#torr

[worldwarriorandfriendsbracket]

Mortal Kombat Tournament Preliminaries Group D

Top 5 makes it to the tournament.

[roxirinart]

"A shark-like people, the Duellin ("dwell-in") inhabit Torr's coastal regions. Unlike the other races on Torr, they have a complete inability to use magic - fortunately, their multiple rows of teeth, high muscle mass, and phenomenal skill at weapon-smithing seems to be more than a fair trade-off."

[incorrectedda]

Þórr: *seductively* doomed by the narrative all by yourself, handsome?

Jǫrmungandr: *reveals traits that foil yours* Not for long.

[mogai-headcanons]

Kung Lao from Mortal Kombat is a genderfluid abrosexual mspec lesbian who uses they/them, she/her, and he/him pronouns!

They're dating Li Mei, an intersex genderqueer girlflux pan lesbian who uses she/her and ey/em pronouns!

Liu Kang is a biromantic asexual transfeminine person who uses she/him pronouns!

Bo' Rai Cho is a bisexual pangender person who uses he/him and they/them pronouns, but is fine with being referred to with any pronouns aside from it/its, as he finds them dehumanizing specifically towards himself!

Raiden is a panromantic greysexual agender transfeminine person who uses they/them and she/her pronouns!

Their sibling Fujin is an omnisexual bigender person who uses he/him and she/her pronouns!

Kung Jin is canonically gay and uses he/him pronouns!

Kobra and Kira are a T4T transhet couple! Kobra uses they/them and he/him pronouns, and Kira uses it/its and she/her!

Sheeva is a butch lesbian who uses she/her pronouns!

Ferra is a trans girl who uses she/her pronouns!

Torr is aroace and uses he/him pronouns!

Kotal Kahn is aromantic and uses he/him and sun/suns pronouns!

D'vorah is an unlabeled sapphic uses she/her, they/them, and this one/that one pronouns!

dni link

[ehlnofay]

19! :)

19: sea change

In the last few days of the year 200, Torr kills the Emperor. In early 201, a war breaks out.

It’s not wholly unexpected, at least not by those who know where to look. The Emperor’s death is no small blow to Solitude, the city that sent him off on a voyage he would only exit under a pall; especially considering that the guard had patted itself on the back for successfully foiling an assassination attempt right before his ship left, only for his throat to be slit under their noses, anyway. The head of Skyrim’s Penitus Oculatus appears to have vanished. No-one reports seeing anyone out of place on the boat until they started stumbling over the bodies. The Empire mourns through all the official avenues as the heir prepares for succession; Solitude’s government is busy trying desperately to smooth it over, putting out excessive bounties on the assassin that failed and scraping up intel on the one who succeeded. Not that there’s anything much to find – it’s a locked-room murder, and every logical suspect has an alibi that holds up to interrogation. There are no leads to follow.

And Windhelm is a powder keg.

It always has been, ever since the Great War, as long as Torr or any of his kids have been alive. Short-fused and disillusioned, crowds moving hot as blood through its winding stone streets, it’s always been something tough, hard-throated, splintered into careful lined sections. Torr walks whatever lines he wants, but not everyone has the energy to straddle them; not everyone can.  The upper city is all harsh-cut stone and ice, the bricks ancient, the crowds in a hurry, even though none of them seem to know where they’re going; the Grey Quarter is where the snow runs when it turns to slush and the walls are stuffed with rags. The planks keep snapping with dry rot, sharp and gaping as broken teeth. They need to be filled to keep the cold out. The Cornerclub keeps the fire roaring. Talres goes there to work most days and doesn’t come back up to the house until the streets are empty. No-one knows it’s going to happen, not exactly, but there's no way anyone couldn't know. There are a lot of people who have been waiting on an opening, and all eyes are pointed elsewhere.

With little fanfare, the Jarl and his entourage leave Windhelm.

