Thank you @thornsorcery for trusting me with this commission, and I'M SORRY THIS ONE TOOK SO LONG!!!! It was fun to flex my writing muscles around characters I've never written of before.
Prompt: ''Haefnir is a Frost giant. Big. Strong. Perpetually shirtless. Calm and gentle-voiced. Very 'do no harm but take no shit. Hes seen as a bit of an oddball amongst his kin because he is considerate of the 'smallfolk', whereas most Frost giants see them as raiding targets or not worth their time at all.
Anyways, he and his kin recently took down a big ass dragon in a tundra. While the other giants are celebrating their latest conquest, Haefnir realizes that the Dragon was out hunting and looks around to see what destruction it wrought. He unfortunately finds a village decimated by the dragon. But when he finds a single survivor amidst the ruins, he rescues them and decides to take care of this lost soul.''
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Great curtains of steam roll up off Haefnir's almighty shoulders and drift away on winds blowing from the Northern mountain range.
Tall as a church spire, the giant stands monolithic over his felled quarry.
The dragon, once a noble beast and a fearsome adversary, now lays dead before him, its wings twisted and bent where it fell to the ice with a lance through its lung while the residual heat from its scales melt the snow underfoot.
One of Haefnir's kin is already using the jagged edge of a blade to separate the wyrm's horns from its skull. He watches impassively, his ears abuzz with the cheers and thunderous celebrations of his fellow giants.
None of them seem to pay any mind to Haefnir as he stands apart from the noise and gazes silently down at the dragon's convex belly, a furl to his brow that suggests he's deep in thought.
They are, for the most part, accustomed to their brother's less than typical manner. He fights out of necessity rather than for glory and he's mindful of his colossal stature - large even by his species' standard - where anyone else would be proud to boast such substantial size and strength.
Haefnir learned long ago not to heed the whispers or the bemused glances.
Bending down, he prods three glacier-blue fingers into the beast's gut, feeling the taut rigidity beneath its softer under-scales.
Full, he deduces, raising a pair of frigid, pale eyes up to the distant mountains.
As he suspected... They didn't track the dragon into its nest... They caught it on its way home from a successful hunt. And there's only one species in this frozen tundra that a dragon its size would consider prey...
Even through the gentle flurry of snow that falls from charcoal clouds and settles in his long, ivory hair, Haefnir's eyes pick out tiny columns of smoke rising steadily in the distance, floating above frost-laden treetops.
Despite itself, his heart gives a dull throb of sorrow.
A human settlement...
Pushing himself to his feet with his stare fixed on the mountainside several miles away, he steps around the dragon's corpse and wordlessly takes his leave from the group.
"Haefnir!"
His footfalls trundle to a halt in the snow, and he half turns to find several members of the tribe watching his departure, their eyes curious.
"Will you not stay to share in the spoils of this glorious hunt?" one of them calls, his shout a boom of thunder over the land.
In response, Haefnir quirks his lips up and gestures with a slow sweep of his arm at the dragon laid out in front of them.
"Divide my take amongst yourselves," he supplies, the gentle thrum of his voice incongruent with his herculean stature, "There is... something I need to take care of..."
Another giant scoffs loudly, sharply, his bristled beard shifting as he bares his teeth in a sneer. "Searching for some wretched smallfolk to nursemaid, no doubt."
Any trace of solemn placidity is wiped from Haefnir's face as he turns a slow, stony glare upon his fellow giant, eyes like hoarfrost, colder than the mountain's shadow.
A muscle in his jaw ticks noticeably.
What few jocular chuckles had started up at the ribbing are quick to fall deathly silent as each party catches a glimpse of Haefnir's expression. He allows them to get a good look at it, letting the weight of potential consequences hang over their heads for a few moments longer until at last, he blows out a rough snort, turns on his heel, and tromps off towards the rising smoke.
Nobody else thinks to pick fun at him again as he leaves. They know that in spite of his gentler nature, Haefnir didn't get such an indomitable physique by passively swanning through life...
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This punishment is almost starting to feel divine in nature.
