Trickster's Gambit | By : Andartha Category: Marvel Verse Movies > Avengers, The Views: 2529 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: I don't own the Avengers. They belong to Marvel. Like all the other fans, I only get to play with them a bit, in an entirley non-profit kind of way. |
At night, he sleeps on a cot that has been set up in Meara’s room.
Late one night, after they’d shared that room for the better part of a week, she had timidly whispered in the dark to him: “What is it like…..Asgard?” He’d known that he could tell her it was none of her damn business and she would accept that, unquestioningly…but somehow…. He was the only one here who knew of the soft golden light that flowed through the streets of the city in the morning, bathing the soaring spires of the halls in an iridescent glow that made the shining glory of a dragon’s hoard seem tawdry by comparison. So he describes Asgard’s gilded halls to her, the vaulting arches, the towering statutes and the broad boulevards, where people attired in bright robes flitted along like colourful butterflies. Meara “oohs” and “aahs” in wonder and delight as his words paint a sunny and lively picture of the place he used to call home and it reminds him of how he loved to climb up on the roof of the palace, just to watch the sun rise and the city come awake beneath him. No one here but him knows about the sweetly mellow and yet crisp perfume that permeated the orchards in spring, when the trees are in full bloom….a delicate promise of juicy, succulent apples and pears and plums come fall. So he tells Meara about the velvety green grass that you could lie on for hours, reading; about the comforting background buzz of bees gathering pollen and of the feathery petals that would drift down like snow when a breeze sifted through the branches with gentle fingers. “I’d like to see that”, she says and he almost says “Sure, why not? I can take you.”….but then he bites his lip to silence himself. He can’t. Can’t go back. Can’t make Meara smile by showing her his mothers’ orchards. And so, instead, he tells her of the vast libraries of the Asgardian palace, where one could lose oneself for hours, discovering secrets that no one else had laid eyes upon for millennia. He’s practically able to hear Meara grin, when he’d tells her of how, as a boy, he’d browse through tomes so heavy he could hardly lift them and so dusty that they made him sneeze. She laughs outright when he tells her about that one time he discovered a spell for skewing someone’s perception and how he’d practiced it on Fandral. At that time, Fandral, who’d always been a bit of clothes-horse, had just discovered how much the ladies appreciated a well-dressed man and he’d become so picky about his appearance it drove his friends to madness, hearing him wax eloquently about a new doublet or a fashionable pair of boots for hours. He’d even tried to drag Thor and Volstagg shopping for new cloaks. As it turned out, Loki’s spell skewed Fandral’s perception in interesting ways indeed and that particular evening, the blonde warrior had sauntered into their usual meeting-place, wearing a broad grin, unbelievably tight pants garishly striped in flaming orange and a bruised purple, combined with a tunic in sunny yellow speckled with dots of puke-green. A court jester would’ve worn less outrageous garb. It was Thor who started snickering, but it took only a few heartbeats for him, Sif and Loki to end up on the floor, howling with laughter, no longer able to stand. Even Hogun had to hide a grin behind his hands and Volstagg had simply been left open-mouthed and staring, a chicken thigh raised halfway to his mouth. And now Meara is laughing at that old story and he finds himself chuckling right along with her and it makes his chest go painfully tight, but it also makes him feel lighter, as if a weight were lifting off of him and so he tells her another story….and another. Of how Thor received his hammer (and almost messed it up). Of how Sif won her first tournament (and how her mother fainted, when she discovered that the mysterious masked swordsman who had held the entire court in awe was, in fact, her daughter). Tales of fair maidens saved, realms rescued, pranks played and Meara begs him for more, just one more and grinning indulgently, he finds himself complying. From then on, right before they go to sleep, Meara will always beg him “Tell me a story of Asgard?”