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olet-lucernam · 2 days

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A Hollow Promise [27] chapter vi, part iv

{_[on AO3]_}

main tags : loki x original character, post-avengers 2012, canon divergence - post-thor: the dark world, canon-typical violence, mentions of torture

summary: In the aftermath of the Battle of New York, the Avengers need a few days to build a transport device for the Tesseract. With the Helicarrier damaged and surveillance offline, SHIELD sends an asset to guard Loki in the interim: a young woman who sees the truth in all things, and cannot lie.

Even long presumed dead, her memories lost to her, Loki would know her anywhere.

And this changes things.

Some things last beyond infinity. And the universe is in love with chaos.

(Loki was never looking for redemption. It came as an unexpected side-effect.)

chapter summary : astrid gathers her allies, and draws the attention of her enemies. loki pays a heavy price for a victory.

recommended listening : what you waiting for?, gwen stefani

tag list: @femmealec @mischief2sarawr

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54 weeks and 1 day out

“Sir. We have movement.”

Tony felt the lines of his spine and shoulder blades pull straight, almost reflexively, swivelling into motion at his holographic worktable like a well-oiled gear.

He was going on a self-imposed work diet- an attempt to rebalance, after living in his work for the past few months, building and breaking and remaking in an endless beta-testing phase, a Sisyphean attempt to patch every vulnerability he could imagine- but it had been pushed back, under the circumstances, and he had rationed out enough time for him to deal with the situation, before starting the full detox.

“Where are we, J?” He asked, with a casual upwards flick above the table.

The gesture summoned a hologram above the desk: an architectural scale model of the Tower, crafted in vitrified blue light.

“There is some unusual activity near the roof.”

The area in question turned orange on the three-dimensional map, zooming in for an exploded view of the topmost two-dozen floors.

Tony had remodelled the top of the Tower, after the Battle of New York. Damage had given him the excuse, and the team had provided the reason. Repaired and restructured, several stories added to its height, the broad, smooth curves and open layout modelled after his cliffside home in Malibu were scrapped, the exterior cleaner and sharper- streamlined, from the slanted crown of its roof, through the convex glass-faced layers of the penthouse floors, to the landing pad extending out into the open air.

Locals had taken to calling it Avengers Tower. None of the roster aside from Tony had taken up residence yet, but they all agreed that it was a good base, and Tony kept the personal suites ready for whenever they might need to drop in.

The luminescent A badge shimmered on the side of the building, level with the landing pad. Just below it- within the three floors dedicated to Tony’s private laboratories, workshops, storage, and fabrication facilities- a red diamond marked his current location.

“Surveillance feeds and motion sensor detectors are offline,” JARVIS announced, highlighting the locations in a chain, “as are the door sensors.”

Tony visually tracked the path that it created.

It led from the roof access, into the emergency stairwell, before terminating at the door into Thor’s suite: no more and no less than would be needed to gain access to the building.

It was more than twenty floors above him- a distance that would take several minutes to traverse. He had time.

“You locked out, buddy?” Tony asked quietly, summoning his touch keyboard with a sweep of his palm. “Or are they trying to be subtle?”

“Neither, sir. As with the first occurrence, this appears to be a mechanical failure, not a cyber-attack.”

His gaze narrowed briefly, jaw moving.

Somehow, that was both more and less plausible than JARVIS being hacked.

“Shall I prepare to go into lockdown protocol, sir?” JARVIS proposed. “It should be possible to isolate intruders to one of the penthouse floors, once they are inside.”

Tony contemplated the offer for only a heartbeat.

“No. Clear the way down for her, J,” he decided breezily. “Let’s hear what she has to say.”

There was a brief, audibly judgemental pause in the response time.

“As you wish, sir.” Tony could hear the mild disapproval and concern behind his AI’s cool, crisp tones. “Shall I at least stand by with security protocols?”

“Doubt we’ll be needing them, but- feels like this one’s got a few fireworks up her sleeve.” He conceded blithely, pre-empting the reproach about putting himself at unjustifiable risk. “Alright. Safety off, but finger off the trigger.”

Tony turned in his chair, scanning the room. The workshop was cluttered with a rich confusion of half-finished projects, both metal and digital, strewn across screens and surfaces between discarded coffee cups and various tools.

“And clear the decks, J. Window Dressing Protocol.”

At the command, the screens cleared.

Detailed blueprints and test data were replaced with generic schematics and randomised code, like cellophane pasted on a device fresh out of the box. They reflected in the wall of glass that faced the length of the room- diluted against the dark hallway beyond.

With a gentle swipe, Tony dismissed the render of the Tower.

Rising to his feet, he slid the rolling chair aside, summoned a program and began typing, looking to all the world like the very image of productivity and genius at work.

He wasn’t kept waiting for long.

A gentle rap of knuckles sounded on the reinforced, shatter-proof glass.

Tony’s head snapped up.

The girl whose real name definitely wasn’t Alethia waited just outside, painted like day in the light spilling from the workshop.

She was dressed for the winter night, a New York romance in a soft black sweater and jeans the colour of dried roses, champagne hair pinned in in a braided coil, emphasising a pretty set of cheekbones and long eyelashes. Backs of her knuckles still raised to the glass, snow-dusted and pleasantly windswept, she tipped chin down slightly in greeting.

She looked better, Tony observed. Her skin was clearer, her eyes brighter, expression smoother- less tension-soured, less angry, and more like the person that she had sounded like, aboard the Helicarrier.

Without looking, he tapped a command into the control panel.

The electronic lock switched open with a heavy snap.

Alethia turned the handle, stepping inside, flawless and measured.

“Dr Stark.”

There was a low thrum in her voice, as though cautiously pleased to see him.

“Not-agent.”

Tony’s reply was blandly jovial. Shunting the lines of code aside, he stepped away from the workbench, one hand tucked into his pocket. He had remained outfitted in dark sweats and a gym shirt, standard gear for the workshop, but his posture was that of when he was in a three-piece suit and a boardroom- eyes fixed on her face, chin tilted up slightly, sizing her up with an air of casual challenge.

To her credit, Alethia remained unaffectedly at ease.

It had reminded him a little of Pepper- but not by much.

Virginia Potts was like a ceramic knife. There was a deliberate poise to her, born of a consciousness of her disadvantages in the industry, a refusal to be anything less than a worthy player of the game; she was everything prim and correct and refusing to be intimidated, the result of thousands of observations and lessons learned and choices made, constructed into a statuesque, pleasantly intimidating facade.

Alethia reminded him far more of someone else.

Tony had realised it when she was leaning over the Tesseract transport device, her voice focused and softly mirthful.

Relax. I have steady hands.

For a moment, he had been hurled back in time. He had tasted metal, and dust, lung tissue still burning from the water with each breath, the heat of the forge at his back and the dim cold of the caves at his front, the weight of a car battery slung over his shoulder, and a pair of lean hands- Yinsen, sure and calm and steady, mild-mannered yet ruthlessly insightful, guarded and tired and yet earnest- pouring molten palladium into its cast.

Relax, he had chided Tony gently, tilting the long handles of the tongs, inclining the lip of the crucible over the mould. I have steady hands. Why do you think you are alive, ah?

After removing it from his chest for the second time, Tony had quietly returned the first miniaturised arc reactor to the display mount that Pepper had commissioned, sealing it back in glass.

It was still powered by that delicate ring of palladium, poured by steady hands under a mountain in Afghanistan.

With a steady sweep of her lashes, Alethia looked past Tony’s shoulder, at the screen display where he had been typing.

Her head tilted.

“Was there any particular reason that you were translating the lyrics of ABBA’s Dancing Queen into base64?”

Huh. Well.

Tony had more or less expected that she would see straight through the chains of randomised letters and numbers, like an awl punching through leather, but- the casual quickness was a little disorientating. It was like expecting a card trick, and getting shoved into a swimming pool instead.

“Everybody needs a hobby,” he said, bald-faced and shameless.

“Mm.” Hazel eyes flicked to his, warm as vanilla and laughter. “I’ve heard worse.”

They trailed into silence.

“Ran a trace, on the phone number you left,” Tony admitted boldly. “Before I called.”

Alethia smiled slightly.

“Ah. Were you disappointed?”

“I think I’d be disappointed if it was that easy.” Tony decided, circling the desks, feigning distraction. Alethia was missing a coat that would make sense for the cold. Her nails were trimmed neat, without polish. The only traces of makeup were a swipe of soft black kohl at the corners of her eyes and the sheen of lip balm. Practical, yet impractical. “Complete no sell, though. Impressive. That SHIELD tech?”

The corner of her mouth pulled up further.

“No.”

“You still with them?”

“If I ever was, I’m not now.”

“So you’re a free agent?”

“Free not-agent.”

“How long?”

“Is this an interrogation?”

“I mean, I’d call it due diligence, but I’ve got a pair of cuffs somewhere, if it’d make you more comfortable.”

Alethia’s smile bloomed into a brilliant grin.

“Didn’t think you’d be into that, Dr Stark.”

She sobered slightly, clear as glass.

“Ask me what you want to know. I wouldn’t have left a way for you to contact me, if I wasn’t willing to talk.”

Tony held her gaze for a long moment.

He tapped at the keypad.

Several pages opened across the screens.

Pages of instructions, formulas, tables, calculations, and skeletal molecular structures illuminated the digital glass.

Alethia kept her gaze on Tony.

“What is this?” Tony asked, quiet and direct.

She breathed a slow exhale, hip cocking.

