Vadimas Lugosi (hammerfall) wrote in olympian_rewind, @ 2010-04-04 22:07:00 |
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Entry tags: | hephaestus, npc, vadimas lugosi |
Who: Hephaestus (Vadimas Lugosi) and Freyra (Janelle Delmar)
What: Status updates and tasteful lunches
Where: Ridgekeep
When: BACKDATED Wednesday 2/24, Lunch Time
Warnings: None
Hepheastus walked calmly down the halls of Ridgekeep. He felt more comfortable in the home of the Aesir and Vanir, but every visit reminded him of his first, ill-fated trip. Hephaestus smiled ruefully a the memory, and his grip on his briefcases' handle tightened slightly. He let his tension out in a sigh. At least that mess had resolved successfully enough, and with slippery Subrosa dead, it was unlikely to happen again.
He stopped outside of Freyra's office. He had a list of things he wanted/needed to talk to the elf goddess about, but this wasn't just a business meeting. After all the craziness of the past day, Hephaestus found the idea of spending the day with a beautiful woman and away from the craziness of his family quite attractive.
He knocked on the door. No need to kick it in this time.
Freyra was trying to work, but there was a giddiness in the Elf-goddess, that she couldn't quite concentrate on the mess of gears she had before her on the table. She picked one up to bolt it onto a lever only to find herself smiling and then snickering to herself. She then had to start over.
Today was not going to be productive, she had decided, but she could definately pretend it would be.
Until she heard a knock on the door. She spun around on her swivel chair and was more than pleased to welcome a distraction. "Who's there?"
"It's Hephaestus." he answered through the door. "May I come in?" He didn't want to interrupt any delicate work she may be doing, magical or mundane. He would monopolize enough of her time without disrupting any of the myriad things she did in the course of her duties.
Hephaestus? Freyra's eyes widened. He was a Greek. This giddiness was unacceptable. "Of course. Just give me one second..." She took a deep breath and forced her smile into a more neutral expression. The Greeks had just lost a member and she was the sister of the god of foreign relations -- she could at least pretend to have tact.
Only when she was sure of her appearance in all regards did she rise from her chair and open the door, "I assumed you went back to Miami."
"I did," He replied. "Odin didn't leave me much of a choice." Hephaestus wasn't going to question Odin. He had an air of command about him, very much unlike Zeus. Hephaestus glanced at Freyra. She was stunningly beautiful, as always. He thought he saw something-- a smile? --flicker across her face, but it was gone as soon as he saw it.
"I returned home to unpleasant phone calls and scads of data to pour over concerning Zeus and his new son," he continued. "But neither of them are going anywhere for the time being, and, since I am fabulously wealthy, I decided to ready my private jet and come here to see you." Hephaestus felt better just being in Freyra's presence. This had been a good decision.
"You look lovely, as always," he added. He placed his briefcase on a nearby table. "Your beauty has made this trip worthwhile already." While true, Hephaestus felt it may have been too much. But, too much was often never enough for the Aesir and Vanir.
Too much was never enough for at least Freyra. If anything the compliment pleased her on two levels today. One appeases her normal vanity and the other allowed her an excuse to smile. And she did. She smiled brightly as she motioned to her work area and pulled over another chair. "I am having a very good hair day today. Our uniform helmet does nothing for me." Sitting down, she pushed a gear pile aside so she could rest her elbow there to prop up her head, "So, you came just to see me?"
"Of course." Hephaestus nodded and returned Freyra's smile. "I was disappointed I didn't get to talk to you yesterday." He kept the tone light, but wondered how he would work back to the fact that he had some business to talk over with her. Just because it's business doesn't mean it's not still focused on her, he rationalized, but decided to keep heaping praise of the elf goddess for the time being. "And now I am rewarded by bearing witness to your wonderful hair day."
"I'm still getting used to it being short. After centuries of long hair, not being able to whip it around is something to get used to." Freyra kept on smiling, more and more pleased that she had more and more excuses not to try not to be happy. Though her words made her imagine the previous day only with her not having a helmet on and having long hair to whip around as Subrosa agents fell at her hand. She managed to catch her snickering only as she remembered that Hephaestus may be here to escape the gloom of Miami. She fought to bring down the happiness just a notch. "So, is there anything I can do for you besides having a wonderful hair day?"