The city stops being a fuse and starts being the wreckage after it’s blown. Torr is told that there’s a span of a few weeks where Talres stops leaving the house completely. Katla gets arrested again and weasels out of it on her own. The ill-drawn posters of something approaching Torr’s face stuck up over the walls of Solitude are covered up with announcements and calls to join the Legion. Windhelm floods with bodies ready for the rebellion. Aventus’ house is already crowded; in a few months, Torr hears, it’s nigh impossible to walk in for the bedrolls and blankets spread over the floor. The city has never been a warm place in any sense of the word; Torr’s siblings are inundated with more kids and more kids with nowhere else to go. They don’t know if Solitude is much better; they look different now than they did on the night of the assassination that wasn’t and then was, hair cropped shorter and uneven, face gaunter, the weight they’d managed to gain over their comfortable months in Falkreath sloughing off them like a spider’s old skin, but even so it’s a bit much to step foot in there so soon, some of the bounty posters still mouldering on their posts. One of the kids says something about needing a whole other house. They’ve only got the one. Still, it makes Torr think.

(Skyrim has one orphanage, a little wooden hall down on the banks of Riften’s canals. And now there is a cursed house in Windhelm.)

Torr doesn’t go to Solitude. They only occasionally go to Windhelm. When they’re not on business, they stay on the outskirts of Danstrar; the Pale, all frozen winds and snow high enough to ice a horse’s knees, is an unappetising enough target that aside from an announcement of alliance with Windhelm’s Stormcloaks the war has not truly reached them yet. Which is ironic, considering.

(If prompted, Torr probably could have seen this coming – Torr, who spent years with his finger on Windhelm’s pulse, moving through the people and hearing endless talk about the government. It was going to happen sooner or later. And of course the Empire reeling from the assassination of its Emperor – the first since around the time of the Oblivion Crisis, which no-one is anxious to repeat, and the reminder of which put plenty of important people quite on edge – is enough of an opportunity to weigh heavily in sooner’s favour. If he’d thought about it with his blade set beneath the hairs of the old man’s beard, he would have known he was setting a war in motion. What Torr doesn’t know is if he would have cared.)

(Probably not. He still doesn’t, after all. Not enough to regret anything.)

Dead winter bleeds into spring; a little ice melts, and the sea begins to change. Torr’s shoulder aches when the weather is bad. There are clashes on the roads, outside cities, described in newspapers and word of mouth. Cyrodiil ships off heaps of soldiers to spill into Solitude’s ports. The house in Windhelm is overrun. But the nightshade kept in the temperate corner that Babette has transformed into a garden begins to bloom months early. The tides still come in and out.

The old Emperor is dead. Skyrim is tearing itself apart. Torr cleans his knife after use with a soap that smells like lavender and tries very hard to dredge up any guilt.

[superherobriefings]

Torr, Interplanetary Space Detective

Creator(s): Paul Dak

Alias(es): Torr

1st Publication w/Uniform: Active Comics #28

Year/Month of Publication: 1946/03

[crosssssky]

torr's album molecule slaps

[dddragoni-drabbles]

Torr cracked one eye open as the sound of a triumphant roar dragged her out of the best sleep she'd had in weeks. There waws no mistaking it- another dragon had come to her territory. She'd been dreading this.

She slowly rose to her feet, feeling her scales pulling at her scars with every movement. It had only been two weeks since her encounter with the strange shadow beast, and although her wounds had healed, she was still getting used to the new stiffness and limited range of motion. Hopefully, a her size and words would be enough to intimidate this intruder. She wasn't sure how well she could fight in this state- especially without wings.

Torr did a few quick stretches to shake off as much of the stiffness as she could, then strode forth from the cave with as much practiced ease as she could muster. If the intruder realized that even walking brought her pain, she was as good as done for. It only took her a few minutes to locate the source of the roar, a small clearing a little ways into the woods. Sitting and sunning itself in the grass was an orange-scaled spined dragon, a young male by the looks of it.

This was just about the worst scenario possible for Torr. Though not as big as a great dragon like her, a spined dragon was still big enough to be a threat. He'd be about two-thirds of Torr's size when fully grown, though he was slightly short of that still. The fact that he had stuck around rather than taking his kill- a deer by the looks of things- and flying off meant that he wasn't just passing through. His youth meant a lack of experience, and although that meant he wouldn't be a skilled combatant, the bravado that came with it just made him more likely to overestimate himself and call her bluffs. Still though, this was her territory. Her home. She couldn't just let him lie act like he owned the place. She had to try.

