#ty friend!

[incorrectafcrichmond]

Colin: We're a team yeah, ride or die?

Jamie: Yeah, I would totally ride you.

Colin: What?

Jamie: What.

#incorrect quotes #incorrect ted lasso #ted lasso #jamie tartt #colin hughes #source: unknown #submitted by ravenclawrockchick #ship post #ty friend!

[a-lonely-dunedain]

LOTRO intro game with Tossdir?

(for this ask game where you send in one of my OCs, and I give you a synopsis of what it would look like if they were the main NPC in a tutorial quest)

ah! ok this one is fun, because Tossdir fits into Before the Shadow more naturally as an NPC than a PC lol

So you show up in Mossward, enter the blacksmith shop, and are greeted by not one, but two Rangers! Meneldir, area Mysterious Guy, and his slightly more approachable but still Weird brother, Tossdir.

during the raid on Mossward Tossdir would be fighting right alongside the PC, and would probably even initiate a little competition to see which of you can kill the most orcs. Tossdir will actually forget what the count was by the end of the instance though, what with Tegwen being in danger both he and the PC had more pressing matters on their minds. (but I think later on in the questline, prompted by absolutely nothing, he will suddenly exclaim that he's remembered you won the wager and offer to buy you a drink at the Crossway House)

Most of the time his role in the questline would be just to play off of Meneldir and offer a little levity when appropriate. here's how a few lines might be changed with his inclusion: "I have never had much patience for children. Well, except for Tossdir." "HEY!" and "but my kin are far away now..." "Meneldir I'm right here" "I was not talking about you!"

I think I've already posted a bit about the end of this questline in the Tossdir-verse. but yeah Meneldir survives Specter of the Grey Fear, Tossdir gets possessed, you Meneldir and friends have to fight him in Sarch Vorn, Meneldir dies in the 2nd stage of the bossfight etc. difference in this version is, bc Tossdir is not the Main Character™, he will just go to Thornhad and later Esteldin, ending up as an occasionally reoccurring NPC throughout the epics. Next time you encounter him he's going to seem really really depressed, but you will see him improve later on after he's had time to process things and reconnect with the other Rangers

#lotro #Meneldir #ask game #lotro oc #Tossdir #ty friend!

[blackjackkent]

Jaheira-anon from before (please mention if you prefer not to get little hints!). For your Minsc quest - just to remind you that you have a non-lethal damage toggle available ...

I also have another little pointer for later in Act 3 that I'll drop by if you don't stumble across it yourself :)

Still loving the playthrough! I cannot WAIT to watch a Durge playthrough if you decide to go that way. Especially a Resist Durge playthrough.

Oooh, ty for the reminder! I'm assuming this means we will have to fight him and want to be sure he doesn't get dead in the process; I think I probably would have remembered to turn it on but extra reminders are always helpful in a situation of this importance. :D (Zero sarcasm.)

The tips are very welcome as long as they don't spoil plot developments! So feel free to keep 'em coming. <3 I appreciate that you wanna tell me about it!

Tysm for reading and the kind words. c: Durge is def still the plan for after Hector's run is done. (I have managed to stay pretty unspoiled on Durge plot/mechanics but I am assuming "Resist Durge" is about fighting the dark instincts vs giving into them, which is def more or less the direction I was planning to likely go. :D)

#bjk plays baldur's gate 3 #bjk talks #nice people #ty friend! #anonymous

[foxgirlplushie]

Wildmane/Fartooth for the prompt thing if u don't mind

Wild Mane is a whirlwind of energy. From the training rooms to Engineering to the cafeteria back to the training rooms to medical back to Engineering, it seems like she makes it a mission to travel the entirety of the landship on foot each day. Always moving, always talking, never allowing herself to lose momentum.

But every evening, around sunset, she heads up to the rooftop and allows herself a moment of calmness, of stillness, as she listens to the melodies Justyna plays into the wind.

#thats a case of 'autism to adhd communication' if i've ever seen one #which i have #ty friend! #asks #arknights drabbles #my fics

[sweetearthandnorthernsky]

28 for morinel?

28. unexpected. i have been working on this one for at least a month and it keeps wanting to expand lmao.

There have been many things Morinel might’ve expected when she stopped by her mother’s house near Avallonë. 

