#because i thought eir interactions with her while she and i were still dating just felt. weird

[brainfullofbees]

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[taaroko]

Post-IW MCU Rewatch: Thor: The Dark World

Yay more Thor! (Yes I know this is widely considered to be the worst of the MCU movies and I DO NOT CARE. *hugs entire population of Asgard possessively*)

This prologue is ridiculous. I don’t know if it’s Anthony Hopkins’s inflection or if it’s just a step too far in the high fantasy direction, but it does make me cringe a bit. More showing, less telling! The prologues in the LotR movies were way more interesting than this.

The Dark Elf language also makes me cringe. I am very aware that it’s preposterous to assume that people from different planets speak English, but what’s most important to me is that actors cannot deliver nuanced performances when they are speaking gibberish. At least when it’s real languages, someone can coach them on inflection and stuff, but they really hamstrung Christopher Eccleston by making him say these silly-sounding lines.

Malekith has no imagination if the only thing he could think to do with the Reality Stone was turn stuff into dark matter.

“Benevolent god” indeed. Sending the Chitauri to slaughter people doesn’t really fit that description, sweetie.

Seriously Anthony Hopkins’s delivery is really weird in some places.

Odin is now three for three on children who showed scary genocidal tendencies, so I think there’s a lot of bitterness and feelings of failure behind what he says to Loki. Also Loki’s not showing any remorse at all, even though now would be a great time to explain that he was tortured and manipulated by Thanos. They’re both getting defensive and lashing out instead of engaging in meaningful communication.

Hi Sif! Hi Volstagg! HI THOR! He has such good entrances. Hi Fandral and Hogun! (Even if this is Zachary Levi Fandral with his stupid wig.)

The weapons the raiders are using are really interesting.

Hey I wonder if this Kronan knows Korg.

I love Thor’s smile when all the raiders laugh at his “I accept your surrender.”

*dreamy sigh* Asgard.

HUGIN AND MUNIN! And one actually lands on Odin’s arm! That’s awesome.

Odin ships Thor/Sif. (Me too, Odin.)

Obligatory shirtless Thor scene!

Volstagg and his family! *wibble*

Oh Sif. Rejected. (But Thor’s pretty nice about it.)

Jane is really quite socially awkward, isn’t she? Why did she go on this date?

It says something about how bad of a driver Jane is (hitting Thor, nearly driving off the road) that she would trust Darcy to drive her around (I guess Darcy’s record is slightly better, having only hit Thor once, while they were in the middle of a dust cloud).

“Why’re you calling me?” “I didn’t want to shout.”

Portals! Whee! (Honstly the portal shenanigans are one of the big reasons I love this movie. This crap is so much fun.)

I love the way Darcy wiggles her hand when she says “Gimme your shoe.”

Okay so the Dark Elves are set to wake up if the Aether gets activated? Headcanon time. Judging from all the creepy red lights in their ships, I think they used the Aether to make most of their tech, much like Schmidt did with the Tesseract. So yeah, if the Aether gets activated, their tech would react. That works.

Heimdall’s new armor has an orange stone in the breastplate. I thought he was gonna turn out to be the one who had the Soul Stone, and that it was the source of his infinite sight. ...I’m pretty sure I still like that better than what we ended up with in canon. Also, I only noticed this the other day, but Heimdall’s helmet is shaped the same as Hofund’s hilt, and that’s awesome.

Heee, I love Thor and Heimdall’s chat. I definitely believe that Thor would describe Heimdall as his best friend.

Whoops! Continuity error. Jane should not be in her Asgardian outfit yet. I guess they decided to move this bit to this part of the movie instead of later, but didn’t reshoot it.

Did Thor make this storm or is that just London being London? He does make it stop, I guess.

Sorry guys, Thor already has that dark strand of stuff in his hair; it’s not a Loki memorial braid.

Thor and Darcy’s interactions are always gold.

You sliced off part of that car!

Oh, question answered from before. You CAN see space rushing past from inside the Bifrost. Sweet.

Hi Eir! The Soul Forge is so cool.

Jane takes Odin’s rudeness pretty well. But dang, Odin. I know you ship Thor/Sif, but being mean to the competition is an elementary mistake.

That book is freaking awesome. It’s like the Book of Kells, except the images move and it’s in runes.

Dangit I don’t want the bad guys to be the ones who touch foreheads to show affection!

I really don’t like this look for Frigga. That one-boob breastplate is really weird.