“The formulas, chemical synthesis processes, and medical procedures for stabilising the biological effects of the experimental serum known as Extremis,” she announced clinically, “when introduced to the human body intravenously, subcutaneously, or intramuscularly.” Alethia paused, pointedly. “I did include an abstract.”

“And you broke into my building to leave it here.”

“I apologise for the necessity.” Alethia replied evenly. “It was safer, than a courier.”

“You couldn’t think of another way?”

She arched an eyebrow.

“So- a package, delivered to this building, or a file sent to the general inquires inbox for Stark Industries, addressed directly to you, from an unknown sender- wouldn’t have been lost in the system?”

Despite the lingering irritation, he could admit that she had a point.

And at least she hadn’t tried to hack JARVIS, or threatened to taser him, or ripped the arc reactor out of his chest, or thrown him through a window.

All in all, this break-in was probably in his top three.

Tony flicked his hands into a shrug, keeping his expression blank and blithe.

“Alright. Let’s say I buy that.” He did buy it, but she didn’t need to know that yet. “You wanna tell me what this really is?”

He saw the subtle shift in her eyes, becoming a little shrewder, a touch sharper- and a little pleased.

She pulled up one shoulder.

“A gift? Or a bribe, perhaps. Gratitude. Diplomacy. A resumé.”

“What, you’re in the market for a job?”

The quip was as pithy as he intended, but in the split second that followed- huh.

Actually.

That wasn’t a terrible idea.

Tony acknowledged that he needed to step back from Iron Man- at least until he could reorganise his head and redraw the lines so that it wasn’t the all-consuming furnace of fear and duty and penance and freedom-safety that it had become- but the work wouldn’t wait. The planet was on a deadline, and Tony had more resources than most to pull the necessary defences together. Having good people on board, who could keep his projects ticking over while he reorientated, was essential.

And Alethia knew. She had recognised the monsters lurking in the dark between the stars, and had looked for someone to warn when she decided that Fury couldn’t be trusted to listen.

And then there was the truth in all things, and cannot lie aspect. That was a hell of an ace up Earth’s collective sleeve- if, if, if-

“I don’t need a job, Dr Stark. What I need is an ally.” Alethia spoke as clear and calm as daybreak upon the mountains. “We both do. As many as we can get.”

Tony swallowed, carefully.

He turned his head to look at the screens, grappling down the swoop of intermingled terror and relief.

“So this is your pitch.”

“I was working on other areas, but- I saw the news,” Alethia said mildly. “The bombings. Malibu.”

She hesitated.

“I was worried.”

Tony flicked a slightly surprised glance back at her.

Alethia’s gaze was on the screens, inscrutable.

There was a note of quiet sincerity in her voice that rattled something within him, like marbles in a jar.

“Well.” Tony began, turning back towards the illuminated text. “I’ve come back from the dead before.”

“Even so.” She demurred. “You were- you were kind to me. I didn’t forget that. So I was glad to find that you were alright. Then I found out about AIM, and Extremis, and I- thought you could use the assistance.”

Tony didn’t know what to say.

He still couldn’t decide, even after a moment to reboot.

Instead, he deflected.

“I knew you weren’t an engineer.”

“Hm?”

Tony flicked a practiced, flippant gesture at the screens- a quick upturn of his palm, fingers loosely curled- turning away.

“Back then. The instructions you provided for the Tesseract device- I mean, we talked about it at the time. Hot garbage, right? Intentional hot garbage, but still. There was a solid working understanding of the physics and the mechanics, but it wasn’t written by someone au fait with the field. There are things that you only learn if you’ve studied it, read the books, learned how to speak the language. It’s all in the common practice- the jargon, the shorthand. That was missing, from your papers. There were a few pieces, but not enough. You’re not an engineer.”

Tony turned to face her, expression a flat, inscrutable mask.

“You are a doctor, though.”

Alethia didn’t flinch.

He would expect nothing less, from someone who had kept secrets from Nicholas Fury and was still walking around, doing as she pleased.

“This,” Tony raised a finger to his shoulder-line, indicating the screens behind him. “Is perfect. Flawless. You could send this for peer review and get it published in The Lancet.”

A chink appeared in Alethia’s expression- something that she had allowed to break through, intense as sunlight striking on a shard of glass.

Pride.

It was earned. As far as Tony could tell, she had whipped up the antiserum formula within a matter of days; any sane research institute or private company on the planet, including the medical subsidiaries of Stark Industries, would be putting a bounty on her corporate headhunt if they knew.

Blasé as he could afford to be with money, however, Tony rarely made a purchase without knowing the price.

“So. What are you?” He paced back towards her, gathering a slow momentum like the wind of a crank, closing in. “Biochem? Cellular biology? Genetics? What’s your speciality?”

Alethia smiled.

“Neurosurgery.”

Tony’s brow twitched at the admission, taken aback.

He wasn’t actually expecting a straight answer. He wasn’t expecting that answer.

And he wasn’t expecting its wistfulness.

“You’re a brain surgeon?”

She let out a short laugh.

“I should probably introduce myself.” An incandescent, media-ready smile lit up her features, relaxed and confident. “Dr Astrid North, MD.”

Tony stilled.

That was her name, he could tell. Not an alias.

Tony quickly calculated the risk, that she was taking.

“Date of birth recorded as the twenty-ninth of February, 1988,” she continued, as though this time she was actually reciting and submitting her résumé for consideration. “Graduated from Columbia in the class of ’03, summa cum laude, completed my neurosurgical residency in 2010. I also worked under the surnames Stephenson and Stephensdottir- spelt like the doctorate, not like the super-soldier. There should be records of me available here in New York, as well as the UK, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Singapore, and Brazil.”

Tony could feel the staccato of his heart, stuttering behind the arc reactor, a thrum of anticipation.

“Hm. SHIELD know any of this?”

Alethia’s- Astrid’s- lip curled with a hint of contempt.

“No.”

“Then why are you telling me?”

She lifted her shoulder. “I thought you’d want an insurance policy.”

“And what have I done to earn that?”

“You listened.”

“I passed the test,” Tony inferred. “That’s why you’re here?”

“I’m here because I would like to trust you,” Astrid said coolly, “and because I think there’s a more than fair probability that I can. And- because I would like you to trust me. Even if only enough to work together.”

Tony observed her for a few dragging seconds.

“What’s your endgame?” He challenged. “You told me back then that you’re not an altruist.”

“Oh, I’m not.”

“Then why? What’s in it for you?”

Her brow tensed slightly.

“Enlightened self-interest? Or, is I don’t want the planet I currently live on to be destroyed insufficient for you?”

“Eh, plenty of people don’t find it compelling. Look at climate change.”

Astrid’s lips parted to reply- before she grimaced, glancing aside in admission.

“Alright, fair point.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But maybe I’m just more circumspect.”

“Or you have another reason.”

She lifted her eyes to the ceiling with a slow blink.

“You are being very obstinate about this.”

“You know, I don’t actually care, what your actual reason is,” Tony blurted out, sharp and caustic as battery acid, a sudden flare of anger and impatience shoving him forwards, “because you’re right. We need allies. Including each other. So I’m willing to work with your reason why. But only if I know what it is.”

The moment that Tony stopped speaking, he became aware of how Astrid was looking at him.

Tony felt like he was being taken apart, disassembled, the cover plate pulled off to check the hardware.

Truth in all things.

She hummed, soft in the back of her throat. It was the kind that he could feel in his sternum, even with most of it carved away for the arc reactor.

“Alright,” she said softly. “Fair’s fair.”

She straightened, looking away.

“There is- someone.” She said carefully. “Someone that I love.”

Tony blinked.

It was like the twist of a kaleidoscope, patterns reforming, in four simple words.

“And the one responsible for- that-” Astrid snapped a finger heavenwards, her entire being smouldering with a leashed, soul-deep hatred, “took them, at their most vulnerable. Captured them. Tortured them. For months. Years. Twisted their memories, tainted their emotions, and manipulated their pain until they no longer knew where they ended, and the sceptre began. They barely kept enough of themselves to ruin it all, and break free of the control.”

Tony felt a muscle in his bicep and jaw twitch, flicking an appraising, calculating look across her.

Interesting.

“The one that I love will be hunted as a traitor. Or, as a failure- I don’t think it matters, and I don’t care. It all has the same end. What matters is that the one I love will never be safe, until and unless that is no longer a threat.”

Astrid dropped her hand, meeting his eyes addressing him with a tone of complete, terrifying certainty.

“I have decided that it is not going to be a threat.”

The floor of Tony’s stomach dropped out, the room seeming to tilt.

He was suddenly struck with a strange thought- like some survival instinct coded into his evolutionary ancestry, tapping at his nerve endings, lingering like a chill in the vertebrae of his neck. It was the feeling that he was looking at something ancient, and angered- half-mad and unhinged and doing an admirable job of containing itself to its human skin.

He realised, in a split second, that Astrid was probably something not entirely human.

And she was baring her teeth at whatever was threatening to swallow Earth whole.

Fuck it. He could work with this.

“All of the sake of love?” Tony asked.

He took pride in the fact that his cadence was even-keeled, despite the stagger of his pulse.

A humourless, self-deprecating smile wrung through her features.

“You can laugh,” Astrid told him, rueful and without rancour. “I know how I must sound.”

Tony forced himself to shrug, nonchalantly. “I’ve heard worse.”

And he had. Tony had been worse. He had cut deals with worse, because he was a realist, and anyone pursuing utopia had to be willing to drag themselves through purgatory first.

After a long moment, Tony inhaled sharply, pulling his shoulders back.

