The Grandmaster held up his finger. “Lo Lo,” he said, a dark note to his voice. “I asked you a question. You know I don’t like to repeat myself.”
Loki’s jaw snapped shut, and he stared at his hands in his lap. “Yes, Grandmaster,” he murmured. “Sakaar is--my home.”
***
(also completely irrelevant side note to anon: i am going to bed, so keep sending those mob au asks and i will see ‘em in the morning XD hope your work shift goes well! <3)
(because 400 words aren’t supposed to be hard and I’m awake and trying to sleep ^^’ )
The rumbling did not go away. It rose and fell, but it did not go away.
It sounded like it was made by something... huge.
Breathing.
I was shaking.
I stared into the darkness and shook, listening to this... sound.
It was just... there.
…
About half an hour, the smell caught up to me.
The sulphur was hard to ignore. The burnt smell neither.
It got more intense by the second.
I slowly worked myself to the edge of the blanket, lifted the end up enough to let some additional air in. There... was not much light out.
But... but there was still the breathing. And I saw the plants already and... cracked walls.
Not-burnt, cracked walls.
I gasped.
The fresh air made it worse,
I threw the blankets off, the motion startling myself.
A little.
But when I stopped to look there was still just... darkness. And breathing.
And a burnt-smelling bed.
I clampered down from it and walked towards the edge of the room: I... was in a tower. It went dowb. And down from there.
Way down. All the way cracked stone. Really. All marble and cracked and... it was everywhere.
It was also cold. On my naked feet. Or under them.
After a quick look around, there was a wardrobe and my – slightly glimmering – bed and a chair and a table and a... a door!
Looked burnt.
But it was a door!
It was an out!
I poked the door handle before pressing it down. Wasn't hot. No inferno behind.
I opened it with a bit of difficulty, pulled my nightskirts up and ran down the spiraling stairs.
Somewhere around the hundreds step my mind went... somewhere.
It supplied helpful information like 'pitterpatter is a good word for naked feet on marble', and beautiful gems like 'this style has been out since about 200 years' or 'at least the material is stable'.
Because apparently, that were things to think if there was a dragon breathing all around you and you flee down stairs.
But there was just... no much happening.
There was a handrail. And it just went down... endlessly.
And nothing much changed.
There was a window every two dozen steps. Shaped hole-in-wall-windows.
…
the constant breathing helped the adrenaline a bit, but when I saw my breath in front of my face in tiny puffs of air, it was getting...
I didn't think about it.
I was down.
There was another door.
There still wasn't an inferno behind. But the breathing got louder.
The door closed.
I didn't think about that.
The next second, I just saw a closed door.
Deep breaths.
Concentrating on breathing.
I'd seen... I'd seen walls.
That's... that's it. There had been a wall.
That's... that's not that bad.
I carefully pushed down the handle again and the door swung open.
There, sure enough, was a wall. And louder noise. But still the same rhythm.
So I kept the... the pitter-patter to a minimum and started into the... floor, apparently. I decided away from the noise was probably the best choice.
It went away from the bit of light that the... the moon, I supposed, I had not paid attention, gave.
So... deeper into the castle.
Well, I knew how a castle looked from the inside.
The looked all the same.
There was a logic order to servant rooms and great halls and floors and... everything.
This logic here involved a lot of marble and iron. Cast iron.
And no candles.
Still cracks everywhere, but my suspicion that the great hall would be opposite of my tower-exit was... right. As I saw after I opened another – creaking, had they all been creaking? - door.
There was air blowing immediately, messed up the hair. Felt cold.
Big marble table, chairs, more cast iron, the usual layout of a castle and...
…
I stood in the entrance and... stood there.
Because maybe... if I stood really still... the breathing would come back.
Because it wasn't there right then.
Because the breathing-owner stared at me.
I don't know how big it was.
Ginormous.
Too big.
And I was shaking to the core.
I saw it's head. It's eye. And it stared at me.
Maybe it wou-
The next moment was something I will only remember in my nightmares.
Well, I was not dead.
But the dragon – it really, really was one, breathed.
It breathed in.
And I could do nothing. Nothing. Scrabbling or holding or anything did nothing, it just breathed and I... I was pulled towards the teeth and then everything was dark.
No pain.
But it was too much.
My terribly helpful ind supplied something about 'fainting princesses' before it collapsed completely.
