#Untitled Varlais and Ondolemar Nonsense | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mareenavee · 9 months

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WIP Whenever~

Good Wednesday, my friends! I had no idea what day it was until Winter posted lol. I love that. <3

I was tagged to do this by the lovely @thequeenofthewinter, @nuwanders and @ladytanithia! I tag the most esteemed @paraparadigm, @polypolymorph, @changelingsandothernonsense, @thana-topsy, @elfinismsarts, @gilgamish, @kookaburra1701, @snippetsrus, @saltymaplesyrup, @dirty-bosmer, @orfeoarte, @archangelsunited, @inquisition-dragonborn, @tallmatcha, @rainpebble3 and YOU. Yes. If your tag is invisible, I still did tag you, so feel free to tag me back (: I'd love to see what you come up with!

Below the cut for some UNTITLED WIP stuff! This is a prompt fill for a prompt challenge I've got going with a handful of mutuals. This one will be for Para when I'm done.

More Ondolemar (and Varlais) this time. The story is fic-universe canon and occurs before A Heavy Truth, sometime early on in The World on Our Shoulders.

CW: Implied accident involving the Jarl of Markarth's pets.

Below the cut!

“Don’t touch anything, Varlais,” Ondolemar hissed. The fool had got himself chased into the ruins by the Jarl’s dogs and, of course, he had to be pulled from the rubble, so to speak. There was nothing else for it. Though, of course, Mother would have words about this situation – none of them good. The dogs were, at the moment, nowhere to be found. It was tough to say if Varlais had run through Nimhe’s chamber with them close behind on purpose. He’d come away with only a mild poisoning and a few new scars to add to his immense collection. The dogs… Well, he didn’t have to put two and two together and upset himself again.

Varlais had kept his hand on the Dwemer metal plate anyway and was doubled over between two pipes. The loud exhale of steam from a nearby vent blessedly muted the sound of his illness. Ondolemar didn’t have anything on hand to help with that, so he’d just have to suffer until it passed. He himself had only barely managed to kill the wretched spider, only narrowly escaping a similar fate. It had been hours before he’d been able to discover where Varlais had stashed himself away, and longer still to Heal him. They were thoroughly lost in the depths of Nchuand-Zel, his absolute favorite place on all of Nirn. And the Falmer – everywhere! Like vermin. As if the day couldn’t get any worse.

Varlais was looking sorrier by the second. Had they not both fallen through a rusted grate and between all this metalwork, they’d have a clue of where they’d ended up. Calcemo’s expedition team had mapped this place up through a certain point, before the Falmer attacks, the deaths and then, of course, the resulting need to seal off the inner chambers. Leave it to the nitwit to burst through locked doors. If only his magic worked reliably for other, more important tasks. There was no longer a way to tell how far down they were.

“Ondolemar, I’m going to die here,” Varlais complained. He wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. True, he was pale, the gilding almost gone from him in his misery. But it was just frostbite spider venom – and only a single bite, now healed. The pain and nausea would be a bit much, come to think of it. It’d been a while since he’d had to deal with the poison. And it had been a much smaller specimen.

“You’ll be fine,” Ondolemar said. He walked over with a Calm spell in hand. “Let go for a second.” Varlais obliged and closed his eyes, breathing as steadily as he could through flared nostrils. Ondolemar rolled his eyes. He sighed and passed the spell over the back of Varlais’s head and down over his shoulders. It wasn’t taking quite as easily, hackles up as they were at the moment. It took some doing – and more Magicka than he’d have otherwise wasted – until the spell settled into the crevices of Varlais’s mind. His shoulders relaxed; his jaw unclenched. He still looked like hell. Ondolemar almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

“We have to find – ” Varlais started, pausing to turn away and retch. He sighed and steadied himself on Ondolemar’s forearm. “We have to find a way out of here.”

“No kidding,” Ondolemar said through gritted teeth, perhaps more icy than he had originally intended. He rolled his sore shoulder where he’d landed hard on the stonework. He’d need a real healer whenever they managed to get out of this place. They both would.

Varlais dragged himself along behind Ondolemar as they moved through the crumbling stonework, littered now and again with sharp fragments from the damaged grates above their heads. Acid from the pollution of the city above had seeped into this ruin through the cracks over untold centuries and ate away at the metalwork. Pipes had broken, machines had seized up. It reflected the state of things topside, really. Apt he was caught in this place like a fly in a web. Every waking hour already felt like that, and this was no better. He frowned in dismay. At least it wasn’t cold down here. Thank Mara for small miracles.

They walked through great gates of jagged filigree, bent and warped with age, hanging precariously off hinges green with patina. The corridor opened into a wide, dimly lit area, the stench of fungus and mold wafting over from somewhere deep in the darkness. Along the way, Ondolemar had taken out a few more Falmer with Shock magic. He was no good with a bow, and Varlais was hardly in any condition to aim, let alone keep from drawing attention to themselves. This place seemed to be far flung even from the hive located in these ruins. The sound of gears echoed through the chamber, which was cut through with flowing water, contaminated by slicks of oil and the putrescent miasma of rot – likely bodies of Falmer or chaurus, or worse. There would be no point in thinking about it. He pulled the edge of his silk undershirt up from under his standard issue robes to settle it over his nose and tried to concentrate on anything else at all.