The emotion in Loki’s scene with Frigga’s projection is so great. He wants to sever ties with Odin (or he thinks he does) but he can’t do that without severing ties with Frigga too, and you can see how much it hurts him to say anything that would hurt her. Which he plainly instantly regrets. And it’s the last thing he ever says to her.

Yessss more romantic exposition from Thor.

Hahaha, Jane is so much more shy around Frigga than Odin.

Man the way the Kursed dude kills people is really messed up.

Loki you would not be smiling at this dude if you knew he was going to do much more than cause a bit of mischief.

Thor jumping and grabbing Mjolnir is such a cool shot.

“It’s only because I’ve worried over you that you have survived.” Based on how Odin behaves as soon as she’s dead, that is extremely accurate.

Heimdall is so awesome. Oh, and I love the way the Dark Elves’ ships look almost like they’re made of dragon hide or something. Dragon hide or lava rock. Fantastic design. Fantastic movements.

This movie has so much more of Asgard in it than the first one, which is awesome. Even if it’s mostly getting pummeled by Dark Elves.

Those black hole grenades are freaking terrifying.

Yeah...if Loki hadn’t given that tip about the stairs to the left, the Kursed dude wouldn’t have arrived in time to help Malekith before Frigga finished him off, or before Thor and Odin arrived. :/

Frigga’s funeral is beautiful. The music, however, has been somewhat retroactively ruined by that play in Ragnarok. (Which I adore.)

Even if Loki doesn’t know how much his actions specifically contributed to Frigga’s death, I think he regrets helping the Kursed dude.

Hi Stan!

Dang, Asgardian law is crazy strict if Thor and the Warriors Three are casually talking about being killed by Einherjar if they screw up this plan.

This is so sad, because Loki actually doesn’t betray Thor at any point during this mission. He makes up for it by being incessantly irritating (which is the best stuff in the movie), but he sticks to the plan the whole time. The only one he betrays in this whole movie is Odin.

Okay the dagger/handcuffs trick by Thor is funny and all, but it really doesn’t hold up if you think about it. You’d definitely notice the difference between being handed a dagger and having thick cuffs put on.

Sif is very good at not letting her jealousy show too clearly. And her sword is awesome. Her and Volstagg’s threats to Loki are pretty great.

Peak annoying little brother stuff right here, when they’re in the Dark Elf blade ship. My favorite is “Oh dear. Is she dead?”

So Thor has the “face squashed against glass motif,” and I think Loki has a falling motif. Into the abyss in the first one, out of the ship in this one, and through whatever dimension Doctor Strange trapped him in in Ragnarok.

The flying longboats are so cool.

I love how much Loki likes it whenever Thor gets the better of him with sneakiness. He’s so used to Thor just smashing his way through stuff, so any subtlety he uses (especially when it’s successful against him) is fantastic in his book.

“Ta-dah.”

“What I could do with the power that flows through those veins.” I would love to see what Loki could do with the Aether. He’s already a master of illusions, and the Reality Stone would multiply that by about a thousand. It’d be awesome. And yet he sent it off to Knowhere instead of keeping it (or giving it to Thanos). Just like he kept the Tesseract safe in Asgard’s vault the entire time he was pretending to be Odin. If Loki had really done everything he did in Avengers of his own free will while in his right mind, he would not have gone to such lengths to keep multiple Infinity Stones away from Thanos. Heck, he might even have been the one to commission Stormbreaker from Eitri. I suppose he didn’t use the Stones himself because he knows as well as Thor does how deadly they can be to the wielder, or maybe he knew they’d draw Thanos to him like a beacon.

Thor thinks Loki wants to hurt him because he’s talking about Jane’s mortality, but Loki thinks Thor only cares about Jane and not the fact that their mother just died. They’re so bad at understanding each other.

The bittersweet smiles they exchange after “She wouldn’t want us to fight.”/“Well, she wouldn’t exactly be shocked.” are so painful to watch. They both desperately miss the days before any of this happened, when they were simply brothers, and I think they realize that about each other in this moment. But it’s not enough to fix everything, which is why Thor says “I wish I could trust you” and Loki says “Trust my rage.”

Ian is such a dope.

If a flock of starlings burst up through the ground at my feet like that, I would be scarred for life.