She might have expected to see her grandmother Nerdanel stopping to have tea, perhaps. She might have expected one of her aunts coming to discuss the latest innovations in pottery or textiles, or even a Vanyarin mathematician coming to discuss theorems that made Morinel’s head spin. 

What she was not, under any circumstances, expecting was her cousin, laughing at something her mother said, wearing a plain linen shirt as he worked clay in his hands–

His hands – 

His hands are whole and sound–

Morinel blinks, and all she can see is Celebrimbor's body before her, strung up like a banner with a crown of holly upon his head and his hands dipped in silver. Sauron's banner that Celebrimbor had been that had clearly said: see what I will do if you do not join me. She still can smell the faint char of flesh, if she thinks hard enough about it.

A hand shakes her shoulder gently, breaking her out of her thoughts, and Celebrimbor is standing in front of her.

“You worry too much Morinel,” he says, a faint note of teasing in his voice as he looks down at her – did he get taller with his rebirth? She can’t tell. “I got better, see?”

“So you did,” she manages, shakily. 

Then she lets all her breath out in one rush and throws her arms around her much missed older cousin – but really, Celebrimbor had always been more like the older brother she’d always wanted than a cousin. 

“Ai!” He says, laughing as he hugs her back, just as tightly, belying his next words. “I can’t breathe, arnethig.”

She blinks away tears, burying her face in his shoulder, and she doesn't care that her tunic is now probably ruined from the clay staining her cousin's hands.

“Too bad,” she says, her voice unsteady. “I have waited an age and a half for this hug, and damn it, I am going to make the most of it.”

Celebrimbor just laughs again, loud and ringing.

#ask game reply tag #og post #my fic #morinel #ty friend! #translation note: arnethig > ar (beside) neth (sister) + ig > diminutive #is. definitely an attempt at 'younger female cousin ( affectionate ) ' lmao #i also wasn't sure how to end it though w/out it turning into 15k words

[aurore-parle-de-ses-idees]

LOTRO intro game with Sileär?

sil is fun bc you can do a high elf intro in mordor or a more current day one, in which case she’d be in rivendell (elf still being the most plausible pc race here, but yknow you do you lol)

mordor version: honestly she gets to keep most of the things the actual helf intro has. location gets moved around a bit, but otherwise she’s doing that. you’re most likely there as one of the younger elves in the alliance; mostly meant to be a message runner. you’re sent to deliver something to sil & halthel, and this should be a perfectly routine thing really, but you’re right on sauron’s doorstep. what even is routine any more

so things go wrong, naturally

you and silear get separated from the rest of her company and she’s very intent on 1, making sure you don’t die (combat tutorial) and 2, getting back to the rest of the company (escort/follow the npc quest). this is a little later than the actual helf intro is set- a couple years at least into the siege of barad-dur. silear’s company was up among the feet of the ered lithui, possibly running around those watchtowers that are full of wraiths and fell spirits in post-war of the ring dor amarth or camped nearby to watch them. your message for silear was where she and halthel were supposed to meet people from a few other companies for some vague secret mission (you don’t get to know all the details then, but they’re running off to chase gaunt-lords). incidentally, that’s also where sil gets stabbed with a morgul blade, but i’m getting a little ahead of myself there

so you’re trying to get back to the rest of her company. that goes fine, you get back, you give them your message. there’s a bit where they invite you to sit down and eat with them and it’s nice and chill and nothing happens. you find a bedroll and stay the night in their camp, intending to head back to echad-in-edhil in the morning, going at least part of the way with silear and halthel for purposes of Not Wandering Mordor Alone if it can be avoided. then you wake up in rivendell in the third age and get a bit of a summary of ‘war over, sauron gone (for now), also silear got stabbed and is in a morgul coma still. if i break from game mechanics a little bit, you can be trollshaws level and join the epic around book 4/chasing shadows (though even that’s a little lower level than i’d be thinking, but 50 in rivendell doesn’t have a great epic entry that i like and that doesn’t lose a ton of important early vol 1 stuff or skip you straight to vol 2). if we don’t break things, you just kinda get to be level ten or so because Game Says So. silear wakes up, you say hi, you both end up on the trip to edhelion and you do the epic as normal from there. you may get to have sil as an npc who shows up for in their absence stuff later

rivendell intro: if you start as a fairly young elf in rivendell, you probably meet a silear who’s just woken up. she’s still pretty weak, but she can do something like really mild sparring or training with someone who is just learning themself (she is trying very hard to be patient with everyone involved). it’s a very chill intro honestly, with no early awful experiences for your guy! probably just works as an alternate tutorial instance that then leads into the thorin’s gate prologue stuff- get put on the expedition to edhelion as a history lesson or just to get some travel experience and then get sucked in by the epic vortex

ok the rivendell one is way less involved actually lol. hang out a bit, have tea with sil and bilbo, get sucker punched by just how much the epic is. tada!

