blades before babes

In the wake of Dark, Magnus takes a day or two to dig camp out from the snow drifts with Alex, then presents himself, finally, for lessons with Hanguang-jun.

They've been talking about it for a while, him and Hanguang-jun and Galahad — since Magnus first got weird about Galahad becoming Hanguang-jun's student. By now, he pretty much knows he's not going to stop feeling weird about stepping into a lesson with the two of them — even one totally unrelated to sword stuff — so he might as well rip off that proverbial bandaid.

He's a largely punctual guy, a trait recently intensified by Sunny's interest in making plans to hang out in one week and Magnus's role in keeping her calendar, but there is still a lot of snow to fight through to get to the Mansion's doors. He's a little breathless when he sweeps into the agreed-upon room, raking melting snow out of his hair with his fingers.

"What's up, my favorite comedians?"

It's Magnus's birthday and he is a man with a surplus of plans. And many, many plastic recorders.

He's still a little overstimulated from the birthday party Galahad got Claudius to throw for the two of them — he loves all his friends, but that was a lot of people in one space, most of whom were also feeling many, many things about their visitors — and so it's been a quiet few days. Sunny is still a little subdued, so they've been having muted hangouts in the mornings; Galahad, also overstimulated from their birthday party, has fortunately been on Magnus's wavelength about just sailing around aimlessly on the Big Banana with many snacks and very little conversation during their daily hangs for the past few days. He drags himself to sword practice with Lancelot once or twice, has his weekly dinner at Hanguang-jun's, spends a great solo afternoon cleaning out Little John's cave in case anyone else wants to use it at some point, and lets Alex tease him into wrestling and, um, other stuff after dinner basically every night.

But on this, the twenty-sixth anniversary of Magnus's actual birth, most of his energy has returned to him. He's made birthday dinner plans with just his immediate family (and also Alex and Hanguang-jun) at their house for the evening. He's had his liveliest morning of the week. And with his newly regained energy he's found critical supplies for his afternoon: a roll of duct tape, several trash bags, eight recorders, a handful of hollow pens, and a dream. He's sitting cross-legged in the middle of the Mansion's lawn, a look of grave concentration on his face, as he makes little holes in a bag, duct tapes two recorders and one pen here and there, and then seals it all up.

And then he takes a deep breath, fits his mouth to the hollow pen, and blows the bag up. When he places it under his arm and squeezes, he's gratified to find that his makeshift bagpipes work perfectly. And he still has supplies for a couple more!



I know everyone is still busy with visitor's day so feel free to take your time on this one... but I would love to ultimately have a ton of Chaos Thread Opportunities.

The first day of summer dawns bright and warm, a steady breeze stirring through the trees. The day itself is a flurry of activity: Magnus and Tress meet up in the kitchen early in the morning to start throwing together refreshments for Galahad's party. They make three kinds of cookies, and also a tray of flat brownies — Magnus has it in his head that half of the cookies and all of the brownies should be turned into ice cream sandwiches and, accordingly, tracks down Susan (who seems to know everything about this place) to get her to produce a deep freezer for Legoland. (She has that look on her face like he smells bad the whole time, but when he mentions it's for the bachelorette, at least she seems slightly less cold and standoffish.)

While the baked goods cool, Magnus ransacks the pantry for chips and candy and stuff for sandwiches. He lets Tress handle ice cream selection; when they find boxes of Bagel Bites in the freezer, he cheers. Legoland definitely has a microwave; they plugged the freezer into the same outlet. (Is a bachelorette the same thing as a slumber party? Maybe!)

It's early evening by the time everything is done and set up, even with Alex and Tress's help. He decides that the substantial food and record player should both be reserved for Legoland, partly because it does have electricity. They lug a big old table up to the top of the tower for the taste tests, and then an easel with giant post-it notes for the 'naming Mansion constellations' portion of the evening, and then a bunch of the smaller easels, sketchpads, and a selection of different art supplies (markers, crayons, watercolors, pencils, acrylic paints) he and Sunny have been tracking down and hoarding, for the bestiality portion of the evening.