Thor’s plan is awesome. I totally fell for it in the theater. I thought Loki had double-crossed him and chopped his hand off, but they were working together the whole time. I kinda don’t think they let Jane in on it, though. Is the lack of blood on Thor’s arm stump a mistake or a hint that it’s a trick? *rewinds and squints* Ooh, no, it’s because the dagger has a glowy energy field on it! Insta-cauterization! Anyway, this would’ve been the perfect time for Loki to betray Thor for real if he’d wanted to, but he plays along. In part, I think, because he was so impressed with the plan.

Hey guys, even when Loki’s pretending to be a traitor, he doesn’t call himself Laufeyson. STOP CALLING HIM LAUFEYSON IN YOUR TAGS. Also his knife-fighting is awesome.

The Kursed dude’s eyeballs getting sucked out of their sockets was NOT a necessary detail to include.

“You fool, you didn’t listen!” What does Thor mean? What did Loki not listen to? Did Thor tell him that he was only supposed to protect Jane, not him?

Okay so I’m really not sure what the deal is with Loki’s fake death here. I have a couple different theories.

Theory 1: Loki really did get stabbed and really did believe he was dying. After Thor and Jane left to seek shelter from Thor’s uncontrollable grief storm, Loki reverted to his true form (because, dying) and that actually saved his life because Kursed blood isn’t as deadly to the Jotnar as it is to the Aesir, or his vital organs aren’t in the same place anymore, or something. So he was able to heal himself and take advantage of the situation.

Theory 2: Loki never intended to betray Thor, but he always intended to fake his death, both as a way of escaping prison and of avoiding Thanos’s retribution. So as soon as he finished off those four Dark Elves, he turned one of their corpses into a copy of himself and puppeteered it over to stab the Kursed dude and get theatrically killed. It would explain why the Loki who gets stabbed only has a Dark Elf sword and a black hole grenade on him.

I lean more towards theory 1 because I don’t really like the idea that Loki would trick Thor into thinking he was dead the day after their mother died, and also because when they filmed it, they actually meant for this to be Loki’s real death scene, and they only changed it later because test audiences didn’t believe Loki was dead. However, if I put aside my emotions, I have to admit that theory 2 makes more logical sense.

Would Malekith have found the Aether sooner if it hadn’t gotten into Jane? The movie implies pretty strongly that Malekith woke up because the Aether was out of its hiding place.

Mjolnir on the coat hook is such a great gag.

The elevator in Malekith’s ship looks like a spinal column, which is some fantastic design.

Thor’s battle trash talk is always delightful.

PORTAL SHENANIGANS. YESSSSSS.

Poor Mjolnir. It’s trying so hard to get back to Thor. I like to think that when it shatters the glass of that building on its way back up, it’s doing so in frustration.

Hi Jotunheim!

So apparently this isn’t remotely how you get to Greenwich from Charing Cross. Whoops. Maybe that girl was just really flustered at being addressed by Thor and gave him crap directions?

Jane really likes trying to throw herself between an unconscious Thor and a thing that she thinks might kill him.

POETRY. Malekith tried to destroy the Asgardian army by dropping his fleet on them. Now he gets killed by his own ship falling on him.

How’d Loki know about Thor’s line to Odin “There will never be a wiser king than you”?

“I can assure you, it will be absolutely safe here in my collection.” LIAR.

It’s so cool that Chris’s wife is the one who played Jane in the end credits scene. I’m not sure how they failed to do this kiss scene with Natalie in the first place, but whatever.

Every time Thor’s about to show up somewhere in this movie, there’s thunder. :D

Okay so the biggest problems with Thor: The Dark World are that Malekith is the dullest villain in the entire MCU and that Thor kinda doesn’t have a character arc. In a movie where half of his family dies (as far as he knows). How is that even possible? Despite the beautiful funeral, Frigga’s death was really kind of glossed over, and then Loki seemingly dies too, but even though those are very powerful scenes while we’re in them, they don’t leave much of an impact on the rest of the movie. You don’t really feel those losses in the way Thor fights Malekith. Thor should’ve been struggling to stick to the plan instead of just whaling on Malekith blindly with Mjolnir. He should’ve had some breakdown with Jane there to witness it and comfort him. Instead he’s the one comforting Jane when she blames herself for all the loss he’s suffered? No no no. He should’ve either been very emotional, very bent on revenge, or smiling and joking through the pain like he does in Ragnarok and Infinity War. This stoicism is not effective, and it probably contributes to so many people’s (mistaken) belief that, prior to Ragnarok, Thor was a boring character. And Malekith’s side of the battle would’ve been better if it had been personal for him too. He could’ve been more upset at the death of his buddy Algrim, or maybe he had family members who were killed by Bor, which is why he’s so keen on killing members of Asgard’s royal family now. It would’ve been so easy to make this an emotionally intense fight. Instead, it’s merely fun because portal shenanigans. *shrug*

Despite not having much of an arc, Thor is still wonderful. He’s funny, he’s more thoughtful and wise than he’s ever been, he’s gallant, he’s romantic, and he’s getting better and better at working as part of a team and finding solutions besides smashing stuff. Also he makes the best entrances, has awesome armor, and is mesmerizing to watch in battle. I adore him.