“Okay,” he said powerfully. “If this is a bluff? I’m calling it. Cards on the table.”

A spark ignited behind Astrid’s eyes, like a struck match.

“Pepper’s been injected with Extremis,” he continued brusquely, “I need to get her stable, along with any other test subjects that AIM decided to turn into literal walking time bombs. That’s why you gave me these papers, right? You thought I could use it, and I can. So let’s get to it. You in?”

Astrid looked startled- before her entire demeanour snapped into a honed, clinical focus.

“Wh- are you monitoring cortisol levels? Internal temperature, heartrate, WBC-?”

“Per doctor’s orders.” Tony flicked his head towards the reams of detailed medical instructions, listed out on the glass. “Followed your procedures to the letter. We’re tracking down anyone else who might have taken part in clinical trials, but it looks like there were a limited number, at least.”

Astrid tugged up her sleeves with an efficient pinch of fabric, pulling the soft knit clear of her wrists and forearms. “How many potential patients?”

“Caps out at a dozen, maybe.”

“The antiserum? You’ve started synthesising it?”

“As we speak, lab’s running on auto.”

“How much?”

“About two hundred and fifty milligrams, in the first batch.”

“Not enough. Triple it. And quintuple it for the others, per patient. I don’t want to be caught out with less than we need. Have you started on the round of pre-antiserum IV fluids?”

“About three hours ago.”

“And no adverse effects, contraindications?”

“Nada. Smooth sailing, all in line with where you said we should be by now.”

“Good, but keep Miss Potts closely monitored. And we’ll still need to test the antiserum on a live tissue sample, if possible.”

“I’ll get on it.”

Tony swiped two fingers down through the air, dismissing the pages on the screens, the room dimming slightly as they slid away.

“If this works,” he said, his enunciation crisp, “we can talk.” In one fluid motion, Tony plucked a StarkPad from amongst the chaos of the workbenches, flipping it in his grip to hold it, outstretched, within her reach. “Sound good, doctor?”

Astrid smiled, light and wild, and Tony felt his decision settle in his chest with a feeling of rightness.

This could work.

She took the tablet.

“Lead the way, doctor.”

Astrid made an addition to her list.

Flour.

50 weeks and 3 days out

Brunnhilde would be the first to admit that she was not made for subterfuge.

She was a woman of brash, blunt action, more inclined to punch her way straight through her problems that to deconstruct them. As such, her vocation suited her. The Valkyrie were the vanguard, the cavalry, the elite corps, revered shieldmaidens who cleared the field with a swift, graceful brutality that was immortalised in legend and song and carving.

They had been thralls, once. Slaves.

Most of Asgard had forgotten that.

As war raged across the Nine, they had been appropriated by the throne- a form of tax levy, on the wealthy of Asgard- and dispatched to the battlefield in the wake of Asgard’s armies, to collect corpses from the slurry. Choosers of the slain, the golden-plated Einherjar snickered into their cups, leering over the rims.

Then there was a shortage of disposable warm bodies. It had seen weapons pressed into their hands, shoved to the front lines to fill out the ranks.

Against all expectation, the Valkyrie had fought. The fought, and lived, and bought victory to Asgard.

In recognition of their deeds, Bor had purchased their freedom. The Valkyrie became the pride of Asgard, a symbol of its might, arrayed in battle armour of bright, sun-catching pearl-white and star-silver.

Their origins were probably why the Valkyrie could be found working, even in peacetime- conducting funerary rites, serving at great state occasions, maintaining Folkvang- while the Einherjar regressed into nothing more than decorative doorstops scattered throughout Gladsheim.

Brunnhilde had once remarked as such to Loki. Months later, he had presented her with a gilded doorstop for her nameday, crafted into the shape of an Einherjar in full regalia.

It had sent Brunnhilde into a fit of delighted, undignified cackles.

I’m calling him Sigurd, she declared with a feral grin.

Ah, he’s not going to last a week, Loki had commented, clicking his tongue with a convincing veneer of faux-pity.

Even now, few if any of Brunnhilde’s sisters were of noble blood or wealthy backgrounds. Most of them came from labouring families, apprenticed in a trade before they turned old enough to apply to the corps, and they bought their skills to Folkvang. The Valkyrie’s halls, sheltered in a chilled, fertile basin in the mountains, was almost entirely self-sufficient thanks to their collective knowledge. They raised fields of wheat and flax, milled their own flour and spun their own linen, wove and baked and built, felled timber and hunted and fished, tanned leather and cured meat, cut stone and dug wells, even kept bees and pressed oil and fermented wine and made candles.

And then there was the lace.

A few girls who knew how to weave had taken it up, transforming thread into pretty swatches of aerated cloth. They had begun teaching the craft to a few others, when they showed interest. Then the pastime became an additional source of income, to supplement the stipend provided by the crown.

And within a few centuries, Valkyrie lace was considered amongst the most exquisite craftsmanship in all the Nine. A single spool of inch-wide trim commanded a small fortune. When a Valkyrie was wed, it was customary for her sisters to spend the year and a day between engagement and marriage- or longer, if they saw the union coming- making as many yards of lace as they could manage, as her dowry.

Brunnhilde loved her sisters, admired their work, and hated lacemaking with a virulence that she usually reserved for bilgesnipe and strutting lordlings who thought that bedding a Valkyrie was a notch in their gilded belt.

Fortunately, she also had absolutely no talent for it. The others had quickly banished her from their tatting pillows and needles and bobbins, gently shoving her off towards work that actually made sense to her.

And Brunnhilde was content to have nothing to do with it. She honestly couldn’t understand what the others envisioned in the countless threads, or why crossing one here or knotting another there would somehow create a magnificently intricate motif several thousand more motions later, even if she was capable of appreciating the result.

In that sense, subterfuge reminded her of lacework.

She couldn’t see all of the threads, where they were leading, or how they locked together into a single bolt of woven fibre and air- but Loki so clearly knew exactly how each and every loop and twist and knot would build outwards, and took quiet satisfaction in seeing each one tighten into place, like a miniature noose.

There was an aching patience to it, each miniscule snag changing the fall of the delicate mesh, and Brunnhilde was often caught by the impulse to just hack her way through it.

She didn’t.

Instead, she did exactly as he asked.

Asgard underestimates him, a memory whispered- that of a warm voice, accompanied by a smile that darkened the eyes above it into amber. Or thinks it sees him, or thinks it knows what it’s looking at. A trick of the light. A shadow on glass. It is a mistake, you know.

The darkened eyes had begun to glow, instead, when they saw that Brunnhilde was paying attention.

I think he might be the most real person that I have ever met.

“I was surprised,” Loki admitted, on a low, distracted hum, “that you didn’t ask.”

The dungeons were quiet, at least in the wing where Loki was being held. It felt like an archive, a place for lost and forgotten things to be kept, shelved and stored out of sight until they were needed- the air settled as silt on the bottom of a riverbed, barely stirring with the sparse rounds of the guards.

Brunnhilde had counted eleven weaknesses that she could exploit, if it came to it.

She would have counted three dozen more in a fraction of the time.

She felt her heart clench strangely. It was the feeling of old scar tissue, untouched for so long, flexing and moving once more.

She and Loki were seated at the front of his cell, arranged parallel against the golden barrier on either side. Swathed in worn, nondescript suedes, Brunnhilde slouched on the stone steps, bare shoulder shoved against the forcefield; the air felt thicker the closer she came to the curtain of spellwork, like magnetic resistance, but she found herself leaning her weight into it, defiant and testing, like pressing her thumb down on a new bruise.

On the other side, Loki was sorting through several sheaves of handwritten notes, stacks surrounding him like panes in a half-rose window. His black hair was braided back at his crown, dressed in soft leathers and deep green linens and lightweight boots, finely made with immaculate quality, but far simpler than would be expected of an Asgardian prince- at least outside of the privacy of the residential wings of the palace.

Brunnhilde knew that he could have dressed himself in illusions, if he wished.

The choice not to was- interesting. In a way that she refused to think about.

There were a lot of things she refused to think about, with regards to Loki.

Not when it made her feel all those mollusc-soft sentiments that she had decided to kill years ago, for her own survival, after the gold plating of Asgard had begun to flake in her eyes.

In that, at least, she knew they were both in good company.

“I asked about this,” Brunnhilde countered his comment, tapping a nail against the arm ring that sat flush against the curve of her bicep. It was a deceptively simple band of brass, seeming to blend in against her, unremarkable regardless of lighting. Between it, and Loki’s magic, they were shielded from the Gatekeeper’s watch- Loki as a glaring lacuna in the script, a blank space, and Brunnhilde as though from behind a fine, misting rain, the specifics blurred out of focus.

Loki rolled his eyes, in that prissy, superior manner that left Brunnhilde more amused than irritated, these days.

“Yes, about whether it would turn your skin orange or set you spitting toads, of all things.”

“It was a valid concern, knowing you.”

“Hm.” There was a slight upturn at the corner of Loki’s mouth- the closest thing to agreement that she would probably wrest out of him.

Brunnhilde slipped loose a smirk.

“I didn’t bother asking,” she admitted, in a crisp-consonant drawl, “because I knew that I probably wouldn’t understand it anyway. It would be like asking to read a contract before I sign, when I don’t know the language it’s written in.”

Loki’s eyes sliced up from the papers, without lifting his head, fixing her with a serpentine gaze.

“You do yourself a disservice, Brunn.”

Brunnhilde paused, a little surprised by his quiet vehemence.

She shrugged it away.