After sending Tress and Alex off so they can get ready, he sets up for the taste tests: bowls full of different candies (white rabbit, hopjes, strawberry-flavored fizzing warheads, Reeses's cluster bites, Haribo gummy goldbears, hundred grand bars, red vines, salmiak licorice, candied verdant vines (Tress made them), and nerd ropes), bowls full of chips (Takis in the flavors angry burger, blue heat, and dragon sweet chili; Lays in the flavors Wasabi Octopus, All Dressed, Cappuccino, White Rabbit Rich Toffee (to compare with the actual white rabbit candy), and Pimento Cheese), and several cloth bags covering different red-flavored sodas, with wine tasting note cards so people can try to guess which is Code Red, which is Big Red, which is Cheerwine, and (in a fond nod to Alex), which is Tizer. He completes the array with a stack of paper for general ranking notes for the candy and chips. (There are also a couple child-sized easels and ranking sheets, for Mothwing and Sunny, but Magnus did also bring regular water for her and Sunny, a fish supplied by Drosera for Mothwing, and some carrots and apple slices for Sunny. There is also an easel and notepad for Shen Yuan, even though he's just a ghost and probably can't manipulate it, but he knocked once for yes when Magnus asked his growing body if he was going to make it.)

Finally, after convincing Drosera that she should absolutely wear a cute little bolo tie and party hat for this, he darts into the mansion for a quick shower, a change into one of the outfits Galahad picked for him when they tried on clothes, and to collect the groom himself. He presents Galahad with a white sash embroidered in gold; it reads GROOM TO BE. There's also a little tiara that he found in their bedroom. He assumes it's a cheap gimmicky one, but it's actually filigree red and white gold with real sapphires, diamonds, and pearls — he just picked it because it's delicate and will blend in with Galahad's hair in a way that will let the sapphires really pop.


Stages of the night will be posted in parent comments; everyone is welcome to thread with whoever in response to those! Awkward social interactions between people who aren't necessarily friendly are encouraged.

Magnus's day is already pretty thrown off, between surprise Hanguang-jun morning hangs (definitely positive) and coming clean to Alex about training with Lancelot (mostly positive), which led directly to Alex coming along to afternoon training (weird, but ultimately extremely good), so that he can... vet Lancelot??? Have a fun little spar with Magnus???? Tease them both mercilessly??? Anyway, it's fun! It feels kind of like the best part of old times, except Magnus is actually kind of good now that he's had formal training, and even though he knows Alex, like, super well, Alex is always a wildcard with fighting, and it's nice to have things shaken up in training now that Magnus is also getting used to how Lancelot fights.

All this to say that he somehow hasn't seen Galahad yet, even though usually by now he's spent several hours with Galahad. So after dinner, he heads back up to the Mansion with the dual purposes of finding (1) Galahad and (2) art supplies for his next time-sensitive project.

"And then we realized Frigg was knitting with clouds. Actual factual clouds," Magnus says, passing another box that, as it turns out, holds nothing useful down to Galahad. He climbs up another rung on the little stepladder and starts in on the next shelf. "How many boxes of Legos do we have so far?" He knows it's certainly not enough for a bachelorette party yet, but surely there's something they can go on. He'd kind of tonight that this far after Dark, there would be... more? "Do you think we should find another room to look in? Maybe the game room isn't the best choice."

The first thing Magnus does -- with Alex's help -- after fully healing is board up the hole in the side of the greenhouse where the cheetah ran through. The second thing, once he learns the full scope of Dark (it's different at camp; he'd already taken out a ton of camp-appropriate food for when Galahad and Laertes couldn't make it out there, and so he and Alex have been fine on the eating front) is go to the greenhouse again to figure out what plants in there yield edible produce. (Also, he tries to scrub his blood off the table. It... partially works?)

Partly it's that he's still feeling weird after the whole affair. The season doesn't help, but he does feel closer to his own mortality than pretty much any point since he died for real the first time. Being around growing plants helps that. Mostly, though, it's because he doesn't want anyone to get, like, scurvy living on bushels of rice alone.

He doesn't want to overtax any of the plants, but some can be cajoled into fruiting. Right now, he's got his hand on a kumquat tree, and he's trying to convince it that it can speed up the growth process by a few weeks. Drosera is with him, 'helping:' she's found a dead leaf, and she's chasing it down the pathway between some plants. If anyone shows up -- either because they've heard of his near-death experience and want to check in on him, or just to hang out, or even because they're drawn by the way it looks like sunlight is coming from the greenhouse itself -- he'll be glad for the company.

Magnus wakes up, normal again except for how he's in an unfamiliar room. Not Galahad's old room, either. A nondescript one that, as far as he can tell, just has a bunch of clothes and stuff. Also he's wearing silky pajamas he'd never pick out automatically on his own?

It doesn't take long for him to feel like the walls are closing in on him. It's out of respect for Aornis that he stumbles out of her room through the door (barefoot and in the silky pajamas) and goes outside the normal way. Once outside, he flops into the snow, calling summer and feeling the way the snow steams against his skin as it melts.