Other stuff this movie has going for it. So much more Asgard screentime, even if they cut a few scenes I wish they’d left in. The music is still great. Everything looks gorgeous, and the Dark Elves at least have interesting technology and costumes. No Dutch angles. Plenty of screentime for Heimdall. Every single second of Thor and Loki’s scenes together, being obnoxious bros to each other but still working as a very effective team (heralding all the excellent contentious Brodinson stuff to come in Ragnarok).

[dragon-moms]

Entry 156 - Merry

Dear Diary,

Today was a good day!

I’m excited, but also kind of worried, but mostly excited?

I woke up and Myrmidon, Philly, and I made breakfast, like usual. We ended up humming that little song that Philly and Baroness taught us? It’s kind of catchy, right? And Myrmidon insisted it was a good way for us to remember it.

“Do you think Dagger is okay?” Philly asked as I gave the soup a good stir. “Baroness was a little harsh yesterday.”

“We just have to support em if ey need it,” Myrmidon said. “Other than that, it is between our mother and em.”

“I mean, I’ve only heard what you told me, but surely she didn’t, like, mean to hurt em?” I said. “I wouldn’t have known what to say to make someone mad if I was on the spot, you know?”

Philly chuckled. “I don’t think you could make someone mad even if you tried, Mom.”

“My grandpa got real upset with me once or twice when I was a kid,” I said. “Like, he’d be all, ‘Merry, I told you to relax, you didn’t need to do that!’ or “I told you you’d get sick if you ate all of those!’”

Philly chuckled some more, and Myrmidon just smiled. “I also believe this to be one of my mother’s common errors in interpersonal interaction,” they said. “I would hope Dagger would understand and I am sure my mother will work to remedy the situation.”

“I’m fine, really. You don’t have to talk about me like this,” Dagger’s voice said.

“We are just concerned about you, my dear sibling,” Myrmidon said.

“Mom has hurt me plenty and will hurt me plenty more during this eternity ahead of me,” ey said. “I’ll just have to keep dealing.”

“You don’t have to deal with her if you don’t want to,” Philly said. “I mean… I like Baroness. She’s taught me a lot. But if she’s hurting you, and won’t stop, then maybe she shouldn’t get to be around you.”

There was some silence. Finally, Dagger said, “She tries. And sometimes I feel like things are better. And then things like this happen.”

“If we can do anything, please let us know,” Myrmidon said.

“Yeah… maybe…” Dagger said.

Soon we were all having breakfast, and Baroness sat in her corner while we ate. I was a little worried, but like, it’s hard to tell how she’s feeling? Because of her bone face? I’m getting better, though… it didn’t seem like she was upset? Maybe she was just thinking about the work we needed to do.

“What is everyone working on today?” Gloria eventually asked.

“My apprentice and I, with help from my child, Dagger, have come to a discovery about the nature of the door as well as several other things of note,” Baroness said. “The door is designed to be activated using a previously unknown element that seems to be what the White dragons possessed.”

“That makes sense,” Gloria said.

“Sure, but do you know how to convert to it?” Nobody asked. “None of us are White dragons.”

“While that is accurate, and I have not yet discovered how to convert other elements to it, we… have someone in our group with that element,” Baroness said.

“What?” Nobody said. “That makes no sense.”

Baroness looked to Philly, on my shoulder.

“I seem to have the same inner element,” Philly said.

“Hey! But… huh,” Flare said. “I know Philly isn’t really a human and stuff, right? She’s a dragon-in-training! But I know a lot of humans, and none of them have an inner element. They do magic all weird, make contracts with stuff. I didn’t realize she was doing dragon magic.”

“Her capability puzzled me similarly for some time,” Baroness said. “But there is no point in disputing facts. We have run tests, and she does have an inner element, and can activate ritual lines left behind by the White dragons.”