And if it is the Gods playing their hand, Ria thinks dismally, did they have to make it all seem so personal by leaving her alive just long enough to face an entirely different kind of death?
The dragon was already more than enough.
The Frost Giant is just overkill.
Helplessly trapped by the enormous ceiling beam that’s long-since cooled from the dragon’s fire, Ria turns her un-swollen eye to the horizon, and the colossal mass that thumps ever closer to the smouldering, smoking ruins of her village.
Unsteady breaths wheeze in and out of crushed lungs, barely enough oxygen to keep the girl conscious as she blinks away dark spots that flicker at the edge of her vision.
She has to stay awake lest the cold take her first.
She can feel it now, like Death’s own fingers burrowing under her pale skin and sliding up the length of her spine.
It almost makes a darker part of her wish she had been caught in the dragon’s fire along with the rest of her people. A few seconds of blistering heat sounds a little more palatable than slowly freezing to death after all, surrounded by familiar, dead faces, those whose bodies weren’t snapped up by the hungry serpent that had come rampaging through here several hours ago.
The ground beneath Ria quakes violently with every step the giant takes, causing the treetops around the village to shed great clumps of snow from their branches.
Weak from the cold, beaten to the dirt by a grief too great to wrap her head around, Ria lays pinned beneath the beam, still as a corpse, her vision swimming as the giant finally reaches the centre of her ravaged village and comes to a stop, towering high enough to blot out the sun where it hangs just beyond a layer of thick, grey clouds.
She hasn't been unlucky enough to see a Frost Giant up close before, but the stories and illustrations hardly do them justice. She always imagined they'd be huge but... this one is... a colossus.
His expansive torso is entirely unclothed, wider than her house and defined so well that he looks more to have been sculpted from clay by the hand of a dutiful artist than anything born from flesh and blood.
Fitting, she supposes hazily, that the Universe would send ice to end what the dragon had started with fire.
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Haefnir’s sullen gaze roves over the burnt-out husk of what must have once been a lively, bustling establishment.
The stench of burnt flesh hangs heavy on the wind, and it’s only respect for the dead humans scattered about that keeps him from curling his nose in distaste.
They must have been a brave people, stubborn and determined enough to carve a haven out of this frozen wasteland and made it work.
There’s no movement among the bodies he casts his eye over, scattered between the smouldering huts, nor does he expect there to be.
Shoulders sagging beneath the weight of a sigh that sends a great, white cloud billowing from his lips, Haefnir turns solemnly to the houses closest to him, hoping against logic that somehow, by some miracle, there might be a still-beating heart amongst the rubble.
His keen eye is drawn immediately to a flash of brilliant red, half obscured by a blackened wooden beam that must have once propped up a ceiling. Embers, he presumes, kicking out a colour that draws his eye naturally by their stark disparity against white snow and charred wood.
Sighing, he almost blinks and turns away.... comes so close to it that later he'd look back and shudder at what could have been his biggest regret... But then, by chance, he sees the eyes staring up at him from below, one blown wide with terror, and the other sealed closed by swollen flesh, almost lost under the soot that covers the rest of a dusty face.
Haefnir’s breath stills in his chest.
A human… Alive?
Moving as if he’s been caught in a trance, the giant lowers himself down onto one knee with the slow, practiced ease of a great willow bowing in the wind, his gaze locked onto his little discovery.
A girl, he notes belatedly, close enough now to make the distinction.
Letting out a low, wordless hum intended to serve as a balm to fear, Haefnir leans over the hut, uttering a gentle hush when the human immediately starts to struggle, shoving futilely at the beam pinning her down as her rolling eyes track the movements of his hands, gargantuan things that loom over her head.
“Easy,” he thrums in his softest cadence, slipping the tip of his forefinger beneath the beam and effortlessly lifting it into the air, all too wary that the burnt wood might break and collapse back on top of her at any moment.
The second her chest is free of the weight, she gasps in a breath so deep and desperate that a flurry of ash is sucked between her teeth, and she lurches up into the scant inches of space he’s just cleared for her, choking on the very air she’d been so long deprived of.