The lighting was rather odd the further they walked into the dimness. A green-blue glow emanated from what appeared to be rather large mushrooms, which seemed almost purposefully cultivated, towering and casting odd half-lit shadows across mountains of rubble as far as the eye could see. Which, admittedly, was not very far. Ondolemar’s attention shifted as Varlais stumbled behind him leaning into one such pile; the action sent a cascade of ceramic tile and other debris crashing down toward them. Without thinking twice, he yanked his friend out of the way just in time. Varlais coughed as thousands of years worth of dust choked the air.

“Do try to be less of an idiot,” Ondolemar sighed.

#MareenaWrites #WIP Whenever #WIP Wednesday #Untitled Varlais and Ondolemar Nonsense #Varlais #Linare Varlais #Ondolemar #skyrim #skyrim fic #tes #tesblr #fanficblr #writblr #writeblr #The World on Our Shoulders #Dragonborn and Far-Star Marked

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mareenavee · 9 months

Text

WIP Whenever!

Hello! I was tagged by the amazing @elfinismsarts, @archangelsunited and @ladytanithia!! Thank you friends! I am tagging the most esteemed @paraparadigm, @changelingsandothernonsense, @thana-topsy, @thequeenofthewinter, @dirty-bosmer, @viss-and-pinegar, @greyborn2, @saltymaplesyrup, @kookaburra1701, @gilgamish, @polypolymorph and @rhiannon1199!! If I didn't tag you, consider yourself tagged and tag me back!

Below the cut for small slices of three projects!

First up, a small piece of my upcoming Ondolemar fic, Recurse.

“S-sorry,” Varlais complained. He was flat on his back, staring up into the ceiling where the lamp, if that’s what it was, flared. He sat up gingerly and leaned heavily on Ondolemar’s shoulder. The bad one, of course. He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Why in Aetherius do you insist on touching anything in this Godsforsaken place? Considering everything was looted, you’d think there’d be a reason these things were still here, perfectly organized,” Ondolemar said. He checked the thing one last time. There was still nothing of note, no obvious secret, no etchings or engravings – nothing. Dwemeri magic would remain a mystery, its creators gone on the winds like ash over Morrowind – or worse. “Here. You’ve won a prize for your incompetency.” He handed the cube to Varlais. “We need to keep moving. If anything is sneaking around in here, they’d have heard that absolute racket you had no problem making.” “I said I was sorry.”

Next Up, Untitled Sequel to Little Dragon.

Teldryn looked up from the book he was reading aloud – Kolb & the Dragon – for perhaps the hundredth time this month. It amused Anisa, even though he half-wondered if she couldn’t by now read it herself. In her place where she had been sat the last he checked, muddy footprints trailed out instead. Two sets. Which meant Anisa and her mudcrab were wandering back and forth between the backyard and her room. He sighed and set the book on the arm of his chair. So much for keeping the nonsense to a minimum. “Hl’aka?” Teldryn called. There was a burbling of several languages that echoed across the house in response. Then, of course, the chitinous chittering of Cara, always throwing his two Septims in. He stepped gingerly around the mess they’d created and popped into the little room Nyenna had fashioned for her long ago. This, too, was in shambles. The mudcrab was wearing the blanket Nyenna had quilted herself like an overlarge cape as Anisa tossed her things around the room, searching for something Teldryn couldn’t discern. She muttered to Cara in Bosmeris and wandered past him, the mudcrab clattering by, nearly knocking Teldryn over. He didn’t seem concerned. The blanket, not at all secured, dragged out behind Cara, through the mess, until it fell off, covering the footprints like a poorly placed rug. Teldryn shook his head and sighed again. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. He glanced out of the side door. There was a fenced in yard with a small pond Athis had built once Cara had more than tripled in size and could no longer scuttle about in the fish tank. They were safe, making mud pies and generally being children. He caught himself. Cara was a mudcrab, not a child. Or perhaps Anisa was also a mudcrab. He grinned and started picking up after the two of them, keeping an eye as he moved through the house following the path of destruction.

*Chara is Gaelic Bosmeris for "Friend" and also Anisa's mudcrab's name lol.

And last up, a piece of Chapter 29 of The World on Our Shoulders.

Teldryn nodded. He’d noticed as much. “Watch out for him and send for me if it ends up anything like last time, when Ildari…well, you remember.” “I remember,” Talvas said, voice drifting off as he grimaced. Teldryn took the tea and made to turn around, but Talvas cleared his throat. “Remind me…why do we still put up with all of this?” Teldryn wasn’t sure if he’d said it to himself or if it was a valid question. Or more like a bout of existential dread. “Because we know how bad it can be if we don’t stay.” He didn’t mean to sound ominous, but it was true. Talvas had no idea the depth of exactly what Teldryn was implying. He was barely a decade older than Nyenna. He’d been so young when Ildari had…passed. He’d not seen the worst of that, either. Talvas paused. “It’s not really our responsibility, though, is it?” Teldryn thought back to something Varona had said, right before the heart stone experiment. “That man is going to kill himself one day, and take the rest of us with him.” Even she was too young to know how true the statement was. That pursuit of power untempered by other purpose was perhaps more dangerous than anything else. But he was better than that. Teldryn knew it. He’d seen the difference. “It doesn’t have to be in order for something to be worth doing. Plus, you’re Telvanni. There really isn’t a better teacher if you intend to make a name for yourself,” Teldryn said, partially deflecting. He warmed Neloth’s tea again with a weak Flames spell. Talvas sighed. “If there’s anything left of me to make a name of,” he said, voice wistful.

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