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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.
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purposeful_glory
If it's too tough for spiky-Lævateinn to rip out of it Asgardian strength or no, she'll shorten the whole thing to strike again, but she re-illusions it and plants her feet and yanks.
It does rip loose. The location of the injury is glowing white-hot and the skin at its edges is bubbling. There are arrows raining down on it. It raises several whip-like appendages and lashes out wildly.
She hits, but can't immediately slice through it; it races in the direction of whatever injured it, scorching the ground as it goes.
purposeful_glory
Right, it'll be able to place her by figuring out weapon reach and angle, if it's smart.
Fortunately, she's got a variable-reach weapon.
She vaults out of the path of a tentacle, plunges her blade down into the thing as she flips over its head, and lands, dragging a wound after her - then yanks and shortens the weapon to have another stab at it. It's hot; her armor's all-environments but this isn't quite an environment. Heal. Heal. Heal.
Fortunately, she's got a variable-reach weapon.
She vaults out of the path of a tentacle, plunges her blade down into the thing as she flips over its head, and lands, dragging a wound after her - then yanks and shortens the weapon to have another stab at it. It's hot; her armor's all-environments but this isn't quite an environment. Heal. Heal. Heal.
This seems to have successfully confused it into thinking it has multiple attackers, or one who's moving in a different direction. Several fire-lashes miss and leave deep smouldering scars in the ground.
purposeful_glory
She does not like those fire-lashes one bit. She tries again to relieve it of some, trying to shave them off close to the body so it can't just wave them with the assault.
A clean hit slices through one of them. It shrieks, again - and then again, even louder - and instead of charging her again starts racing for the center of camp.
purposeful_glory
Shit.
Stab-spikes-yank, aiming to knock it off balance.
(It's too hot, it's too - heal heal heal -)
Stab-spikes-yank, aiming to knock it off balance.
(It's too hot, it's too - heal heal heal -)
It's now covered in superficial, white-hot scars everywhere - from stumps, from arrows, from two gaping wounds in its central body, and it stumbles and then changes course yet again, this time running to get out.
purposeful_glory
I'm thinking I don't let it go, Loki sends. Does it want to try being decapitated? She thinks it should give it a whirl.
Don't, Nolofinwë agrees. More arrows are flying.
purposeful_glory
And an axe for its neck.
It's so hot. Fires aren't usually this hot, she's burned herself on campfires when she was younger and she's not even quite burning now, but it's so -
It's so hot. Fires aren't usually this hot, she's burned herself on campfires when she was younger and she's not even quite burning now, but it's so -
It explodes.
A fireball rushes outwards, throws her back, lights several of the nearby buildings on fire, and burns out nearly as quickly, leaving a crater with some whitish ash.
A fireball rushes outwards, throws her back, lights several of the nearby buildings on fire, and burns out nearly as quickly, leaving a crater with some whitish ash.
purposeful_glory
heal
She keeps her grip on Lævateinn, shrinks it, with her other hand starts patting down her armor; maybe she'll need to ask Dwarves to patch it -
- her hand is blue.
She stops still, looking at her hand.
It is blue.
She makes herself a mirror.
Her face is her own, except -
"I think I'm adopted," she murmurs to no one in particular.
She keeps her grip on Lævateinn, shrinks it, with her other hand starts patting down her armor; maybe she'll need to ask Dwarves to patch it -
- her hand is blue.
She stops still, looking at her hand.
It is blue.
She makes herself a mirror.
Her face is her own, except -
"I think I'm adopted," she murmurs to no one in particular.
The Quendi seem to have deployed some people to put out the fires. Everyone else is milling around anxiously.
"Loki," says Findekáno, "is that you?"
"Loki," says Findekáno, "is that you?"
purposeful_glory
"Yes." She blinks red-scleraed eyes, touches her forehead - smooth as it looks, the frost giants must do a ritual scarification thing or - "But I'm too short to be a frost giant."
"When we met, what mental analogy did you decide to use when you learned protecting your thoughts?"
purposeful_glory
"Ciphering. Look, if the problem were that I'm sporting a different color scheme I could fix that," she says, and she does, holding up her hands side by side and turning one pale-pink again. "I am busy dealing with the fact that apparently I was kidnapped as a baby from a culture my own has been at war with since before I was born and nobody told me."
"The problem is that a fight with a shapeshifter ended with something that looks vaguely but not exactly like an ally of ours who is now behaving uncharacteristically.
If that is what happened that sounds horrifying and you've been very terribly wronged and I'm sorry."
If that is what happened that sounds horrifying and you've been very terribly wronged and I'm sorry."
purposeful_glory
"I don't have a characteristic way to behave on discovering that I'm secretly a frost giant!" exclaims Loki. "I can't even say 'well, this explains a lot' because it doesn't, the only thing it explains is why I was more comfortable than anyone else on the ice, and I'm too short to be a frost giant!" She dismisses the illusion from her hand, stares into the mirror again.
The blue's receding.
The blue's receding.
He watches silently.
purposeful_glory
She does too. Eventually it's gone, eyes back to normal, skin flushed and fair as ever.
"Why the fuck would Odin have kidnapped a baby frost giant to pass off as her own child to everyone except presumably Frigg - for that matter if she adopted me to begin with why not chuck me back to Jötunheim after she noticed I wasn't Thor all over again like she wanted -"
"Why the fuck would Odin have kidnapped a baby frost giant to pass off as her own child to everyone except presumably Frigg - for that matter if she adopted me to begin with why not chuck me back to Jötunheim after she noticed I wasn't Thor all over again like she wanted -"
There really isn't much to say to that.
purposeful_glory
"...no, you know what, there is an explanation, there is in fact an excellent explanation if you're Odin and think 'parenting' is another word for 'frowning'. She kidnapped a baby frost giant to raise as an Asgardian princess so she can conquer Jötunheim and install me as some kind of puppet ruler, because there's no way I'd have developed a personality at any point during the process, or take the revelation badly, or that Thor would freak out and the puppet rulership might not hold. Hell, I might be a frost giant princess to make that go smoother, she's occasionally canny about people's motivations if those people aren't her offspring. Her ostensible offspring. Fuck."