She’s coughing like she’s about to hack up a lung, and Haefnir’s brows screw together across his forehead. He barely wastes another second before he shifts his grip on the beam, slipping his entire palm beneath it and heaving it up and off the girl as though it weighs no more than a twig.
In protest of the sudden movement, timber begins to crack and groan, and the entire house shifts like a closing maw, but Haefnir’s free hand has already swooped down to curl around the little prone body below him, surrounding her entirely with a wall of calloused, blue flesh.
At the very least, tere’s enough air in her lungs now to release a broken shriek, and Haefnir clings to that fact as he whisks her up and away from the collapsing wreckage, bringing his closed fist instinctively against his chest.
In the wake of his interfering, the charred walls that had been standing upright by only the barest threads of luck finally give way, toppling down into the space the human had been laying mere seconds ago, as if the house has just exhaled its dying breath.
With a distant gaze, he stares down at the wreckage, gradually becoming more and more aware of the blunted nails attempting to gouge divots into his palms.
The giant's massive chest expands and contracts as he heaves an almighty sigh, settling back on his heels and drawing his cupped hands towards his face, easing them apart inch by inch.
That same wide, frightened eye peers back at him from the shadows cast by his fingers.
Despite the circumstances, Haefnir finds his lips twitching up at the girl, something tight in his heart unwinding at the mere knowledge that there was a life out here he could save.
Startled by his focus, she makes an attempt at shoving herself backwards, kicking weakly at the heel of his palm until her spine hits his curled fingers, hunching beneath them like a mouse trying to hide under the bars of its cage.
Movement is good, but Haefnir's concern lands squarely on the darker skin surrounding her bad eye, a sizeable lump doming out from the socket, and although he casts a quick glance over the rest of her, it’s hard to tell if she's injured elsewhere with her skin and clothes so dusted by layers of ash.
The dragon must have attacked in the early morning hours because her ensemble only consists of a simple, modest nightgown, hardly protection enough against the cold.
Humming pensively, he retrieves the hand hovering above her, exposing her to the grey daylight and sending her curling in on herself even further as she throws a pair of trembling arms over her head and lets out a yelp of alarm.
Or pain.
Hell, perhaps both.
“Be still, girl,” comes his gentle admonishment, his forehead puckered in concentration as he catches one of her wrists between a thumb and forefinger, hardly daring to squeeze at all lest he crush the appendage before he can move it aside to get a proper look at her face.
She fights him, of course, tugging at the trapped limb with a sudden burst of desperation that leaves him concerned that she’ll pull it right out of its socket.
And at last, she seems to find her tongue.
“Let-! Let go!” she stammers.
Haefnir’s ears merely twitch at the sound of her voice, shrill and hoarse and shaking from the chill in her bones.
He eyes the rattling limbs and a gash on her forehead that he almost mistakes for a lock of her flyaway hair, then he meets her sad, watery gaze and murmurs, “You’re hurt.”
Likely in more ways than he can simply see on the surface of her skin…
“Put me down!” she insists in lieu of acknowledging his observation, giving her arm another frantic yank.
Haefnir’s focus drifts down to the hard, unforgiving ground below him, to the dark patches where ice has been melted down to the rock by dragon-fire.
Frowning, he lifts his gaze to the girl once again and tilts his head, quietly pointing out, “You will freeze.”
He doesn’t expect the sudden spark that blazes across her expression as she gives up freeing her trapped limb and instead pours every last ounce of power she has left into a glare that could rival the dragon’s flame.
“Then let me f-freeze!” she snaps, though the ferocity she no doubt wants to project is lost to her chattering teeth and diminutive size.
It takes him a moment to sift beneath the lunacy of her statement to find the heart of it.
Ah… She’d prefer to take her chances with the cold than face whatever death he could grant her.
He supposes that’s…. understandable, if he considers her perspective. His kind aren’t known for their amicability with other species, after all. Still, Haefnir grunts in appreciation for her boldness. She’ll need every last kernel of it once the grief and despair eventually find her.
Which almost looks as thought it might happen sooner rather than later.
Something gleams on her face in the fading light, and he squints at it, his frown softening in a blink when he spots the tears streaming in earnest from her eyes, cutting paths through the soot on her cheeks to reveal freckled skin beneath.
