calling_logs | What girl doesn't need a good axe?

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What girl doesn't need a good axe?

WHO: Garnet and anyone who wants to drop by!
WHAT: Weapon shopping.
WHEN: Around midday.
WHERE: The Mid-Summer Festival in the Lost City of Amazonia
NOTES/WARNINGS: Dem thighs always need a warning. /ahem. Nothing as yet.

She had taken her arrival with her usual aplomb. The City of Tomorrow had been interesting, but she saw more things that she might need to take a closer look at when she thought about attending the Festival that everyone was talking about.

So that was where Garnet had gone. It was rather nice to be amongst fellow warrior women - not that she wasn't always, or almost always, but the attitude here was different. Pearl fought because Rose fought. Amethyst fought because, in her words, she was 'scrappy.' Garnet's reasoning was different. She fought because the battle needed to be fought, and she was able to fight it.

The reason she was looking intently at a weapons booth, though, was because...

Well...

Her giant axe looked a little lonely, and this place was, currently, a little closer (and definitely less laden with memory) than the strawberry fields.

Her lips tugged to one side, a hand at her chin, Garnet eyed a particularly well-made polearm. Reach, and a blade. Both of those were positives in her book.

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She was carrying her polearm, walking through the crowd as if there was no crowd at all. She missed every oncoming pedestrian until they were in the edge of the forest. And even then, the forest was no challenge. "Divination," she echoed once they were surrounded by quiet instead of the multitude of voices.

"A bit like second sight, a bit like precognition, but more targeted," she explains.

She'd known that. Her question was more-- "Is it an inherent magic, or learned?"

"Well..." She frowns thoughtfully. "All my magic is inherent. But the spell was learned. By the Loki of long, long ago."

Ah. That, Garnet understood. Mostly. "There are multiple Lokis?"

"In a way. And in a way, there is only one. Loki-that-was learned, and so Loki-that-is knows. But what Loki-that-is learns, cannot often aid Loki-that-was."

Ah. That, she comprehends.

"I see."

But then she was walking on, contemplating how knowing the future effected her. Not that she hadn't considered it before, but it was something worth thinking about multiple times.

"You know... I think you might," Loki replies. "So, do you want to go in through the cave entrance, or the tunnel entrance?"

Options. Garnet looked ahead, weighing and measuring possibilities before deciding - "The tunnel entrance."

If they passed through it first, they had a better chance of leaving through the cave. The tunnel was old. There were chances it could collapse, depending on the many possibilities inside the dungeon.

"Sounds good to me," Loki says cheerfully.

"You use your magic for combat." She could see a few instances of that ahead. Garnet used hers, too. Just in a more physical way.

"It's what I prefer. Doesn't mean I can't go ten rounds with the ol' fisticuffs, but if I can magic missile the thing trying to eat me, then I don't see why I shouldn't."

She ducks under some lush hanging vines into the old stone tunnel, once part of a sewer system, and before that a lava tube, at least at this end; much of the carved stonework is in the original black basalt, and strange figures in bas relief can be seen under the moss and lichen and leafy vines.

The basalt gets her attention and, with a touch gentler than any she's shown so far, she brushes aside some of the growth to see what's underneath. There is a bit of curiosity here. Could this be from an ancient gem colony? Is that why she was called to this place?

Hm.

It didn't quite look like what she expected. It didn't look like gem carvings. None that she'd seen, at least. But she'd remember them.

"Careful of the floor," Garnet warned, though, just as Loki was about to step onto a dip in the floor. It wasn't sophisticated, but there was a little trap waiting there to be triggered.

Loki flashes a wink, and her feet start glowing green just before they touch down-- and fail utterly to trigger the trap.

"Seven-league boots," she explains. The green glow reflects of of tiny crystals of olivine in the tunnel walls, making them glitter with reflected light.

It also gives the carvings a somewhat more sinister cast, shadows making them seem to come alive, shifting and moving under the moss.

The olivine...

Well, she once knew an Olivine. She was a good person.

But as it was, Garnet could only continue, her polearm at her side.

"Convenient. There is a creature ahead." And Garnet... prepared. With a sound, her hands seemed to grow, turning into blocky gauntlets marked with stripes and stars.

Loki conjures a blade to one hand, and a spell to the other.

"You want 'up' or 'down'?"

"Up."

As soon as she saw the beast, she leapt and punched it hard enough that it impacted the wall, making their surroundings shudder. Expected. Worth the risk.

Loki casts a quick spell to shore up the walls, and casts a handful of destructive energy at the creature's feet, right as Garnet punches.

Between the two strikes, the creature is both in pain and disoriented - and Garnet doesn't like inflicting either condition on anything, especially as they're invading its territory, but it would've attacked anyone here.

And this place was... interesting.

So Garnet struck again, this time hurling the polearm into the beast's head in one swift move, piercing it as she seemed to almost hang in midair -- or so she seemed until she dropped, standing firm while the creature groaned toward death, the injuries too much for its life to continue.

Loki moves smoothly up beside her, to get a look--

"--what the Hel is a rust monster doing in here?"

"A rust monster?" She knew what rust was. She also knew that she was going to retrieve her polearm quickly if the thing was going to erode it, so she did, yanking it free and wiping it clean on some nearby moss.

Loki gestures at the feelers on the thing's mouth.

"It touches metal with those, and they instantly turn to rust, which it eats," she explains.

"...Hm."

Reason enough to put her polearm away. So, holding it between her palms, even in the gauntlets, her gems shed light on it, and it...

Changed. It faded, wavered, and seemed to fade into her gems as she made a pointed gesture, leaving her with only her gauntlets to fight with. As if that was a problem.

"Now it is harmless."

Loki nods, and her blade vanishes in a similar way, a shimmer of green energy, and then gone.

"Shall we?" she asks, gesturing down the tunnel.

"We shall."

She'd get quite the workout. And apparently, some money. Was this a public service?

Hm.

"Others do this?"

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