![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
monthly word count - July
TOTAL: 41 437 HOLY FUCK
Granted the bulk of it is for a single fic in the Girl Genius fandom and not anything most of y'all will want to read, but. XD whoa, nice wordcount, self, you rule. it feels so good writing regularly once again guys ;__;
POSTED:
-not-even-a-drabble dave/terezi dragon/knight cute (82 words)
haha ha ha aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh orz
just have it here never mind linking it:
"So you’re not the type that changes to a handsome human from a fair damsel’s kiss, huh,” Terezi said, hands cupping a long scaly muzzle.
"Where do you see a fair damsel," the dragon droned back, and flicked his long forked tongue at her fingers. "Oh right, you can’t see shit, I guess that explains it."
"It’s okay, Dave, you will always be a pretty princess in my heart," the knight said soothingly, and flicked her much-shorter tongue right back at his.
WIP:
-Crash Standing chapter uhhhhh 15? 16? (345 words orz)
-Homestuck: Demon Patrol (756 words)
-Homestuck: arranged marriage davekat fic: Lil Hal sequel (1 328 words)
-untitled Girl Genius OC-centric fic, chapters 1 to 6 (38 775 words BOOYAH)
-first attempt at GG fic, abandoned (151 words)
--
crash standing (already teasered on tumblr sorry guys nothing new)
--
You come back a couple hours later, as promised by no one but yourself to yourself. Karkat and Roxy have migrated from the living room to the deck right off it, and John joined them at some point. You stand back behind the glass doors to watch for a minute, half-hidden by the dimness and the reflections. Roxy is laughing like a loon as John tells her a story, complete with hands waving around fit to bitchslaps someone and very earnest nodding. Karkat leans against the railing a couple of steps away; he's smirking faintly, watching them.
Your best bro is totally hitting on your bio mom's clone, isn't he.
From the way she smiles, she doesn't mind one bit. You almost turn right the fuck around.
"Oh hey, Byrd!"
Crap, John saw you. You push the door open and step out. You're not smiling, but you're also not not smiling, which pretty much counts as a smile. "Hey bro."
He grins back, dimpling. "I was telling Roxy about the time I convinced you Howie Mandel had pissed in your sealed apple juice."
You pinch your lips in a perfectly neutral, uncaring line, and then you wrap your hand around his neck and start pushing him over the railing, in a friendly-murderous way.
"Lawl," Roxy goes. "Okay, you two flirt on your own time, kay? I was getting entertained here."
"Eww," John goes with feeling, bent over backward against the railing.
"Yeah, mom, don't be gross," you drawl, and allow him to grab onto your wrist so you can help him get back up. "We're totes in diams, you keep your diagonal quadrant-flip fantasies away, okay."
"Did you research or something?" Karkat interjects, dry and maybe slightly amused.
... You totally did not spend the last two hours idly rereading group logs for hints about Karkat's views on romance and dating and stuff at all.
You totally didn't come out only slightly less confused about quadrants, and "Um. Of course not. Haha quadrants. Why."
"You sure? Because that sounded slightly less ignorant than your usual."
--
demon patrol
--
"Wakey, wakey, Lord Lazybones the sleeps-a-lot!"
Dave comes to already knowing he doesn't want to move. He has it confirmed when he bats his eyes open, and his cheekbone twinges, and then again when he tries to lift a hand to push John off him. The jerk is looming over him and grinning with far too many teeth for this hour of the -- oh hey, it's almost noon.
Dave lets his arm flop down on the mattress. Yeah, abort this shit, all his muscles went so crazy tense yesterday to keep from being strangled and smothered, he's sore even in the places he didn't get hit. He is going right back to sleep.
"G'off, Egbutt," he grumbles, "this princess don't need kissed."
John chuckles and leans closer in. "What pretty eyes you have, your highness."
Wh -- fuck, where are his shades. He forces his protesting arm to feel around for the nightstand, finds it, doesn't find his shades...
... Ooooh, hell. He slumps back, tries to merge with the bed, eyes scrunching closed. He was home yesterday, he wasn't wearing them.
Thank fuck for that, because wearing them at night on that roof might have gotten him killed for real.
"Daveypoo~"
Dave cracks an eye open to glare. John and his giant teeth are about two inches from his face.