“Please,” she breathes wetly, making a helpless gesture at the carnage around her with the arm that isn’t trapped by his fingers, “Please just… leave me be.”
Troubled, he drags his eyes away from her face and swivels them out over the village instead, taking in the stillness, the silence, the bodies, the vastness of the tundra and how little life there is for dozens of miles in every direction. There must have been livestock here once, but they’re either dead or they’ve fled. There are no horses - no means to transport herself anywhere unless she intends to go by foot.
And if she does that, she’ll die. Hardly a fitting end for the sole survivor of such tragedy.
“Leaving you here...” he begins in a rumble, twisting his stern eye back to the human and releasing her arm, “...would be a death sentence.”
The second her limb is free, she snatches it back against her chest, cradling it with her opposite arm as if she could protect it from him in the event he tries to take it again. Each furious breath she gulps down is swallowed as if it hurts.
He watches her upturned eyebrows knit together in bewilderment whilst she stares at him, can almost hear the unspoken question that hangs like a dead weight in the air between them.
‘Why would a Frost Giant care what happens to a human?’
Why indeed.
Well… Why not?
She's small, and alone, and injured. And there's a fire in there somewhere, a drive to survive even in the face of an unknowable entity like him.
He'd... rather not see it snuffed out.
Pulling her away from his face for a moment, he shifts a knee beneath him and braces his weight on it, pushing himself up to his full height once more.
“W-wait!”
Hesitating, he glances down, a brow cocked at the girl as her face turns wan and panicked.
“What will you do with me!?” she adds, her little chest rising and falling in rapid succession as she casts an eye over the side of his hand, blanching at the distance between her and the ground.
“I will not leave you here,” he tells her, his tone brooking no argument, “I’m taking you home.”
“What… what the Hell are you talking about-?” she half scoffs, half sobs, clutching her arms tightly around her shivering frame and shaking her head at him, incredulous, “This is my home!”
He matches her glare with an even blink. “This will be your grave if you stay…”
Her breath hitches instantly, and he only just catches the defiance flashing across her face.
There’s no warning to precede what she does next.
In the blink of an eye, every muscle she can still command seems to go taut, and she lurches sideways, intent on throwing herself from his palm.
Spitting a curse and bending his knees, instinctively trying to shrink the distance between his hand and the ground, Haefnir throws his opposite appendage around her front and scoops her back into the cup of his palm, hauling her right up against his broad, blue chest once again.
“Have you lost your senses!?” he barks, and it’s the sharpest his voice has been in a long time, cinched tight by worry, “Are you trying to get yourself-!?”
A tiny sound interrupts his bluster, barely louder than a squeak, but his keen ears catch it nonetheless and stop him in his tracks.
Craning his neck down, he unfurls his fingers just slightly, still wary of her prior unpredictability, and blinks at the little human huddled between his hands and his sternum.
She’s… crying.
Curse his tongue, of course she is. A brute his size raising his voice at a girl no taller than his thumb?
Cowardly…
“Ah… Ahm, forgive me,” he murmurs, cowed by a creature infinitely smaller than him, “You... startled me.”
Startled the life right out of him....
She doesn’t offer a reply, merely trembles in his hold and weeps out heartbreak all over his chest.
Rolling out a deep, heavy exhale, Haefnir presses his lips together and observes her for a few more moments, wondering at his new charge he's landed himself.
First thing's first, he has to get her out of the cold. His good intentions won't do her any good if she succumbs to hypothermia before he can squirrel her away in his home and tend to her wounds.
His mind drifts to the fur-lined pouch dangling from his belt, empty save for a whetstone and a handful of sprigs he's picked up on the hunt.
Swallowing roughly, he clears his throat, turning to the South, towards the felled dragon and his kin. "Do you have a name, girl?" he utters, narrowing his eyes at the horizon.
For a long stretch of silence, she doesn't speak, just emits subdued wails as she stuffs a knuckle into her mouth to try and stifle the noise.
