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Characters: The Witch of the Candy House
Open? Yep
Where: Two Faced Forest
When: RH4 [or really, any other day if you wanna backdate]
What: In the Forest is a candy house, and a cranky old witch who wants these dang heroes to get the hell off her lawn!

Deep in the Two Faced Forest, next to a lake of impossible clarity sits a small candy house. Walls made of gingerbread, decorated with hard candy that magically stays unmelted in the sun, it's picturesque and inviting. Care to knock on the door? Or just have a nibble of the gingerbread? Either way, take great care. The witch is not known for her good nature...

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Thor nods morosely, adding this piece of information to the number he already has; so many of them strange to his ear, difficult to understand, to process. The Loki he confronted was far more similar to the Loki he knew, but neither the wolf nor the one he hears these tales of are the same as the brother he was returning to Asgard with.

"I would..." he finally says. "I would ask that you tell me how he came to treat so well with mortals." It is not exactly safe territory, but safer than speaking of Asgard, and it's a piece he needs to know about.

"I wouldn't say that it's all mortals." Truly, she has seen Loki interacting with very few. He is good to the wolf boy, but his own past experiences explain that. Gretel as well -- but again, a shared bond in magic.

"Children. Perhaps those that he sees something of himself in." She looks to her friend. "Thor, I honestly have very little insight when it comes to your brother's actions. I don't know what he will do from one moment to the next. It has scarcely been two weeks since his fall, and in a way that has made him more mercurial than ever."

Something of himself? Perhaps that, then, is where he will find some of his answers... But for now, he lets that part of it go, and moves along to the next question. "Do you know anything of the reason behind this latest transformation?" he asks, although with less hope. He trusts Sif implicitly: if there's something she knows, something to tell him, he believes she would have.

They near the lake, now, and he sits higher in his saddle, looking around. "Mjolnir is near." He doesn't need to explain how he knows; not to her.

“I do not.” The things she has no idea about are piling up, and her own ruefulness at that is clear in every motion. “I know that he has been transforming more often, and that his magic here is less than what it was.”

I would be anyone but me, Loki said. She looks down at her mare, frowning.

“I underwent a change, here. It was a curse, that briefly—” And there is a look, now, that if Thor laughs Sif will push him off his mount, serious conversation or no “—turned me into a mare. It was very difficult to retain my own mind. Loki said that’s why he relies on the same forms, when he transforms. It is not as simple a business as I’d always assumed. In a new place, with his magic weakened and his mind in turmoil...perhaps it was easy to lose himself to an animal’s instincts.”

He tries, really, but he can't help it: he hears the words turned me into a mare and his mouth twitches automatically. He looks away, turning his face away to hide it, because he doesn't doubt that she actually will dehorse him.

But, really: a mare?

He clears his throat quietly and returns to seriousness, daring to look at her again. "I will not lie to you, Sif, I had hoped for... more, after everything I heard on my arrival. But perhaps this will only be cleared up by talking to Loki, in the end." If he talks to Thor at all, of course. He doesn't see that that would be likely, at this point.

A mare in a derby hat. She leaves that part for another time.

"I think that would be good for the both of you." She returns his gaze, earnestly. This is a much more somber version of the man she knows -- they are all more somber, now. But she still has the sense that he has motivations and memories that she is in no position to ask about.

"He loves you, Thor. I do not doubt that. But that love is perhaps too..." she considers her words carefully. Something better left to other members of their group.

"--whole," she decides on. "Whole, in a way that he is not. In a way that he does not presently think himself capable of."

"Whole?" he echoes, not understanding; perhaps because from his eyes, if his brother loves him at all, it seems to be fractured, even splintered into almost nothing. They met on Midgard, and he attacked. They met here, and he attacked.

Thor sighs, but then his eyes brighten when he looks into the distance and sees-- "There." He smiles slowly. "Do you see?" The hammer is sitting not far away, lodged in the middle of a crater near the lake.

"I am as poor as you at giving words to things," she says, following his lead. "We always had him for that."

She does see, and though the weapon will never call to her as it does to Thor, she cannot help the smile that crosses her face. It is something so intrinsically part of home. Something that is not complicated by speech, deed, or emotion.

"You've kept her waiting long enough."

Although it is only two days since he last held Mjolnir, he cannot help but agree. He swings down from the saddle with a broad smile and a sound of great pleasure, striding forward to collect his weapon.

