video @lightemup

[umbrastaff]

[The camera turns on, and shows these babies -


- before moving to show Lup's face.

She has a bit of flour on her nose.]

I call them 'Lupcakes'. This is prime Flour Up Desserts advertising, obviously.

[She grins and settles the phone at a good angle.]

Frosting's got some spice in it, like those red candies. I'm offering some taste-testing free of charge if you tell me a good story.

...or for any tips on really good napping spots. We elves might not need to sleep like you poor chums, but chagirl's got priorities next month and like half of it is gonna be naps.

[She's so into getting a real body, okay? This vessel was great but undeath is shit for snoozing.]

Comments

[umbrastaff]

Don't hold out on me, now! I like a good asskicking, as long as it's not kids or animals.

[ragnarsson]

Want to hear about the time my brothers and I conquered an English kingdom?

[A very satisfying moment, getting revenge on the king who had killed his father.]

[umbrastaff]

You conquered a whole kingdom? This I gotta hear!

[ragnarsson]

So there was this king named Ecbert who captured me and my father Ragnar. He claimed to be his friend, but then he turned around, and handed him over to another king named Aelle, who hated my father. Ecbert knew he would kill him, which he did, tossed into a pit of serpents. So naturally, my brothers and I wanted revenge. We assembled the largest Viking army that's ever been and took it to England.

King Aelle and his forces came out to meet us, but they greatly underestimated our numbers. We wiped them entirely out and dragged Aelle behind my war chariot all the way to the pit where he murdered my father. There, we performed the worst kind of death on him called the blood-eagle. It's so horrible it had only been performed one other time in recent memory. So now his kingdom is in chaos, and when I go back, Ecbert is going to suffer the same fate.

[The moral of this story? Don't piss off Ivar The Boneless, because he will fuck up your entire freaking country when he wants revenge.]

[umbrastaff]

[She's quiet as she listens, and almost asks what a blood eagle is, but decides she really doesn't need to know.]

That is one bad-ass revenge thing. [It was messy and kinda gross, but Lup could kind of understand it.] Sorry about your dad.

[ragnarsson]

It's alright. He showed up here later on. But don't mention the part where he dies if you meet him. He doesn't know yet.

[That was one of the things that Ivar had vowed not to tell him unless he absolutely had to. That would only create a whole host of problems.]

[umbrastaff]

Don't worry, it's not my place.

[Shrug.]

Definitely worth a Lupcake, though. Where are you at?

[ragnarsson]

I'm at the park by community housing.

[Ivar has come to definitely appreciate sweet things after being here so long. He's developed quite the sweet tooth.]

[umbrastaff]

Gotcha. Give it like, five minutes.

[...and in five minutes, an invisible something brings Ivar a lupcake.]

[ragnarsson]

[See, he'd be more surprised if he hadn't seen some weird shit in his time here in the city. So he'll just enjoy his lupcake. This is how to get the Viking to behave. Keep him fed. Om nom nom.]