"At the moment," Hephaestus began, smiling a little, "the question is not what you can do for me, but what I can do for you." Hephaestus popped open his briefcase. "I am grateful for all that you and your kith and kin have done for my family, and it pleases me that I can return the favor in a small way." He pulled out a few pictures of a familiar looking man and placed them on the table. "I believe I have found Loki, at long last." Hephaestus sat back, immensely pleased with his presentation.
Freyra carelessly swept aside the gears and bolts and other odds and ends as it was clear they were all meaningless, or at least much less important than those photos. She snatched them up quickly and studied them with all her other-worldly attention, such focus almost bleeding through her human glamour. She certainly recognized the giant in the photos, even the woman he grasped tightly in another. It made her laugh, delighted, "You really found him! Just when I thought I couldn't be in a..." Quickly but not quite quick enough she pulled her words back a touch, "You really made my day with this. He's alive."
Hephaestus' furrowed his brows a bit at Freyra's slip. He didn't think he'd ever seen her correct herself like that. It seemed almost contrary to her fre-spirited nature. Mentally, he shrugged his concerns away. Perhaps he was letting himself be a bit too enchanted by Freyra's beauty if he was leaping to conclusions based on minor slips in speech.
"I've been working since the dawn of the new year tracking down fleeting hints of Loki across the globe," Hephaestus explained. "I didn't want to come to you with 'maybe's and 'possibly's. I wanted something concrete to show you. It was only recently I was able to obtain these photos. I would have come to you with them sooner, but they got buried under my usual schedule and the recent... unpleasantness with Zeus and Subrosa." Hephaestus frowned briefly, but smoothed out his features. There was plenty of time to worry about Zeus and the family drama later. "I have his current whereabouts and a dossier on his current life prepared. I thought you might want to look it over." Hephaestus pulled out a rather thin folio from his briefcase and held it out to Freyra.
The pulling out of the thin folio took away any thought Freyra had been having about how Hephaestus had frowned at the mention of his family. The whole thought process of how she was right to restrain her giddiness was done away with at the sight and she looked to the folder like it was an offered snake and even backed away a little bit from it. "No, no. Put that away. I don't want to know where he is. Just that he's alive somewhere."
"You don't?" Hephaestus' eyebrows rose a bit. He hadn't expected that. Thinking about it for a moment, however, he realized that if Ares went missing, he wouldn't care where he was. In fact, there were plenty of family members that Hephaestus had no idea nor care where they were. It was doubtful Freyra's disinterest in Loki's location was as simple as Hephaestus' own apathy, but then, things were never simple when Loki was involved. He was about to burn the folio in his hand, but decided to simply put it back in his briefcase. He didn't want to trigger any of Ridgekeep's fire suppression systems.
"Well, if you ever have need of information on Loki, I will happily provide it at that time." Keeping tabs on a shapeshifting trickster god might not be easy, but it couldn't be much harder than finding one with almost no clues to go on.
"Not at all. The only time I will ever want to know where Loki is now that I know he's alive is when someone claiming to be him reaches the front door." Freyra wasn't doing that again. They had been tricked for decades. If she wasn't in such a grand mood, if everything wasn't going her way, just thinking of that would bristle her, but today? No. Everything was going to swell. "Until then, he can be mysteriously anywhere he wants."
"Fair enough," Hephaestus said with a shrug. It was her family, after all. Speaking of unwelcome family, Hephaestus needed an update on Atlas. He had lessened and lessened his surveillance on Atlas over the weeks. It was more out of deference to the privacy of the Aesir and Vanir than out of trust in Atlas, but Hephaestus begrudgingly admitted to himself that he would need to trust Atlas for his plan to succeed. He had seemed well-behaved when last he checked.
"If I may be selfish for a moment," he began, "How is Atlas doing? I hope he's not causing too much trouble." Hephaestus thought a moment. "Or should I hope that he is? You did take him in on the virtue of him being an evil giant." They had seemed so excited about it. Hephaestus still got headaches remembering his time trying to contain Atlas.