[autisticmushroom]

uhh see there's a few categories of artists (meaning bands/singers) that I like for me

I like a few of their songs. The others aren't my thing- afaik (P!ATD, Ricky Montgomery, Owl City, Fish in a Birdcage, Imagine Dragons, girl in red, dodie)

I like one (1) of their songs. May have listened to the others and judged them "not my thing". (Melanie Martinez. Get Scared, Annapantsu

I like many of their songs. The ones I don't like aren't bad tho. (MARINA, Taylor Swift, Imagine Dragons?)

RAAA they are good! (torr, Hozier)

like their songs, mostly. Want to/I should listen to them more, because I like them, or to get a better view of their music. (Hozier! The Oh Hellos. Taylor Swift, Cavetown, AJR, Aurora.

Have to be in a Specific Mood to listen to them. (Aurora)

haven't been listening to Cavetown, AJR, much Taylor Swift or Imagine Dragons recently.

[postcard-from-the-past]

Michele Torr on a vintage postcard

[dezimaton]

failed negotiation

[worldwarriorandfriendsbracket]

Mortal Kombat Tournament - Round 1A - Match 5

Kung Lao - Mortal Kombat II (1993)

Ferra & Torr - Mortal Kombat X (2015)

[horsegamesins-old]

Oh my lawd this looks amazing

[dddragoni]

Little Dragonfly

(Originally written as part of @chipper-smol‘s dragon telephone game. Also on AO3) A small dragon sprinted through the forest’s underbrush, the shouts of his pursuers following close behind. His bright green eyes glanced into the trees behind him, searching for the fangs and claws that he expected to leap out and eviscerate him at any moment. A set of slender gossamer wings strained against the leather straps holding them to his sides, but the bindings held firm.

His mind was racing almost as fast as his legs. He was staying ahead of the Solturi for now, but his adrenaline would only keep him going for so long. Once it ran out, he would be easy prey. He had to lose them somehow.

Slipping around a particularly dense patch of foliage, the dragon saw his chance. He dove into the patch of sun-dappled brush, hoping that his stripes and green frills would keep him camouflaged. As the sound of heavy footfalls drew closer, he squeezed his eyes shut, begging to not have a repeat of the bad luck that had gotten him into this mess in the first place.

---

K’Sellis stood in a line with five other dragons in the center of the camp. They may have been larger than him, but even the biggest of their number only came up to the chin of the creature in front of them. It stalked down the line, occasionally pausing to sniff at one of the dragons before moving on. After a few passes, it came to a decision and turned to address the guards at the back of the room.

“The orange one,” the chief Solturi said.

“No, no, please, no,” the orange dragon pleaded, stepping backwards. “You don’t have to do this, you-” she stopped abruptly as the Solturi guard behind her held a claw to her throat.

“Be silent, meat,” it hissed.

Whimpering in terror, the orange dragon was forcibly led away. The boss turned to address the remaining guards. “Take the rest of the stock back to the pens. And make sure they’re fed.” Its face twisted into a wicked grin. “I want them fresh.”

K’Sellis fell in line with the others as they were herded back to their cages, trying his best to block out the sounds he knew were coming. It was always awful when the screaming started.

And even worse when it stopped.

He slunk into his cage and dropped down into the dirt, nosing dejectedly at the pile of half-rotten fruit in the back corner. His turn was coming up soon, he knew it. From the way the Solturi leader had looked at him, he had almost been today’s main course. He stood back up and started to pace in the cage as his worry began to overtake him. As he did so, his tail brushed up against the cage door—and he felt it move.

K’Sellis whirled around, hardly daring to believe it. He raised an experimental talon and pushed against the door and sure enough, it started to open. The guard must have forgotten to lock it! Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, he pushed it open and slipped through. He glanced over at the cage next to his—the dragon inside was watching him with keen interest. They pushed against their own cage door, which didn’t budge, and shook their head. “Get out of here,” they whispered.

As quickly and quietly as he could, K’Sellis skittered to the outer wall of the camp. He sunk his talons into the wood and started to climb, freedom just a few yards away—and then one of the Solturi rounded the corner and spotted him.