It's pretty hard to miss the way his expression goes from teasing to a baffled frown.
"Dave? Look at me?"
Aw, fuck. Dave looks over the room. Karkat is siting beside him in bed, laptop on his knees, and looks so completely absorbed by whatever it is he's reading or watching he isn't even paying them enough attention to mock.
Dave so doesn't want to talk about the faint but unmistakable clock gears circling his pupils. Nope. He'd been doing fine pretending they didn't matter one bit, actually.
"I don't know, that's a lot of -- ow, fuck -- a lot of commitment, Egbert, I don't know if I'm ready for a big step like that--"
"Dave, stop being bashful, it doesn't suit you at all," John replies placidly.
Dave gives in and turns his head -- oh Jesus his neck hurts. He turns his shoulders with it and his back twinges hard instead, so it takes him a couple of seconds to bring himself to meet John's eyes.
John peers at him for another two seconds, and then goes "Huh. Yeah, Rose has them too."
Then he straightens up, puts his hands on his hips, and goes "Now get up, we're having lunch!"
Karkat looks up from his laptop and starts closing up things. Dave sits there and maybe gapes a tiny little bit.
"Hey!"
"Hmm?"
"Oh my little Jesus you humongous dick, I know I underreact to everything but that's because I know you'll make a fuss for me! Is that it? 'Oh yeah, Rose has them too?'"
"I said 'huh yeah'," John rectifies.
"That's even worse!"
Karkat closes his laptop with a decisive slap of noise and knuckles him under the rib, where he's ticklish. Not in the bruises, that's on the other side, so really Dave is the one who hurts himself jumping when he knew his whole body hurts and he should resist the urge, and Karkat is perfectly within orders.
"I hate you both with the fiery intensity of a hella pissed off phoenix," he mutters, slumped over the very edge of the mattress, one hand over his ribs. "Seriously this phoenix was dating a hellhound that was literally on fire and she left him for, like, I dunno, something cold and I don't even remember where the fuck I was going with it but I really hate the both of you a lot."
"We'll remember that next time you invite us for a threesome," John replies, pursing his lips sternly. "Dad's waiting for you at the station at two sharp, by the way--"
"I'm up, I'm up."
He is... approximately up. Sort of. He's standing on his feet, at least. He's just standing pretty crooked. Everything from the base of his skull to the small of his back is one big pulled muscle. He has pulled muscles he had never felt in his life before and would have been pretty sure he did not use.
"Could have brought me painkillers, fuck, what's this service..."
"Jade has Feferi until one-thirty," John replies, and gives him an innocent look.
Dave limps his torturous way out of the door and down the staircase at a hopping, yelping run.
--
prince lil hal is a jerk ♥
--
To his Grace Kurloz, Duke of Lotam, from Harold Strider-Lalonde, with most sincere compliments,
They've been riding a week; they left behind any civilization worth the name four days ago. Hal spends the time writing letters in his head, that he will never put on paper because they would be read and then never sent.
As you might recall, I was recently entrusted to the Care of my very dear Uncle David and his beloved husband. My Esteemed Uncles have seen fit, in their benevolence, to grace me with the gift of a solid, serviceable bay mare, and a pack mule of unprecedented willpower.
I believe most strongly it is an attempt at strengthening my Will through Adversity. It's succeeding quite well.
"--hey, Hal."
He glares, he can't help it. They let him keep his smoke-tinted eyepieces, though, so he's almost sure the troll can't tell. "Yes?"
The troll is riding the pack horse for once, a stout, shaggy thing unfit for a duke's husband, and all of the pack is tacked onto his war drake along with a sizeable part of David's belongings. They're attempting to tire out the great beast so its temper will be a little more manageable, to pretend that the chunk it almost took out of Hal's hand is actually an issue they want resolved.
The troll draws even with him, and tilts his head, inhuman bright red and yellow eyes fixed on him from under thick, bushy brows. "Your turn to find us a spot for the night, remember? Well, it's time to start looking."
He points at the sky. Hal makes a humming noise of acknowledgement and kicks his horse ahead on the rocky path. The mare lumbers on.