“I think it has something to do with what the human Queen did to me,” Philly said, putting a hand to her chest. “She put something in me a long time ago.”

“So, what, we let the little kid open the door?” Nobody asked.

“I believe she can, though we will want to take it slow, doing tests to ensure her safety,” Baroness said.

“We should head over there, then,” Gloria said. “Soon as we’re done eating.”

As we flew over, I told Philly, “Don’t push yourself, you know? This is a big job, probably! It’s a big door! I think.”

“I know Mom… don’t worry, we’ll take a lot of breaks,” she said.

“Yes, and we shall be standing by to ensure and help with those breaks,” Myrmidon said, smiling.

“Yeah,” Philly said. “But… I can do this, I think. I can.”

I was so proud of her! So I said, “I’m so proud of you! You’re such a hard worker! I’m sure you can figure it out, right?”

“Surely,” Myrmidon said.

I couldn’t really look at Philly while I was flying, but she made a little noise of embarrassment I barely heard.

Soon, we landed again at the castle thing. We all watched Baroness and Philly do some experiments at first, until Gloria shooed us away.

“Let’s let them work,” she said. “Maybe we can focus on something else.”

“Like what?” Nobody asked.

“Something else from the Diary?” Gloria suggested.

“I still haven’t found anything new. It’s all in code,” she said.

“Well, we could keep exploring then!” Flare said.

“I suppose so,” Gloria said. “Let me fill you three in on where Flare and I looked the other day, and then we’ll split up and search.” She started to explain which structures nearby they’d cleared. I didn’t think I could follow it, but Myrmidon seemed to think they could, so that was probably fine!

“So Merry and Myrmidon, me and Flare, and Miss Nobody, you want to go alone?” Gloria asked.

“I’ll go with you and Flare,” she said.

“Okay. Let’s be back here around lunchtime, and we’ll see what they’ve figured out,” Gloria said.

But as Myrmidon and I started to fly off, Dagger materialized in front of us.

“We should work on something else,” ey said.

“What would you suggest, my dear sibling?” Myrmidon asked.

“I was watching Mom and Philly,” ey said. “The song, they think it’s not the right song. Like, every spell has a song, and that’s just for the claw thing,” Dagger fidgeted in the air, making eir claw longer and shorter. “So I need to get upset again, I guess… but I’m not going to talk to Mom about it again after last time… so…”

“You could just let them work it out,” Myrmidon said. “They are both quite capable.”

Dagger shook eir head. “There’s nobody alive to teach this stuff. But I can help… probably…”

“Well, we’ll help, of course!” I said, smiling. “I don’t know how, but we’ll try.”

“...thanks,” Dagger said.

We sat there and tried to figure out something.

“What sorts of things make you feel upset, my dear sibling?” Myrmidon asked.

“I feel like if I told you I’d be expecting it and it wouldn’t work,” ey said.

“Well, maybe we should think about what makes us feel that way?” I asked.

“I remember having strong reactions to you, and the thought of losing you, and first getting my freedom,” Myrmidon said. “I am unsure how I could replace those for Dagger.”

“Yeah… I’ll never be free or in love…” ey said softly.

“Sure you will, probably!” I said. “I mean, I don’t get the magic stuff, but the love part, surely!”

“I doubt it,” Dagger said.

“Well, what do you want out of a romantic partner?” I asked. “We could start looking!”

“What? No,” ey said, body getting a bit angular. “That’s ridiculous. We’re in a ruin.”

“But it’s fun to think about though, right? Like, I would think about it a lot when I was little, you know? And read books and get ideas, you know?”

“Did that work out?” ey asked.

“Well… no, Myrmidon is kind of completely different, but they’re also way better!”

Myrmidon chuckled and smiled. “I am glad you think so, my sweetest.”

“But it was fun! So! What do you think?” I asked em.

“I… someone strong, probably… like…”

“Ooh, like muscles strong?” I asked.

“Well… y… mm…” Ey shook eir head, eir body spiking up all over. “T-this is stupid…”

“No it’s not!” I said.

“Anyone I dated couldn’t really touch me or do anything with me anyway…” ey said.

“Do you want them to?”

“Well, no, but…”

“Then don’t worry about it!” I said.

“But it makes no sense,” Dagger said.

At first, I was just trying to be polite and helpful, but I saw how worked up Dagger was getting, Diary. Ey were like… all spiky like ey get when eir upset? Maybe embarrassing em was a better method than what Baroness did? I figured maybe this could help with the other problem.