"He's been fine mostly. He fits in well enough here. We can do moody and violent with the best of them." Freyra shrugged. The evil giant had certainly delivered in her estimate. Anything that kept Thor occupied was a success to her. A welcomed success. She only took another moment to consider the Titan. "He was in a terrible mood this morning at breakfast though. Not his jovial self at all. Maybe he's upset he didn't get to go to the fight. Not that I blame him. Of course, I also didn't ask."
Hephaestus made a mental note about Atlas' bad mood. Something about it worried him, but he couldn't tell what at the moment. It certainly warranted more thought. Later. Hephaestus didn't want to waste too much of his time with Freyra worrying about Atlas' moods. Maybe the Titan had simply stubbed his toe in the morning.
"He would be especially upset to learn he mad missed seeing Zeus expire before his eyes." Hephaestus chuckled a bit. "I felt a little thrill seeing Zeus pay for one of his mistakes. Atlas would have been positively insufferable." Hephaestus leaned back in his chair, his smile widening. "But Zeus' comeuppance was nothing compared to the joy of dismantling Subrosa. Every ounce of pain and suffering I brought to those foolish, ignorant mortals was delightful." Hephaestus had wanted to crow about their victory over Subrosa, but his family wasn't up for it. But Freyra would almost certainly be up for sharing war stories.
Freyra would be but right now she had to blink at what she just heard. "Wait. You're not upset about yesterday and Zeus?"
"No," Hephaestus responded easily. Pieces tumbled into place in his mind, and Freyra's behavior today became less mysterious. "Were you worried about that?" Hephaestus smiled warmly. "Thank you, but, really, I'm fine. But," Hephaestus continued, "I'm not totally heartless. I've seen how his loss has effected others in my family, and I empathize with their pain. I simply don't share it. Plus, Hades is confident that he can bring him back. I have full confidence that he'll be back stirring up his usual brand of trouble soon." Hephaestus left unsaid that he found it too ironic that Zeus had died suppressing a powerful son to be saddened by it.
The Elf-Goddess let out a sigh of relief. "I wish I had known that when you stepped through the door. I wouldn't have had to try to put on a show." She then laughed, no longer trying to hide her glee, "Yesterday was so much fun. It's been so long since I've got to do something like that."
"It's quite the opposite for me," said Hephaestus, finding Freyra's unsuppressed good mood infectious. "It seems like I've been fighting for my life more often now than ever in the past. Fighting the Egyptians, fighting Atlas, crushing Subrosa," Hephaestus shook his head in amazement. "You know, I've been creating arms and armor my whole life, but now I'm starting to understand the thrill of using them. But then, I've always enjoyed putting tools to their intended purpose." Of course, swinging a sword or wielding a gun brought one far greater glory than swinging a smith's hammer, no matter how skillful the smith.
"I thnk we may have settled down in the wrong city. DC seemed crime ridden but all our fights keep being thousands of miles overseas." She reached out and grabbed one of the gears like a top and then took one of the levers to toss it through the center of the spinning gear, "I so rarely get to go out and play, but yesterday was great. At one point, one of the humans was shooting at me so I rushed him and I jumped on top of his stupid dart gun. I balanced there for a second and he realized how doomed he was."
Hephaestus joined her in her gear game. He may not be an elf, but his hands were as skilled and dexterous as any of the musicians in his family.
"You should get a summer home in Miami, then," Hephaestus offered. "There's always some deadly peril skulking around the next corner in Little Havana or Coral Gables. It's like a TV show." Burn Notice, to be exact, but with former deities instead of spies.
"Less than two years ago, I found myself plunged into my family's battle with the Egyptians." Hephaestus leaned forward, engrossed in the memories of that day. "Later, I would come to learn all the circumstances surrounding that fracas, including your brother's capture, but at the time, I had almost no understanding of what was happening. I was still reeling from the revelation that I was unknowingly surrounded by the family I had avoided for centuries." Those had been tough times for Hephaestus. Sometimes he still felt overwhelmed by it all. "But, I was told that the Egyptians were plotting our downfall, so I donned my armor and axe and headed out to battle."
