View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
Loki parks in Doriath for another six years. She manages to make friends with some of the people who have things to do in accelerated perception. The Men who started as babies are full grown. The spell comes along and she refreshes everyone serving as a sorcery backup on a routine basis. She visits people between stints of work; during same she does things that she doesn't have to move around much to do. Writes a memoir. Screws around with decorative illusions. Sleeps, when absolutely necessary.
She's asleep when the quake hits. But not for very long.
+ Show First Post
purposeful_glory
purposeful_glory
Out she seasicks. She collects herself and goes where they take her.
They are climbing a mountain. They are still a day's walk away from Taniquetil but at this point I think it was worth having you, Nerdanel says.
It's a stunningly pretty mountain. It opens onto a very obviously artificial plateau between two peaks. The Valar are assembled there. The petitioners kneel.
purposeful_glory
This is so far from the time to complain about the time Ulmo kneeled her without permission. Just pretend they're Odin, ugh. Kneel.
It's not Nerdanel but someone else who speaks. "To give context to our petition before the Valar it is our desire to share the whole brief history of Men, Ilúvatar's second born, and the great goods that would be realized by allowing them to remain here. We would like your leave to provide this context first so that those of us who have urgent responsibilities among the newly resettled host can return until the Lords of Arda see fit to call them back to speak."
Can we talk for the next two years while Loki works, please. Nerdanel translates.
This is granted, booms a voice that is not Ulmo's but similar.
Can we talk for the next two years while Loki works, please. Nerdanel translates.
This is granted, booms a voice that is not Ulmo's but similar.
Stay for the first hour, probably. Then someone else will ask leave for a few people including you to go.
And then someone does indeed ask leave for some of the petitioners to return when needed, and they can go.
purposeful_glory
Loki dips her head in what she fancies is probably an excellent approximation of polite deference and she goes back to work.
And they bring testimony, and they bring considerations, and they bring evidence, and they buy time.
purposeful_glory
Valinor breaks her sense of time.
But she knows it's doing that, so she breaks it right the fuck back.
Nowhere else in the world is habitable, and gliding over pretty landscapes while half her friends are either dead or time-frozen and Valinor sucks her urgency out of her skull is not appealing. She keeps clocks on every wall of her room. She runs them fast. She reminds herself that any moment she takes to do anything else could be fucking Valinor gnawing on her brain. She doesn't need to be ready to jump out in an emergency, anymore, she skips as much sleep as she physically can and lets herself keel over and then gets right back up and works more and uses that tolerance and not her more conservative one. Acceleration songs buzz in her ears, resonating, stacked, barely even sound to her anymore, and she works.
When the Valar have been debating for nearly two years the last piece goes snap.
And she breaks the acceleration songs and prints the text out and tells everyone who happens to be in range I got it, text extant on my desk
and
she
goes
home
and the room with the pedestal is empty
and she snarls and teleports again and goes and collapses dizzily at Heimdall's feet
and says,
"Where is the Tesseract. It's an emergency."
But she knows it's doing that, so she breaks it right the fuck back.
Nowhere else in the world is habitable, and gliding over pretty landscapes while half her friends are either dead or time-frozen and Valinor sucks her urgency out of her skull is not appealing. She keeps clocks on every wall of her room. She runs them fast. She reminds herself that any moment she takes to do anything else could be fucking Valinor gnawing on her brain. She doesn't need to be ready to jump out in an emergency, anymore, she skips as much sleep as she physically can and lets herself keel over and then gets right back up and works more and uses that tolerance and not her more conservative one. Acceleration songs buzz in her ears, resonating, stacked, barely even sound to her anymore, and she works.
When the Valar have been debating for nearly two years the last piece goes snap.
And she breaks the acceleration songs and prints the text out and tells everyone who happens to be in range I got it, text extant on my desk
and
she
goes
home
and the room with the pedestal is empty
and she snarls and teleports again and goes and collapses dizzily at Heimdall's feet
and says,
"Where is the Tesseract. It's an emergency."
Heimdall blinks down at the sudden princess in genuine startlement.
Then she says, barely a hint of shock in her deep calm voice, "Midgard. A hidden chamber under a village in the region you frequented during your first visit there."
A brief pause. "Yes." Another, briefer pause. "Good luck."
purposeful_glory
"Thanks," Loki says, rather than you mean good skill, and she disappears to collect a force hood and then she goes for the Tesseract.
There it is. Blue. Cubical. She wants to just fucking grab it and if it reacted to this badly enough it could disintegrate Midgard.
So now she and it are on the ugliest and least useful moon in the Alfheim system. Her skin stings as the vacuum pulls at her but it's not enough to actually bruise somebody as tough as an Asgardian, however grafted-on the toughness.