---

It took every ounce of K’Sellis’s willpower to remain still—holding his breath so not even the slightest movement could give him away—but after a few moments, the Solturi thundered past his hiding place, their footfalls starting to fade into the distance. K'Sellis waited a few more seconds, cracked one eye open to make sure the coast was clear, then slunk out of the bushes. It wouldn't be long before the Solturi realized he'd given them the slip, so he needed to get out of here before-

"Hey! Back this way!"

And then he was running again. K'Sellis cursed his bad timing—that trick had been his best hope of escaping, and it wasn't going to work twice. He frantically cast his eyes about every which way as he ran, desperately searching for something, anything, that could give him an edge- but he was so intent on his search that he didn’t see the patch of mud ahead of him until his talons had already started to slip. He cried out involuntarily as his momentum sent him tumbling and rolling wildly across the ground, scrabbling desperately for a foothold—until he slammed head first into something solid.

Head swimming, he stood on shaky legs, squinting as he tried to make out through hazy vision exactly what it was he'd collided with.

Then it opened its eyes, and his blood ran cold.

A great dragon, easily ten times his own size, stared down at him with an icy blue glare. Sharp spines bristled on her head and neck, broadening out into thick armored plates as they got closer to her torso. A ring of horns encircled her head, framing a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. Her jet-black hide was mottled with battle scars, and as she rose she stood on wicked talons several feet long.

K'Sellis let out a shriek of terror and fell backwards over himself, scrambling to get away, but he only made it a few yards before coming to a screeching halt. Three Solturi—one thin, one scarred, one short—were emerging from the shadows on the edge of the clearing, teeth bared and eyes radiating malice. He reversed course again only to see the massive dragon advancing on him, her body dropped low in the unmistakable posture of a hunter about to pounce.

He wailed in dismay and dropped to the ground, the terror and exhaustion too much for his body to take, and shut his eyes, waiting for the end. He heard the snarls of the Solturi, felt the ground shake as the massive dragon leapt, and braced himself for the teeth and claws that would pierce his scales-

But they never came.

After a few agonizing seconds. K’Sellis dared to open his eyes and saw the larger dragon standing over him, spiked tail lashing back and forth only a few feet over his head. She was facing the Solturi, fangs at the ready. He slowly started to stand, hoping they’d distract each other long enough for him to make a break for it, but the moment he did her gaze flicked back to him.

“Stay,” she snarled, her voice so authoritative that even before he registered the word he was already back on the ground.

The scarred Solturi stepped forward. “This whelp is ours by right,” it hissed. “What use have you for such a pitiful morsel? It would barely even be a light snack.” The other two snickered as they slowly spread out into flanking positions. “Give it to us, and the Solturi may forgive this transgression and deign to let you live another day.”

Her only response was a deep, rumbling growl from the back of her throat.

The scarred Solturi’s sneer grew into a wicked, sadistic grin. “So be it, then.” It charged toward her, but broke off and dove to the side just before it got into range of her jaws. At the same instant, the two Solturi at her sides leapt at her, claws at the ready. The large dragon saw through the feint, rising up on her front left leg while slashing the thin Solturi out of the air with her right, the short one twisting in midair to avoid a swipe from her tail.

The leader darted back in, aiming for a decisive strike to the throat while she was occupied with the others. She reared up on her hind legs, bringing her vulnerable neck out of rage, and unleashed a gout of fire downwards from her maw, so intense that K’Sellis had to shut his eyes against the sudden brightness. The scarred Solturi shrieked in pain as the flame engulfed it, its scarred hide doing little to shield it from the roiling heat.

The others made a second charge as their leader’s charred corpse hit the forest floor. On her left, the thin Solturi drew her attention with feints, careful to stay out of her reach, while on her right, the short one slipped under her lashing tail and leapt onto her shoulder, biting and tearing at her flesh. She let out a cry of pain, then lunged forward at the Solturi still on the ground, ignoring the one clinging to her. Taken by surprise, it tried to leap out of the way but wasn’t able to move far enough before her jaws snapped shut around it. The thin Solturi struggled and clawed at her face, but she bit down, and with a sickening crunch and a spray of blood, it fell still.