#ask games #sil & om #ty friend!

[sharkflan]

I love your comics so much!!! They make my day, the expressions are so good and they’re so funny!! Thank you for sharing them with us all 💕💕💕🥺✨

😭🫶💕💕💕

#ty friend! #flantalk

[rohirric-hunter]

🖊️ for Léonys? 💜

Gotta talk about Léonys in the 3rd person every once in a while, or I start to believe the lies she tells herself about herself.

Something I was reflecting on the other day is the oddness of the story of Léonys of Rohan being sort of an outlier in the way she usually behaves. Most of her motivations in that story are self-interested ones; first she wants Rohan, and then she wants Bree-land. But normally she concerns herself less with what she wants and more with the needs and wants of the people around her, especially the kids in the Hackberry House.

But that's the funny thing about stories, isn't it? The thing that makes them interesting is in their departure from the norm. But if you're not careful, the departure may start to look like the norm. It's weird.

Another fun thing about Léonys is that she can play the fiddle. Lady Hackberry is a very talented fiddle player and she taught Léonys, although Léonys isn't nearly as good at it, and won't really pick it up seriously until well post-canon.

#ty friend! #<3 #not that theres anything wrong with leonys self-interested motivations btw #theyre all perfectly reasonable #thats why i didnt say selfish #theres a bit of that too but like shes 19 #its more evident in stories where shes present as a peripheral to someone elses story #im working on something with drof that leonys is like. there for #and theres this one throwaway line where drof is thinking about leonys thats a lot of fun #because (from very brief acquaintanceship at this point supplemented by hathellang talking about her) #drofs main impression of her is that shes kind #(and it somewhat strikes her as surprising when she starts cussing someone out) #(they deserve it) #idk its interesting tho

[a-namjoon-a-day]

Namjoon is so gorgeous he literally made me realize I was queer. Before I discovered BTS I was able to excuse my attraction to other guys as kind of minor and deny it, but Namjoon is so pretty and hot I wasn’t able to do that anymore.

He has so much power lol!

-🐇 (if we’re doing the emoji anon thing ;D )

Nice to meet you, 🐇!

I AM TELLING YOU. He sneaks up on you lol. I'm convinced his final form is a fitted suit. But I'd never turn down a leg day gym photo 💀😶‍🌫️

-------------------

ps- If you want to be known as a specific emoji anon, feel free to claim one now! 🐬 & 🐇 are taken. :)

#bts #rm #namjoon #bts army #no one can resist that dimpled smile #ty friend!

[christianstepmoms]

Happy Borthday Siel :)

#ty friend!

[a-lonely-dunedain]

what about mosspuddle of the bog :D

(for this ask game where you send in one of my OCs, and I give you a synopsis of what it would look like if they were the main NPC in a tutorial quest)

ooo ok! how about this:

you are in the Rushock Bog for an evening stroll (not dissimilar from the hobbit intro) Your character senses that they're being watched. They go to investigate a strange sound further into the marsh, and soon come face to face with a strange hobbit-lass. what's so strange about her? Well for one thing, she has leafy green hair, and despite the fact that she's standing waist deep in bog water, her clothes seem perfectly clean and bright. This, you guess, is probably not normal.

She tells you that she's glad she was able to get your attention, as you were about to walk into an ambush! Some dwarf brigands, calling themselves the Dour... Dour-Hams? Dour-Band? the Dour-something-or-others, have recently set up a camp in her home, and started robbing unsuspecting travelers. This, she tells you, simply will not do, and they need to be dealt with.