“That doesn’t matter, you know? It’s love!” I said, smiling. “Tell me more.”

“No!” ey said.

“Please?” I asked. “What about, oh, what about their job? What do they do?”

“I… I don’t know… like… build things, maybe… but it…”

“Ooh, like sculptures?”

“M-maybe, but it doesn’t…”

“Like sculptures of you and them?” I asked.

“Certainly not…!”

“A big cute sculpture of them licking your snout!”

“Stop!” Dagger said, covering eir eye with eir fins. I reached out to try to pull one away, and as I felt the chill, eir eye lit up.

“The door, Dagger. Please think of how to open the door,” Myrmidon said.

“Oh, yeah, that!” I said. I had gotten a little caught up in the mushy stuff, Diary.

And then we were in the chamber with the door! Only there was a lot of people back behind, a whole bunch of Whites and other dragons, and some humans too, on little platforms! And the White Queen was there! And that Blue, Blanche, from the other vision!

“...swear with my word as my bond, to move us ever forward,” Blanche said.

There was applause and cheering.

“By my authority, granted to me by the Founders and Progress, Our Guide, I accept you as worthy,” the White Queen said. There was more cheering. “May our new White Dragon rise ever higher in her new life.” She smiled and cut the official tone in her voice. “Now, let’s head in, and stop wasting time with the official stuff, eh?” She reached out, and touched the door, and began to sing. The whole door started to fill with magic as everyone else in the room joined in on the song, that bounced and reverberated and echoed. The stone door began to roll away.

And then Dagger collapsed to the ground, and it was gone.

Myrmidon and I exchanged looked.

“May our new White Dragon rise?” Myrmidon asked.

“That’s… that is what she said, right?” I said.

There was a pause, and then Myrmidon gasped. “The song! We require the song! How did it go?”

We both started singing to each other. Dagger woke up and joined us, and we worked at it until we were sure it was right.

We rushed back into the castle and to the chamber with the door. Philly was sitting next to the door on the ground, breathing hard. Baroness was thinking.

“Mom? Myrmidon? Everything okay?” Philly asked.

“We were taking a break to give Philly a chance to recuperate,” Baroness said.

“I believe we might be able to assist,” Myrmidon said.

“We know the song, I think!” I said.

“The song we learned previously does not work,” Baroness said.

“No, we have another one!” I said, and I looked to Myrmidon, and we sang it, the best we could. I even thought I could hear Dagger singing along, quietly.

Philly stood, and took another deep breath, and touched the door, joining us in song.

And it filled with magic. And it opened.

And inside was a gigantic chamber, like, really huge! Maybe as big as the whole castle? Or bigger, even! And the floor, the entire floor, had lines etched into it.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I… am unsure,” Baroness said. “It is… quite a large spell, clearly.”

“What could it do?” Philly asked as I picked her up so she could see better. “Something that big, it could do anything, really…”

“Yes,” Baroness said. “It could.”

“In the vision Dagger showed us to learn the song, it was stated whatever was in this room makes a White Dragon rise,” Myrmidon said. “This may be our goal.”

“...I will study it,” Baroness said.

We sat there and watched her go over the huge chamber. Soon, Gloria, Flare, and Nobody joined us, and we filled them in. And we watched, and waited.

“It’s getting close to dinner time,” I said. “Should we go back?”

“I guess so,” Gloria said. “Baroness can keep working if she wants, since she doesn’t need food. Rest when you need to though, okay?” she called to Baroness.

“Yes… I will…” she called back.

“I’m going to stay with Barry,” Flare said.

“Why?” Nobody asked. “All you can do is your weird tricks.”

“Progress tells me I can help here,” he said, grinning. “Save some soup for me though, okay?”

So we left, for now. Philly was exhausted from her work on the door, so we let her rest while we cooked.

“Baroness may need me to cast that spell in there,” she said as she laid down. “I need to be ready…”

“Oh, but that’s probably too much for you?” I said. “Let her do it. You’ve done so much!”

“If I can do more, I want to,” she said.

“It will not do to have you push yourself,” Myrmidon said. “We do not wish you hurt.”

“I know… but… maybe I need to this time,” she said.

“Let us hope not,” Myrmidon said, placing a claw on my shoulder as they could tell I was worried.

And I still am, now.

But we opened the door! And we got clues? I think we did well!

Maybe we can go home.

I really hope so, Diary!

I really hope so.