He doesn't stop at the first place he sees, or at the second; too many little rocks here, too exposed there. He wants to show he has some discernment; dragging his feet would only guarantee more beginner lessons, only with even smaller words, and he's tired of being thought daft, tired of having all his life experience amount to exactly nothing.
"Here."
His uncle doesn't say anything, and his face is blank enough to rival with the good Doctor for unreadability. The troll pinches his lips together, one eyebrow up.
"Well."
"Yes?" Hal asks, cuttingly polite.
"I did say you'd get to decide. Trying to figure out what'd work better."
"Work for?"
The troll turns to look at him, diminutive horns glinting in the evening light. "Hm. Dave?"
"Your decision, husband," Uncle David says piously.
The troll snorts, like he thinks he's a horse. "Okay. You're not stupid, so you probably have a good imagination. You probably won't need to experience snowmelt runoff getting into your blankets firsthand."
Hal stiffens, clenches his jaw rather than retort the first ... several things that come to mind. He scans the camping site again, and yes, there is a slight slope, and the cliff does present traces of ... damn.
"It wasn't so warm today. Night would freeze it all again -- wouldn't it?"
He didn't mean to sound like he wasn't sure there. Damn it.
The troll shrugs. "Your choice. Okay."
Hal yanks his horse around, kicks it once for good measure when it won't turn as fast as he wills it. "Don't you do that. Explain!"
The troll stares back, one eyebrow up again like he wants to ask Hal if he's really sure he wishes to challenge him right now, but bland and uncaring like he knows he'll come out on top without any difficulty. Uncle David sighs from the back of his fire-pelted hippogriff.
"The warmth or lack thereof we feel from down here doesn't matter half as much as the amount of light at the top," Uncle David says, "and it's been sunny almost the whole day. By the time all of it freezes again it'll be the middle of the night. Might dribble, might not." A careless shrug.
"Waiting on your decision," the troll adds, like he's actually interested to see what Hal will choose.
They shrug the same way. He's not sure why it annoys him so much.
"It'll be too dark soon." Hal squares his shoulders, chin subtly up. He was raised to be a king and he doesn't want them to forget. "I say we stay here."
They exchange another look, another shrug.
"Sure thing," David says.
The troll nods. "It'll be interesting, I guess. For East Beforan values of such."
--
Girl Genius OC/OC fic
--
The brand new secret tunnel behind Frau Crina's Bar and Bagels had not been outfitted with lamps, and it was the middle of a drizzly mountain night.
The reddish glow and dry heat that slowly grew the farther Sorin went had him chanting "Don't be lava, don't be lava" from the second he noticed his hair was drying to the time the tunnel opened onto a ridiculously large cave.
It was, of course, lava.
He flattened himself against the wall of the tunnel -- black, bubbly stone -- his heart trying to crawl its way up his throat. Vulkanburg was nestled in an ancient caldera; there was nothing inherently suspicious about volcanic rock. The squad of hulking creatures down there on the bank of the lava lake maneuvering with odd flamethrowers made him a bit too aware of how the tunnel had appeared in the first place.
Noise came up to him in a cacophony of unintelligible voices, clicking, cooling stone, bubbling. Even so high up the heat of the lava made his nostril hairs curl up. He didn't get how the minions working down there hadn't been baked already.
He scanned them all -- five, six -- ten, twice that many, looking for a swinging black braid. There had been forks in the tunnel but he'd been so sure --
There. There she was.
Rozalia was making a beeline for the center of the mass, waving a sheet of paper overhead. Sorin didn't need to hear the words to read them all over her body. "Mistress! Mistress!!" She was so excited. Good news.
She'd been so excited slipping into the passage that she hadn't even seen Sorin. Hadn't heard him call, despite all rules of prudence and the late, quiet hour, the curfew.
Master Iliescu was going to cry.
He looked over the cave a last time. It must spread under half the town, it was so large. The creatures looked like clanks, only without the shine of metal to them. Not like flesh either. Puppets maybe, animate statues. All well-armed.
Minions opened a gate and a thread of molten gold flowed into a series of molds that reminded him of the stone clanks. Others manned levers and control panels he couldn't make sense of; spark stuff.