….and he will. … Time passes. Just as his nights, his days settle into the calm, predictable rhythm of routine too. … In the mornings, he helps Meara milk the goats while Tjalar makes breakfast. The animals have grown used to him and greet him with loud bleats when he opens the stable door. One of the kid goats has taken a particular liking to him and it will nibble at his fingers and nudge his legs with its’ silky nose until he bends down and scratches the little rascal’s sweet spot, right at the bottom of the jaw where it meets the neck. After that warm welcome, he dumps some fodder into the trough for the goats that he and Meara will be milking, while the rest of the herd stays confined to their pen and then they set to work. After milking and feeding the rest of the goats too, Tjalar is waiting for them with breakfast. It might be leftovers from the night before or bread and cheese, porridge. Sometimes pease-pudding left on the hearth to simmer over night. There are no servants to dish up platters of fruit and pastries, to fill golden goblets with juice or light wine. He finds he doesn’t miss either the servants or the opulent fare. There’s no Thor, who can’t be shut up with bribes or begging, no Allfather who pays intense attention to the mornings’ reports while they eat, but no more than token attention to his family. No Frigga to wink at him either, and soothe his temper when Thor teases him mercilessly yet again. He tells himself he doesn’t miss them either and that the ache he feels in his chest is just because he swallowed too quickly. Here, in this simple kitchen, there’s just Meara, humming softly under her breath as she butters her bread and Tjalar asking him to pass the cheese. It is….soothing. After breakfast, they get started on one of the thousand and one tasks that need doing around the steading. He’ll never forget the day they fixed the roof. They’d assembled all the necessary supplies: spare shingles, nails, toolbox, and then climbed up on top. Tjalar had explained how to identify rotted shingles, how to pry them loose and how to fit the new shingle in. And then he’d handed Loki a hammer. It had been a perfectly innocuous gesture. But Loki had just gripped the darn thing and stared at it as if it would bite. A hammer. And then Meara, who at that point had been the sympathetic ear he’d poured plenty of rants about his older “sibling” into……….Meara had giggled. He’d shot her a poisonous look, trying to shut her up with the force of his gaze alone, but that just set her off even more. Outright chortling, she’d pointed at the innocent implement and burst out: “Oh, come ON! As far as hammers go, methinks YOU got the fairer deal. At least that-a-one will FIX our roof, not BREAK it!” And he’d looked down at the simple tool in his hand, the head covered with tiny dents, the handle worn, and had tried to picture Thor’s hammer in its’ place. Had tried to picture Thor at so domestic a chore as repairing a roof…..with Mjölnir. The first involuntary snort of laughter had left him wide-eyed with surprise, but before he knew it, he and Meara both were shaking with belly-deep guffaws that had her teetering dangerously close to the roof’s edge. Not wanting either of them to fall, he’d reached over and pulled her down so they were both sitting on the roof, shoulder by shoulder, and together their mirth had taken flight like a murder of crows, mocking and merry, leaving them wheezing for breath. Tjalar had thrown up his hands and climbed down, only returning much later, when their mirth had died down. He’d given them an exasperated look, but the water he’d brought was soothing nectar indeed to their sore throats. Later on, the roof got repaired and by the end of the day, Loki could wield a hammer in ways that Thor couldn’t hope to match. Thor had always been abysmal where it came to mending things. … After a quick lunch, he’ll head over to the river, to his favourite spot in the old oak’s branches, right over the river. He’ll spend a few hours “talking” with the cube. There’s so much she’s showing him. Other dimensions, stars being born and dying, alien races encased in living diamond or ephemeral as the morning mist and whose thoughts he can’t even begin to comprehend…but most of all, she shows him Midgard. Again and again. She lets him taste something that he later learns is dark chocolate ice-cream and it leaves him practically purring. She shows him libraries that almost rival those of Asgard in their vastness and the shimmering net of pulsing light engulfing the planet, the thoughts traveling along it ranging from unbelievably banal and petty to brilliant and of an ingenuity that intrigues even him. She drags him into catacombs hidden deep beneath the earth and shows him where they keep her hidden. There’s an undercurrent of frustration in her “thoughts” as she does so and he understands. These churlish mortals have not been treating her well. Eistla explained that when Odin took the Tesseract from Laufey, he used it to repair the damage that Laufey’s attack had left behind. Without the Tesseract in place, to carefully balance the chilling grasp of a thousand glacial storms that Laufey had unleashed from the Casket of Ancient Winters, Midgard would have been plunged into a new ice-age. The Tesseract had mitigated those effects, buffering the unrelenting frost that had been unleashed, dissipating it slowly over the centuries. It had been a fitting amends for Laufey’s murderous plan, a weregild paid in full. But the artefact had fulfilled its’ duty a while back, had returned to a resting state once the balance had been restored…had lain dormant, until one mortal, crazed by the hunger for power, had re-awoken the cube, had cruelly bound it, enslaved