"Looking back on it now, I'm surprised we survived." Hephaestus chuckled ruefully at the admission. "We went in without anything resembling a plan, and Zeus casually left the field of battle after he settled some personal score. And as we came to learn, the Devil himself was there. I'm almost glad I went in with so little information." Hephaestus settled in, getting ready to get to the heart of his tale.
"The Devil really gets around," Freyra couldn't help but mutter but she also couldn't help but lean forward as well to listen. A battle story was being told, she couldn't nor would she fight her own nature Hephaestus had her whole attention. The gears could wait. "Then what happened?"
"We came face to face with the contraption they were building." Hephaestus was pleased to see that he had Freyra's attention. He wanted her to know that there was more to him than just the crippled inventor from the myths. For a brief moment, he was thankful for all the mortal danger he had been exposed to in the last few years.
"One thing I did know," he continued, "was that it was our primary goal to destroy it, so I looked for anyone who seemed poised to activate it. Ptah, their god of creation and craftsmen, was busy tinkering with it. With him in my sights, I threw myself into battle. Literally. The contraption was in some sort of pit, which you may remember from our time at the site, and so I jumped from the edge, ax outstretched, looking to strike the first blow while surprise was still on my side." Hephaestus paused, purely for dramatic effect to draw Freyra more into his story.
And it worked. Freyra was more drawn in. If there had been a fire, mead and some drumming she would have felt back in time almost. "Did you bring down your axe on him as your feet reached the ground?"
"Exactly." Hephaestus nodded at Freyra's astute guess. "I caught him above the right shoulder. My ax carved cleanly through his shoulder and ribs on its way out near his arm pit." Hephaestus guessed that he didn't have to spare any gruesome details. In fact, those would probably be her favorite parts of the story. "With a gout of ichor, the old god's arm dropped to the floor."
"Amazingly," Hephaestus continued with an incredulous tinge to his voice, "he seemed more angry that I had disturbed his work on the tower. He asked me if I could not see 'the beauty of my task'. The fact that his arm was off didn't seem to bother him. And it certainly didn't make him less dangerous." Hephaestus' tone turned serious. "He picked up a piece of steel and it became a sword in his hand, and I found myself on the defensive, parrying his new-made weapon." Hephaestus had reacted purely out of instinct. He had a feeling his armor had had more to do do with his survival than his ax play, but when he examined the armor later, there were no nicks or scratches on it.
""It's probably good my family does not have that power. We would just make swords all day." And then probably throw them at Baulder, but she omitted that part. Mostly because Freyra believed it went without saying and if Hephaestus was an Aesir it would have. She had merely forgotten that fact listening to a story of hand to hand combat involving limbs being hacked off with an axe. "Did you dispatch him or did he retreat? I know you weren't killed as you are telling the tale."
"No, I was not killed," Hephaestus affirmed. "Ptah had a deadly quickness with his sword, and I was unsure how my armor would hold up under the blows of a sword crafted by Ptah himself. However, I had something on my side that Ptah did not. Another arm." Hephaestus smiled mirthfully at his own witticism. "I batted away his sword with my ax and buried my fist in his face. Ptah, along with several of his teeth, hit the floor in a wet heap." Hephaestus had been very proud of himself for incapacitating the other god.
"With Ptah defeated for the moment, I turned my attention to the device he had been working on." Hephaestus frowned, remembering the intensity of that struggle. "Suddenly, it was like I was battling Ptah all over again. He had invested so much of himself into his work that it threatened to overwhelm me." He spread his arms to show the enormity of his struggle. "I managed to rend a great crack in the tower, but I paid for it. While I was focused on the tower, Set managed to get the drop on me." Some of the drama of his last line was sapped since, as Freyra pointed out, he was obviously still alive, but it had come as a great shock to Hephaestus at the time.
Even though she was sure he hadn't been killed, there were other outcomes that were almost as bad and she was sure the Egyptians were capable of them. They had managed to almost destroy her twin brother under the yoke of their slavery after all. She delighted in this tale. It was so wonderful to hear how they were made to suffer defeat, "Did they flank you? Did Set manage to fight you away from the tower?"