The sudden creak of the ground is the only warning before a wall of thorns, much like those that guard the forest at night shoot up around the crater Mjolnir is in the center of.

Sif spares a moment for a frown, but it is not as if the thorns are every wholly unexpected. Even her mare is familiar enough with them that she does not spook, merely follows her master's quick commands.

"Back, Thor! They respond to attack with attack."

It is a necessary warning, for Thor's sword is already out. He shakes his head and lets out a savage laugh: his youth may have been tempered by the wisdom of his time on Midgard, but a good battle is still a good battle. "Ha! Damn this place and its sorcery: let them come at me, then!"

He slashes at the thorns with a blow that would likely fell a human where they stand. On them, however...

There is a moment as the wall of thorns horns against the attack before falling under it...

...only to twine back up, curling around the sword to hold it in place.

Edited (missing e) 2012-06-13 18:05 (UTC)

"They were kind enough to grant your request, I see."

Sif understands his desire for battle better than anyone here. But she has spent time enough among these thorns, and that tempers her.

There is one thing. And surely, surely it is strong enough to cut through the thorns. If not, then they may well be unbeatable.

"Call for Mjolnir. Swords alone have never worked on these."

He gives an angry cry as the thorns try to take the sword of him, yanking it furiously back. The Thor of old would have simply kept slashing, but Midgard has luckily tempered him as well, and he stays his hand when Sif speaks up.

He glances at the sword, then casts it aside with a scowl. Damn the thing, too; she's right. He came here for Mjolnir, anyway. He holds his hand out, concentrating on the hammer, feeling its answering hum. He calls out to it silently, and it, in turn, reaches for him. They were made to fight together.

The thorns make a grab for the mythic hammer as it answers the call, but it is easily able to avoid them.

The call of Mjolnir thrums distantly in Sif's veins, as it always has when Thor calls for it. It is familiar, and it may well be what keeps her from losing her temper outright and hacking at the thorns with no reservation.

A grin.

"Try breaking them now."

Her sword is just a sword. His weapon is much more.

Although he's only been separated from the hammer for two days, the feeling of relief that washes over him when it hits his palm with a solid thump is almost indescribable.

It's second only to the feeling of power.

He does not hit the thorns, no; he begins to swing the hammer in circles at his side, picking up speed until the shaft is a blur of brown. Above the trees, the sky begins to crackle and darken...

and then CRACK! He drives the hammer into the ground and the lightning comes with it, spreading out from him in a wide circle of electric destruction.

The thorns crumble at the touch of the supernatural lightning, the sword in their grasp falling to the ground.

"Not bad for a hero..." came an old crackly voice as a withered looking old crone hobbled out into the clearing. "So you're the one who I have to thank for this destruction..."

At the thorns crumbling, Sif lets out a breath that she did not realize she had been holding. Try as she might, all of her attempts to combat the thorns have failed. If Mjolnir had been unable to break through the cursed branches...

There is no need to lend it thought. She grins.

...and then she does not.

"You," Sif says, rushing towards the witch, sword out. She would give Thor an adequate explanation once they had cut the old hag's head off.

"Sif!" Thor barks, holding out a hand. "Stay your weapon." Which is not what the prince of old would have done... But it is what he does now, tempered by new experiences, the wisdom that comes with regret.

"I would hear who this woman is, and what she has to say," he tell her firmly, and then turns to the witch. "I brought you no destruction, my lady. The forest attacked me when I came to retrieve my weapon."

"No destruction?" The hag snorted. "You call this no destruction?" she gestured to the crater that Mjolnir's impact had created.

What?

She gapes at her friend, openly. Since when did he question her judgement? It has always been her job to question his!

"This hag sells children for food, Thor!"

"What is with you heroes and your obsession with cannibalism!" The witch exclaimed, annoyed an exasperated. "As if I had nothing else better to do with my time..."

He shoots Sif an apologetic look, but still does not attack the crone. "I defended myself and Mjolnir," he tells her coolly. "Nothing more."

"And do you have an explanation for this claim?" he adds, eyes narrowing. "The Warrior Sif does not tell tales."

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PINGING THE WITCH, HELLO WITCH

HELLO!

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DOES IT WORK?

Yep! Did you want to meet the witch, BTW?

Absolutely I do

I second this heck yes!

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...remind my addled brain, when did Sif run into the witch before?

She hasn't, she's just heard conjucture. Which is MORE than enough for beheadings >:(

*jumps order quick like*

oop... still works here though

jumps order quick like