it mercilessly to the purpose of destruction. He had not succeeded, but, by what he could discern of mortal history, it was only a question of time until a different power-hungry war-monger made the same kind of bid. He wouldn’t let them. No longer would he allow these dog-hearted curs to paw such a treasure with their grubby hands. The Tesseract was HIS. And sometime soon, he’d set out to collect his inheritance. …..First though, he would have to find a way to Midgard. It was not a task he could send a shade to do. At least not over a distance as far as this. Across the boundaries of the worlds, a shade was fit for errands such as whispering ugly, poisonous lies in his brother’s ear, while Thor suffered in his midgardian exile; lies that were to make sure the boorish fool didn’t even so much as entertain a thought of returning to Asgard. Such a shade could touch Thor’s hammer, asgardian by its’ nature, and feel it solid beneath its’ fingers. But his shade’s hand had slid right through the file on that one Agents’ desk, the file with Thor’s picture on it. Too bad. He’d have liked to see what these mortals made of his brother. They certainly hadn’t seemed inclined to worship at this feet. For reasons he still does not fully understand, the shade could not touch the Tesseract either. He tried every trick he could think of to lift it, to teleport it, to get it to create a small portal through which he could pick it up…..all to no avail. What is his is on Midgard. And he needs to find a way there. A feeling of assent coming from the cube floods him and she begins pushing images at him. It’s her vision of the people around her and through her “eyes” they are spectral, semi-transparent lights that shift and pulse in strange colours. He begins watching them, observing. The mortals have started exploring what the Tesseract can do, but she hides her secrets from them and he watches their lights blur and frazzle as the so-called scientists grow increasingly frustrated. And then….one day, there are two new presences. The first one is of a tightly controlled, glittering black, shot with threads of unyielding resolve like purest steel. The second one is of a vivid blue opalescence that is constantly shifting and re-patterning itself in interesting ways as the man THINKS. Loki can’t help himself. He just has to get a closer look and within the blink of an eye, a shade of his finds itself in a dingy, shadowy tunnel with odd bits of metal tubing sticking out of the walls and dusty metal crates and barrels sitting in odd corners. He’s seen dvergar tunnels that were more pleasing to the eye. And these foolish mortals dare keep a precious object like his Tesseract in a place like this? Even such artless, ill-bred louts as them should be able to tell that a beauteous wonder like her deserves better. The first presence is a man with the straight posture and the restrained violence he has seen in the Odin’s elite warriors. The black suit covers a muscular, broad-shouldered frame and the glint in the one eye that’s left betrays a sharp and shrewd intelligence. Not a man to cross lightly. Nor a man to be fooled lightly. Ah….but the hunger for power betrayed by the proprietary air with which he handles the metal casing that houses Loki’s Tesseract? THAT is something he might be able to work with. Later. The second man is no kind of warrior. Older, with a slight paunch and greying, receding hair. But oh, what boundless, hungry curiosity hidden by that uncertain laugh. What a sharp mind concealed behind a few choice self-effacing remarks. The warrior opens the silver box and the scholar is drawn to the Tesseract’s soft glow like a moth to a flame. “What is it?” he asks. And then something unexpected happens and Loki can’t keep himself from inhaling sharply as it does. With a tendril of its’ energy, the Tesseract reaches out….and opens a link to the mind of the scholarly one, connecting him to Loki. It is only a small link….barely a thread, stretched to the breaking point, and the man, too absorbed by the blue-glowing enigma laid bare before him, notices the link springing up no more than he would notice a spider letting itself down by a silken thread and settling on his robes. Loki however finds himself flooded with a wealth of information. Dr. Erik Selvig. Gauss–Bonnet gravity. Raychaudhuri's theorem. Quantum Theory and the Roman ring. Einstein Rosen Bridges. The Bifröst. Erik Selvig. Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics at Culver University. Someone who, given time, will be able to understand the Tesseract. Loki feels a malicious smile spread over his face. “What is it?” Selvig asks and the Warrior answers “Power, Doctor. If we can figure out how to tap it, maybe unlimited power.” For a heart’s beat, Loki is torn between dancing with glee and snarling like a maddened dog. He will NOT allow them to use HIS Tesseract for their purposes. However….. The warrior means for Dr. Selvig to discover a means that will grant him access to the Tesseracts’ power. But unbeknownst to the one-eyed war-monger, it will be Loki who will make use of this blessed opportunity. He will guide the scholar in his research, and the secrets he learns by watching over Selvig’s shoulder will enable him to find his way to Midgard and steal away his inheritance right from under the noses of these loggerheaded nitwits. A grin on his face that is half-delight and half-snarl, he mutters to himself “Well….that’s worth looking into”. And Dr. Selvig, connected to him by the Tesseract like a fly connected to a spider through the silky, delicate threads of the arachnid’s web, echoes him. Word for word. Things look promising indeed. … In the late afternoon, Loki will return to the steading, either to go hunting with Tjalar or ice-fishing with old Eistla. Or, once a week, he will go down to the village with Meara, to trade for what they lack at the steading and to sell the mild goat’s cheese that Meara makes. The first time Meara had asked him to go with her, he’d flat out refused. The second time, he had hesitated a bit, but ended up telling her nay. Facing the onsetting bouts of boredom was less daunting a prospect than facing the rest of Jotunheim…..or what, after so long with only Tjalar, Meara and Eistla at least seemed like the rest of Jotunheim. The third time she’d asked, he’d sprung down from the beam high up in the barn that he’d been lounging on and had practically raced Meara to the dairy to help her pack. Who cared if he set himself up for being stared at and maybe insulted and spit-upon? If he didn’t find something new, something loud and different to do, to see, taste, hear, smell, he’d start talking gibberish with himself before he knew it. His mouth goes a bit dry and his palms start sweating when they set up their stall and out of the corner of his eye, he sees peoples’ gazes follow him with the intensity of a cat watching a mouse-hole. With a few short gestures hidden under the table on which they’re placing their wares, he sets up spells to listen for trouble….just to be warned in advance if he needs to make a run for it. Then the first customers approach and before he knows it, he’s wrapping up their purchases and making recommendations about which cheese will go best with a nut-root casserole. After a while, he finds Meara furtively eying one of the young men who have gathered in front of the tavern and who are joking raucously with a group of girls by the village well and when she starts chewing her lip, he just lowers his head to hide his grin and tells her “Go ahead, I can handle this” and she’s off so fast, she leaves some of the gently falling snow-flakes swirling in her wake. He surreptitiously glances over at where she’s standing, smiling a bit shyly as the young man she showed interest in presents her with what looks like a carved wooden spoon, and almost starts signalling for her to come back when a cantankerous old biddy starts haggling over the price of the cheeses she wishes to purchase and it takes every ounce of his charm and some bits of seriously twisted rhetoric to make her pay in full. The ordeal leaves him blood rushing in his ears and a fool’s grin painted on his face, a grin that only grows broader when the woman tending the stall with the smoked ham and sausages right next to them jerks her head in the direction of the departing old crone’s bent back and then graces him with a saucy wink. Busy with selling cheese and the occasional bit of easy banter that springs up with some of the buyers afterwards, he hardly pays attention to his spells. When, at the end of the afternoon, he un-makes the magic again as they pack up, it hits him like a bilgesnipe’s kick that none of the spells caught either a whispered threat, or a shushed insult….there hasn’t been so much as a quietly hissed derogatory remark behind his back. It makes his hair stand on the end and his blood run hot and cold alternatively…but he returns the week after with Meara regardless. … The first time Tjalar asked him to go hunting with him, he’d only went because he wouldn’t have felt comfortable in his own skin, refusing such a reasonable request from the man who sheltered him. A hunt in Asgard is a grand affair involving wild rides on horses and horns loudly blown, the hunters crashing through the underbrush with shouts and much fanfare, pursuing the quarry until it was cornered and then taking it down in a flurry of spears or arrows. A carnival of fools would have raised less of a ruckus and more often than not, he’d tried hiding himself away when Thor and Fandral had come looking for him, wanting to drag him along. Usually, his attempts to make himself scarce ended with Thor telling him “It’ll be fun” as he handed him the hunting gear Loki thought he’d carefully stashed away somewhere where it was supposed to gather dust until it fell apart. It never took Thor more than the time it took to saddle a horse though, to unearth his younger sibs’ gear, and by the end of the day, Loki would usually find himself at the end of the procession, covered with dust and sweat, itching, ears ringing from the noise and in the company of some foppish courtier who kept