He's not feeling totally regular again when he sits bolt upright, remembering that Drosera is probably in Galahad's old room with two people that aren't Magnus or Galahad. Existential crisis over, there's a child to retrieve! And hopefully, he'll run into Galahad in the halls.

On the one hand, Magnus is on cloud nine. Even though Alex isn't here anymore, she was here, and he got to see her. He got to hug her, and hold her hand, and kiss her, and joke around with her, and have all the important and difficult conversations he's been wanting to have with her for months. He's gotten the impression, by now, that a lot of people showed up for just the one day, and so the fact that she's gone doesn't burn the way it might otherwise. She was here once; maybe she can be here again. In the meantime, now all his friends back home will know he's okay. And as long as Surt doesn't figure out whatever magic brought her here, things might be... okay for a while?

His only regret is that, since he assumed she was here for good, he didn't monopolize all her time. (He wouldn't have; he never wants to tie her down. She can tie him down! He doesn't mind! But she should be free, always. But it does feel like every exchange he had with someone else that entire day was a waste of time. Except saving Hanguang-jun and his husband. That definitely wasn't a waste. But...)

But he's still feeling all mixed up about it. He's feeling lonely now, in a way he's managed to stave off most of the time he's been living in the woods. He and Shen Yuan and Galahad have been tossing around the idea of a game night for a while now. Maybe Galahad and Shen Yuan had visitors, too? Maybe they're also feeling a little lonely? Maybe they might be willing to have some quality bro time right about now?

It's midafternoon. A little early, maybe, but he's definitely going to come back outside to sleep. He empties his backpack into his camp cooler so that he can fill it with snacks in the kitchen, and heads toward the Mansion. He'll find Galahad first -- if Shen Yuan is in his room, that's a little too close to Magnus's empty room for comfort right now, and he'll want a friend with him before he goes down that hallway.

The zombies are gone, the bodies are healed, the Magnus is exhausted. He's had an extremely strange few days. First, everyone else seems to start unloading their entire hearts at him -- unexpected! But pretty cool! -- and then he wakes up to zombies.

It really gets him thinking, is the thing. He's been practicing swordplay daily since arriving, sparring with people or against Jack, trying to keep a hand in and not let his mediocre skills atrophy. He's also been exercising in new-to-him invigorating ways, learning new stuff, meeting new people...

He likes it here. He really, really likes it here. He misses his friends back home more than words can possibly express, but if he went back to Valhalla right now, he'd miss the people here, too, some of them even equally as bad. And he doesn't want to subject these people all to Valhalla -- it's really not for everyone -- but he also can't figure out how to bring all his people here. Jack still can't rip through the barriers between worlds here like he can anywhere else in the Nine.

He likes it here... and it's becoming abundantly clear to him that he doesn't want to fight all the time anymore. The zombies have made it really, stunningly clear how much he doesn't miss Battle Practice or dying all the time. The rest has clued him into how much he likes learning new things, and talking to different kinds of people, and figuring out who he is when he's not constantly in crisis all the time, zombies aside.

But liking it here so much feels kind of like a betrayal? Especially after all the specific, deliberate choices he's made to stay in Valhalla with his people. And this sobers him, a little, blunting the rough edge of the adrenaline that's still coursing through his body.

His thoughts are distracting and, thusly preoccupied as he walks through the halls in the vague direction of his room, a shower, and a nap, he absently reaches out and returns Jack to pendant form...

And immediately passes out.

[Post intended for anyone who will be particularly upset by Magnus passing out xoxo]]

"Señor, you really should practice more," Jack says, as Magnus rearranges his mental notes and sighs.

(Anyone else might think Magnus is just lying back on a bench on the grounds, staring at the sky, lost in thought. And technically, he is. But he's working hard!!! He's trying to sort out everyone he's encountered so far!!!)

"You're right," Magnus groans. Being in a weird Mansion with no way out, no established Battle Practice, and no pressing quests to go on is not an excuse to let his limited fighting skills fall by the wayside. He hauls himself upright and shoves his (still largely blank) notebook into his backpack.

Twenty minutes later, he's secured a practice sword from some random closet or another in the Mansion. It's dull steel, not sentient, and heavy in his hands.

"Perfect," Jack decides, so Magnus tramps back out to the spacious lawn, one sword in each hand. Checking to make sure no one is directly in harm's way, he releases Jack and brings the dull training sword up, ready to parry whatever attack Jack decides to throw at him.