Nothing he could do, if the Viscountess decided on war. Nothing he should. And perhaps there was some threat coming that they needed protection for, though he would have assumed the Baron's Peace would ensure they receive reinforcements for the asking. But Rozalia he could drag out of here, talk sense into... maybe...
Yeah, talking someone into abandoning their madboy of choice rarely went well. He gritted his teeth, raked sweaty curls out of his face, sank into a crouch. At worst he would just kidnap her. Her father would sort her out. Or forge pretty leg irons for her, either or.
"--perfect!"
All the hair went up along his spine.
This -- cutting through the noise, stretching to the limits of the room -- this was the voice of a Spark in the grip of madness.
"--report from Plovdiv that the Tectonic Dismantler is working at the maximum planned capacity! Bwahahaha!"
...Sorin had no clue what tectonic meant but he was sure it couldn't be good. Plovdiv was hundreds of miles away. He tried to hope it was the kind of weapon that left the area around its user untouched, for at least town-wide levels of 'area'.
And Rozalia stood at the Viscountess' left hand, face upturned in awe.
She had to come out at some point. (Never mind that no one had seen her in town for a week, that she hadn't been home for two.) She had to come out and there was a pretty even chance she'd use the same tunnel she had used to come inside. (There was, right? There was.)
He inched away from the opening, cautiously, and then turned on hands and knees to crawl toward the first bend. The tools in his satchel clinked together briefly, and he froze, eyes wide -- but no reaction out there, he was still safe, there was no way they'd heard. Breathing out, he shifted--
"Mistress! Mistress! Intruder!!"
Sorin jerked like he'd put his hand down on a live wire, whirled around. Down on the floor a guard was racing to the Viscountess, same way Rozalia had, not the same emotion behind it at all.
He saw the minions flinch, start to scan the walls of the cave, the tunnels' openings; he tried to move back, tripped himself, landed on his ass.
A hand pointed to him.
"There!"
He saw Rozalia turn. Recognize him.
He was fleeing in the next second, scrabbling on hands and knees and then running, uncoordinated from terror but all his limbs agreeing on forward, on fast.
"--There! Construct! Get him!"
The tunnel twisted this and that way; he barreled past a forking path and only noticed after he was five, ten steps past, and didn't, couldn't stop and go make sure he was going down the right one, oh by all his ancestors he was going to get lost, get caught, die here in the furnace-dark -- this one looked familiar but what if he was wrong?
Yells resonated behind him, wretched beast, traitor, cursed spy. He kept running.
Then they seemed to come from before him, and he stopped.
He was almost blind from the lava, his rainy-night vision hadn't yet come back and his hands were scuffs and bruises all over from catching the walls, but the light of the torches, that he could see.
No tunnel, no other tunnel, no fork no big rock no place to hide no nothing --
Something wrapped around his neck, covered his face. Shrieking, he threw himself back into it -- there was nothing behind him, not from the shoulder blades down; he tried to drop his weight to the ground, make it drop him, and choked hanging instead.
It swung him up by the neck and the back of his shirt and then he was being shoved in the dark against rocks and something -- a body. He could see nothing, understood nothing. The slope was bad and his fingers wouldn't catch; he backslid into the other -- person, thing, monster and it --
Caught him, an arm across his chest, hand (too big too big) tightening on his throat, his back pressed to someone's -- hand on his face, mouth, no--
"Shh."
He shushed.
He was on someone's lap up an almost vertical shaft in the rock and if he didn't shush he was going to be choked out until he was quiet. That was something he understood with crystal clarity in the middle of his terror.
Under them two small mobs met screeching -- firelight danced on the rocks. Raised voices. Flesh impacting with flesh.
"--Ow!"
"You lost him!"
"No, you--"
"Stop -- fight each other!"
The chest against his back jerked like a suppressed laugh.
Fighting each other, in frustration, confusion, anger. One of the men down there said something about going back to check down the last fork. Sorin closed his eyes so he would stop seeing the torchlight and breathed, trembled.
"Stop that," someone breathed in his ear, barely enunciating. "If your tools clang I'm dumping you."
Sorin found that one of his hands was on someone's arm and the other one on -- probably his knee -- and suddenly he was squeezing for all he was worth. He threw his head back -- not hard, but in rage. If there hadn't been a hand covering his mouth he might have yelled, how is that supposed to help?!