"In his own manner, yes," Hephaestus explained. "Set used his power over chaos to confuse me. Fatigued as I was, I couldn't fight off the effect." Hephaestus shook his head. "In my confusion, I almost repaired the damage I had, myself, caused. Luckily, I was so fatigued that I considered regaining my strength a higher priority. I dove into the crack I had caused, which reached deep into the earth."
"I fell ever downward, my thoughts racing in circles," Hephaestus exhaled sharply, pushing aside the memory of that time. "Those were some of the worst moments of my life. Certainly the worst in recent memory. They were mercifully brief, however, as my fall took me deep enough into the earth to hit magma." Hephaestus had never been happier to be immersed in hot, liquid rock.
"As the lord of volcanoes, the magma immediately countered the effects of Set's attack." Hephaestus snapped his fingers for emphasis. "With my mind restored, I was furious! No one would violate the sanctity of my mind and live. I rode a billion gallons of lava back to the surface, slamming it into the tower in my fury." Hephaestus had thought little of it at the time, but looking back, he was impressed with himself. He looked to Freyra, wondering if she would be as impressed.
She certainly seemed it. Very rarely did tales she heard include the phrase 'rode a billion gallons on lava'. Of course, that may have something to do with all the fire beings in her pantheon being their sworn and fated enemies that were destined to kill them again and again. But such thoughts were far from her now. There was no room for them. Not with how she was viciously smiling. These people did horrible things to her twin and held him for months. They deserved a torrent of lava about them. "And what about Set and Ptah? Were they horribly burned in the wave? I hope they were."
"Sadly, no," Hephaestus admitted. "Ptah was recovered by the Devil while I was away, and the Devil and Set had moved to higher ground by the time my wave of lava poured out onto the field of battle. However, Set would not escape me for long. The Devil ordered him to finish me off, but I would not be taken so easily again."
"I charged him, my ax held high. He readied his spear against me, and it struck me here." Hephaestus thumped his fingers into the center of his chest. "But I had faith in my armor, and the spearhead turned aside. As the spear passed under my arm, I grabbed it. Before Set could react, I had already struck him three grievous blows with my ax in the chest, collarbone, and neck. Though grievously wounded, Set still had his wits and tried to flee. He was not fast enough. As he turned, I kicked him in the back, severing his spine and slaying him." That was, perhaps, his greatest victory in the battle.
Freyra lit up with the joy a child has when unwrapping their favorite toy on Christmas morning. Perhaps it was the tale of blood and death. Perhaps it was the slaughter of people she truly despised. Either way, her perfectly happy mood was brought to another notch and she got to her feet. "Wait here. Wait. Just hold your place in your story," she said on the verge of laughter.
Then she left the work area and was gone for a few minutes, only to return with what seemed to be a mini keg and two steins. "This story is too good not to be drinking something. Keep going. Then what."
"Then the end," Hephaestus said regretfully. "The Devil took Ptah and fed him into the tower, activating it. I immediately regretted not finishing Ptah when I had the chance. Though he most likely died when he was absorbed by the tower, that is nothing but a hollow victory." Hephaestus paused. Not for the first time, he wondered if he could have changed the course of the battle by slaying Ptah when he had the chance. "I was able to inflict more damage on the tower before it's activation forced me to retreat, but I don't know if it had any effect. When I returned to the scene of the battle, as you know, There was little left but debris and no sign of the Egyptians other than ash." Hephaestus reached over an grabbed a stein. His distaste for food and drink did not extend to alcohol, and Freyra probably had access to the good stuff.
She did. It was good, strong mead imported from their former European homeland and then written off as a business expense. Freyra made sure both steins were topped off and then tapped her stein to his. "At least you were able to kill Set and make Ptah suffer. I did see the aftermath of the battle. The Egyptians suffered greatly. Something to toast about really."
Taking a sip of her own stein then, she thought to her own battle the day before. "Sadly, I don't think those Subrosa agents suffered physically like that. AK-47s are pretty brutal, but I could see it in their eyes -- it was a terrible, demoralizing experience for them that they took to their graves. Their tranq guns bounced off our armor and when they shot one of our men and saw his red blood they exchanged looks of horror like it was their worse nightmare, gods with mortal soldiers."
