Updraft: Update 9

Spoilers Ahead!

A lot has happened, but I don’t think it’ll take long to sum up. Kirit, Ellna, Wick, Nat, and Tobiat agree to take down Rommul, and decide the best way to do this is to have Kirit challenge Rommul. The problem is that she needs to get into the Spire and then get to Rommul in person so she can challenge him before being captured. Wick informs her that Rommul is still injured from his fight with Taren and is vulnerable. Kirit fixes up a makeshift set of wings from her damaged ones and the ones she brought to Ellna.

Kirit sneaks into the Spire, using a secret panel, and gets to her father to help get the support of the Windbeaters. That goes well, but she still needs to get to Rommul at the top of the Spire without getting captured and her makeshift wings were damaged getting into the Spire. She goes to the Skymouth pens and cuts off the skin of freshly dead Skymouths to create a smelly cloak of invisibility. Then she raises herself up the Spire in a bucket on a pulley.

She says hidden as she gets to the top of the Spire where the counsel is. There she challenges Rommul. Rommul wants her to be thrown into a cell, but he is trapped by tradition and enough Singers oppose him that he can’t get out of it. However, Sellus steps up to take the challenge for him. Wick starts to do the same for Kirit, but she stops him. Kirit needs wings and several people offer her theirs, but Wick holds out the wings of Kirit’s mother and she takes those.

Instead of just fighting Sellus, Kirit starts to yell and sing the truth of what is happening in the Spire. Tower citizens have gathered at the top of the Spire to watch the challenge and hear this. Then she starts to scream as she’s injured by Sellus, using her Skymouth controlling scream. Her father and Wick add their own screams and then the Skymouths respond with screams and roars of their own from deep down in the Spire. Hey, maybe that’s what the roar of the city actually is, skymouths. Makes the sacrifices of the conclaves seem kinda pointless, but I suppose the Singers could justify it as clearing the city of laws-breakers.

Anyhow Rommul wants to put an end to this and dives into the gyre and right at Kirit. They both fall to the nets at the top of the Skymouth pens and Rommul is seized by Skymouth tentacles poking through the net. Kirit, her father, Wick, and the Skymouths continue to scream and roar and the wall around the Spire begins to break apart at places that Nat’s father strategically weakened (and marked on his bone chips). Parts of the Spire wall fall away, including in the  Skymouth pens and the Skymouths start to escape. Sellus is eaten by one. Kind of a nasty way to go.

Wick comes to Kirit and tells her they need to get to the top of the Spire. That’s where things leave off after my commute. Sounds like Wick and Kirit need to do something about all the newly-freed Skymouths. Rommul has been defeated and the Spire opened to the daylight (literally), so now I get to see how they handle the aftermath.

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