(Which probably would have been bad. But.)
Granted the bulk of it is for a single fic in the Girl Genius fandom and not anything most of y'all will want to read, but. XD whoa, nice wordcount, self, you rule. it feels so good writing regularly once again guys ;__;
POSTED:
-not-even-a-drabble dave/terezi dragon/knight cute (82 words)
haha ha ha aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh orz
just have it here never mind linking it:
"So you’re not the type that changes to a handsome human from a fair damsel’s kiss, huh,” Terezi said, hands cupping a long scaly muzzle.
"Where do you see a fair damsel," the dragon droned back, and flicked his long forked tongue at her fingers. "Oh right, you can’t see shit, I guess that explains it."
"It’s okay, Dave, you will always be a pretty princess in my heart," the knight said soothingly, and flicked her much-shorter tongue right back at his.
WIP:
-Crash Standing chapter uhhhhh 15? 16? (345 words orz)
-Homestuck: Demon Patrol (756 words)
-Homestuck: arranged marriage davekat fic: Lil Hal sequel (1 328 words)
-untitled Girl Genius OC-centric fic, chapters 1 to 6 (38 775 words BOOYAH)
-first attempt at GG fic, abandoned (151 words)
--
crash standing (already teasered on tumblr sorry guys nothing new)
--
You come back a couple hours later, as promised by no one but yourself to yourself. Karkat and Roxy have migrated from the living room to the deck right off it, and John joined them at some point. You stand back behind the glass doors to watch for a minute, half-hidden by the dimness and the reflections. Roxy is laughing like a loon as John tells her a story, complete with hands waving around fit to bitchslaps someone and very earnest nodding. Karkat leans against the railing a couple of steps away; he's smirking faintly, watching them.
Your best bro is totally hitting on your bio mom's clone, isn't he.
From the way she smiles, she doesn't mind one bit. You almost turn right the fuck around.
"Oh hey, Byrd!"
Crap, John saw you. You push the door open and step out. You're not smiling, but you're also not not smiling, which pretty much counts as a smile. "Hey bro."
He grins back, dimpling. "I was telling Roxy about the time I convinced you Howie Mandel had pissed in your sealed apple juice."
You pinch your lips in a perfectly neutral, uncaring line, and then you wrap your hand around his neck and start pushing him over the railing, in a friendly-murderous way.
"Lawl," Roxy goes. "Okay, you two flirt on your own time, kay? I was getting entertained here."
"Eww," John goes with feeling, bent over backward against the railing.
"Yeah, mom, don't be gross," you drawl, and allow him to grab onto your wrist so you can help him get back up. "We're totes in diams, you keep your diagonal quadrant-flip fantasies away, okay."
"Did you research or something?" Karkat interjects, dry and maybe slightly amused.
... You totally did not spend the last two hours idly rereading group logs for hints about Karkat's views on romance and dating and stuff at all.
You totally didn't come out only slightly less confused about quadrants, and "Um. Of course not. Haha quadrants. Why."
"You sure? Because that sounded slightly less ignorant than your usual."
--
demon patrol
--
"Wakey, wakey, Lord Lazybones the sleeps-a-lot!"
Dave comes to already knowing he doesn't want to move. He has it confirmed when he bats his eyes open, and his cheekbone twinges, and then again when he tries to lift a hand to push John off him. The jerk is looming over him and grinning with far too many teeth for this hour of the -- oh hey, it's almost noon.
Dave lets his arm flop down on the mattress. Yeah, abort this shit, all his muscles went so crazy tense yesterday to keep from being strangled and smothered, he's sore even in the places he didn't get hit. He is going right back to sleep.
"G'off, Egbutt," he grumbles, "this princess don't need kissed."
John chuckles and leans closer in. "What pretty eyes you have, your highness."
Wh -- fuck, where are his shades. He forces his protesting arm to feel around for the nightstand, finds it, doesn't find his shades...
... Ooooh, hell. He slumps back, tries to merge with the bed, eyes scrunching closed. He was home yesterday, he wasn't wearing them.
Thank fuck for that, because wearing them at night on that roof might have gotten him killed for real.
"Daveypoo~"
Dave cracks an eye open to glare. John and his giant teeth are about two inches from his face.
