Loki (fiorvalr) wrote in noexits, @ 2022-03-15 11:49:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread/narrative, marvel (tv/movies): loki laufeyson, the magicians: eliot waugh, → week 032 (dungeons & dragons) |
D&D | DAY 7
His first mistake was leaving Mobius. He should have listened to the stuffy mustached bureaucrat when he told Loki not to wander off. But when did Loki ever listen to anyone? (Never.) His second mistake was using the ring to turn back into his unicorn form. But he did that because he was waiting for Thor and Thor really liked his unicorn appearance. In fact, it was something the two of them had bonded on earlier in the week. Thor being a lion. Loki being a unicorn. For some reason that made Loki feel like they were really brothers. They weren’t, of course, and that logic didn’t make a lick of sense. But Loki had felt a connection in their similar transformation that week. And he also wanted to show off to Thor. How often did he get that chance? (Never.) This was an opportunity to build a new relationship. A new friendship. A new kind of brotherhood.
Plus he could only get to the magical unicorn glen in unicorn form so naturally that’s the form he waited for his ‘brother from an alternate universe mother’ in.
But that was also the form that attracted attention. Unwanted attention.
Loki didn’t know what they were. Bandits. Bounty hunters. Treasure enthusiasts. Collectors. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that they’d been tracking him all week, unbeknownst to Loki himself, and now they finally had him alone. Alone and vulnerable and in the guise they needed. Four legged, sparkly maned, and with that brilliant shining horn. The kidnappers used magic to sneak up on him; some kind of powder and spell to daze him. His vision blurred. He saw dozens of attackers when there were only a handful. And every time he tried to ram his horn into one of them, he was met with air.
Illusions. No. Delusions. They’d magic drugged him. And after a few minutes of struggling, Loki was so disoriented that he could barely stand. Which made it all the easier for his attackers to tie him up before one of them, a sorcerer of some kind, entrapped him in a cage hitched atop their wagon.
“Oh fuck.”
Eliot stared, mouth hung just slightly agape, frozen in a state of near helplessness. He’d been doing business in a less savory part of town because in order to help the money go as far as it possibly could, Eliot was not above turning to unconventional, mostly illegal means. It was a fluke he was even there, just ironing out the details of the last shipment to one of Derleth’s magical doors.
Someone else really should have been there to see Loki’s abduction. Mobius? Hugh? Anyone with a sword or turned into a big green Orc or Fury Adjacent Lion Person that week?
Eliot looked around helplessly but there was no one. Not even a bystander. The streets had seemed busy, completely normal, until an unspoken rule was activated. When the attack went down, people made themselves conspicuously absent. Doors closed, curtains drawn, and an eerie silence made Eliot acutely aware he was not supposed to be there.
”Get him up on the cart.” It was a group of men, working together. They didn’t even shout to communicate. Now that the hard part was over, they went about their business calmly, as if there wasn’t some sacred magical beast they were carting off to slaughter but they were run of the mill merchants loading up… merchandise. (Eliot didn’t know.) They must have had eyes on Loki the entire week, waiting for their chance. A prize like that would not have gone unnoticed.
Why the fuck did Eliot have to be the one to notice?
He thought about reaching for his phone, texting for help. There were plenty of people in Derleth far more suited for something like this. Maybe Eliot could just get general information about the men responsible and someone else would be able to take over from there?
Maybe between transport and whatever else they had planned for Loki, it would take more than the remaining day they had left? And really? Spending your last several hours in a cage, drugged, with unsavory, unwashed men leering at you couldn’t have been that bad, right?
“Fuck me,” Eliot exhaled.
Loki’s cage was nearly loaded up on the cart when Eliot approached the magical traffickers, hands raised to appear as non threatening as he felt. This was a terrible fucking idea, but all Eliot needed to buy them was time, right? Surely someone would be willing to negotiate? Hold Loki in cargo when all Eliot had to do was find new and exciting ways to run down the clock?
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Eliot started. “How much?” He felt their eyes bore into him, sizing him up. It was not the sort of attention Eliot ever wanted for himself. Save the world or not, Eliot had never considered himself much of a hero. (To be honest, he broke the world about as often as he had to save it.)
“Piss off,” spat one of the men, “if you know what’s good for you.”
Eliot exhaled. Well, they hadn’t gone straight to murdering, so that had to be a good sign, right? He tried again. “I could, but I feel like there is a lot more gold in it for you, if you would just tell me how much. I’m having some things delivered to a magical estate and I think a unicorn like this would really complete things. If not gold, maybe a suitable trade?”
