#but it's exciting i'm learning more about oc boy char as i go lol

[cerealmonster15]

sfjksklefkls on one hand comparatively it's a lot of progress bc i doubled one of the two docs ive been working in and it's the most ive done in a day onthem. on the other hand Do Not Look At The Tracker Line It's Scary LOL

[liltaz-asatreat]

Ask game! Ask game! Ask game!

"Fire" for the WIP asks please

You can find the ask game here! :D (Feel free to send a word in! I probably won't get to it until tomorrow though lol)

(And don't worry, Noodyl, I saw your other ask too, but I have multiple works with "fire" in it, so I'm gonna do both :D lol)

I don't remember if you've seen the few posts about this wip either, but this is from the new long term wip I'm writing called Double Troubles! If you haven't heard of it before, I can send you a link to where I talked about it more in depth :)

Anyway, here's the exert, and I'm adding a bit more than what I've been sharing with the other asks (like, a lot more, so much that it's the length of most of the Julia exerts I've posted lol) because I haven't shared a lot of this one, and I'm excited about this whole scene (it's gotta go under a readmore though):

(Also, credit to @institute-of-planar-shitposts for letting me use her taz OC, Sunshine, in my story [only in this bit she's only referenced as the half-elf bard Meadow saw in a tavern in the past] and the song Meadow sings is Could Have Been Me by The Struts [which I first learned of this song by watching Sunny's Sunshine tiktok using the song here] And you should totally check out the stuff Sunny's shared about her story she's writing about Sunshine!! I think she has it tagged as "Sunshine" on her blog and I have all the reblogs tagged "Sunshine tag! :D" on mine)

Meadow grabs Magnus' hand, and he helps him out of the well and onto solid ground. He looks around, still trembling, and...

It's just gone.

Everything is... it's just gone.

The only things left where Phandalin once stood are the charred remains of buildings standing at the very edge of a perfect circle of black glass and, in the epicenter of the circle, a burned out dwarven figure standing with his right arm raised in the air and on the end of it is the silvery gauntlet.

This has got to be enough evidence to know that he's cursed, right? Would this still have happened if he hadn't been anywhere near this?

“Meadow, I– I know, but I need help getting the others out,” Magnus says, disrupting his thoughts and delaying the inevitable doom spiral that he surely will go down later.

“Right. Yes, of course.” Meadow mumbles, and he grabs the part of the rope Magnus offers him before Magnus gets behind him with the end of it to act as an anchor.

Together they manage to help the other boys out of the well, and then all four of them work together to pull Killian out too. After they drag her a few feet away from it, they all stop and look at each other in silence.

“So what now?” Taako asks, and Meadow laughs a little hysterically.

“I have no fucking idea.”

“Well, we can't leave the gauntlet here,” Merle says as he looks over at it with his hands on his hips.

At this rate, Meadow's going to become a Pokémon master of super powerful, indestructible artifacts because he has a funny feeling that the gauntlet is going to be just as resistant to everything as the amulet is.

“Killian was looking for it and knew what it was, so she must have some sort of way to contain it,” Magnus says.

“I don't trust her to take it no matter if she has something to contain it or not,” Meadow says immediately.

The others look at him questioningly. “Why not?” Merle asks. “She definitely knows more about it than we do and wanted to avoid this happening.”

Fuck!

“Uh... Because I–” Meadow sighs. “I've seen something like this before.”

“Wait, you have?” Magnus asks incredulously.

“Well, why didn't you tell us what was going to happen then?!” Merle asks angrily.

“Yeah, any information could've helped, Dow!” Taako agrees, and Meadow winces.

“I– I didn't know this was going to happen!” he says defensively. “I didn't even know it was like the– the other artifact I saw once a few years ago until it was too late!”

Taako and Merle scoff, but Magnus' face relaxes slightly. “Do you know anything about it that could help us now?”

Meadow licks his lips nervously and nods slightly. “Yeah, uh... the other artifact like it... It takes over the will of whoever is using it like the gauntlet did with Gundren. And it's really powerful and really hard to beat the temptation to put it on and use it; I... I'm the only person I know of who's been able to handle something like that without using it.”