It's pretty hard to miss the way his expression goes from teasing to a baffled frown.
"Dave? Look at me?"
Aw, fuck. Dave looks over the room. Karkat is siting beside him in bed, laptop on his knees, and looks so completely absorbed by whatever it is he's reading or watching he isn't even paying them enough attention to mock.
Dave so doesn't want to talk about the faint but unmistakable clock gears circling his pupils. Nope. He'd been doing fine pretending they didn't matter one bit, actually.
"I don't know, that's a lot of -- ow, fuck -- a lot of commitment, Egbert, I don't know if I'm ready for a big step like that--"
"Dave, stop being bashful, it doesn't suit you at all," John replies placidly.
Dave gives in and turns his head -- oh Jesus his neck hurts. He turns his shoulders with it and his back twinges hard instead, so it takes him a couple of seconds to bring himself to meet John's eyes.
John peers at him for another two seconds, and then goes "Huh. Yeah, Rose has them too."
Then he straightens up, puts his hands on his hips, and goes "Now get up, we're having lunch!"
Karkat looks up from his laptop and starts closing up things. Dave sits there and maybe gapes a tiny little bit.
"Hey!"
"Hmm?"
"Oh my little Jesus you humongous dick, I know I underreact to everything but that's because I know you'll make a fuss for me! Is that it? 'Oh yeah, Rose has them too?'"
"I said 'huh yeah'," John rectifies.
"That's even worse!"
Karkat closes his laptop with a decisive slap of noise and knuckles him under the rib, where he's ticklish. Not in the bruises, that's on the other side, so really Dave is the one who hurts himself jumping when he knew his whole body hurts and he should resist the urge, and Karkat is perfectly within orders.
"I hate you both with the fiery intensity of a hella pissed off phoenix," he mutters, slumped over the very edge of the mattress, one hand over his ribs. "Seriously this phoenix was dating a hellhound that was literally on fire and she left him for, like, I dunno, something cold and I don't even remember where the fuck I was going with it but I really hate the both of you a lot."
"We'll remember that next time you invite us for a threesome," John replies, pursing his lips sternly. "Dad's waiting for you at the station at two sharp, by the way--"
"I'm up, I'm up."
He is... approximately up. Sort of. He's standing on his feet, at least. He's just standing pretty crooked. Everything from the base of his skull to the small of his back is one big pulled muscle. He has pulled muscles he had never felt in his life before and would have been pretty sure he did not use.
"Could have brought me painkillers, fuck, what's this service..."
"Jade has Feferi until one-thirty," John replies, and gives him an innocent look.
Dave limps his torturous way out of the door and down the staircase at a hopping, yelping run.
--
prince lil hal is a jerk ♥
--
To his Grace Kurloz, Duke of Lotam, from Harold Strider-Lalonde, with most sincere compliments,
They've been riding a week; they left behind any civilization worth the name four days ago. Hal spends the time writing letters in his head, that he will never put on paper because they would be read and then never sent.
As you might recall, I was recently entrusted to the Care of my very dear Uncle David and his beloved husband. My Esteemed Uncles have seen fit, in their benevolence, to grace me with the gift of a solid, serviceable bay mare, and a pack mule of unprecedented willpower.
I believe most strongly it is an attempt at strengthening my Will through Adversity. It's succeeding quite well.
"--hey, Hal."
He glares, he can't help it. They let him keep his smoke-tinted eyepieces, though, so he's almost sure the troll can't tell. "Yes?"
The troll is riding the pack horse for once, a stout, shaggy thing unfit for a duke's husband, and all of the pack is tacked onto his war drake along with a sizeable part of David's belongings. They're attempting to tire out the great beast so its temper will be a little more manageable, to pretend that the chunk it almost took out of Hal's hand is actually an issue they want resolved.
The troll draws even with him, and tilts his head, inhuman bright red and yellow eyes fixed on him from under thick, bushy brows. "Your turn to find us a spot for the night, remember? Well, it's time to start looking."
He points at the sky. Hal makes a humming noise of acknowledgement and kicks his horse ahead on the rocky path. The mare lumbers on.