That was the moment one of the men drew a dagger and plunged it into Eliot’s gut.
Or attempted to.
The blade glanced off Eliot’s skin and to the side, leaving a tear in his fine robe.
Eliot looked his attacker in the eyes, each of them mirroring one another’s confusion.
So, the attacker tried again, this time driving his blade into Eliot’s chest. Again, the blade made it through Eliot’s fine clothing, but failed to so much as scratch Eliot’s flesh.
Eliot hissed. It hadn’t hurt, but the friction of the blade against skin was uncomfortable. Maybe he’d enchanted himself? Eliot didn’t recall enchanting himself. Perhaps he had a magic item that--
The men circled Eliot suspiciously now, drawing weapons.
“Please, I really like this clothing and all you seem to be doing is--” putting holes in it. Eliot didn’t get to finish his request before he felt tackled on all sides. So this is what football was like. Eliot still didn’t understand the appeal.
It was uncomfortable.
And that was it. Eliot wasn’t dead. Not from fists or blades or pulling on his hair. The hair pulling was just irritating and desperate. Eliot shifted, trying to shove the men off him. Nothing happened.
Eliot shifted and then all of his attackers slid off him and suddenly looked very tiny.
Had Eliot shrunk them?
He exhaled through his nose and saw his breath rise in a dark plume of smoke.
His hands were in front of him, planted on the ground, large, clawed, covered in black scales that shone like polished glass. The thieves began to scramble. But they weren’t the only ones getting acquainted with a new level of terror that made their legs tremble so terribly that it was hard to move.
Eliot’s appearance attracted screams and distant calls for the city guard.
“Change of plans,” Eliot’s voice said, which had dropped about an octave but was still somehow recognizably Eliot. The dragon picked up the cage containing one drugged unicorn in one hand (Paw? No, that couldn’t have been right either.) and stretched his wings, realizing just then he had those, too.
Did he know how to fly? Eliot was about to find out.
The first time he flapped them, not very much happened. He tried again, and again, until his body gradually began to lift from the ground. His massive tail knocked into a nearby produce stand, thankfully abandoned, but Eliot felt the need to apologize anyway with a quick and perhaps too casual: “Sorry!”
And then he flew.
Flying where he had no idea. Only that getting the two of them out of the city was probably for the best.
At least flying felt nice.
Eliot verbalized the next important question: “Do I know how to land?”
Turning the cage upside down in his palm and holding it to his chest, Eliot carefully attempted to land on his back legs, before stabilizing his stance with a third limb. Once he felt solid on the ground, Eliot righted the cage and set it carefully on the ground in the middle of a field of wildflowers.
“I do,” Eliot answered, sounding pleased with himself. “You okay in there, Loki?” Eliot used his fingers (but they weren’t really fingers, were they) to gently, tenderly rip the door of the cage off its hinges. He tried to peer into the cage, but a large black snout was in the way of seeing the unicorn inside properly.
“Loki?”
Pause.
To no one in particular he announced: “I’d like to turn back into an elf now.”
Loki was only half aware of what was going on. He heard a noise. A growl. The yelling of strangers. Possibly the clanking of weapons. And then he felt like he was swaying. His head was swooning. At one point he opened both eyes enough to catch a glimpse of the ground far below him. Was he flying? Rising higher and higher? Was he dead? The equine instincts in him wanted to panic, but he was still too woozy to react. No. Not dead. Maybe dreaming.
And in the distance, behind the sleepy haze, a familiar voice.
Perhaps not a dream, after all. But a nightmare.
"Huuuughliot?" he murmured after the cage finally ceased jostling and settled to a steady soar.
He must have been imagining it, right? Neither Hugh nor Eliot was a giant scaly flying lizards. Were they? Maybe he shouldn't have snacked on that patch of clover. Clearly there had been something amiss with it. Or was it the alfalfa? Loki couldn't remember. And while he tried his hardest to stay awake in order to figure it out, the raider's spell had been too much for him. And combined with the gentle rocking and the fresh scent of the air so high up from the ground, he fell asleep.
The sparkling glow of his unicorn horn fizzling out as well.
Hopefully he'd wake up and be wrong about the nagging feeling that pervaded his slumbering thoughts. The last thing Loki wanted was to owe Eliot a life debt.