“This is just not something I’m suited for. Politics and subterfuge and spywork. Moving the pieces by moving entirely different ones, lightyears away. It’s like my sisters, and their lacework,” she admitted blithely. “I understand the theory. But even if you had told me where this was going, I wouldn’t know enough to tell if you were lying.”

But.

Brunnhilde wasn’t entirely ignorant to Loki’s plans. She had made certain of it.

She had heard the gossip, on dozens of planets across the Nine. The arm ring not only shielded her from Heimdall’s sight, but also from the perils of using the secret passageways that were specked across Asgard- allowing her to move freely between worlds, at Loki’s direction.

Steadily, disparate pieces and seemingly unconnected incidents were coalescing, into a clear picture.

Muspelheim had struck an unexpected trade deal with Ria. When the revival of the disused trade route had attracted Marauders and Ravagers, a new defence coalition had formed, stationed at crucial waypoints to prevent piracy and smuggling.

The Crown Prince of Vanaheim had headed a diplomatic envoy to Alfheim. By the time he had arrived, Niflheim’s queen just so happened to be also be visiting her fellow monarch. The triumvirate meeting occurred without a single Asgardian dignitary present.

A few weeks later, the realm of the light elves had also hosted several representatives of dwarven guilds.

The Nova-Kree War was turning cold. The Nine had become neutral ground. The Nova Corps had offered aid to those on the outskirts and most affected by raids, and had sent engineers to retrofit their older, short-haul vessels with swifter engines and stronger defences. The Kree were in tentative talks with Nidarvellir, to have the dwarves invest in maintaining local jump points, in exchange for Kree arms to protect their merchant fleets.

The realms were moving, like the interlocking turn of dials and gears. And for the first time in millennia, Asgard was excluded from its workings.

And it was Loki’s doing.

At his instruction, Brunnhilde had bribed and baited Ravagers to harass Nidarvellir trade routes. She had placed bets at various ports, on the likelihood of a Kree civil war. She had sold information on Knowhere, changed figures on shipping manifestos, stirred up bar fights and complained about the export tax on goods out of Ria, destroyed shipments and switched documents and delayed correspondence, paid off and blackmailed and persuaded civil servants and stewards and aides into suggesting or omitting a minor detail from a report, or handing a project to a different department.

Brunnhilde was the stage hand in a great, orchestrated play. The Nine were being gently herded into a strengthening current- one that was looking outwards, into a galaxy where the balance of power was shifting.

It was a coup.

And Loki hadn’t even left his cell.

Brunnhilde refused to be impressed.

After a moment, she realised that Loki was looking at her with a glinting amusement.

It wasn’t the kind that was intended to mock, but rather the prelude to bringing her in on the joke.

“Of course you can’t see where this is going, Brunn,” he said softly. “You’re the needle.”

A memory clicked into place, flickering in like guttering lamplight.

There was a bolster pillow in her lap, a lace pad template pinned atop it, embroidery needle gripped uncertain and rigid between her forefinger and thumb. The chatter and bickering and teasing of her sisters was a cloud of ambient sound that seemed to glow like nimbus, in the apple-golden autumn afternoon.

A warm shoulder brushed near her own.

Gently, Brunn! A voice laughed. Treat your needle with respect. Relax your hand. The needle can feel where it needs to go- you’re just guiding it.

This is a terrible idea, Brunnhilde had muttered. We all remember what happened when Svanhit tried to teach me.

Stay away from my bobbins, Brunn! Came a sharp call from across the hall, to a few snickers. Olrun, Hervor, keep her away!

Brunnhilde had made to wave a vulgar gesture at her, and almost stabbed herself with the needle.

Needlepoint lace is more straightforward, a clear voice interjected. Brunnhilde had looked over to her- the glint of her needle moving in brisk freehand stitches, looping and tightening, all deft skill and focus, one moving part, one thread. You don’t have to keep track of seventy different bobbins, and the order you need to cross or twist them in.

Your prince prefers bobbin lace, doesn’t he? Brunnhilde asked, smirkingly.

Brunnhilde received a gentle, reproachful elbow to the ribs.

A flush, through golden skin, head dipping and pearl-white hair slipping forwards.

Prince Loki has a mind for it, she replied, deliberately and damningly neutral. The dance of it, the complexity- it suits him.

Well, what do you prefer?

She had paused, head cocked.

I like both, I suppose, she hedged. Bobbin lace is essentially weaving- looping the strands together, pulling them into place against each other. It tends to be- lighter, more of a fabric with motifs created inside of it. Layers of opacity. Needle lace is often studier. Like- scaffolding. The pattern is all that there is. And the needle has to work back and back and back to bring it into existence, to make sure it holds in place, knotting back where it has already been.

Her eyes sharpened.

No- I think I prefer bobbin lace. Needle lace is- putting a great deal of trust on just one thing.

Brunnhilde blinked back into the present.

Oh.

Loki had learned some lacemaking. He would have likely received that same explanation, heard the same comparison.

After a moment, she scowled, looking away.

“I still hate lacemaking.”

Loki laughed.

Worlds away, Astrid made a cautious addition to her list, framed in brackets.

(Lace).

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soov-archived · 1 year

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WR⩇NG R⩇⩇M! 12. #ASTRiD

warnings ⠀ cursing, crappy layout AGAIN.

MAY 17TH, 2022

PREV M.LiST NEXT

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⠀ ⠀ ⠀ yang jungwon, the leader of enhypen, keeps using his senior’s dance room to practice even after his manager calls him out. what is he going to do when the said senior finds out that he's not only doing it on purpose, but also trying to win her heart?

⠀ ⠀ pairing idol!yjw & f!idol!reader

⠀ ⠀ © soov, 2O22.

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REi'S N⩇TES ⠀ FAMM the only songs in the tracklist that aren't made up by me are %% (by apink), surf + be in love (itzy), and in & out (red velvet)!! all the credits go to the mentioned groups, make sure to stream these songs!!

TAGLiST 1 ( CLOSED! ) @fadedluvv @hiqhkey @wony-graps @4hysgf @mfbookishbitch-vhae @raimbows4u @ahnneyong @drunkjazed @ssseob @777wonz @kange3939 @byhsng @i-yeseo @riverkee @luvdokja @kittyeji @she-is-dreaming @luveuly @zeraaax @eunbiland @ineedcoffeeandtherapy @ch0ijiung @mxristars @itznotshy @jaxavance @mitsukifilms @4vonly @jovibaes @hykai @sunoik @kkalechip @boowoowho @jeongintwt @chukiez

TAGLiST 2 ( ꗃ ) @ilovewonyo @shinsou-rii @slayciie @luvkait @mylobae @dimplewonie @vatterie @flower-lise @yenqa @wh0reforscoupsandsunghoon @dreamenvi @soobsdior @wonhrs @rrvvby @ineedaherosavemeenow @cloudcutter @ilvsoup @lil-iva send an ask or fill this form to be added!

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jackiemeandthispod · 8 months

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new episode is up! 2.06 "Squirt and Flirt" (Chapters 9&10)

This episode the ladies discuss pressing and relevant concerns, such as their beer preferences and changes to the Tumblr desktop layout; Astrid decides that dating a gay man doesn't seem all that bad; and Lucy asks the real questions - like does Ryan Ross actually know what a muffin is?

Links from Todays Ep →

Astrid's Montessori Video

Chelsea Hotel Private Appartments

Content Warnings Below the Cut ...

Brief discussion of sexual violence at the beginning of the episode, mention of eating disorders at the 00:19 mark, and mock retching sounds at 1:10.

#podcast about a podcast #throam

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kreinvulon · 3 months

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For the ask game, I'll take a 3 and 19 for Vyn! 👀

sure! i accidentally wrote a lot. i’ll put it under the cut, so i don’t clog anyone’s feed.

3. “what are their religious affiliations, and how does their worship affect their day-to-day life?”

— being an assassin of the dark brotherhood, it’s obvious that orivyn holds some form of reverence for sithis and the night mother. the dunmer hold beliefs that sithis’s birth was the start of creation anyways, and thus, vyn has a lot of respect for the obscure entity. his relationship with the night mother is— of course— more intimate. regardless, he still holds respect for other deities. most.

in terms of worship, i believe that his worship is displayed through his interactions with the world: with each contract killed, he refuses to tamper with the body ( unless necessary for a series of contracts i.e. leading to the emperor’s ) in a belief he will desecrate it. he does this with all other corpses unless they have posed some threat to him.

if possible, he may leave a deathbell or nightshade flower beside the corpse, like an offering to the soul as it travels to the void. he, also, collects bones or skulls. vyn holds the same beliefs about death as gabriella, where the brotherhood “plays some part in a being's inevitable end”. doom’s herald, as she says, honour too.

as for the night mother, he frequently leaves offerings beside her coffin whenever he can— flowers like the aforementioned, bones, teeth, skulls. orivyn greets her when he can, and heeds her words. there hasn’t been a time where he’s disrespected her (cough astrid).

fun bonus fact: his worship of the night mother feels more sincere than anything else. as youth, vyn was encouraged to pray to azura, who his mother revered. yet, he slowly felt more “abandoned” over time by the prince. he silently ceased his prayer in belief no deity would “save him” from his sorrow.

19. “how are they with money? do they hoard, or do they spend until their pockets are empty and they have to find work again? have they saved for any houses?”

