The Nettle Tea Chronicles

Marissa

It took another couple minutes before Jazz finished eating, and the party got antsy fast. Fiona and Caoimhe both kept acting like they were going to bolt down the tree toward the next part of the quest. Everyone was jumping around at the top where they had originally landed, or doing random emotes to pass the time. Marissa was pretty sure if Jazz had taken another minute or two to finish, they would've gone on without her.

As it was, as soon as she said she was ready, everyone started sprinting down the tree. The massive trunk was twisted just enough to give them all enough space to run down until they made it to the roof of the [Dagda's] home. And right next to the snug little gap that the tree grew out of was a convenient trap door for the party to go through.

Once they were all in, it was just a short spiral staircase down to the floor, which put the entire group once again in the breathtaking room that was full of plants and things where they had met the [Dagda] in the first place.

The whole space was still gorgeous, but it was big and the map didn't appear to be any real help. Instead, they all needed to follow the quest marker on the edge of the minimap to find their way.

It didn't take very long, thankfully, for them to find the [Dagda], as well as [Scathach] and [Cu], talking about battle plans over a large stump that was functioning as a map table.

As the party approached, [Scathach] was the one who offered them a greeting, and called out to them with a simple "Welcome back!" only through text. The NPC they needed to talk to to move forward, however, was the [Dagda].

Marissa moved up to the man and interacted with him, which - surprising no one - started a cutscene. She heard the telltale sounds of her friends going deafened in the chat as she focused on the cutscene as well.

"Welcome back," the [Dagda] said, as Marissa watched her and her party members spread out around the map stump. "I hear things have gone well."

A few dialogue options came up for Marissa to choose from to respond.

"You heard?" Hibiscus asked.

"From [Áine], yes." He said, his smile coming through in the voice line, despite his face being more or less hidden between the cloak hood and his large beard. "Also, plenty of people saw your rather…unmistakable way of returning."

"Yes." [Scathach] said flatly, "people don't often tumble out of a portal above the clouds and live to tell the tale. Let alone clearly fly gracefully to land safely."

"Ah. Saw that, did you?" Bisky asked.

"We did." [Cu] said. "Congratulations are in order, I suspect."

Stolen story; please report.

"[Áine] didn't explain everything, but she did give me a basic explanation of the situation. Would you be able to elaborate on it?" the [Dagda] asked, reigning the conversation back in.

Hibiscus began silently moving through a simple talking looped animation, and the scene faded to black for a moment, before coming back shortly thereafter, with the characters all in very slightly different positions, just to indicate time passing.

"I see."

"That puts us all in a rather unique situation, doesn't it?" [Scathach] said.

"Renouncing the [Aes Sídhe], hm…" [Cu] said, clearly deep in thought.

"Well, it certainly gives us the possibility to fight off the flying enemy." the [Dagda] said. "I'm not sure that just the eight of you will be enough, so we will need to spread the word quickly amongst some of the rank and file warriors we have here."

"Agreed," [Scathach] said, "I'll spread the word. If nothing else, I'll certainly tell [Uathach's] company. Most of them were handpicked, and should not only be trustworthy, but also great fighters."

"Good. [Cu]?"

"Yes?"

"You should tell your men, as well. Your company of longspear fighters would be great for aerial combat."

"Yes, sir." [Cu] agreed with a military-like bow.

"As for you all," the [Dagda] said, turning back toward Bisky, "prepare yourselves for the next battle. I suspect the wyverns will arrive en masse soon. Within an hour or two, I suspect."

Marissa picked the option to have Bisky agree and bow.

"I suppose you are all dismissed, then. May luck be on our side," the [Dagda] said, and Marissa expected the cutscene to end.

Instead, the party followed [Cu] and [Scathach] out of the room. [Cu] still looked pensive, but eventually nodded resolutely. "Alright. I will go talk to my company. I hope you all fare well." Once again, he offered a military bow, and trotted off down the corridor.

[Scathach], however, looked back over the party. She leaned into Bisky conspiratorially and whispered, "Come with me," before leading the party down a different hallway, toward another room. Marissa recognized the space quickly, as they approached the same room that they had talked in with [Scathach] previously.

"Can you go over the whole situation with me again? I want to be sure I have everything correct before I tell [Uathach's] company."

Without any input from Marissa, Bisky nodded and clearly began going over everything with [Scathach] again. And once more, there was a short transition indicating the time passing.

When the scene came back, [Scathach] was seated on a stump, listening intently to Bisky and her party go over the events that had transpired in the [Other World]. When it appeared that they had finished, [Scathach] took a deep breath, nodded, and stood up.

"Right then!" she declared, and suddenly there were shadows and darkness spiraling around the woman. It took only a moment for them to begin to coalesce behind her in the shape of wispy, smoky wings. She spread her legs to shoulder-width apart, as if preparing for a fight, then loudly said, "I hereby renounce any and all ties I have with the [Aes Sídhe]. I am one of the [Daoine Sídhe], distinct from my ancestors."

Evidently, she had meant it, too, as a wind swept through the room. Marissa swore that she heard [Áine's] laugh carried on the wind briefly, as [Scathach] flapped her shadowy wings. As the wind that whipped through the room stilled, [Scathach] tilted her head curiously and then lifted off the floor.

"Oh," she said, looking a little confused. It took another couple of seconds before she smiled widely and let out another, "Oh!" and began to move around the room, hovering off the ground. She made a loop around the room once before settling back into the spot she took off from.