She tossed the lifeless body aside, then reached up with her left talon and grabbed the sole surviving Solturi off her shoulder before tossing it across the clearing. It struggled to its feet, then started to back away toward the treeline. “T-this isn’t over!” it hissed. “You’ll pay for this insolence!” The large dragon snorted and stepped forward, and the short Solturi turned and bolted away into the trees.

A quiet fell over the forest.

The large dragon watched for a moment to make sure the Solturi was gone, then turned and sat back on her haunches, regarding the much smaller dragon quivering on the ground behind her.

“Torr,” she said after a moment of silence.

It took K’Sellis a moment to find his own voice. “W-what?”

“My name. Torr. I assume you have one as well, little dragonfly?”

“Oh, uh, I-I’m K’Sellis.” Even though Torr was no longer in an aggressive stance, her sheer size and the might that she’d just displayed- not to mention the blood still dripping from her jaws- left him near-petrified in fright. “So... you’re not going to eat me?”

“Why would I? They were right, you’d barely make a light snack.” K’Sellis shrank back from her, instinctively trying to make himself look smaller. She chuckled. “That’s a joke. I don’t eat people that don’t deserve it. Besides,” she nodded towards the two dead Solturi. “I already have a fresh kill for today.”

Torr stood and started walking to where the second Solturi’s body had landed. As she did, K’Sellis noticed that she was walking with a slight limp on her left side- and that her left shoulder was still dripping blood from when it had been attacked. “Wait- you’re hurt.”

She snorted dismissively as she picked up the corpse. “I’ve had worse.”

Now that K’Sellis could get a proper look at her, he saw that Torr wasn’t just speckled with scars- her scales were practically covered in them. There was nary a square foot of hide that hadn’t been clawed, bitten, or torn at some point. She had marks on her jaw, on all four legs, on her sides, even her tail had its fair share. But what drew his attention most was her back. Where most dragons had wings, Torr had nothing but two massive patches of scar tissue, stretching from her shoulders all the way down to her hips. K’Sellis couldn’t even imagine what could do so much damage to a dragon of Torr’s stature- nor how she could have possibly survived it.

She looked back and caught him staring, then silently shook her head. K’Sellis shut his mouth. There was a history there, but clearly she didn’t want to talk about it.

Torr carried the body to the scorched patch of grass where the other one lay and set it down, then turned back towards K’Sellis and laid down. “So, how does a dragon like you end up getting chased around here by Solturi? Your kind isn’t exactly common in these parts.”

K’Sellis grimaced. Though only a few days old, the memory was still painful. He supposed that he owed Torr an explanation though. "A friend of mine, Z'Kola, said that he'd heard of a place to the east where the fruit grew as big as your- as my head, and it tasted better than anything in the world. We’d just gotten over the mountains and stopped in a cave to rest for the night, then the next thing we knew, Solturi were blocking the only way out. We didn’t even know this was their territory, it was like they came out of nowhere. Z’Kola tried to fight, but...” He closed his eyes, shuddering at the memory. “They tore him apart. Devoured him, right in front of me. I couldn’t even recognize what was left.” He took a moment to regain his composure. Torr’s expression was unreadable. K’Sellis nodded back to the leather straps holding his wings in place. “They put these on me, brought me to their camp. And then the first chance I saw I just... ran.”

Torr cocked her head quizzically to the side. “The nearest Solturi camp is more than three miles away. Did you run all that way on your little legs?”

“I just wanted to get away, I don’t know how far it was, or where I was going, or...” He was trembling now, eyes wide. “I don’t even know where I am anymore, what am I supposed to do? I’m not strong like you, I can’t fight—this is deep in Solturi territory, if they catch me again I’m dead! I-I don’t even know how I haven’t died already, there’s no way I can make it back home.”

Torr rose to her full height and looked down at him. Her expression was difficult to read, but he could almost see a measure of pride in her eyes. “You, little dragonfly, are not dead because you have chosen not to die.”

“What?”