"... Mine is Haefnir," he prompts when it becomes clear she isn't inclined to offer hers first. He's all too aware that he has a chasm to span between himself and the girl, but perhaps offering his name could start to build that rickety bridge.
Then, just as he raises a foot and swings it forwards, taking a step that clears an entire house, he hears it.
"R...ia..."
Her diminished voice starts and falters, as if she can't decide whether she should have spoken up at all, so soft that it's immediately swept away by a curl of the groaning wind.
But Haefnir catches it.
"Hmm. Ria," he echoes softly, letting his tongue roll the word off the front of his teeth.
Pretty.
He decides to catalogue it away for later use.
Lowering her to the pouch, he uses a thumb to flip the lid open. It’s deep enough that she won’t be climbing out of it, and the buckle should help deter her from that regardless.
“You will be warmer in here, Ria..."
The flash of her fire-red hair is the last thing he sees as he slips her inside, steeling his heart and mind against the sudden, feeble protest she kicks up, crying out for him not to put her in the dark.
"It's for your own good," he tells her firmly, though not unkindly, nestling her safely at the bottom of the pouch and peeling his fingers away from her, trying not to wince at the way her nails rake frantically along his skin as he withdraws his hand and closes the top, securing the brass buckle through the strap once more.
For good measure, he offers the bottom of the pouch a reassuring pat, falling into his stride as a newfound purpose puts down roots around heart.
He only hopes she finds some well-needed rest in there, enough to quiet down – especially once they reach his brethren.
He'd much rather avoid knocking some skulls about, but if they suspect he intends to bring an outsider - much less a human outsider - into the village, it'll raise a few hackles to say the least, and Haefnir won't hesitate to defend the lost soul he's bringing under his care.
Thoughts about Guilimans daughter (who I have named Olyssia Guiliman) being the little baby sister to the ultramarine. Adorable. Now picture adult Olyssia, the Lady of Macragge being the elder sister. Olyssia seeing Ultramarines, so long lives to the baselines, but still so quickly gone to she who has lived millenia.
I'll be frank here, I pulled this short thing out of my ass at 3am so hope this actually gives you some fun when comparing old astartes regarding Roboute's daughter vs 40k astartes regarding Roboute's daughter. Not a lot, but I had fun writing it.
-°-
Titus had heard about the Lady of Macragge during his years as a Neophyte.
Most astartes do after undergoing the gene-seed implantation, but it was usually mentioned in reverence the same way one did with a Primarch’s name during the preachings. Before any of that, the primaris had never even seen a sculpture or portrait of the Lady.
To see her in person alongside her father, their Father, was quite an experience he had yet to express properly; mind still unable to believe that he is in their presence while inside the one place in the Macragge’s Honour that just a handful of firstborn astartes were allowed into: The Resting Home of the Legion Mother.
The fact that he had been brought here by Calgar himself was the one thing that kept Titus in check to not kneel rushedly in front of his Primarch and trueborn like just some initiated marine; this was a place of peace and quiet that needed to be respected and more specially when both husband and daughter mourned the prone body of the woman inside the stasis field that kept her life in a limbo.
“My Lord” saluted Calgar but once his eye strayed to the Lady, his expression softened in a way that caught Demetrius by surprise. “Hello, little one” he said this time with a tender influx. Nothing like the hardened Chapter Master that the Primaris had come to know.
“Hi, Calgar” answered the young woman with obvious strain in her tone and a few traces of tears on her face.
It had been said in the past that when the Lady of Macragge always visited her mother’s sleeping form, crying could be heard from the outside. One thing was hearing the serfs mentioning such a fact but another abysmal thing to see it become true. He had heard the fates this woman, the granddaughter of the Emperor, had achieved during her years leading the Ultramarines after the Heresy.
To see her reduced like this by the grief was… humbling and strange.
“To what I own this interruption, Calgar?” asked the Primarch impatiently. Eyes never leaving the face of his wife as if he hoped to see a change in her peaceful expression.
With that question, both Guilliman and Marneus went a bit far to speak privately from them. Leaving Titus and the Lady alone.
This couldn’t be more awkward.
Demetrian still had to wrap his head around how the Chapter Master simply greeted the young woman with a familiarity that floored him. As if her status as trueborn was merely a decoration extending from her.
