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Tumunzahar makes Menegroth look like a contract project. Which, the Dwarves assure her, it was. The stonework is astonishingly careful and beautiful, silky to the touch up close while from a distance it gives the impression of stretching on forever above, a sky of stone with crystals for stars. Vast natural cave systems are connected by dozens of perfectly smooth, gently sloped broad stone pathways from which the fall, if she fell, would be several miles down. There are handrails. "We use those to move materials carts," someone explains to her, "we're not going to be reckless."
There's an amphitheater, a place where a hundred of the stone walkways twine around to create space for a hundred thousand people to sit in close proximity, and someone is giving a lecture or a demonstration at the base of it, the seats closest to him filled with eager, tiny, bearded Dwarf-children.
And they spiral down, and down, and down, past waterfalls and egg-sized gemstones left half in the rock and halls of crystal. Everything grows gradually more ornate and more perfectly maintained and the clang of hammers fades behind them. "People say," her guide says, "that we only have a council instead of a single King because there were nine winners of the competition to design the throne so we couldn't just select one person to sit it." And they push open the doors to reveal, indeed, nine thrones so elaborate it would be hard to choose between them, and nine squat bearded people sitting them.
purposeful_glory
"I like my pointy stick. Only good present my mother ever got me. As for what I want, that seems like a really personal question from someone planning on killing me."
"You brought me Nelyafinwë. Badly, but you did it, and I can be tolerant of mistakes under circumstances like these. Turn him back, and let's think about arrangements that are less of a waste of your potential."
"Is he going to be distracting? I actually don't think he will.... I'm going to be annoyed and disappointed if he's just spent the last week begging you to kill him. I was expecting him to try something more interesting than that."
"I was thinking we're still more 'people who can agree to mutually beneficial trades' than colleagues, but if you're ready to take the leap you can take him back to Angband with me. Patch him up whenever you'd like and so forth. I don't think he'll thank you."
purposeful_glory
"What, can't you do it? Is he useless to you bird-shaped? Maybe I should leave him a bird forever and you'll have to write him off if you ever do kill me."
And the bird is dragged across the grass, abruptly, towards a man who seems to step down out of the sky, a few yards in front of her, to stoop and pick it up.
He's about twenty feet back of that, Huan says.
And then the bird is an Elf, and then the Elf is dead. "Maitimo," Thauron says wonderingly. "I'm disappointed in you. That was cowardly."
He's about twenty feet back of that, Huan says.
And then the bird is an Elf, and then the Elf is dead. "Maitimo," Thauron says wonderingly. "I'm disappointed in you. That was cowardly."
purposeful_glory
Fuck. (She kills the healing song that was supposed to let the decoy fly, if there was ever another chance -)
"If you're trying to engender virtue in your guests I have very little respect for your competence," she says softly.
"If you're trying to engender virtue in your guests I have very little respect for your competence," she says softly.
"You've made it apparent that you don't, yes. Loki, there's a galaxy at stake here, and you are choosing a heroic death over the chance to live to influence it."
"Do you know anything about the distribution of intelligence in populations? Fëanor is the most gifted of the Elves. Orcs have the same average intelligence as Elves, and there are a thousand times as many of them."
purposeful_glory
"I'd be eager to subscribe to the many scientific journals I'm sure they're producing under their current conditions, especially since apparently they have such a gifted population statistics teacher," she says, gesturing at Thauron's illusion.
She's not sure that keeping him talking is the best idea at this point but he'll see her coming if she moves first, and if she can draw him closer -
She's not sure that keeping him talking is the best idea at this point but he'll see her coming if she moves first, and if she can draw him closer -
He - doesn't start singing, exactly, but the sounds around him resolve themselves into music. The feeling is a little bit like standing in a fast-moving river. "This isn't your last chance, Loki, because I'll give you one more before I kill you, but it's your friends' last chance, I don't need them. You are underestimating us. You're going to die here."
And he imitates her own voice, impassioned and unhappy and dangerous, from a few weeks ago, the first conversation with Vár: "I am asking you to think. You know what I want from you and you know I'm strong enough to get it. Can you think of any way for you to get anything you want given that?"
purposeful_glory
Shit - Vár, is she -
"I can think of a way to get something I want," Loki says. "I want to say go fuck yourself." Huan -
"I can think of a way to get something I want," Loki says. "I want to say go fuck yourself." Huan -
Huan sends her a location. The visible Thauron vanishes. The song rushes up around her and makes the sky even darker, the stars invisible.
purposeful_glory
She turns invisible, fights the song with silence, looks around like she's trying to find a visual clue to where he is. Steps in a wrong direction with her weapon ready to shoot out in the right one.
He contests the silence at least as forcefully as Melian contested darkness in Doriath, and then from Huan she gets a fleeting warning that something is moving, very fast, towards her.
purposeful_glory
Lævateinn shoots out, forked, thin-puncture-wound extensions ready to explode in barbs if she hits something. She doesn't need all her attention to do this, she practiced, she practiced so much, only good present her mother ever -
It hits him. The force is staggering. For a second he's visible, still in the form of a handsome Elf, and so are a dozen werewolves around him, and they are faster-moving than last time, and then they're invisible again, though he isn't, and he conjures up a blade to meet hers.
purposeful_glory
She skids, but only a little; she tags the wolves and Thauron too with their outlines; and then she makes the ugliest exit wound she can so she's ready to parry and pick off any wolves that come too close.