on gushing about how exciting it all was until Loki could barely restrain himself from stabbing the addle-pated twit. As he discovers, a hunt with Tjalar is a quiet, stealthy affair. Silent sneaking, slipping between trees and rocks like ghosts, hardly seen and even heard less. Patient waiting for their prey to come close. Short moments of swift action that leave their prey either with its’ neck broken or with a swiftly flung shard of ice piercing its’ heart. Tjalar’s way of hunting suits him like a fangs suit a wolf or claws a bird of prey. He begins seeking Tjalar out, asking if he can join him on the hunt. And Tjalar will take him. Will teach him. How to read the traces his prey leaves behind in the snow, on rocky riversides, on the trees and the bushes. How to know not only where his prey is, but where it was and where it will go…and why. How to call ice to his hands to form weapons or how to freeze the ground so his prey will slip and fall. The more he learns, the clumsier Asgardians seem in retrospect. Noisy. Gawky and ham-fisted. He is NOT like them…..and for the first time since he can remember, this thought brings an easy smile to his lips and lightens his heart until it is as weightless as a snowflake. … Going ice-fishing with Eistla is a quiet affair too. They’ll sit beside the hole they made into the ice, with no more effort than willing it to be there and the ice obeying their command, and they’ll watch their lines, baited with bits of earth-slugs that they dug up on the shore earlier. The quiet will only be interrupted by short bursts of hushed conversation, when he asks Eistla about Jotunheim, about his family, about his past. “How did Meara and Tjalar know who I was?” “The patterns of your skin, child. They show you are of the royal bloodline…and after Farbauti’s death, there was only one person left in all the worlds who bore such a pattern. You.” “What do you know about commanding the Tesseract?” “Well….Ymir used to have a sceptre. The blue stone in it was born of the Tesseract and through it, Ymir wielded the Tesseracts’ power. With it, he would build bonds with his closest friends and advisors, with his most trusted warriors. With those who had a true heart. And together, they would achieve what no one else could even hope to aspire to.” “What happened to the sceptre?” “Well….Laufey could not use it. And so, he sold it to an alien race, the Chitauri, in exchange for passage to Midgrad, so he could wage war on the mortals.” His stomach churned. He’d read about the Chitauri. Had heard about them too, spoken of in unusually hushed tones at the long tables in the banquet halls. The Chitauri were merciless and without honour. They swarmed weaker worlds like locusts, gorging themselves on local riches, taking what they found useful and malevolently destroying what they didn’t. He might get the Tesseract back. But his grandfather’s sceptre? It was probably lost forever. Making a deal with the Chitauri is tantamount to inviting a rabid weasel into a hen-house and as one man, he is in no position to take on the entire Chitauri army. Verdandi’s tears, even the armies of Asgard were reluctant to take them on. It is better to concentrate his efforts on more immediate…more solvable….questions. “Why aren’t people here…..more angry at me? I almost destroyed Jotunheim….and you told me that it’s no secret amongst the Jotun.” “The race of Ymir is older than that of Asgard. We are not mere children like them, to judge before we have listened and to condemn before having weighed and measured all the arguments…..or at least we used to be, before Laufey.” A sense of unease unfurls in his gut, like a snake prepared to strike. “So…” he licks his lips and fidgets slightly. “So….they might still condemn me….for what I did? Punish me?” Eistla reaches over and ruffles his hair. “No youngling. The Council already convened quite a while ago.” A smug smile spreads over her face and settled there. “For the first time in centuries, I might add. Laufey didn’t hold much with asking his people about their wishes and needs…especially not those of his people that he hadn’t seduced into joining his army.” She quirks an eyebrow at him. “Odin Allfather DID send a message, explaining. There are still people here that know the old crow from a time where he was still a babe swaddled in rags. People who expected him to keep our prince safe. People who trusted him to handle the challenge of raising Ymir’s grandson at the court of Asgard with more sensitivity.” A smile, tentative and a bit wobbly, comes to his lips and Eistla chuckles darkly. “He got quite an earful. And was quite contrite afterwards. Lies, however well intended, breed only misery and you, youngling, caught the worst of it.” A wistful sigh on her part, a flinch and a frown on his. She sighs once more, deeply, then catches and holds his gaze, face gone serious. “You reacted badly though. You lied. You tried to kill the man you had known as your brother all your life. You attempted to destroy Jotunheim.” He flinches. Looks away, shoulders hunched, as if expecting a