View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
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.
+ Show First Post
Best case scenario, it's much less precise than he indicated and he's just hoping you'll show. If that's true, we may need to get in touch with him to lure him out. Worst case scenario, he can see everything, in which case if he can also see invisibility we're in trouble and if he can't he'll still find it suspect that you're not carrying a prisoner.
purposeful_glory
Swifts all look the same, but that's a hell of a thing to ask for a volunteer for.
Can you turn anything into a swift, or just people?
Then I think when we're over the mountains I will ask for a volunteer. It seems plausible that he'd approach you invisibly to check that you're on your way, and he has better eyesight than any of us. I don't suppose we can catch a real swift.
Let's go.
By evening they're over the mountains. Should you walk from here? Practice more with the power spell?
purposeful_glory
Sounds like a good idea.
She lands. She hikes. She swings Lævateinn around while the song hisses in her ear. Eventually she has to sleep.
She lands. She hikes. She swings Lævateinn around while the song hisses in her ear. Eventually she has to sleep.
We'll let you know if anything comes up, Macalaurë says, and decide who you should be carrying.
We can keep an eye out while you do.
Maitimo's been completely silent.
purposeful_glory
That does not surprise her.
She gets better at using the oomph spell; eventually she switches to spellwork.
She gets better at using the oomph spell; eventually she switches to spellwork.
Everyone else does combat practice, too, except Macalaurë who's working on a song to make people uninteresting.
purposeful_glory
Loki eventually switches to giving people a few pointers on their combat practice.
And then she sleeps.
And then she sleeps.
When she wakes up Maitimo says Thauron is within a few hundred miles.
No. If he can tell that about me he's using some ability I'm not familiar with.
purposeful_glory
Thank you. And then, assuming Maitimo didn't do it, she relays this exchange to the others.
She's correct that Maitimo hadn't done this. Have a bird, Macalaurë says, and let's be careful.
purposeful_glory
She accepts a bird. She hikes. She can do spellwork without needing her hands free.