— i’d say orivyn’s fine with money, i don’t think he spends until his pockets are empty. it’s not something i’ve given much thought. he gets a decent pay from contracts and work on the side, and is cautious and reasonable with his septims. spends a little, saves a little, just in case... asides from when him and gore are at an inn. he consistently offers to pay for every single drink until gore gives in. they’re both stubborn as fuck.

and, yeah, vyn manages to get a small house. he sees no need for a giant manor with stewards and whatnot. a small, secluded cottage concealed in the amber forests of the rift suits him just fine. think elianora’s ruska, just in a different spot, and with a slightly altered interior layout. very cosy.

city life would be too much for him. i also like to think that vyn chose the rift, as he’s heard a lot about how gore cherishes the aspen groves. he shares the home with him.

#kriin talks #oc: orivyn arethren #tes v skyrim #skyrim oc #gore skyrim #<- only mentions but i hope it’s relevant to tag

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rosiethedragongeek · 2 years

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Headcanons for the gang's position in the tribe after the end of thw

They're all on Hiccup's council of advisors alongside Valka, Eret, and Gobber

Astrid helps Hiccup with strategy and diplomacy and all of that (all of the stuff that includes talking/fighting with other tribes), she's basically a second chief

Snotlout is in charge of training young vikings to be fighters and keeping stock of weapons etc

Fishlegs is the record keeper and teaches young vikings about the history of their tribe and the dragons. He helps Hiccup keep stock of how much food/resources they have

The twins are very much still the twins, they do about as much as you'd expect them to do in the way you'd expect it. They're also in charge of construction and planning out the layout of the village (idk I know that doesn't make a whole lotta sense but it falls in line with their rtte characterization to me they built their own hut, they're always trying to design the interior of stuff like) they also invent and test some surprisingly effective weapons from just messing around and being the twins

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astridmontilla · 9 months

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where: laundromat for: closed ( @knuckleddown )

The humidity of the laundromat is already making her hair frizz up, and she runs her fingers through it - annoyed when it clings to her fingers. Astrid has made herself comfortable lounging across two of the seats while she watches her clothes go through what feels like a never-ending cycle in front of her.

Down on the floor, though, she's got a whole layout of plans and such that might look suspicious but upon closer inspection is just a smorgasbord of nerd shit. She's trying to plan out events for her shop.

"My brain is leaking out of my ears, Syd. You got anything fun back there?"

#knuckleddown #syd

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vaya-writes · 2 years

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The Wyvern's Bride - Part 1.8

When Adalyn gets sacrificed to the local wyvern, she’s a little annoyed and a lot terrified. Upon meeting the wyvern, she discovers that he’s not particularly interested in eating people, and mostly wants to be left alone. In a plot to save himself from the responsibilities his family keep pushing on him, Slate names Adalyn as his human Envoy, and tasks her with finding him a wife.

In 1.8 Adalyn takes a tour of The Spires as Slate's guest.

Cis female human x cic male wyvern. SFW. No content warnings for this chapter aside from flying and heights. 4800 words.

Adalyn wears furs for her trip up the mountain. From forays to the valley’s edge she knows that there is no path, no easy ascent through the Spires. She wears a shirt and sheepskin slacks, along with a jacket. Her hair is tightly braided in anticipation of a flight.

Slate meets her at their tree, sun barely risen as he lands.

She starts at his appearance – there’d been no wing flap, nor forceful landing. He’d snuck up on her.

Ready to go?

It’s not unexpected, but the voice in her mind still surprises her. She wonders at how the familiar timbre translates into her thoughts – at how none of the inflection is lost.

She nods. Her body stiffens in suspense. She knows Slate’s clawed grip will not hurt her, and that she will be safe in his grasp. That the ride will be exhilarating. But she still doesn’t look forward to dangling beneath the wyvern.

A breathy chuckle echoes through her thoughts. I won’t drop you. Promise.

“Okay,” she replies, embarrassingly hoarse, before closing the gap between them.

His slitted eyes watch her approach, and she tries not to falter under their weight. It’s impossible not to stare at the creature before her. To notice how he dwarfs her, or to appreciate the colour of his scales. They lighten in colour and the pattern changes in size around his chest. Smooth and flat, she reaches out absently to touch a scale.

A rumble goes through the wyvern and she remembers herself, snatching her hand back immediately.

Her cheeks warm. “Sorry.”

It’s fine.

She lets out a gasp when he grabs her, the spread of his claws holding her flush against his chest. She’s definitely secure; legs astride one of Slate’s articulated ones. She can’t help but picture the way she’d carry a small animal against her own chest, and some of the embarrassment leaves her, replaced with exasperation.

Snug?

“How couldn't I be?” she grumbles.

For a moment she thinks he’s growling – the vibrations of his chest going right through her, and a deep noise emitting from him. She realises after a moment, that she’s feeling his laughter.

Hold tight.

She grips one of his claws as he takes off, and the breath is squeezed from her lungs as the ground drops away. He flaps once. Twice. A third time and suddenly the tree is far below her, and she is rising high enough to see Fleecehold’s outline.

I won’t keep you up high for long, but it’d be easier to show you the layout if I did.

The Spires extend past the length of the valley by some distance, but the largest of the mountains are nestled against the clearwater river area. Adalyn counts perhaps seven prominent peaks; one of which standing slightly above the others. Slate flies closer to the range, until the karst ringing the mountains comes into easy view.

He circles the tallest of the peaks. I call this one the Tower. It’s where I’ve made my quarters. He descends too swiftly to be sure, but Adalyn thinks she spies openings along the stone – holes and shelves that are almost hewn in shape. He makes his way downwards, until Adalyn spies a gaping crevasse in the karst between the Tower and the next mountain.

One of the main entrances. And perhaps the only one where I can land in this form. It’s one of the more central points and the caverns beneath naturally extend towards the neighbouring mountains. Most of the groundwater runs through here. I’ll be using it as the main passage towards the different wings of the keep.

Adalyn yelps at the sudden change in direction, arms and thighs clenching around Slate’s hold, fingers digging in. After their sudden rise, she can see the length of the Spires again.

That one will be for the Matron, should she or an elder deign to visit me. Most of the other mountains will either be vaults for my hoard or rooms for visitors.

“I thought you didn’t want visitors.”

Have you ever been to a castle before? Most of the space is just there to house guests. If I wanted to be a recluse, I’d have had to pick a smaller territory.

“No, I’ve never been to a castle before. Obviously.” She mutters the response to herself, but he hears anyway. She can tell from the smirk that brushes along her thoughts.

Slate makes his way towards the crevasse, and she finds herself eyeing the opening doubtfully.

“You sure you’ll fit?”

Another smirk. You don’t trust me?

She rolls her eyes but doesn’t otherwise respond.

Before they descend, Adalyn catches sight of another wyvern, sprawled out in the morning light over a rocky outcrop. It’s nearly twice Slate’s size, its grey scales dull in colour. Adalyn watches the creature stretch – the movement sluggish.

She nods towards it. “Does everyone not fit in your keep?”

That’s Elder Gabbro. He came when I called for the clan, but... we’re not confident in his ability to maintain a human or a demi form. He’s not confident. So, he stays outside.

“Why can’t he keep a human form?” She hopes it isn’t rude to ask but can’t help the curiosity.

Aging sickness. Sometimes the minds of elder wyverns lose their edge and their lucidity. And with it their magical control.

Adalyn nods. “Humans can experience it too. Does your family come out to visit him enough?”

He’s a little ornery. So probably not, no.

Adalyn frowns. “Will he be participating in the feast?”

It's doubtful. He’s an honoured elder, so we will bring him food. But unless he comes inside to dine with us, which is simply impossible due to his size...

Adalyn considers. “A wyvern in their natural form, what do they eat?”

Slate descends through the cavern opening, tucking his wings and splaying his free foot to brace for landing. She’s barely jostled when he touches the ground, to her relief.

We’re omnivorous. But in this form we prefer raw, fresh meat.

She tucks the information away for later, relieved as Slate lowers her to her feet. With her legs beneath her, she steps out from the wyvern’s shadow, and examines her surroundings while Slate takes a human form.

She stands in a cavern larger than her imitation could supply on its own. The crevasse limits the wingspan of entering creatures, but the space itself could probably hold a score of wyverns in their natural forms. The area is so expansive lengthways that Adalyn can’t see start nor end of the room.

A running stream of groundwater carves through the length of the cavern, and Adalyn can already see where heavy foot traffic lays the groundwork for a path alongside the water’s edge.

“When I got here this byway spanned three peaks. I think with time I’ll lengthen it to connect each of the spires.”

She picks her way behind Slate, listening with mild interest as he points out the natural cave features, recent installations, and every planned intersection in between.

At first, she refrains from commenting. There isn’t much in the cavern byway aside from bare cave walls, torches sitting in recently installed sconces, and atypical piles of stone, denoting the destination of each side passage. There isn’t much to comment on, and despite Slate’s ambition, she’s not particularly impressed. It’s a large cave system, sure, but it’s still just a hole in the ground.

He leads her down a side passage, and when they reach its end her scepticism is banished.

The limestone curtains and ribbons that layered the pre-existing passage walls end abruptly at the opening, hewn away to make room for the dining area. The walls become thick with deep, wide claw marks – the amount of space that has been cleared is astonishing.

“I’m guessing the mountain wasn’t like this when you arrived.”

“Ancients, no. The place is riddled with natural pockets and caves, but I’ll need to connect them before they can be navigated. I’ve spent most of this month just burrowing. The clan have helped too.”

“I didn’t realise you could do that.”

He smiles, cheeks slightly darkened. “Tunnelling is more common to drakes and wyrrms, but I’d bet any Draconid could do it if pressed.”