“You’re Demetrian Titus, right?”
At her soft voice, the primaris finally dared to look at the Lady to her eyes. She was practically a carbon copy of the Primarch, but her baseline genetics did a good job to smooth the rough edges.
“That is correct, my Lady” he answered the same he would when regarded by a superior. “It’s an honor to even be let inside this sacred room, my Lady. I feel humbled that you know my name too”
“It’s the minimum I can do as my father’s daughter… I always try to remember the names of the astartes that Big Brother Calgar always mentions more than once”
Titus, again, has to do a double take at the familiarity the Lady refers to someone like the Chapter Master.
Where he looks up at her in both reverence and curiosity, those that have lived before the Heresy had known the Lady of Macragge when still a child of bright eyes.
-°-
Titus when Olyssia knew his name the very first time they met:
Pawn gossip is by far my favorite thing they've added to Dragon's Dogma. You'll be walking around killing goblins and one of my pawns will say something like "You know, one Arisen I served only hired female pawns and made us all walk around nothing but our skivvies, nay, a most peculiar habit, perchance," and I'm just sitting here like:
I want her to split me open, to dig her fingers in my ribs, lick my heart and my blood and my bones. Pick open my bones and suck out the marrow. I want to be devoured by her. And she wants to devour me just as badly...
Don't mind me, just sharing some silly little idea that I need to scream into the void because this game has me in an absolute choke hold atm
But I'd like to imagine Tav having this happy-go-lucky, positive, always willing to help others attitude because they were basically forced into this position from the very start.
From the moment they escape the Nautiloid ship, there are these complete (and slightly unhinged) strangers that are relying on them to help. To lead them and make these huge decisions that affects each and every one of their lives that are suddenly dependant on one, very unlucky Tav. Not only with the tadpoles but like, their personal issues.
And the more they travel, the deeper into those issues they delve.
Tav will talk to them, listen to them, aid them in any way possible. Because that's what a good person does, right? And Tav does begin to genuinely care about everyone in the party. Even the more snarky and trigger-happy members.
But the deeper into those issues they delve, the more Tav's resolve begins to crack.
Astarion's daily feeds starts to weaken them physically, Gale's magic consumption makes them weary, Shadowheart and Lae'zel's bickering starts to test Tav's patience, Karlach's need for infernal iron begins to grate on them. Just. All of these people keep taking and taking.
They actually have no idea what they're doing. What path to take. What words to say. They're confused. They're terrified. They barely know how to survive on their own. All they want to do is run away from the sudden weight of these responsibilities and then...
They crack.
Something insignificant sets them off. Like someone forgetting to feed Scratch, or someone accidentally breaks their instrument (if they're a bard), or hell, someone just looks at them funny.
Now who do you think would be the first to see Tav break?
Today on Thorn's Tav of the day:
Ylena! A Forest Gnome from a small village near Baldur's Gate. Her parents are alchemists, but for some reaosns he was born wiht Wild Magic in her veins. Her hair used to be brown-until a surge turned it into the Pink-and-Blue it is now.
I've seen ship stuff with shadowheart, aldfira, elodie...do you multiship Anson? Just asking out of curiosity ((And if yes can I have a slice))
Ajskskd okay, look, I made the man too hot and now I have to ship him with everyone.
Short answer: Yes! I do multiship him. Come get a slice while it’s hot.
If we wanna get more in depth about it, I mainly ship him with Elodie.
And in the canon where he’s running around alone just with the normal companions in the game (so no Elodie) he ends up with Shadowheart.
In either of those he had a crush on Alfira, but he kills her cause Dark Urge and all that so nothing ever really happened between them. The Guardian also looks like Alfira to Anson cause I love the idea of him being haunted by her image.
He also used to have a thing with Ketheric and is still into him, or well, into him again cause he lost his memories about the whole thing.
This is Yavien. She is a Wood Elf druid far from her home circle in Hartsvale and is not taking the stress of all the tadpole nonsense well-but she would absolutely try to be there to support Anson and his redemption.
She needs a hug.
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