[Scathach] dusted herself off as she settled back on the ground. "That was interesting." She said, sounding like she was holding back clear excitement. "I'm surprised how…easy it was."

Marissa was given a few potential responses to make, and she quickly read through them, settling on, "Was it easy? You don't have any attachment to the [Aes Sídhe]?"

[Scathach] just shook her head. "Only in name, really." She sounded almost sad in the voiceover. "I missed being truly a part of the [Aes Sídhe] by around two generations, I think. And they've been more trouble than helpful in my lifetime. So no, I'm not particularly attached to them."

And then [Scathach] gave such a brilliant smile directly to the camera that Marissa was actually taken aback at first. "If anything, I'm more than happy to throw in my lot with the new [Daoine Sídhe]. Here's to working together from now on, right?" She said, extending a hand to Hibiscus, the huge grin still on her face.

Bisky took her hand, shook it, and that was where the cutscene finally ended. Marissa heard the chimes as her friends all returned to the chat now that the cutscene was finished. She did the same, curious what everyone thought.

The first thing she heard was Nyx excitingly fangirling over [Scathach] basically being confirmed as a staunch ally to the party.

"Do you guys think we'll get to fight alongside her more now?" Nyx was asking quickly. "Or, maybe, she'll be more like a companion for the raids?"

"I don't think she'd be a companion for us. Not yet, anyway." Kieran said. "If anything, I would guess that we've got a shot at making Uathach our companion to start."

"Ah, yes. Get at the mother by befriending her kid. Good call." Nyx said.

"Nyx, I really hope you're joking." Evie said, sounding mildly disturbed.

"Eh, maybe a little?" She laughed. "To be fair, though, it is a common enough romance book plot."

"I mean…I guess that's fair." Jazz said. "I actually quite like single-parent romance plots. Kids written to be cute are usually a net positive."

"Sure, but Uathach is hardly a child." Ash said.

"You know, given that Scathach is, like, almost a thousand years old…how old do you think Uathach is?" Kieran asked.

The party went quiet for a moment, as everyone considered the idle thought.

"That's a really good question."

"She could literally be anywhere between like twenty and nine hundred." Evan thought aloud. "I would guess she's probably not actually that young, given we haven't exactly seen heads or tails of any sort of father?"

"As if that matters," Evie said. "I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but I think most of the NPCs are typically exactly the age they appear. There's not a ton of characters like Scathach that are near immortal."

"That's true. Hm." Evan said, sounding like he was lapsing back into thought.

"I'd actually guess she's in her twenties," Firo said. "Like Evie said, I don't believe we've seen a ton of characters that have unnaturally long life-spans. And those that do are basically all thought of as heroes in some way like Scathach and Cu. Not to mention, they're all pretty well-known characters from myth. Well, mostly." He added.

"Scathach and Cu definitely are well known enough characters, yeah," Kieran agreed. "They've shown up, at least in name, in plenty of media franchises. In a couple of them, they're even very important characters. But Uathach is fairly unknown, so she could definitely just be a normal NPC."

"That's my thought process, too." Firo agreed.

"Y'all, does any of this even matter?" Marissa asked, rolling her eyes.

"Yes." Nyx said. "Or, no. Not really." She shrugged. "But it's still fun to think about."

"If you say so." Jazz said, clearly not interested. "What's the plan from here, exactly?"

"Well, we're out of the cutscene, and Scathach is standing in front of us with the next quest icon. We can just move on if we're ready?" Marissa asked.

"Yup. Let's do it." Jazz said.

"Real quick before we continue." Firo said, and Jazz groaned loudly.

"What now?"

"I've been thinking about this since last week," Firo said, "but did we ever get any rewards at all for the battle with [Áine]? Did I just miss them somehow?"

There was a moment of silence in the chat as everyone thought about it. And no, they had never gotten any sort of loot from the fight with her at all, let alone anything particularly special for the challenge fight that had promised additional rewards.

"Hang on, what the fuck? You're right!" Nyx said. "We even cleared that extra special fight!"

"Huh." Evan said. "It's actually even more surprising that we all just kinda…forgot."

"Flying." Marissa chimed in. "Flight is all I wanted and I got it, so I got distracted."

"I won't lie, as far as excuses go, that's not a bad one." Evie said.

"The game kinda blew right by it all, too." Kieran said, thinking back to the end of the fight. "We just kinda got ushered from the end of the fight straight to the Flight 101 class. And then we dropped out of the sky."

"That's true. There wasn't really much downtime in between it all." Ash agreed.

"Part of me wonders if the promise of gear wasn't just another Fae trick." Evan said. "We were constantly warned about it-"

"Oh, you gotta be shitting me." Nyx said.

"What?"

"What you just said," she clarified. "I swear, if they just chose to not give us stuff we earned because "Fae are tricksters" I'm gonna…do something, but I don't know what yet."

"That's the spirit!" Evan said, egging her on, "Let's burn it all down!"

"Now, hang on just a sec, guys." Kieran said, "We've been in a pretty tightly packed part of the raid series' story. Let's give it a minute to breathe before we get angry."

"Kieran's right," Marissa said, glancing at the side of her screen, where her active quests were listed. "Technically, we still haven't completed the quest that [Áine's] fight was part of."

"Oh. I guess I can wait to be angry, then." Nyx said, sounding almost sad she wasn't allowed to be angry yet. "But if we complete that quest and get no gear drops, I'm gonna be pissed."