Hephaestus too a long draught from his stein as he mulled over Freyra's words. The portrait of human suffering she described was sobering. Hephaestus hadn't fully stopped to consider the feelings of the Subrosa foot soldiers. They were cogs in a larger machine. It lead him to a single, grim conclusion.
"Good. Let them learn the lesson in death they refused to learn in life." Hephaestus took another stiff drink. "They pushed my family too far, when all most of us want to do is lead quiet lives, often to the benefit of humanity. By crushing Subrosa, we've probably done more good for humanity than Subrosa ever did with their inane agenda." Another drink and Hephaestus' stein was empty. He paused to fill it from the mini keg.
"I couldn't use my coil gun against Subrosa's soldiers," Hephaestus began, relating his own experience in the battle. "The quarters were too close, and most of my family too lightly armored to risk stray shots and ricochets. No doubt Subrosa thought they had the advantage, despite the fact that we had the element of surprise. That illusion would be dispelled soon enough." Subrosa's tactics were too foolhardy to ever have stood a chance.
"My uncle had gone ahead and sabotaged Subrosa's air guns. That alone guaranteed their doom." Hephaestus almost ruined his latest sip by chuckling at Subrosa's fall. Maybe he should slow down on the mead. It was good. And strong. "When I entered the bunker via high-powered explosives, Subrosa was reduced to using conventional weapons. Two never even got to draw. The explosion had knocked them over, and I made my entrance by grinding their heads to paste against the floor. Two more fell as they fumbled with their holsters, one with his chest crushed with a kick, the other split in twain with an ax. The remaining soldiers surged around me, stabbing at me uselessly with their stun guns. They fell away just as quickly, their heads split from crown to gullet." Hephaestus remembered the look in the last Subrosa agent's eyes as the ax fell. It made Hephaestus smile a cold smile.
"No one escaped that bunker alive. Not a soul. They certainly tried. The men said they had cut down whole lines of people running for their lives. Some of them, realizing they had run into a line of Men tried to reason with them." Freyra let out a wicked laugh as she put down her now empty stein to the work table, "Not that our men understood what they were talking about but they also didn't care. We don't hire people who disobey orders for pleas of mercy."
Filling her stein again, she shook her a little in reference to Subrosa, "They are fools. They should have left your family alone. Now your family wants blood and we simply love to help. James went to a meeting this morning about the whole affair to help us find anymore of their doomed band."
"I would like to be in the loop on that discussion," Hephaestus requested. "I've initiated my own measures to track down and eradicate any remaining dregs of Subrosa, and we've already seen how well things go when we work together." He finished his second stein of mead. As much as he didn't care for eating, he knew that any more drinking on an empty stomach and he may find himself in trouble. "Maybe we can continue this discussion over lunch," he offered, "but I'm loath to leave this--" He put his hand on the mini keg. "--behind." He liked the booze far better than any food, after all.
"We'll be sure to let you and your family in on any results he makes. I'm sure whoever he's talking to doesn't officially exist or something like that. He had to put his clearance ID on this morning before he left." Freyra smirked as his hand rested on the mini keg and completely understood. The mead was good. "Well, if you don't mind a complete mess we can go eat in the formal hall." "Formal hall" meant something very different to the Aesir/Vanir but she was sure he would understand that fact.
"It sounds wonderful." Hephaestus worked in an asylum for nerds. Being highly intelligent and well-paid had not changed what they were, and much of VTS looked like a bomb went off in it, even when it hadn't. Hephaestus picked up the mini keg and placed it under his arm, gripping his briefcase in his hand. This left him one arm free to extend to Freyra. "Shall we?"
Freyra nodded and looped her arm with his. The gears and bits of stuff were left abandoned on the work table. It wasn't like she had been actually doing anything with them anyway. Her morning had been a morning of utter, giddy distraction. Now at least she had an excuse to be distracted from work. "I hope you still think it's wonderful when you're helping me get the 800 pound table righted. We knocked that thing clear over last night." But she didn't leave him much time to think or respond to her comment as she began to pull forward with her toward the formal hall with its roast meats and stews.
Summary: Hephaestus visits Freyra under the pretense of business. They talk Atlas, Zeus, emotions, Subrosa, Loki, and bloody battle before knocking back some mead and deciding to get some lunch.