“Well that's convenient,” Taako says sarcastically.

“I mean, it's true!” Meadow says desperately. “I'll even say it under a Zone of Truth spell if I need to! Look–”

He takes a deep breath, his heart hammering wildly as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the amulet. It's a deep green emerald shaped into a teardrop with silver trim, and it's set on a thin golden chain. He holds it up by the chain to let the boys look at it, and it starts whispering again.

“What the hell?” Merle asks quietly. He reaches out to grab it, but Meadow yanks it away.

“No! You can see it with your eyes, but don't– don't touch it.” he says in a panic.

“What did that do that was just as bad as the gauntlet?” Magnus asks, tearing his eyes away from the necklace to look at him.

He fights the urge to look away from him, mostly because he needs to keep an eye on all of them to make sure they don't lunge for it. “I... I don't want to talk about it,” he says quietly. “Please just... just know that... it was bad, okay? I've been trying to find a way to destroy it for years now, and nothing's worked, so I have to keep it on me. And I guess– I guess also that gauntlet.”

Meadow stuffs the amulet back into his pocket, and Taako eyes him warily.

“Don't you have a spell that identifies what magic objects are?” he asks. “You were buzzing to cast it on the umbrella and the gauntlet before Gundren took it. Do you think you'd be able to figure out anything else about the glove?”

“I can give it the old college try,” Meadow says with relief. “To be honest, I don't know if I'll get any more useful information from it though if it's made by the same person who made the amulet because I tried casting it on that too, but all I got from it was a really intense headache.”

Taako frowns. “Weird. You sure you were casting it correctly?”

Meadow rolls his eyes. “Yes, Taako, I was casting it correctly. It's not like that was my first time casting the damn spell.”

“Well, while you go do that, we'll tie up Killian, so that when we wake her up, we can get more information from her about what she was doing here in the first place,” Magnus says.

“Yeah, good idea!” Merle says. “I can heal her after you do that.”

“Is it alright if I come with you to the gauntlet?” Taako asks, and Meadow's shoulders tense up again before he quickly adds, “I'll give you space, but I figure just because you were able to pick up the necklace without putting it on, that doesn't mean the glove wouldn't be different.”

Meadow relaxes again as much as they can in this situation and nods. “Yeah, if I start to put it on...” they swallow hard. “If I start to put it on, don't hesitate to kill me, okay?”

“Are you sure?” Taako asks slowly, and they immediately nod.

“Positive. I'd rather die than be allowed to use that thing.” Even if it means they'd die in the Plane of Logic too. They still don't know how that works.

The two of them walk toward the gauntlet, and as they do, Meadow looks around the area more carefully. They were convinced while being awake in the other plane that Barry would be okay and able to talk to them after he died, but he's obviously not here anymore. They have no idea what they meant by that or what they should even be looking for, but if Barry was a ghost or something, he should still be here, right?

Taako peels off to the side as Meadow gets within five feet of the glove. They stop walking and look around the empty field of glass one last time.

Just more proof that they don't know what their talking about up in that other plane.

Meadow sighs and focuses back on the gauntlet. They take a few tentative steps forward when it starts speaking in their mind.

“Heeeyyy, buddy! Hey, buddy, put me on! Haven't you ever wanted to control fire? To know how it feels to hold that kind of power? I can help you defeat your enemies and protect the people you love!”

Meadow snorts with scorn. “I don't have anyone left on this plane that I love, not anymore, and I don't have any enemies either,” they say quietly, so that Taako doesn't hear. “You can fuck right off.”

They feel a wave of desire and enchantment magic wash over them, but they resist it with relative ease. After the wave passes, the gauntlet becomes quieter, and they feel more confident walking up and grabbing it.

They look over at Taako who looks tense with his wand out, and they give him a thumbs up. “It's all good!” they call out. “I'm gonna cast the spell now, but it's gonna be about ten minutes.”

Taako looks both a little relieved and a little annoyed. “You're casting it as a ritual? Just use a spell slot on it, we don't have all night!”