Adalyn turns and re-examines the room, eyes trailing up the walls. “So, what I’m getting from this conversation is when you’ve been discussing your renovations and plans, I haven’t been taking you seriously enough.”

The blush – yes, it’s definitely a blush – is more prominent this time. “Uh. Don't worry about it. You wouldn’t be the first. Even the clan find my architectural plans unusual. Most nests are either built from scratch or found and left as is. I’m one of the few to attempt a combination of this scale.

Adalyn, thoroughly wowed, gives him a rare, unrestrained smile. “Tell me about this area.”

He hesitates before smiling back. They step into the room, and the dining area opens around them like the pages of a book. Numerous braziers span the edges of the room for warmth and light, though shafts in the ceiling allow natural sun into the room. The centre of the room is clear, allowing entrants a straight path between a handful of long tables, to the high table, sitting on a dais. By the smell of sawdust and the lack of varnish, Adalyn deduces that the tables are recent constructions.

“If you look up, you’ll see the higher walls and the ceiling are quite natural. Excavating into the cave above this space really added some height to the room.”

“It’s gorgeous,” Adalyn agrees.

They cross the room to the high table, and Slate gestures to three openings along the back wall. “Honoured guest’s quarters. Kitchen. My Quarters.”

She nods. “Kitchen then?”

Throughout the tour more and more wyverns have begun to trickle past them. Clumps of them are now forming in the dining area, eating breakfast and chatting in small groups.

In his human form, Slate is an unnerving seven feet tall. Most of his relatives are larger still. While the wyverns had conceded their true forms for practicality’s sake, they still lacked human dispositions (or the urge to pretend). Almost everyone they pass is in their demi form, towering above Adalyn.

In their augmented figures Adalyn observes smiles that are too large and toothy, and the glint of razor-sharp claws. She feels rosy in comparison to present company, as almost everyone she passes has an ashen complexion or is sporting patches of grey and silvery scales.

The pair had selected sunrise for their scenic flight and accompanying tour, mostly to avoid the thick of Slate’s family. With how meddlesome they apparently were, Adalyn was happy to do an early tour. Slate had made it seem that she could be accosted at any moment by clan members intent on questioning them, introducing themselves, or straight up heckling.

They’re given a wide berth, and Adalyn assumes that nobody is bothering them while she is visiting on business.

Slate gestures that she continue, falling into step behind her. She doesn’t see him glower at any who look too long in her direction.

The sheer size of the kitchen catches her by surprise. Clan members bustle about the numerous benches, chopping vegetables and stirring bowls. A fire pit sits in the centre of the room with a turning spit propped over it. One wall is lined with brick ovens, and Adalyn has never seen so many cook pots and cauldrons – certainly not so large anyway.

Slate takes her through the accompanying pantries, larders, and wine cellars, each larger than Fleecehold’s winter storeroom. He points to a shaft above one of the larders. “I’ve not installed it yet but there’ll be a pulley system here to help import meats. It’ll save from trailing blood through the corridors.”

Adalyn eyes the shaft with interest, envisioning the device. “All you need now is a clean water source, and this kitchen would be ridiculously perfect. And an ice room, if you wanted to be obscenely extravagant.”

He flashes his teeth at her. “I can be obscenely extravagant.”

She ignores the jest and takes stock of the pantry. It’s threadbare – most of the food being consumed by the clan is freshly scavenged. Guests have begun delivering supplies to the kitchen. Early wedding gifts of spice and salt, wine and grain have begun to line the shelves. Adalyn makes a note to prepare a meal plan and an ingredient list before the trials. Slate had promised food and assistance, but the suitresses would be at severe disadvantage if they started cooking without a game plan.

Adalyn frowns at the scale of the dining area, and the number of wyverns she’d already witnessed. Even with a plan she’d have found the trial challenging. Four women with no professional hosting or cooking skills barely stood a chance.

Slate notes her mood change, and seems to follow her train of thought. “Will you be assisting them?”

She lets out a long breath. Searches the room, but upon finding no easy answer, looks back to the male. “It’s not my test. Do you want me to assist them?”

Alone in the pantry, Slate presses his palms to his eyes and rubs. Runs a hand through his hair. His gaze turns distant. “I don’t want to embarrass myself in front of my family. I don’t know what I’ll do if nobody finishes the trials.”

A pang of sympathy goes through her. Upon closer inspection she notices the bags beneath his eyes. The tension held in his frame.

Her jaw hardens, and she steels her resolve. She steps before him, placing her hands on his arms. “Somebody will make it. I told you I’d find you a wife. So, count on it.”

His hand closes over one of hers. He squeezes it, and for a fleeting moment something sparks in her chest. It’s gone when he steps away and shakes himself, trying to school his features into something more relaxed.

She swallows thickly at the distance. Controls her own urge to touch him again, and rubs some of the tension from one of her shoulders instead. “I know I’m just here to check the facilities, but do you want to show me the rest of the place?”

He offers his elbow and gives her a smile – this time less strained. “I’d love to.”

Whisked from room to room Adalyn listens to his plans for the offices, a library, several vaults, and an armoury. Her head begins to spin with the possibilities. She asks more questions. Her knowledge about architecture is limited but Slate indulges her, answering her queries about his process and layout, about his stone masonry and the furnishings he plans to commission.

“I’ve got just the thing to show you,” he interrupts himself at one point, changing direction.

Adalyn trails him through a series of narrow tunnels and passages that gradually empty – evidently a deserted wing of his keep. It’s almost a relief to be alone with Slate. While none of his family had approached them, they’re still intimidating, and Adalyn’s not sure she can stay in the same room as them without squirming.

Her relief is short lived when he leads her up a twisting incline, steep enough that her thighs strain and her lungs start to burn. She’s about to ask Slate to slow his pace when she steps into a shaft of light.

“Is this a window?” She approaches the hole in the wall and her breath catches when she peers out from the hewn opening. Only an arm’s thickness of stone separates her from the drop into the valley below.

Slate turns back. “Yes. Or, it’s going to be. I’m going to put a few in this stairwell, though I’ve yet to decide if I want any of them to open into a balcony or not.”

“This is a stairwell?” Adalyn tries to catch her breath at the reprieve. No wonder the incline had taxed her.

He nods. “It will be. My quarters will occupy the centre levels of this tower. The stairs are the outermost layer.”

Slate slows his pace when Adalyn is ready to continue, matching his strides to her own. After what feels like a ridiculous amount of time spent walking, they come before a door. Nearly twice Slate’s height, and far wider than necessary, it’s hewn from stone and rough cut, but with unmistakable skill.

“I still need to install rails, since hinges alone will do little to move stone,” he explains, pushing the door open. It scrapes along the ground with the protest of weight.

All thoughts of his engineering challenges disappear, though, when she sees the room beyond.

The floor has been buffed to a shine and the cladding along the walls are of massive, smooth, unbroken stones – the kind of slabs that would take a sled and a whole team of human labourers to move. A fireplace is set into one wall, and another set of doors into the opposite one. They sit open to reveal a balcony, yet unfinished in its construction.

Artful as the construction is, along with the amazement that Slate had done the work himself, she’s more taken aback by the furnishings. There’s a small house worth of items, just at her first glance. The longer she looks the more she sees. There’s a massive bed, a handful of bookshelves, some large wardrobes, and a dozen intricately carved chests scattered about. Several wooden panelled partitions divide the room, and to one side sit a small dining table and chairs, an overstuffed chaise, and a heavy set desk. All are carved from a dark wood, probably walnut, Adalyn notes, and finished with a polish.

The walls are hung with tapestries and a number of sheer drapes. There are rolls of fabric so fine that Adalyn had only heard of some of them; silks and laces scattered about. The bedding is a rich red colour, decorated with a wide array of pillows.

With the balcony doors propped open the room is well lit, but Adalyn spies braziers in several of the corners, and sconces installed on the walls.

There’s a cushioned reading nook in one corner, and Adalyn turns her attention to the bookshelves. Her eyes water as she takes in tome upon tome. In an age where published books are still handwritten on parchment, she is galled by the ostentatious display of wealth.

“This is all yours?”

He seems nonplussed. “They don’t call it a hoard without a reason.”

The room is cluttered with further miscellaneous belongings, and many of the chests spill open. Pieces of armour and weapons are scattered about. Mismatched clothes of fine make spill out of the wardrobes. One chest of precious jewels sits open, almost sneeringly.

Adalyn turns away from the dazzling display, almost nauseated by the luxuries behind her. “What does one person need so much stuff for?”

Slate shrugs. “I’m long lived. I like to spend my time collecting pretty or unique things. But I brought you here for something else.”

He makes his way to his desk, but Adalyn stops by the balcony, gravitating towards the unfinished railing. There’s a series of chisels laid out on the ground and she crouches to examine the balusters. She stares with open mouthed wonder at the transition from thick stone to artfully carved and twisted balustrade.

“You made all of this?”

“Just the stone masonry. Yes.”

She runs a finger across the stone. Throat dry. Is this what immortals choose to do with their time? She bids herself to stand and join Slate by his desk.

Another small display of wealth is scattered across its surface. She spies pieces of parchment, varying types of paper, coloured inks and quills, and a number of tools she is unfamiliar with. Slate gestures to a sheath of papers, thinner than she’s seen before.

The writing on them is sparse and doesn’t give enough context to the array of lines and shapes they describe.

“Is this some kind of... map?”

“Yes,” he beams at her, and something in her warms at his smile. “It’s a blueprint.”

