Climbing!
Getting up to the roof took a few stages. For the first stage, Morgan simply ran and leapt up, pulling himself to the outbuilding’s roof with only a mild twinge from the wounds on his arm. Forgot about those, thought Morgan as he let down a rope for Kiddo and Ben to use. I need to start being more careful. …And I mean it this time!
Kiddo went up as quickly as Morgan did. As for Ben? Well, he wasn’t in bad shape, but he clearly wasn’t a climber; despite his best efforts, he made some noise scrambling onto the first-story roof. The three of them froze at an odd, half-rumbling, half-rustling sound from inside the annex, but after a moment or two it subsided. They still waited another minute, just to be sure: the two older men had watched enough movies, after all.
“All right,” said Morgan, quietly but not in a whisper. “So, yeah, there’s a thing in there. Huzzah! But we knew that already. So we just need to get up the side of that wall quietly.” He pulled out the rest of the rope; at the end was a sophisticated-looking grappling hook. “I can place this well enough to get up there, then set it better for you two. Ben, you got a trick up your sleeve for this?”
Ben was looking up at the roof. “I think so… yeah, that spell would work. One problem, though: it might be a little louder than usual.”
His spells hadn’t been very loud, so… “Guess we’ll risk it,” shrugged Morgan. “Unless the thing inside pops outside onto the roof, we should be okay. You want me to wait, or should I go up now?”
“Go up now,” said Ben. “It’s going to take me a minute to adapt the spell, and the faster we move after that, the better.” Again, Morgan didn’t understand the level of skill that implied until much later.