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One moment Loki is trying to kill the snake-monster before it gets any closer to civilization, and then next -
She jabs at its face, but with momentum intended to meet resistance, and there is none. With momentum intended to compensate for a dodge on the part of the creature, but it surges forward. She's engulfed, and then there is no snake, and there is no ground, and she's falling.
She gasps. The air is clean; she doesn't need to heal poison out of herself with each breath. She sees - floating land, of sorts, there, some kind of oddly geology-themed ship maybe. She could, potentially, turn Lævateinn into something with enough surface area to steer herself onto it rather than fall farther and suffer worse from the fall, but she just recently perfected a new...
She's a bird, a swift, and she catches the wind, and her spear is a twig clutched in her feet, and she wings her way to the land.
Rockeye's first glowfic. Loki (a Bell) falls on Nick in Cloudbank.
purposeful_glory
cloudwanderer
The town has a public library. The book she wants is not in it. A certain bookstore does have it, and this particular bookstore will let you sit in a comfy sort of cafe area and read things for a much smaller fee than buying it outright. (Paper is expensive, so the book is also rather expensive)
cloudwanderer
There is a lot of dry description on how squids develop, what they eat, where they live, and so on, interspersed with detailed anatomical drawings.
They develop from eggs. Adults have a large main body with a bulbous gas sac above and forty to sixty long, flexible tentacles below. Their eyes are on the bottom of their heads. The brain, mouth, and other organs are in a compact section that has some chitinous armor in adults. Identifiable weak spots near vital organs include the center of the mouth, the eyes, and two joints in the chitin shell that might open a bit when the squid moves.
The squid that attacked Nick's ship was apparently a young one - of the drawings in this book, it looked most like the five-year-old squid. Adult squids are a good four or five times larger, are noted to be faster and more aggressive, and also have sharp claw-like structures on the ends of their tentacles, which typically come with a paralytic poison. Squids are noted to be fairly intelligent, and like to attack things that look like Jellywings, slow creatures that resemble living balloons and eat certain species of floating plants.
They develop from eggs. Adults have a large main body with a bulbous gas sac above and forty to sixty long, flexible tentacles below. Their eyes are on the bottom of their heads. The brain, mouth, and other organs are in a compact section that has some chitinous armor in adults. Identifiable weak spots near vital organs include the center of the mouth, the eyes, and two joints in the chitin shell that might open a bit when the squid moves.
The squid that attacked Nick's ship was apparently a young one - of the drawings in this book, it looked most like the five-year-old squid. Adult squids are a good four or five times larger, are noted to be faster and more aggressive, and also have sharp claw-like structures on the ends of their tentacles, which typically come with a paralytic poison. Squids are noted to be fairly intelligent, and like to attack things that look like Jellywings, slow creatures that resemble living balloons and eat certain species of floating plants.
purposeful_glory
Loki is pretty sure that anything smart enough that she'd have qualms about killing it could tell a jellywings from a ship.
Puncturing the gas sac is undesirable, which will make this a challenge. Probably the best plan will be to get it in the eye. The claws on the tentacles will be annoying, but she isn't trying to fight the squid alongside Thor; it will merely be mildly inconvenient if Nick learns more about her magic powers than she's interested in disclosing right away.
When she has read everything the book has about squids she goes home and notes to the person from whom she has rented the apartment that she's going on a hunting trip and will be departing soon, though she doesn't know exactly when.
Puncturing the gas sac is undesirable, which will make this a challenge. Probably the best plan will be to get it in the eye. The claws on the tentacles will be annoying, but she isn't trying to fight the squid alongside Thor; it will merely be mildly inconvenient if Nick learns more about her magic powers than she's interested in disclosing right away.
When she has read everything the book has about squids she goes home and notes to the person from whom she has rented the apartment that she's going on a hunting trip and will be departing soon, though she doesn't know exactly when.
cloudwanderer
The person she rented the apartment from is surprised! She seems to think Loki is recklessly risk-seeking and makes an annoying attempt to assure her that life is worth living without adrenaline rushes.
purposeful_glory
"I will be fine," Loki says. "I can't speak to the fellow who is conveying me, but he seems to think the risk worthwhile. Your concern is appreciated."
cloudwanderer
Her landlady frets, but relents.
Several days pass with no word from Nick, though a lot of people of various sorts visit his ship. The greenhouse's plants disappear, its glass is packed away, the stone framework goes down, a smooth platform with convenient railings and poles for balancing on replace it. A large section of the cargo bay is emptied and walled off with heat-trapping fur on either side of the walls.
Five days later, another freighter bringing ice comes from the cold high-altitude high-latitude ice farms. Nick buys the entire load, fills the walled section, and comes to inform Loki that it's time to go.