But she stops abruptly before you have time to discuss the matter further, "I hope you know how to fight, friend" she says "because it looks like the Dour-whatstheirfaces found us!" then there's a short combat tutorial. Mosspuddle will help in the fight, though indirectly. Aiding you by... summoning slugs and toads to help in the fight. Yeah, this is certainly no normal hobbit.

Anyway after the fight she leads you to her home where the Dourhands have set up shop. If your character was expecting a hobbit hole, they will be sorely disappointed (JRR Tolkien Voice: "but you see this WAS a nasty, dirty, wet hole filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell-" ok it's not that bad, it's a bit like Gwindethrond but smaller, a little darker, and full of toads. Still, it's no hobbit hole!)

The little starting instance is over by this point, and you now have free-range of the Rushock Bog as your little tutorial area. Mosspuddle will have a few quests for you to finish before you drive the Dourhands from her home, such as stealing their weapon racks, filling their socks with spider nests, and tracking down and enlisting the help of her friend Dandelion the bog-guardian. You might also go to Needlehole for help, but the Bounders don't believe your tale of a strange hobbit lass living out in the bog. (They might still have some other sidequests for you tho)

Anyway once she deems the Dounhands have been sufficiently weakened by your efforts you, Mosspuddle, and Dandelion start another instance and prepare to finish them off.

But before you go in to drive the intruders out of the place, Mosspuddle stops you, seeming somewhat alarmed (your character also gains a Dread debuff). She says something isn't right, and there's a powerful presence here that even the three of you cannot hope to fight.

From your hiding spot in the nearby foliage, you catch a glimpse of a terrifying looking dwarf. He's talking to the other Dourhands, saying something about how he has business in Breeland and soon all of Middle Earth will burn and all the other scary stuff Skorgrim usually goes on about. He tells the dwarves in the camp to finish up their work here and then head east as soon as they can, and they all bow to him as he leaves.

Once you all are sure he's gone, you decide not to let these brigands go east to finish whatever nefarious scheme they have planned, so you go in and kick their asses. At the end of the instance there's a caged stone-troll you have to fight as a boss (because apparently, according to other quests in the area, the Dourhands were here to capture trolls for Skorgrim? not sure why here of all places but that's still canon to lotro so we're going with it!)

After that the day is saved and Mosspuddle has her home back (as well as a very big mess to clean up)! You, however, are burdened with troubling news of scary characters roaming through the Shire. You then bid Mosspuddle farewell and head to Little Delving to bring word of what happened to the Bounders (maybe leaving out mention of the Bog-Hobbit this time), and picking up with the epic line as normal.

Obviously this one works best with hobbits, and might honestly be a hobbit-exclusive intro lol. Also you would be able to return to Mosspuddle's home at any point later and see it all cleaned up without the Dounhand's mess in there

#ask games #ty friend! #lotro #lotro oc #Mosspuddle

[inquisimer]

Ooooh I have got to know about the Hadestown AU!

yessSSSSS okay so I saw hadestown last november (still haven't recovered) and immediately my brain was like HMMMMM handers hadestown au >:] with a cast of:

orpheus - anders

eurydice - hawke

hermes - varric

hades - mythal/flemeth

persephone - solas/fen'harel

fates - spirits, probably

It's mostly just conceptual, although I've written most of the first chapter! Inspiration for this one comes in fits and bursts, but it does have a clear outline based on the show's plot.

#ask games #ty friend!

[jackwolfes]

🫐

[fruits]

🫐 What’s your favorite underrated thing in your fandom? (A ship that only you seem to write for, a character there’s almost no fics about, a trope that criminally hasn’t been written yet, etc.)

kuwei yul bo 😂 like, i love him?? i love him so much and just think he's under utilised as a snarky background character. also there is Loads of trans crows fic on ao3 which is joyful and wonderful but i always think there could be more!! especially trans jesper

also i'm in so many fandoms that are themselves underrated with not that much stuff out there which is a shame bc the world deserves more queen's thief/pulleyverse/a marvellous light/winters orbit fic

#ty friend! #asks #bidoofenergy

[sweetearthandnorthernsky]

31 for morinel & idhrin :D

this one. weird bc i wasn't sure if i wanted to do morinel pov or idhrin. i ended up going w idhrin because she has had like 0 pov time but. still not sure it ended up being the right choice

“You came back for me. You really came back for me.”

You pause. 

