’ to deal with the current crisis it’s quite likely that any sort of precedent set early on will need to beco permanent simply through weight of montum and the cost of reversing it. I’m quite sure my advisors are going to whine about how ’they told not to rush’ and whatnot."
"Fuck them," growled Steel with a shrug. "If we’d started this project a day or two early like I’d pushed for, it was possible this could’ve been avoided or at least mitigated. The poison was almost certainly manufactured recently at the very least. It’s planning ti we didn’t need to give our enemies. If they attack you over the decision I’ll back you."
"Not sure how much it’ll help but I do appreciate it Steel," sighed Gravel.
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