[closed]

[heirring]

WHO: Wysteria, Cassius, Flint & Various
WHAT: Catch-all for fantasy August....which is just August
WHEN: August
WHERE: Kirkwall/The Surrounding Free Marches/misc
NOTES: Content warnings in subject lines; holler at me if you want a bespoke starter, otherwise feel free to drop me a start for whatever your heart desires.

Comments

a meeting.

[propulsion]

It's been a day or two. Enough to get some shut eye, eat something, agree to a meeting at some point today for a thorough handover of duties. Tony does not characterise either Yseult or Flint as people who take on vacations after a little thing like weeks-long captivity and a hard won slog through the battle-worn Free Marches.

He also doesn't characterise them as having a sense of humour, and yet.

When Flint returns from something that pulled him away from his offices, he will find, upon return: a humanoid figure, in the strictest sense of the word. Two legs, two arms, a knightly helmet where a head would go, a heavily armoured torso of patchwork iron, long metal limbs with enchantment-inscribed ore insets and coppery wire bonded with lyrium.

It stands behind his desk, because actually getting it to sit down would have probably seriously compromised the chair. One hand ('hand', a two-fingered appendage) is pinched closed over a sheath of pages, and the other holds a silver tray on which balances (precariously, if this whole arrangement seems dubious) a squat bottle of some kind of not-terribly-expensive liquor, and two goblets.

Light flares behind the slits in the helmet once Flint enters the room, but no other reaction is forthcoming.

[katabasis]

The response is predictable. Flint, recently having dredged himself up a half dozen or so flights of stairs and no doubt reminiscing fondly on the good old days when he had Venatori guards who dragged him everywhere rather than having to rely on his own locomotion, pauses just inside the door as he catches sight of the broad figure lying (standing) in wait at the far side of the room. To call it a hesitation might be excessive—it implies no active calculation is being made, whereas this is a brief cessation of momentum in favor of a measuring moment which can be summed up with:

What the fuck.

The door is drawn closed behind him.

Now this pause here. That is hesitation.

[propulsion]

It's just him and a robot for a minute.

Fred stays put, unmoving and unreacting save for the subtly pulsing light inside its helmet. Then, with a low creak of metal, it moves. Locomotion is smoother than one might imagine—if one were imagining—but slow and heavy. It turns in place, as if to walk around the desk, but doesn't quite angle far enough, and so a metal thigh connects with the edge of the big desk and makes the whole thing shudder.

This setback moves it off course, and so when it takes several steps, it's not towards Flint, but off at an angle. Then it stops, and offers out both tray and pages to the air in front of it, the liquor bottle and goblets all wobbling precariously with the movement.

[katabasis]

There are two possibilities here. The first involves turning back around and leaving the room under the assumption that the not-golem will sort itself out in the same fashion which had seen it posted up in the division office to begin with. The second, the one which might occur to the sort of man who has spent a great deal of his life suffering alongside a constant companion named Harebrained Bullshit, involves intercepting the animated suit of armor's slow lumber to snatch the quavering bottle off the tray. One of the goblets is similarly rescued, though professionally speaking: the papers can go fuck themselves.

Shortly thereafter, somewhere else (presumably not too far though Maker only knows), Tony's crystal flickers to indicate the receipt of a message. It says,

"I believe one of your division's projects may have wandered." In the background: clink, the lip of a bottle making contact with the edge of a cup.

[propulsion]

After only a momentary delay; "That rascal."

And then, the sound of footsteps of someone crossing the floor, and Flint's door opens, a semi-dramatic swing cut short with Tony's grip on the edge of it. He stares inside, from Flint to Fred, who is not quite positioned where Tony might have anticipated, and the corner of his mouth curls up. Still pretty good, though.

In his other hand is a metal rod of some sort, and he tosses it enough to spin once in the air before catching it. "Fred here was vying for the position in the event of a worst case scenario," he says, letting himself in, closing the door behind him. "But between you and me, he didn't have a chance. Too stoic, can't get a read on him."

He stops in place, pointing the baton, and this time, the mechanical golem pivots a turn, remaining goblet once again precariously tipping, barely landing, and then staying relatively steady as he walks on over towards Tony.

Granted: "Pretty easy to keep track of."

writes a tag 100 years later that's just a punchline and nothing else

[katabasis]

In the shadow of the lumbering construction, Flint finishes dosing his goblet from the bottle. The successive drink he takes from the cup and the skeptical tilt of his eyebrows in play over it telegraph the incoming hot take before his arrival at:

"Use one of the Averesches in your next one. Neither has historically shied from telling anyone what he thinks. The impulse may survive."