Morinel sounds horrible – and looks even worse. 

Her face is bruised and she’s got a bloody nose that still bleeds fitfully.  The rest of her is hard to see in the darkness, but there are disconcerting dark patches on her tunic. Her tone sounded more like thoughtfulness than anything else and you’re less than sure if Morinel even sees you properly. 

“Look–”

And you hate this, the sooner you can get out of the dungeons, the better you'll both be.

Morinel winces as she tries to push herself up – her hands look badly wounded – and you step forward, looping Morinel’s arm around your neck. 

“You know I wouldn’t leave you behind–”

When Morinel is brought to her feet, leaves fall free from her hair, and flutter to the murky ground. You can’t see very well in the darkness, but it makes you think of … holly? But that’s absurd, holly isn’t native to this part of Mirkwood, or so you’d thought.

You chalk Morinel’s being so out of it to the nightshade barrels that line the halls of the prisons, but still, that doesn’t make it any easier, when she asks questions that you don’t know the answers to.

The further you get from the dungeons, the more alert Morinel becomes, until she shrugs you off, and insists on walking herself. 

You still hover over her shoulders, just in case, as you follow her into the healers’ tent.

#my fic #ask game reply tag #ty friend! #am i. entirely sure whats happening or if this will be canon? nope #anyway they're having a time

[aurore-parle-de-ses-idees]

Isena & Isedd, 10?

framed

in which isena meets a problem she can't stab! and also wanders into annak-khurfu about a day and a half before the war of three peaks starts. this is the one that made the whole thing spiral out of control lmao

1 | 2 | 3

The stranger is swifter than anyone Isedd has ever faced.

Léothred and Fróthi cry out, but they are even less warriors than Isedd and soon they are all coughing on the ground, bleeding and bruised and breathless. Fróthi glares at the stranger, leaning heavily on his axe to stand.

“What are you doing here, Karazgar?” the old dwarf spits. The stranger rolls his wrists, long blades weaving circles in the air. He looks back at them only briefly, studying the great fall of rocks that now block the tall passage out of the cavern. “What business do you have in this forgotten cave?”

“Forgotten? Hardly.” Karazgar’s glance strays to the carved fang, dropped near Léothred’s feet in the chaos. “Though despite Fram’s best efforts, unfound.”

“You’re trapped in here the same as us,” Léothred breaks in. His voice is amiable, but his shoulders are tight with tension. “If we-”

“I,” Karazgar says sharply, “have little in common with you. None of you are worth my time. Not even you, Tamer,” he adds with a glance at Isedd. He raises his blades, and though Isedd sets loose a burst of fire, Karazgar twists around it- or maybe goes through it uncaring- and one blade catches Isedd in the chest, throwing him hard against the rimed cavern walls.

----------

Karazgar looks down on the three intruders and shakes his head. “At least you tried to put up a fight,” he mutters, nudging Isedd’s limp body with one foot. He turns back to the rockfall, and the last rays of light that make it through the gaps near the top as the dust settles. He seems to decide something, then looks between Isedd and something in the back of the cave. “The hatchlings will appreciate something fresh,” he says and lets them be, climbing up the fallen boulders unhurriedly.

Only when he is gone does Matwyn let herself come down from the high ledge where she had hidden.

---------

Isena wakes with the smell of iron in her nose. She has to try three times to get her eyes to open, crusted shut with... she isn’t sure she wants to know what. She pushes herself to her knees and groans as everything screams at once. Her chest, her back, her shoulders, her head- it feels as if she was stuffed in a ball and thrown to the wargs as a toy. Dried blood cracks and flakes off her hands and she examines them with mounting confusion. She looks herself over. Not hers. A few feet form her is a bird- or what’s left of one, anyway. It almost looks like Matwyn, but the pale feathers of its chest aren’t quite right. Isena gathers herself and stands with only a mild oof.

The sun is up; it’s early in the day. Something itches at her mind as she turns about to take in the scenery. The mountains rise to the north and the pale outwalls of the dwarves’ fortress to the west. What of the cavern? she thinks. Did it all collapse? Only then does the rest of her mind catch up and she whirls about, cursing. There is the small lake outside the walls of Gundabad, and there is the river that runs out of Wyrmsgráf. If she squints into the distance, she can just make out the gap in the mountains beyond which the hidden cavern waits. She looks at the sun again. She starts swearing some more. Last night? Or has it been even longer- it was almost evening when we found the cave, but how long have I been out? It was no short journey into the mountains... Isedd... what of her brother and their scholar friends? How did she come to be so far south again?