She has to turn away, lest her blush be seen. Several strands of her hair shield her face. “I’m not sure what I’m looking at, though.”

He leans around her to point, the other hand resting on her waist, and she struggles to focus on the blueprint. “These lines are walls. These are doors, stairs, windows,” his fingers walk across the paper and the map begins to make sense in her mind. Even if the urge to lean into the wyvern’s warmth proves distracting.

“And when you do this,” he places one page over another, “you’ll see the outer wall and stairs line up on both pages...”

“It’s the next level of the building?”

“That’s right!”

She warms further at his approving tone. Makes herself pay attention to the information spread before her. Slate continues to explain his plans for the Spires, now with visual aids, and it hits Adalyn that the slightly rakish wyvern is a well of knowledge.

As Slate continues to discuss his plans for the rest of the peaks, Adalyn notices a topic he’d skipped over and frowns. “So, where will your bride be staying?”

He stutters to a stop. “Ah, well...” after a brief silence. “There’s nothing built yet.”

“There’s nothing built yet.” She repeats. After a beat, “Have you planned anything, at least?”

He shoots her an indignant look, somewhat spoilt by the slight flush in his cheeks. “Of course. She’ll have her quarters in that peak there,” he gestures to the next mountain visible through the balcony. After some rummaging he unearths the blueprints.

“Do you think you’ll have a room ready by the time you wed?”

His nose crinkles and she laughs at his silence.

“She can stay in my quarters until I’ve readied hers.”

Adalyn glances over her shoulder. “Good idea. I don’t think she’ll complain.” She looks out the window to the neighbouring peak. “Until she has to deal with the long trek between your rooms. And the stairs that a mountain keep entail.”

“It’s a castle, Adalyn. It’s going to have stairs. And she won’t need to spend an hour going back and forth between rooms. I’ll make sure her quarters are equipped with everything she needs.”

She raises a brow. “What if she wants to see you?”

His tone is entirely earnest when he replies. “Why would she want to see me?”

She stares back at him, blank faced and equally baffled. “Why wouldn’t she?”

“Oh, uh,” he shrugs and runs his hand through his hair, a habit that Adalyn is beginning to recognise as a nervous tic. “I don’t know. Would you like to see the other peak?”

She blinks at the change in topic, before agreeing. “Only if we fly. I don’t really want to hike that distance right now.”

Something wicked flickers across his face, before it’s disguised with a smile. “Just to clarify, you’d like me to fly us from here to there?”

At his tone she nearly balks. “I just said that, yes.”

He takes her by the hand and leads her to the balcony. “Okay!” he says in a too cheery voice.

She sees the problem immediately, and goes to pull her hand from his, “What are you-”

Adalyn stumbles towards Slate at his sudden tug, ending up pressed against his chest. He grins down at her, that wickedness visible again.

“As you can see, there’s not enough room for me to transform here. I’ll have to jump first.”

“Oh no-”

“So, your options are to come with me while I jump – I'll hold you tight and promise I won’t drop you.”

“Nu-uh.”

“Or jump by yourself and I'll catch you.”

While before the height had been breathtaking in its beauty, now it’s nauseating. Adalyn tries to pull away from the wyvern, but he maintains his grip on her waist, waiting for a verbal answer.

“I’d rather walk.”

“It’ll take an hour. And the corridors don’t connect properly yet.”

She shakes her head, panic beginning to stiffen her joints. “I don’t want to jump.”

He smiles, and takes a small step towards the railing. “I’ll do the jumping. You just hold on to me.”

A whimper escapes her. She buries her face in his shirt, mortified by the sound. “Please, Slate. I don’t think I can do that.”

“Hey,” he leans back to look at her. Grasps her chin gently. “Do you really think I’d drop you?”

Hesitant, she shakes her head.

“I’ve done this a thousand times. I’ve even done it with passengers. You’re in good hands.”

He waits for her to control her breathing. For her muscles to relax and her eyes to dry. For the beginnings of her panic attack to dissipate, before checking in with her again.

“Adalyn. Do you trust me?”

A long silence. She gives him a tiny nod.

“Can I fly us?”

Another hesitation before a second, smaller nod.

He doesn’t give her the chance to back out, pulling her tight to his chest, lifting her, and pivoting himself over the balustrade. Then he steps into the empty space.

Her eyes are tight shut and she doesn’t see the shadow envelop her. Only feels the hardening of flesh into scale, and the rearranging of bones beneath skin. Clawed legs replace Slate’s arms, holding her equally firm, and within moments Slate has shifted to his largest form.

They still plummet through the air and Adalyn squeals when Slate spreads his wings and flattens their descent, before swooping towards their destination.

All done.

“Why would anyone do that a thousand times?!”

His chest rumbles with laughter, flush against hers. It grows on you. It’s faster than a ground launch too.

He stretches his wings and flies a few laps of the Spires before returning to their destination and circling the peak. Adalyn had almost forgotten the purpose of their flight after her anxiety.

I sense a cave network through this one, though it’s disconnected from the rest of the Spires. I won’t have to excavate quite as much.

“How can you tell?”

By sound mostly. And stone sense. The same way a human could tap on a pot to hear if it’s hollow or filled.

He continues to discuss his plans for the bride’s quarters, though Adalyn struggles to focus once more. In the air it's even harder to ignore the distance between the mountains, and she is stuck thinking about Slate’s previous statement.

‘Why would she want to see me?’

At first, she thinks Slate a bit thick. Is it not natural for a wife to want to see their husband? But the longer she dwells on the thought the more she is inclined to agree with him. It is, after all, an arranged marriage. To the women’s knowledge, they’d never even met the wyvern, as he’d been masquerading as human whenever he visited.

The distance is there, whenever they talk about the situation. She hears them discuss him clinically. She’d spoken to the suitresses about the trials. The requirements. Even the logistics of sex. But not once had any of them asked about Slate. About his likes and dislikes. About his demeanour and his mannerisms.

They’re probably just intimidated. Scared. She can’t blame them for that. Even finding out that Slate had been the human accompanying them in their interviews might not be a great comfort. Whilst visiting for work Slate had been reserved; silent around the women unless spoken to. Would the women finding out that their potential husband-to-be had already met them help or hinder Slate's reputation?

Adalyn can’t help but wonder if any of the women they’d selected would be brave enough to seek Slate out. To take the hour-long trek – probably longer without a guide – through the halls of the keep to find their husband.

She doesn’t need to think on it long, and her stomach sinks with the answer. Bitterness fills her and she has to fight to banish it. To appear present and interested in Slate’s talking.

It would be their loss, to neglect the wyvern. To marry and then confine themselves in their quarters. Part of her is wracked with guilt for only finding self-serving candidates. Slate deserved better than them.

She swallows thickly, and tries to concentrate on his voice, to find that he had fallen silent, content to leave her with her thoughts.

“Do you have anything else planned for this area?”

After a moment he lets out a huff, and she feels what might be a smile warm her mind. Yes. I’ll show you.

#the wyvern's bride #my writing #vaya writes #phew thank you for waiting everyone #this took way longer than it should have #i think i was just a little burnt out creatively #too many ideas and too much trouble choosing which one to work on #monster romance #tetaro #wyverns #dragons #monster fucking

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maddiicake · 1 year

Photo

ON TWITTER || ON INSTAGRAM

~✩✩✩ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ ✩✩✩~

COMMISSION FOR @asenarieka

Their Fullmetal Alchemist OC, Astrid, with their own Reference/Concept Art Card~!

I know I say it a hundred times, but I'll say it a hundred more.... LOVE this character~ Such a dork, especially with Envy~ ewe And, it was nice to be able to make a more official-mimic art of her based on the FMAB anime Concept art, especially with her newly updated design~! (she's got the little FMA-ahoge~ ewe) Now, granted, it's not an exact mimicry of the official art. Compared to the Profile/Reference cards for '03 (which are much more stylistic), the reference cards for Brotherhood are more simplistic--typical studio concept arts where it's just a blank, off-white background with different poses and expressions of the character. So, for the Brotherhood style of Reference/Concept Art Cards, I took a bit more artistic liberty with designing the layout--namely the corner frames, which are based off of the Brotherhood Title Cards.