“You could have chosen to die a thousand times before you got here. You could have fought to the bitter end when you were ambushed. You could have stayed in the Solturi camp until they butchered you. You could have stopped running at any point along those three miles. But you did not. You were clever, you were quick, you were stubborn.” She turned away from him, looking up towards the sky. A hint of wistfulness crept into her voice. “It is an easy thing, to choose to die. To give up. It is much harder to choose to survive. To fight and struggle against a death that seems inevitable. And yet it is a choice you have made a thousand times.

She bent back down towards him, her eyes meeting his own. “You may not be powerful, but you are strong, little dragonfly. Never forget that. And never let anyone tell you otherwise.” She reached out with a talon. K’Sellis flinched backwards instinctively at first, then held still as she sliced through the leather straps binding his wings with a deftness he hadn’t expected from someone her size. "You will survive. You will fly, you will hide, you will run, you will do whatever you have to do to make it home. That is the kind of dragon you are."

K’Sellis stretched his wings out to make sure they weren’t hurt, but he saw no wounds- just sunlight glittering through the thin membranes. He took to the air, tentatively at first, then laughing in relief as he flit around the clearing. He started to take off towards the sky, but stopped at the edge of the tree line and turned back towards Torr. “Wait, what about you? Are you coming with me?”

Torr shook her head. “No, my home is here. Besides, you travel best in the air. I’d just slow you down.”

“Won’t the Solturi come back?”

She chuckled. “No, probably not. This isn’t our first encounter. The Solturi have sworn vengeance on me a half-dozen times and never had the guts to follow up on it. And even if they do,” she smiled widely, showing off her teeth. “I think I can handle them.”

K’Sellis nodded, then turned and zipped off into the sky. Torr watched him go, a soft smile on her face. Then she yawned, stretched, and laid back down to resume the nap that had been so rudely interrupted.

[coffeenuts]

“Ready” by PNWheat https://flic.kr/p/2nWR1xd

[ehlnofay]

There is a pie on the table.

Not part of one – a whole pie, its crust flaky and steaming, one of its sides beginning to split, leaking its innards onto the serving plate. A whole pie. On a table set for eight. And Torr doesn’t think that Babette even eats.

A whole pie. And sliced turnips, baked with melted cheese, also hot enough to steam; a dish of them. Torr briefly considers stealing it – stupid idea, where would he even take it? What would he do with it? It would be difficult to explain later. Right now his main goal is to not do anything difficult, at least until he’s got more of a sense of the place, of its boundaries. What’s expected. What to expect.

And they’re immediately cocking up that goal, because when invited to a friendly welcome lunch they stopped dead in the middle of the floor to stare wide-eyed at the table.

Veezara, standing behind them, raps politely on their arm with his knuckles. “Do you want to sit?” he asks; Torr has no bloody clue what they want right now – shovel turnips into their face, face stuck into the dish like a pig eating from a trough, maybe, or alternatively to steal the pie and hide it somewhere it will be safe to come back to on a rainy day – but people are sitting (that is generally what is done at lunch tables) so Torr casts a quick glance over the lot of them and sits too.

(He doesn't want to make them wait.)

His chair is one of the ones closest to the doors. It’s quite far down the table from Astrid, who is smiling encouragingly; but Veezara sits next to him seemingly without a thought and sitting directly opposite him is Babette, and Torr's spoken a little to them both. He can't make any claim as to knowing either of them well, but Veezara seems even-keeled and open enough as to be a little reassuring, and Babette, at least has made him laugh.

Next to Babette is Gabriella, her dark hood pulled low over her forehead. She has a perpetually secretive look about her face – one brow slightly raised, lips slightly curled – as if she knows something no-one else does, and the way she looks at Torr makes him think of the way people look at bugs. Not in a bad way – she looks at him in the way people fascinated by bugs look at bugs – but still, he’d rather not be a bug. She catches their eye, half-smiles. “You brought your bag to the table,” she observes.

Torr glances at the floor, where his pack spills out from under his seat where he’s stowed it. Shit. They probably should have left it on the bed Veezara said was theirs, but they honestly didn’t think to; they don’t really want to leave it behind, besides.

“Yeah,” he replies, and nudges it further under his chair with his foot. He feels painfully and awkwardly observed.

(They're all watching; Torr's been here for less than a day, and he's trying to get a sense of the place, and until he understands how it works he needs to keep his head down.)