“Halt and declare yourself!” She spins, reaching for weapons that are not waiting for her. Shit! “Who are you?”

A dwarf stands before her, a heavy axe at the ready. On the slope behind him, another has a heavy crossbow trained on her. Isena slowly raises her hands. “Isena, daughter of Téohere. What-” Something at her waist comes loose and falls to the ground with the clinking of metal. That’s not mine-

“What is your business in Elderslade?” the dwarf demands, serious but not impolite.

“I was here with my brother escorting a couple scholars,” she replies. “Do you know Fróthi?”

“Can’t say I do,” the near dwarf says. “Laugi?”

“He’s from Erebor, I think,” the crossbow-dwarf calls. “Came through with a few humans the other day going on about Scatha the Worm.”

“As if we don’t have enough to worry about with the live dragon,” the first dwarf mutters. “Alright then, where is Fróthi?” Isena hesitates.

“I don’t know,” she says. “We found a cave to the north, upriver,” she gestures in the general direction of the Drekvath. “I don’t know what it held, besides more drakes.”

“No?” The dwarf looks pointedly at the dropped pouch. Something glints just inside the mouth of it.

“What-” Isena begins.

“I think you should come with us,” the dwarf says. Laugi shoots him a look, and does not lower his crossbow.

“Do you think it’s as dire as all that, Gunvald?”

“There’s something strange here,” the near dwarf says. “We aren’t all that far from Annâk-khurfu yet, and we can hardly let her wander about unarmed. We can- Durin’s beard, what did you do to this poor bird?”

“I didn’t do this,” Isena protests. Gunvald eyes her bloody hands.

“No?”

“No,” she says, an edge coming into her voice. “I woke out here only a few minutes ago.”

Gunvald snorts. “Out in the open, here? The beasts in this area wouldn’t let you alone even when they aren’t stirred up for war- especially with the smell of blood on the wind. Who is out here with you if you did somehow sleep unmolested?”

“No one,” Isena says. “There was no one else around.” And I don’t think it was sleep. Gunvald makes a disbelieving sound.

“Well, we had best get going before Ausma sends someone else after us,” Laugi says, shouldering his crossbow. “Come on.”

Isena follows. Alone and aching and unarmed, they aren’t wrong to say she wouldn’t last on the Slade. She and Isedd were not along to guard Léothred and Fróthi for nothing. Gunvald scoops up the abandoned pouch when Isena leaves without it and frowns at its contents.

It isn’t a long walk back to the ruins where the dwarf army is encamped. Isena scrubs idly at the crusted blood on her hands, but they still aren’t clean by the time they make it to the old keep. They had stopped here briefly on their way north, but the war-camp had been no place for their studies and no one had asked them to stay. It’s swarmed with activity still, scouts and suppliers and soldiers all running about on their own errands.

“Lóssi!” Gunvald calls when they enter the keep. “Do we have anywhere to hold this woman?”

“Hold me?” Isena demands, stopping short.

“She hasn’t caused any trouble for us,” Laugi adds quickly. “But someone will want to talk with her.”

The guard-captain looks Isena over carefully. “Something can be arranged.”

“No one is putting me anywhere,” Isena spits. She turns on her heel, fully intending to walk back out the keep’s doors. “I’ll gladly spare you the trouble.” She had thought perhaps she might find some help here, but if they would rather put her in a cell-

A firm hand grabs her by the elbow. “You haven’t been any trouble, and if that keeps up you won’t have any from us,” Gunvald says warningly. Yet, Isena adds. “But we are cautious, and you could use some cleaning up for your own part.” She looks down. There is blood beneath her fingernails. “Go with Lóssi, and someone will come down to speak with you soon.” And she walked herself into a war-camp defenseless and covered in blood, and so she follows the wary guard-captain to a small room in the depths of the keep of Annâk-khurfu and waits.