~✩✩✩ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ ✩✩✩~

Anyways, hope you enjoy~! <3

#fmab oc #fma oc #fmaboc #fmaoc #fma oc reference #my finished commissions #madii art

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waywardsalt · 1 year

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the phantom hourglass manga is the one i care about the most out of all of the loz manga and therefore the one i am most willing to rip apart because of its relation to the game, its own problems, and the potential that was lost or thrown away for any reason at all

making this separate than the list of things i liked about the phantom hourglass manga

im not going to be too organized about this; ill go by topic and in each topic go in chronological order through the manga and everything else will probably be all over the place

im not even going to touch the story yet and just go after the art off the bat because i really believe that this manga has the weakest art of all of them. i dont know if its due to some kind of time crunch or a lack of care but its really… im not expecting any of these books to have killer art, but in ph it just feels like there was less effort with inconsistencies in some designs and either very low detail or just absent backgrounds. this feels like a mean-spirited critique since i understand that manga is difficult to create and requires a lot of effort but its just visually… worse than the loz manga that came before or after it.

some specific grievances i have with the art are things like inconsistent designs of some characters (linebeck is hard to draw and i get that but hes just… never totally consistent) and some items like weapons (the shape of bellumbeck’s sword changes during the fight for some reason) and stuff is… left out. the fire temple has basically no layout since link’s just in some flavor of void for the entire blaaz fight. one of the panels with linebeck’s ship shows it from the behind at an angle where you should see the deck but its just not there

his ship is also missing its chimney on the cover art

this is also more of an opinion thing but the way astrid looks almost nothing like her game counterpart is just… it’s a nickpick based on opinion but that is Not The Same Character.

you can absolutely tell a fantastic story with lacking art, but the reason why im criticizing this manga’s art is because its the tenth in a series of manga who, up until this point, has had consistently good art, and then it drops off with weak backgrounds and character inconsistencies.

plus, i really care about how this story is visually portrayed.

the pacing, even with half of the story cut, is also a bit of a problem. as far as i'm aware, this is the only loz manga to have significant chunks of the story cut out, and while it admittedly works well with only half of the story, it fucks with the pacing a bit. specifically, it screws over linebeck's arc, which i'll talk about more in a different section, but it also kind of glosses over the phantom sword and (obviously) loses some possible time for further character exploration and whatever. the cut from the ghost ship right to jolene right to the final boss is, while handled well, kind of abrupt.

obviously, cutting half of the damn story will make what's kept feel a little too fast, but even some of the stuff more original to the manga is paced weirdly or is just... eh.

there's a bit after neri is found where linebeck decides to stop working with link and basically ditches him and this whole thing lasts one to two goddamn pages before everything is patched up and good and... why even include it if you turn the page and oh problem fucking solved. it's even a little out of character for linebeck at that point since a few pages before he's seen getting the sands of time for link and it's... it make sense but it's a really extreme character choice and while it serves its purpose (introducing the idea of linebeck not valuing other people very much and realizing that) it's still extremely brief.

the added stuff with linebeck being a past member of the ghost ship, while fine and interesting at first glance is also a strange choice that doesn't work all that well? it works for characterization and all of that but it makes for a weird situation with linebeck's character motivation where he's a coward and after the ghost ship for the treasure on it, but if he was present on the ghost ship literally as it was fucking gutted then he would know exactly what the danger of the ship is and want to avoid it no matter what. in the game his motivation for going after the ghost ship works because he doesn't know for certain whats on that ship and has never been on it. plus, aside from character backstory and whatever, it doesnt serve much of a purpose. linebeck even makes some comments about the ship's interior and the like but it all amounts to nothing because link never actually goes into the ship anyways. it's just a weird backstory to give linebeck.

the shuffling around (and cutting of one of) the three final bosses is also weird. it makes sense for the story order the manga goes with, but it actually lowers the stakes for the bellumbeck fight (in the game literally everything is on the line but in the manga its just linebeck and they absolutely use that to their advantage but still) and mixing the ghost ship fight and bellum fights make the final encounter really brief and kind of anticlimactic in some way. it's difficult to express, but the order of the final bosses in the game makes bellum a more interesting villain and melds with linebeck's arc in a much more interesting way. it feels like there was a specific reason for that given order and for the manga to just toss that aside means it loses something.

also reserving pretty much an entire chapter for jolene is A Choice to make. there's nothing wrong with using an adaptation to flesh out a character but here you don't learn anything new about jolene she just kind of makes very little sense in her motivations when you give her more screen time but dont change her from wanting to kill linebeck for fucking off but also still liking him maybe. good for you if you like jolene since she got more time here but they did pretty much nothing interesting with her

this is something i figured out while writing this, but the manga actually does Fuck All with the actual hourglass. you could've cut the fucking thing out and it wouldn't have effected the story too much. link never goes into the temple every again and the phantom sword is just. made on request with link having no interaction with it before using it to kill bellum. the only time the phantom hourglass is actually plot relevant aside from link first getting it and then using it to gather sand is when bellum tells link to bring it to the temple and then it's used exactly once to stop time and then it's used as proof that everything happened. oshus says link needs to use it and the sand to break the curse over the temple of the ocean king and then that never actually happens the sand and the hourglass is just used once to stop time once and otherwise it might as well not be in the story it's so weird. it's also implied that oshus needs the sand to restore tetra after he returns to his own true form but they dont say anything about that after he initially mentions it so who cares. oshus also tells link that zuaz will teach him how to defeat bellum. link never meets zuaz and still beats bellum anyways.

it feels like they cut the latter half of the story but forgot that the fucking majority of linebeck's entire goddamn character arc happens in that part of the story. sure, most of the cutscenes and whatever happens in the first part and linebeck does develop a bit in the first part but he doesn't really start to change until after the ghost ship, when you get his letter and his dialogue starts to change slightly to suggest that he's starting to like link more and care about something other than the possibility of treasure. the manga cutting out the latter half of the story but still making linebeck's arc end in similar places makes his arc feel really fast and even abrupt in the manga. he goes from being fully motivated to get treasure and still kind of selfish to caring a lot for link and deciding not to wish for treasure and the time was just NOT put in to make that a smooth transition.

honestly linebeck overall got fucked in the manga more than any other character. his arc was shafted, his characterization is strange and even kind of changed from the game, he's never drawn consistently and doesn't even look great since he seems to be stuck between two styles when he's drawn, he's more shallow and generally a less interesting character, and while most of that is probably a product of having one book to cover ph, it's still a problem.

like with all of the loz manga, the extremely limited amount of space and time the story is given absolutely fucks it over so you really are stuck with telling nothing more than an abridged and seriously inferior version of the story. i dont care how good the original stuff is if it barely qualifies as a good adaptation. the story wasn't told all of the way and none of the game's strengths are kept or expanded upon. you lose the majority of the best character's arc and depth. half of the story was cut. the title item is barely used. it feels like they didn't really care about adapting phantom hourglass and just hashed out a trimmed-down version of the story to fit into 188 pages and while there was some effort put in with a bit of a unique take on linebeck but it just falls flat when everything around it feels like it wasn't given a second thought.

i'm not suggesting that the author's didn't fucking care, i don't know what the process was with this, but it just... it doesnt feel like they actually wanted to earnestly create a good adaptation of this game. i have an altered perspective on all of this because this game is my special interest and something i deeply care about and inspect the little details of and it kinda just sucks that phantom hourglass never got a good adaptation because... this game has some serious potential for a really good extended adaptation.

Unlike the other Zelda games that the other manga cover, the structure of the journey in Phantom Hourglass has an insane amount of space for fleshing out of character, exploration of new concepts or character relationships, or just.. whatever you want. Providing you cover the original story, of course. Off the bat, there's a nebulous amount of travel time between islands, which can be used by authors for character moments and interactions and just little moments that can be used to further themes or concepts. You can use the implied time overseas between islands to have some interactions between Link and Linebeck. Show the three fairies hanging out with each other. Show the whole crew becoming closer to each other as time drags on.

Linebeck's existence and function within Phantom Hourglass alone is so fucking unique and amazingly good for an extended adaptation. In most other Zelda games, the companions are pretty much glued to Link's side and follows him through dungeons, or they're characters locked in a specific place, more or less divorced from Link's quest, but Linebeck is an integral part of the plot, present for every part of it as it advances, and yet he's out doing fuck-all while Link is in dungeons. He's a great excuse for authors to add detail to islands, write new characterization for background characters, or even just give Linebeck his own b-plot running concurrently with the game's normal plot. He's important to the plot and yet doesn't touch the gameplay; he's free to do whatever you want while Link does dungeon stuff. One possible idea I've mentioned before is the idea of, while Link is in the temple of the Ocean King, is to create and explore a possible relationship between Oshus and Linebeck. Scenes of them talking can be used to flesh out Oshus as a character and to add some extra depth to Linebeck and make his arc more interesting to follow.

There is... SO MUCH you can do with Phantom Hourglass if you care enough to do it, and I'm just so frustrated that we got this solid 4/10 of a manga.

#salty talks #bitching about the loz manga #hi if you think i'm wrong or made a mistake in this i implore you to fucking yell at me for it #i care about this game so fucking much that i would love to know if i fucked this up in any way #anyways uhhhh yeah. oof. it sucks.#i dont like jolene at all and have tags blacklisted to reflect that and will not touch stuff w/ her so thats why i dont read this much #jolene wanting to kill linebeck but still being implied to be attached to him makes me slightly uncomfortable ngl #probably one of the biggest reasons why i dislike her so much she gives me really bad vibes and is annoying #anyways. yall out here talking about how this manga has good dadbeck moments are fucking lying #maybe i cant see it because i have a good relationship with my dad but at best he's just. idk he gives a shit abt link at the most #i hate manga astrid i hate her so muhc. like. look at astrid in the game. what the fuck were the manga artists smoking #game astrid looks nothing like manga astrid and i like game astrid better.#this is incoherent bc im tired and i dont know how to write things like this and im so fucking tired #if you want clarification about any of this like you want me to talk about something specific?#send an ask or bring it up in a reblog or smth ill gladly discuss this book and why i kinda want to feed it to my dog #i just. game linebeck has queer vibes. game linebeck can be read as autistic #manga linebeck is neither. milquetoast ass fuckin wet cardboard take on a character #i dont even hate him he just fucking sucks compared to game linebeck #like. i hold game bellumbeck in such high regard bc everything about is is wonderful its a beautiful climax #every little thing about it is great i love the stakes i love the implications you can make about linebeck about bellum #the music the atmosphere the events leading up to it its place compared to other final bosses #manga bellumbeck is cool but its not what it could be #i didnt add any more photo evidence for art grievances bc theres a lot. bellumbeck's design changes between chapters #can you tell when making this post is no longer fueled by tired hate. can you #i thought about painting a target on my back and tagging this as phantom hourglass but thats a bad idea lol

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