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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
A tentacle finds the glass-walled control room, where Nick is. The ship jerks to the right sharply, then starts turning in a circle.
She gets close enough to cling to the base of one of the tentacles. It's slippery and squishy and slimy, but it's solid enough to hold onto.
When the squid tries to shake her off, a gap opens in the chitin.
She gets close enough to cling to the base of one of the tentacles. It's slippery and squishy and slimy, but it's solid enough to hold onto.
When the squid tries to shake her off, a gap opens in the chitin.
purposeful_glory
Lævateinn instantly smooths, shrinks into her hand, and goes long and sharp and barbed again between the plates.
cloudwanderer
The squid is really really upset by this. Thanks to how its body is fitted together, wedging the chitin open has made it pretty much immobile. A good half of those tentacles are still moving around angrily, though.
purposeful_glory
The weapon gets a little wider. It sprouts a few more barbs. Doesn't this thing have a brain?
purposeful_glory
Excellent.
Loki jumps off the squid to the ship, Lævateinn lengthening after to guide the drop and keep the squid under control.
"All done!"
Loki jumps off the squid to the ship, Lævateinn lengthening after to guide the drop and keep the squid under control.
"All done!"
cloudwanderer
There is not an immediate response. One of the tentacles went limp inside the ship's control room.
cloudwanderer
She will find him bleeding from the head and slumped against a wall. His sword is stabbed into the limp tentacle.
"I'm okay. Mostly." He tries to get up. He stops trying to get up. "Ow. It didn't poison me, just slammed me into the wall. Did y'kill it?"
"I'm okay. Mostly." He tries to get up. He stops trying to get up. "Ow. It didn't poison me, just slammed me into the wall. Did y'kill it?"
purposeful_glory
"It's dead and tied to a railing by its tentacle." She looks at him for a moment, then sighs and taps him on the head. Ker-heal.
cloudwanderer
"...Ow?" He stands up. "Wha- I feel better than I've felt all week. How many decades did that one take?"
"...Sarcasm aside, thank you."
"...Sarcasm aside, thank you."
cloudwanderer
"I can't even imagine. It took me fifteen months to build my ship."
Noticing where his sword is, "Oh, I did manage to hit it after all. Not that it did much good."
Noticing where his sword is, "Oh, I did manage to hit it after all. Not that it did much good."
purposeful_glory
"Well, it's very intellectually stimulating work but I go through a lot of paper. That was one of the more time-consuming spells. The other healing ones built on some of the same groundwork, they didn't take as long. My first was fifty years. Is this the only room it tentacled its way into?"
cloudwanderer
"I think so, yes. It's the only room with any glass left. But, hey, we have a squid! Let's go start cutting off tentacles and putting them in the ice room."
He extracts his sword. There's a tentacle here, might as well get to work! Remove the last foot of the thing first, carefully, poison glands and all. Then cut it into light-enough-to-lift segments and carry the whole pile into the ice-room.
After taking care of the tentacle, well, there's some four dozen more up top so he heads to the roof.
He extracts his sword. There's a tentacle here, might as well get to work! Remove the last foot of the thing first, carefully, poison glands and all. Then cut it into light-enough-to-lift segments and carry the whole pile into the ice-room.
After taking care of the tentacle, well, there's some four dozen more up top so he heads to the roof.
cloudwanderer
After a while, Nick says, "I'm going to start trying to backtrack. Do you mind letting me know when the other tentacles are done? I want to try to recover the central body. That chitin looks inches thick, a solid piece of bone that big will make some great tools."
cloudwanderer
"For now at least. The weight of all this squid without its gas sac will be good when we're ready to go back down."
purposeful_glory
"You can't, say, sell the sac? Will it eventually deflate on its own even if we don't cut it?"
cloudwanderer
"No and yes. Human-made gas sacs use goldbeater's skin, which is basically dried cow guts. Without a living creature to feed it, the squid's gas sac will die and start to decay within a week. Same way with any other floating critters."
cloudwanderer
So Nick gathers all the notes on direction and speed from the last few days, opens his navigation book to a wind chart, and starts calculating.
cloudwanderer
And by sunset the squid is packed away, gas sac safely disposed of, the engines are humming, and Nick predicts a two-day return journey.