The room has no windows, but she is brought water and clean clothes and light enough to work by, and while she is left alone she cleans herself up as best she can and takes stock of herself. Her pack is gone; she thinks it came loose in the fight with the drake. She slowly sheds all her many layers against the cold, torn and bloody and covered in dirt. Her mail has survived the whole ordeal quite well, at least. She is bruised all over beneath that. The worst is the great, round spot in the center of her chest, purpling fantastically and promising to only grow uglier. She presses on it, and recalls in a flash Isedd’s shout and the rush of wind.

“Damnit,” she says under her breath. “Isedd...” What had become of him? She remembers the drake, and the falling stones, and then... waking. No! There was one other thing, somewhere in the hazy space between the cave and here. An irritated voice, and rough hands moving her. A just reward for Helegros... And then nothing before Gunvald and Laugi came upon her. She shakes her head and sits.

A knock on the door shakes her from her contemplation of the patterns in the stone. “Yeah?” she calls. The door swings open to admit a dwarf with a short beard and a cap fitted close to her head. She winces at the sight of the great bruise on Isena’s chest.

“Tell Búkk to send something down for bruising,” she calls back into the hall before letting the door fall shut. “That looks painful,” she says sympathetically to Isena. “But better bruises than broken bones, eh?” Isena shrugs in concession. “I am Ausma,” the dwarf says. Her accent is much different from that of most of the dwarves here. “Tell me what’s happened.” Isena takes a deep breath.

“I have been traveling north along the Anduin with my brother and a scholar we met in Rohan...”

Ausma listens to it all quietly, hardly even interrupting with questions. Food is sent down along with some fresh-smelling salve for Isena’s bruises, and Ausma leaves with a polite nod. “Get some rest if you need it,” she says. “I’m sure Hórin and some of the others will have more questions for you later.” This she says with some kind of fond exasperation before leaving Isena to her own devices.

The salve does help, though it sticks to her shirt when she pulls it back on. She grumbles, but it’s not warm enough in this corner of the ruins to sit about bare-chested for hours. She eats fast enough to surprise herself, and with a full stomach soon after wants nothing more than to lie down. She was left with a few blankets, and with nothing better to do she rolls herself up on a low stone ledge and sleeps.

The questions after her nap are more insistent, and less polite.

They ask about her companions, and their fates, and what they found in the cave, and then quite a lot about someone called Karazgar.

“I don’t know who that is,” she says irritably after the third attempt to get something about the man out of her. “There was someone besides the four of us deeper in the cave, but I never saw them. Who is this Weeping Warrior you’re so scared of?” Most of them don’t care for that comment, and soon the questioners are replaced with people far more like Fróthi in bearing, with the pouch that had fallen from her belt in hand.

“These are coins from the days of Grárik,” one of them says. “Most of these are still frozen ten feet deep in Immêsh-khalt. How did you come by them?”

“What’s Grárik?” she says.

She is told quite a lot about Grárik.

“One or two of these seem even older than that,” one of the lore-masters adds. “Perhaps as old as the days we still held Gundabad.” He looks at Isena. “You know Gundabad?”

“I’m familiar.”

She is told quite a lot about Gundabad anyway.

“That’s enough,” Lóssi says at last, standing from where he has been leaning against the door. “This isn’t helping.” He nudges one of the scholarly types until they produce a familiar fang, yellowed with age and pitted with rough-carved lines.

“Where did you get that?” Isena demands, reaching for it. Her questioners all tense at her sudden movement, but she only turns the map-fang about. There’s no doubt- it’s the same one. “Fróthi was carrying this...”

“We were going to ask you the same thing,” Lóssi says. He stares her down coolly. “It was in the pouch with the coins.”

Isena’s heart skips. “It was?”

“Along with the letters.”

“What letters?”

Silence.

“What. Letters.”

“What was it you hoped to find in the mountains?” Lóssi asks instead. Isena glares at him.

“Like I said,” she says, as measured as she can be. “We found something that looked like a map- this map, on the fang- and decided to follow it. We thought Fram may have left something behind to be found.”

“Fram?”

At least she can tell him quite a lot about Fram, by now.

“We were beginning to wonder if it led to the rest of Scatha’s hoard,” she says. “If there was anything of the sort in the cave, I never saw it; the drake arrived first.”

Lóssi stares at her for a long time. “You are either a very good actor, or you are not in league with the Weeping Warrior,” he says at last. He motions the lore-masters out. “The Prince will want more than my word on it though, especially after finding those letters.”