He doesn't stop at the first place he sees, or at the second; too many little rocks here, too exposed there. He wants to show he has some discernment; dragging his feet would only guarantee more beginner lessons, only with even smaller words, and he's tired of being thought daft, tired of having all his life experience amount to exactly nothing.
"Here."
His uncle doesn't say anything, and his face is blank enough to rival with the good Doctor for unreadability. The troll pinches his lips together, one eyebrow up.
"Well."
"Yes?" Hal asks, cuttingly polite.
"I did say you'd get to decide. Trying to figure out what'd work better."
"Work for?"
The troll turns to look at him, diminutive horns glinting in the evening light. "Hm. Dave?"
"Your decision, husband," Uncle David says piously.
The troll snorts, like he thinks he's a horse. "Okay. You're not stupid, so you probably have a good imagination. You probably won't need to experience snowmelt runoff getting into your blankets firsthand."
Hal stiffens, clenches his jaw rather than retort the first ... several things that come to mind. He scans the camping site again, and yes, there is a slight slope, and the cliff does present traces of ... damn.
"It wasn't so warm today. Night would freeze it all again -- wouldn't it?"
He didn't mean to sound like he wasn't sure there. Damn it.
The troll shrugs. "Your choice. Okay."
Hal yanks his horse around, kicks it once for good measure when it won't turn as fast as he wills it. "Don't you do that. Explain!"
The troll stares back, one eyebrow up again like he wants to ask Hal if he's really sure he wishes to challenge him right now, but bland and uncaring like he knows he'll come out on top without any difficulty. Uncle David sighs from the back of his fire-pelted hippogriff.
"The warmth or lack thereof we feel from down here doesn't matter half as much as the amount of light at the top," Uncle David says, "and it's been sunny almost the whole day. By the time all of it freezes again it'll be the middle of the night. Might dribble, might not." A careless shrug.
"Waiting on your decision," the troll adds, like he's actually interested to see what Hal will choose.
They shrug the same way. He's not sure why it annoys him so much.
"It'll be too dark soon." Hal squares his shoulders, chin subtly up. He was raised to be a king and he doesn't want them to forget. "I say we stay here."
They exchange another look, another shrug.
"Sure thing," David says.
The troll nods. "It'll be interesting, I guess. For East Beforan values of such."
--
Girl Genius OC/OC fic
--
The brand new secret tunnel behind Frau Crina's Bar and Bagels had not been outfitted with lamps, and it was the middle of a drizzly mountain night.
The reddish glow and dry heat that slowly grew the farther Sorin went had him chanting "Don't be lava, don't be lava" from the second he noticed his hair was drying to the time the tunnel opened onto a ridiculously large cave.
It was, of course, lava.
He flattened himself against the wall of the tunnel -- black, bubbly stone -- his heart trying to crawl its way up his throat. Vulkanburg was nestled in an ancient caldera; there was nothing inherently suspicious about volcanic rock. The squad of hulking creatures down there on the bank of the lava lake maneuvering with odd flamethrowers made him a bit too aware of how the tunnel had appeared in the first place.
Noise came up to him in a cacophony of unintelligible voices, clicking, cooling stone, bubbling. Even so high up the heat of the lava made his nostril hairs curl up. He didn't get how the minions working down there hadn't been baked already.
He scanned them all -- five, six -- ten, twice that many, looking for a swinging black braid. There had been forks in the tunnel but he'd been so sure --
There. There she was.
Rozalia was making a beeline for the center of the mass, waving a sheet of paper overhead. Sorin didn't need to hear the words to read them all over her body. "Mistress! Mistress!!" She was so excited. Good news.
She'd been so excited slipping into the passage that she hadn't even seen Sorin. Hadn't heard him call, despite all rules of prudence and the late, quiet hour, the curfew.
Master Iliescu was going to cry.
He looked over the cave a last time. It must spread under half the town, it was so large. The creatures looked like clanks, only without the shine of metal to them. Not like flesh either. Puppets maybe, animate statues. All well-armed.
Minions opened a gate and a thread of molten gold flowed into a series of molds that reminded him of the stone clanks. Others manned levers and control panels he couldn't make sense of; spark stuff.
Nothing he could do, if the Viscountess decided on war. Nothing he should. And perhaps there was some threat coming that they needed protection for, though he would have assumed the Baron's Peace would ensure they receive reinforcements for the asking. But Rozalia he could drag out of here, talk sense into... maybe...