Several days pass with no word from Nick, though a lot of people of various sorts visit his ship. The greenhouse's plants disappear, its glass is packed away, the stone framework goes down, a smooth platform with convenient railings and poles for balancing on replace it. A large section of the cargo bay is emptied and walled off with heat-trapping fur on either side of the walls.
Five days later, another freighter bringing ice comes from the cold high-altitude high-latitude ice farms. Nick buys the entire load, fills the walled section, and comes to inform Loki that it's time to go.
purposeful_glory
Loki brings her armor, of course. She might be fighting something with poison spikes. Lævateinn pretends to be a switchblade at her belt.
cloudwanderer
"Is that all you're bringing? I can probably find my way back here, but you should still bring anything you don't want to lose - change your wood coins for metal, bring that paper you wanted so badly, and anything else you've bought since then."
cloudwanderer
"Alright, then. Off we go!" Their first task is to ascend to the squids' usual haunt. "I hope we find a jellywing pack on the way up, though. If we catch a few and use their innards to paint the top of the ship green, we can probably get a squid to come to us."
cloudwanderer
A few hours later, the ship is safely clear of the high-traffic area near the busy town of Liam and Nick's attitude relaxes from really-quite-nervous back into the more standard slightly nervous.
"I remember asking about Asgard, but I don't think you ever answered. What do people do for a living there? Probably there's farmers, everyone needs food, but what else?"
"I remember asking about Asgard, but I don't think you ever answered. What do people do for a living there? Probably there's farmers, everyone needs food, but what else?"
purposeful_glory
"Oh, lots of things. There are craftspeople and healers. Scholars, explorers, warriors."
cloudwanderer
"You really only find those specialized jobs in big towns here. A few adventurers try to explore the upper latitudes in hope of finding leftover technology from the orignal settlers. I even considered trying it once. Would you call the town guards warriors? They would use slingshots to drive off pirates or beasts if the town was attacked."
cloudwanderer
"You seem amused. No doubt you could win against a dozen of them, but that's not what I meant. Whatever." He goes to listen to engine two, which is still acting up a bit.
On this trip, Loki has night work. She needs to take careful records of the ship's direction and wind speed when Nick is too asleep to do it. These measurements will be used to find their way back.
On this trip, Loki has night work. She needs to take careful records of the ship's direction and wind speed when Nick is too asleep to do it. These measurements will be used to find their way back.
cloudwanderer
Nick appreciates the diligence and says so. "I swore never to take passengers again a few years ago. You're much better than the people who caused that oath."
cloudwanderer
"Well, call me a bleeding heart. You didn't have a house or tools or anything. You probably could have fed yourself, but you'd have been pretty miserable the first time a storm came along. Those idiot passengers are why I laid out a lot of rules for you on the first trip, though I know you enough to trust you have common sense now."
cloudwanderer
"I was carrying them because they paid me to take them away from an overcrowded town to someplace new, with lots of supplies. They broke one of my control systems by messing with it, stole three of my flags, punctured one of my gas sacs, complained about the food and water rationing despite my warnings about it beforehand, threw trash overboard instead of putting it somewhere out of the way so I could recycle it later, wouldn't clean up their own meals, disorganized my cargo bay, left the coldroom open and ruined all the ice and meat!"
By the end of this he's yelling. He takes a deep breath. "I try to screen people for common sense before talking to them for more than five minutes or inviting them onto my ship. Other people are three quarters of why I don't have a bigger ship - this is the largest one I can manage by myself. I built her from scratch."
By the end of this he's yelling. He takes a deep breath. "I try to screen people for common sense before talking to them for more than five minutes or inviting them onto my ship. Other people are three quarters of why I don't have a bigger ship - this is the largest one I can manage by myself. I built her from scratch."
purposeful_glory
"Impressive. Both that you built this thing and that you didn't tie them up and dangle them out the window halfway through the trip."
cloudwanderer
"I considered it. But they were paying me, after all. And there were nine of them to one me - a sword isn't enough to make up the difference."
Is that a storm approaching from the east? It is! Nick moves to point the ship west and considers. "This is a problem. It's a large-front storm and we're right in the middle of its path. We're closer to the bottom limit of the storm, but we need to go up. So either we backtrack, or we risk not getting above it in time."
He acquires paper and starts doing some math.
Is that a storm approaching from the east? It is! Nick moves to point the ship west and considers. "This is a problem. It's a large-front storm and we're right in the middle of its path. We're closer to the bottom limit of the storm, but we need to go up. So either we backtrack, or we risk not getting above it in time."
He acquires paper and starts doing some math.