“What letters?”

“Instructions from your master, and a grudging account of payment owed.”

“The only master I serve is the king in the Golden Hall,” Isena says. “And I surely haven’t met this Weeping Warrior of yours, much less taken payment from him.”

“Not for the betrayal of your companions? The theft of the map?”

“No.”

“And your brother’s bird?”

Isena stares at him blankly. “What?” Lóssi sits across from her.

“Gunvald said he found a mangled eagle beside you, and no sign that anyone else had gone that way.”

“What’s that got to do with my brother?” she asks, genuinely bewildered.

“Did he not travel with an eagle companion?”

“That bird wasn’t Matwyn,” Isena says. “It looked like some poor local bird who ran afoul of the little drakes everywhere. Matwyn hardly dared follow us north for fear of them.” Lóssi only stares at her until she throws her hands up and stands in a shrieking of stone on stone. “I don’t know what more you want from me. I’ve told you what I know, and what I remember, and if it’s all the same to you I’m going to go back to that forsaken cave and see if my brother was crushed beneath three tons of stone or not.”

Lóssi stands before the door. “You will not.”

“Watch me,” she says coldly.

“You wouldn’t make it to the doors,” he says, unimpressed. “This is a war-camp. In the end,” he adds, crossing his arms, “it doesn’t matter whether or not I believe you, or even if Hórin and Ausma believe you. The Prince and the Commander think you too much of a risk, and I’m inclined to agree whether you’re working for Karazgar or not.”

“I’m not,” Isena says through gritted teeth. “I did not betray my brother, or the scholars.”

“I can’t have you running about with stories about a lost dragon-hoard full of looted dwarf-treasure,” Lóssi says as if she had not spoken. “We already have problems with rumors of Thafar-gathol. We can’t have anyone disappearing into the mountains on the eve of war.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Isena says yet again, trying not to grind her teeth.

“Ask the lore-masters,” Lóssi says with a shrug. “Lost city, treasure that’s never been found, the whole package. The details of it aren’t my concern.”

“Did this city get up and walk away?”

“That depends on who you ask.” Lóssi eyes her, setting a hand on the door. “I’ll speak with them, but I fear you’ll be our guest for a bit longer.”

“Guest,” Isena scoffs. Lóssi opens the door.

“I’ll send someone down with supplies.”

And she is left alone to fume and to wonder just how she ended up here.

#ask games #my stories #i&i #isena [vibrating]: this is fine :) i am fine with this :) #ty friend!

[impossible-rat-babies]

how about: hanging out in the jungle yay! 👀

ty azia!

it's a rough wip, but i got thinking about all the celebratory banquets that are offered and done post-EW as a thank you to eyrie for saving the world. how uncomfortable those make them feel for half dozen different reasons. and just the one in thavnair is the straw that breaks the camel's back and they run out of the banquet and end up at the Font of Maya overnight.

it's a classic case of im stuck in setting up the premise, but it's been a fun. it's a lot of eyrie dealing with the events of Endwalker, especially the return to Thavnair.

the snippet is below the cut!

They have been keeping count of the days since Ultima Thule and it’s been over a year. One long, long year and every day the sun rises over the horizon.

The heat brings sweat to bloom on the back of Eyrie’s neck, but they dare not move. Despite the aching legs and the painful burning behind their eyes hoping for aether and a long rest, they remain. Eyes half open, staring down at the waters surface.

The memory of plunging beneath that cold, cold water fills their mind. Chasing her body as she sank like a stone, her life gone the moment she hit the water. Untangle the child from her hold, letting her sink as they pushed for the surface, praying the child would not drown. Their hands know work in crisis, their head too slow as they quickly unwrapped her from her waterlogged swaddle to clear her lungs and warm her fragile frame. Praying her stillness meant it was not too late for her; anything to hear that cry of a child with strong lungs and the will to survive. Even as the sky above and the ground below burned.

Praying beyond all hope in divinity she would not succumb, even as they placed her in Matsya’s hands. Closed their hands around her fragile frame and told him that this darkness would not have him. It would not take either of them, they prayed.

#ty friend! #i latched onto the concept and it's been just going #i gotta sit and figure out replicating vtra's voice but! it's going ^^