"Hey," she says. "Please don't kill me. It's really important. I need you to assassinate a god and maybe help me find another infinity stone so I can do some other things I don't think you're specced for and you're my best shot. Please. I think I did really well with the alphabet you gave me. Thank you for that, I never did get a chance to thank you -"
The Tesseract doesn't wait for her to pick it up.
It jumps into her hand. Delicious almost-pain crackles over her, like the time she touched it before; but now she doesn't fall, now she's steady on her feet with the dizziness worn off.
Don't be tedious, it says, I'm not going to kill you.
Oh, she says.
Rather nice teleportation spell. If you focus you're about .3% of the way to being as good as another space stone, you know.
That hadn't occurred to me as a metric, but thank you.
You're welcome. Now. Where's this god you need me to kill?
And it seems to find its own question very funny, something that isn't quite laughter echoes in her head, and she grins tightly and puts herself above the stupid cylindrical planet, floating.
High, high up.
He's wherever I want him to be, right?
Just so.
Tears prickle her eyes and blue energy coruscates along her armor and Morgoth is just. Precisely. Where. She. Wants. Him.
There it is. Blue. Cubical. She wants to just fucking grab it and if it reacted to this badly enough it could disintegrate Midgard.
So now she and it are on the ugliest and least useful moon in the Alfheim system. Her skin stings as the vacuum pulls at her but it's not enough to actually bruise somebody as tough as an Asgardian, however grafted-on the toughness.
"Hey," she says. "Please don't kill me. It's really important. I need you to assassinate a god and maybe help me find another infinity stone so I can do some other things I don't think you're specced for and you're my best shot. Please. I think I did really well with the alphabet you gave me. Thank you for that, I never did get a chance to thank you -"
The Tesseract doesn't wait for her to pick it up.
It jumps into her hand. Delicious almost-pain crackles over her, like the time she touched it before; but now she doesn't fall, now she's steady on her feet with the dizziness worn off.
Don't be tedious, it says, I'm not going to kill you.
Oh, she says.
Rather nice teleportation spell. If you focus you're about .3% of the way to being as good as another space stone, you know.
That hadn't occurred to me as a metric, but thank you.
You're welcome. Now. Where's this god you need me to kill?
And it seems to find its own question very funny, something that isn't quite laughter echoes in her head, and she grins tightly and puts herself above the stupid cylindrical planet, floating.
High, high up.
He's wherever I want him to be, right?
Just so.
Tears prickle her eyes and blue energy coruscates along her armor and Morgoth is just. Precisely. Where. She. Wants. Him.
And she wants him gone.
The orcs in uncomfortable limbo in Valinor feel it immediately. Some of them shudder. Some look confused. Tyr laughs until he cannot breathe.
The orcs in uncomfortable limbo in Valinor feel it immediately. Some of them shudder. Some look confused. Tyr laughs until he cannot breathe.
Right where she left them. Literally right where she left them. Not a molecule out of place.
purposeful_glory
I'm not the time stone, grumbles the Tesseract.
Should I fetch it?
I don't think you'd get along with it. No, I can do this part. Just so.
And the time stop effect and her friends are now in different places.
And Loki too is wherever she likes. Here she is, cube in hand, crackling faintly, eyes gone solid blue with it now. "Got him," she murmurs.
Should I fetch it?
I don't think you'd get along with it. No, I can do this part. Just so.
And the time stop effect and her friends are now in different places.
And Loki too is wherever she likes. Here she is, cube in hand, crackling faintly, eyes gone solid blue with it now. "Got him," she murmurs.
They are huddled in circles around Fëanor. They are clinging to each other. The Silmarils are in his hands and his expression is intent and he looks up and smiles at her. "Oh, good. How long has it been?"
purposeful_glory
"Two years realtime I think," she breathes. It's a little hard to talk. Audio illusion would be easier. She switches. "Considering turning the planet into a sphere. I don't have a really good reason it's just annoying me and if I do have to move it it'll be less likely to collapse suddenly on itself."
"I'm in favor." He straightens. He looks utterly content.
purposeful_glory
"Then I get another stone and then I get complicated," she says.
All of the parts of this planet should be arranged where she would like them.
That is to say, spherically. Gently, please.
Are you suggesting that something about this process might move so much as a hair on their heads if you don't want it to?
...no, I suppose all their hair will be exactly where I want it.
Precisely.
Gently, without so much as a ripple underfoot
the planet wraps itself into a sphere. (That extraneous magic around the edges may affect something but it certainly doesn't affect anything here, not now -)
All of the parts of this planet should be arranged where she would like them.
That is to say, spherically. Gently, please.
Are you suggesting that something about this process might move so much as a hair on their heads if you don't want it to?
...no, I suppose all their hair will be exactly where I want it.
Precisely.
Gently, without so much as a ripple underfoot
the planet wraps itself into a sphere. (That extraneous magic around the edges may affect something but it certainly doesn't affect anything here, not now -)