“I don't have any spell slots left,” Meadow says helplessly. “I only get mine back after sleeping and resting for about eight hours.”

Taako shakes his head and sits down on the ground. “Well, I can't leave you here by yourself, so start casting I guess.”

Meadow sits down too and holds the gauntlet in one hand as they go for their bag before they stop themself and put their other hand back down on their knee.

They can't play their clarinet one handed, so it looks like they're going to have to sing.

They mentally shuffle the songs that they know that are somewhere close to the forefront of their mind, and they settle on a song they first heard a half-elf bard sing in a tavern close to the Fountain Pens and Silver Ink guild hall. Makes sense that would be the one to come up considering the situation, and gods do they need the pick me up.

“I don't wanna live as an untold story,” they begin singing quietly. “Rather go out in a blaze of glory. I can't hear you, I don't fear you–”

“Are you going to start casting yet?” Taako calls out to them, and they stop singing and sigh in frustration.

“I mean, I already was until you interrupted me!” Meadow calls back, and as they do, the faint glow of golden light that was starting to surround the glove fades away again.

“I thought you cast spells with your clarinet or whatever,” Taako says.

“Yeah, usually! But I can't exactly play it one handed, so I'm singing!”

Taako frowns. “You are? You're not that far away, and I couldn't hear you.”

“I don't like singing in front of people; I told you that already. And I don't need to sing loud for it to work.” Meadow says irritatedly.

“You were singing Bohemian Rhapsody just fine with us in the cave!”

“Because everyone who knows that song sings it at the top of their lungs whether they sound good or not. It's literally impossible to not sing that one quietly!” they say as they roll their eyes.

“You didn't even know everyone knew it until Magnus told you that and Killian recognized it!” Taako says exasperatedly.

Meadow's face heats up in anger and embarrassment. “Do you want me to fucking cast this spell or not?”

“Yeah, fine, do your thing.” Taako waves them off, and they roll their eyes again.

“I don't wanna live as an untold story. Rather go out in a blaze of glory. I can't hear you, I don't fear you! I'll live now 'cause the bad die last. Dodging bullets with your broken past. I can't hear you, I don't fear you now!”

Meadow continues singing as the gauntlet begins to glow gold again, and as they sing, the light gets brighter and brighter until it steadies out at about the brightness of a halogen light bulb. They loop the song a couple of times until the spell is complete, trying to take to heart the fact that they can't hear the gauntlet nor fear it and ignore the fact that they are very much wrapped up in regret, and all at once, they're bombarded with what could only be described as static.

Their vision goes gray, and not in the way where everything turns gray-scale. Literally all they see is the color gray with different shades of it moving around like the static on a TV when they switch to the wrong channel. They can also hear that TV static noise loud in their ears, and they yelp in panic as they drop the glove and cover their ears instinctively. Their brain feels like fuzz, and they get slammed with a massive headache.

They squeeze their eyes shut tight and rock back and forth, still covering their ears and trying not to cry at how overwhelmingly loud, overstimulating, and painful it all is.

After about a minute, everything slowly starts to fade again, and it leaves their ears ringing more than usual and their heart still thumping wildly with anxiety.

“Meadow? Can you hear me?”

They feel someone put a gentle hand on their arm, and they jump in the air so bad as they recoil that they tip over and fall on their side.

Their eyes snap open as they see Taako standing over them looking worried.

“Sorry, it's just, you screamed a little and started... doing that–” He gestures at them helplessly. “–and then you didn't respond.”

“Oh, yeah, um... sorry about that,” they mumble, face heating up a lot as they push themself back up into a sitting position.

“Are– are you okay?” Taako asks. “Did the gauntlet do something to you?”

Meadow shakes their head. “No– I mean, yes, I'm okay, but no, the gauntlet didn't do anything to me exactly. I just... I didn't get anything from the spell except static. A lot of it. And it was painful.”

Taako frowns. “Like how we can't hear Killian static?”

Meadow thinks about that for a second. “Actually, yes. A lot like that.”