beating. She lays a hand on his shoulder and he shoots her a short look, only to let his eyes fall back to the ground, as if the dirt between his toes suddenly has become the most interesting thing in all of Jotunheim. Her voice carries a hard edge as she speaks on, as if trying to carve her words into his memory and he can feel his body tense and coil up, as if ready to spring him out of this conversation which all of a sudden seems more like sharp-fanged trap rather than a comfortable stroll down fascinating new paths. “You did wrong youngling. There’s no denying it. But the council believes that the lies the Allfather told, trying to cover his wrinkly old arse, left you ill prepared for the truth and when you found out, you were left to deal with it alone. So part of the blame falls to the Odin. Killing Laufey and attempting to kill Odin’s firstborn? Selfish acts, meant to secure your position. Hateful acts, born from anger and fear…which in part were kindled by the lies you’d been told all your life…. ….and also acts that, if the Allfather is not mistaken, were at least in part meant to protect Asgard." A glazed look films his eyes at her last sentence, as if he’d been pole-axed and her chest aching at the sight, she reaches over once more and takes his hand. His eyes clear as he meets her gaze; hope a small, flickering flame lighting his features and her voice mellows as she continues. “The Council was quite impressed with your cleverness in using Odin as bait. It was a cunning ruse and you played it well to boot. You prevented a war with it….and, unbeknownst to yourself, avenged your mother and your people. The Council considered and weighed all these…..and so…..” She lets the silence stretch until he can’t take it anymore and an impatient and quite worriedly chocked “….and so?” escapes his lips. She points at his fishing line, which clearly has something tugging on it. “And so I believe our dinner is nipping at your hook. Better get to it.” “Eistla!” She grins, the expression full of good humour and cheerfulness. “Be at ease, youngling. The Council decided that at this point, living a lie for most of your life was punishment enough and they chose to let it rest at that.” A blush of the deepest blue spreads over the youngster’s face and he blinks a few times, rapidly, trying to keep the sudden flood of tears that gather in the corner of his eyes from spilling over. He bends down to reel in the fish that has caught on his line…and to hide his face. She lets go of his hand and pats his shoulder, wanting to reassure him that he’s welcome, that he’s safe.... …..that he’s home. Finally.For Sinclaire_Threnody
There are several things I strive for when writing and two of them are emotion and plausibility. The fact that, according to you, I’m doing both of them right so far gave me a smile a mile wide! Also, please regard Dr. Selvig as a sort of teaser trailer for Hawkeye. The next chapter (with Loki AND Clint) should be up within the next hour. As far as the upcoming movies go: Joss Whedon had a reputation for redemptions stories (I mean, come on, Angel got his own TV show and Spike got his own comic book series) and Thor 2 has to fit with Joss’ concept for Avengers 2….so yes, I think there will be plenty of Loki and I think that there’s a good chance that it’ll be good stuff. *crosses fingers* And yeah, I’m looking forward to your stories. That stuff you wrote was HOT and I’m willing to bet you’re good at creating a riveting plot too ^_^ For Alia Heavens, would I love a Loki movie. I’m SO in with you on that. A Hawkeye and/or Black Widow movie would be great too….*sigh* Wishes….fishes…. The movies so far leave a great big, GAPING hole in the Loki story line and I love filling up the cracks between the pieces. ^_~ More Clint / Loki interaction in the next chapter!While AFF and its agents attempt to remove all illegal works from the site as quickly and thoroughly as possible, there is always the possibility that some submissions may be overlooked or dismissed in error. The AFF system includes a rigorous and complex abuse control system in order to prevent improper use of the AFF service, and we hope that its deployment indicates a good-faith effort to eliminate any illegal material on the site in a fair and unbiased manner. This abuse control system is run in accordance with the strict guidelines specified above.
All works displayed here, whether pictorial or literary, are the property of their owners and not Adult-FanFiction.org. Opinions stated in profiles of users may not reflect the opinions or views of Adult-FanFiction.org or any of its owners, agents, or related entities.
Website Domain ©2002-2017 by Apollo. PHP scripting, CSS style sheets, Database layout & Original artwork ©2005-2017 C. Kennington. Restructured Database & Forum skins ©2007-2017 J. Salva. Images, coding, and any other potentially liftable content may not be used without express written permission from their respective creator(s). Thank you for visiting!
Powered by Fiction Portal 2.0
Modifications © Manta2g, DemonGoddess
Site Owner - Apollo