Yeah, talking someone into abandoning their madboy of choice rarely went well. He gritted his teeth, raked sweaty curls out of his face, sank into a crouch. At worst he would just kidnap her. Her father would sort her out. Or forge pretty leg irons for her, either or.
"--perfect!"
All the hair went up along his spine.
This -- cutting through the noise, stretching to the limits of the room -- this was the voice of a Spark in the grip of madness.
"--report from Plovdiv that the Tectonic Dismantler is working at the maximum planned capacity! Bwahahaha!"
...Sorin had no clue what tectonic meant but he was sure it couldn't be good. Plovdiv was hundreds of miles away. He tried to hope it was the kind of weapon that left the area around its user untouched, for at least town-wide levels of 'area'.
And Rozalia stood at the Viscountess' left hand, face upturned in awe.
She had to come out at some point. (Never mind that no one had seen her in town for a week, that she hadn't been home for two.) She had to come out and there was a pretty even chance she'd use the same tunnel she had used to come inside. (There was, right? There was.)
He inched away from the opening, cautiously, and then turned on hands and knees to crawl toward the first bend. The tools in his satchel clinked together briefly, and he froze, eyes wide -- but no reaction out there, he was still safe, there was no way they'd heard. Breathing out, he shifted--
"Mistress! Mistress! Intruder!!"
Sorin jerked like he'd put his hand down on a live wire, whirled around. Down on the floor a guard was racing to the Viscountess, same way Rozalia had, not the same emotion behind it at all.
He saw the minions flinch, start to scan the walls of the cave, the tunnels' openings; he tried to move back, tripped himself, landed on his ass.
A hand pointed to him.
"There!"
He saw Rozalia turn. Recognize him.
He was fleeing in the next second, scrabbling on hands and knees and then running, uncoordinated from terror but all his limbs agreeing on forward, on fast.
"--There! Construct! Get him!"
The tunnel twisted this and that way; he barreled past a forking path and only noticed after he was five, ten steps past, and didn't, couldn't stop and go make sure he was going down the right one, oh by all his ancestors he was going to get lost, get caught, die here in the furnace-dark -- this one looked familiar but what if he was wrong?
Yells resonated behind him, wretched beast, traitor, cursed spy. He kept running.
Then they seemed to come from before him, and he stopped.
He was almost blind from the lava, his rainy-night vision hadn't yet come back and his hands were scuffs and bruises all over from catching the walls, but the light of the torches, that he could see.
No tunnel, no other tunnel, no fork no big rock no place to hide no nothing --
Something wrapped around his neck, covered his face. Shrieking, he threw himself back into it -- there was nothing behind him, not from the shoulder blades down; he tried to drop his weight to the ground, make it drop him, and choked hanging instead.
It swung him up by the neck and the back of his shirt and then he was being shoved in the dark against rocks and something -- a body. He could see nothing, understood nothing. The slope was bad and his fingers wouldn't catch; he backslid into the other -- person, thing, monster and it --
Caught him, an arm across his chest, hand (too big too big) tightening on his throat, his back pressed to someone's -- hand on his face, mouth, no--
"Shh."
He shushed.
He was on someone's lap up an almost vertical shaft in the rock and if he didn't shush he was going to be choked out until he was quiet. That was something he understood with crystal clarity in the middle of his terror.
Under them two small mobs met screeching -- firelight danced on the rocks. Raised voices. Flesh impacting with flesh.
"--Ow!"
"You lost him!"
"No, you--"
"Stop -- fight each other!"
The chest against his back jerked like a suppressed laugh.
Fighting each other, in frustration, confusion, anger. One of the men down there said something about going back to check down the last fork. Sorin closed his eyes so he would stop seeing the torchlight and breathed, trembled.
"Stop that," someone breathed in his ear, barely enunciating. "If your tools clang I'm dumping you."
Sorin found that one of his hands was on someone's arm and the other one on -- probably his knee -- and suddenly he was squeezing for all he was worth. He threw his head back -- not hard, but in rage. If there hadn't been a hand covering his mouth he might have yelled, how is that supposed to help?!
(Which probably would have been bad. But.)