A tall man wrapped in red readies a gleam-edged knife over the pie platter. At the other end of the table, Astrid smiles. It’s a scimitar of a thing. “You’ve all met our newest Sibling, then?” she asks, in her molasses-rich voice, and the knife sinks into the flesh of the pie in a way that makes Torr want to wince. His stomach feels shaky.

There are various noises of assent from around the table. Torr’s met most everyone by now, all but the white-blonde man sitting silent and displeased by the head of the table, though he hasn’t spoken with most of them for more than a few minutes. Gabriella reaches across the table and levers a slice of pie onto her plate with the carving knife, already sticky with the juices leeched from the meat, torn-up flakes of pastry clinging to the side of the blade. It smells nice.

(It is, Torr tells themself, a normal-sized slice of pie. The same kind of portion sizing they’ve always seen in taverns busy enough not to kick them out. And realistically – based on the numbers Astrid showed them earlier – there’s plenty of room in the Brotherhood’s budget, for, what even are the ingredients of that, flour and meat? Water? It can stretch to cover the turnips no problem.)

“We’ve spoken,” says the man from the kitchen – Nazir, that was it. The tall one, with the gold in his beard. He sounds unimpressed. He does not seem like someone who is often impressed. Gabriella passes on the knife; Torr's eyes track its movement. It's an unconscious effort, but they're stuck – in this moment, breaking bread with a close-knit household of people whose only commonality is a predilection for violence, they cannot stop paying attention.

“Lovely,” Astrid says. Her eyes flash in the torchlight as she turns to face Torr. “Torr, do you feel like you’re getting to know everyone? Settling in?”

Torr manages a quick glance around the table, the room as a whole. They’ve learned most everyone’s names and feel reasonably confident nobody’s going to start screaming at them or start doing blood rituals or something; nobody's going to do anything unprovoked, which is enough of a comfort. They’ve mostly learned the layout of the Sanctuary, too – this bit of the cave opens into the dormitory sort of space just up above, and the big room a bit to the left, the kitchen tucked away in the corner. As cave rooms go, the dining space is quite nice; warm light, lots of room, a relatively even floor. It’s not damp in here like it is in the big room with the little pond. It’s nice and dry. Torr could probably do without a bed – they could kip under the dining table and be fine. (They’ll still take the bed if it’s offered, though.)

“Mostly, yeah.” Torr watches the sticky-dark knife getting passed around the table, the beautiful enormous pie disappearing at a rate that isn’t alarming and is in fact a normal speed for things to be eaten. His throat is dry. “Uh, Veezara showed me the beds and everything. It’s a nice place.”

The old man sitting up the other end of the table pauses, his fork stuck into a slice of turnip. “I hope you don’t think you’re being smart, boy.”

Like Torr’s fool enough to try to be snarky about this. Like they'd try to act smart now, of all times, when he's still feeling out the limits.

“Nah,” he says, tapping narrow fingers against the edge of the table. The ends of them are flushed red; scars from old chilblains, an irritated colour that never goes away. He is breathing evenly; a scraping breath in, one, two, three, a steady breath out. Cave or not – “It’s got a roof, hasn’t it?”

It’s warm – almost stiflingly so – and dry in parts. The rain and snow and wind can’t get in. There’s a whole pie served at the lunch table. Hundreds in gold if he does his job right. What the hell is he going to complain about?

There’s a nudge against his shoulder that is too surprising to make him flinch; when he looks, Veezara is holding out the knife, handle-first. “Oh,” he says; he takes it, because what else is he going to do?

There’s one slice left on the platter, rich and dripping, and plenty of the turnip dish. Torr’s stomach is folding in on itself. They ask Babette, “Are you going to have any?”

“Oh,” she says, “goodness, no,” and she smiles wide, vicious teeth pressing into her lower lip. “No offense to Nazir’s cooking, of course. But my appetites are a tad more discerning.”

Torr replies, “Well, that’s disturbing,” and Babette laughs, and Torr is left gripping the knife hard enough to turn red-flushed knuckles white and staring at the food on the plate. Clumsily sliced pastry, the meat and juices spilling out, running down the sides. Still steaming, just a little. There’s no one else to eat it – most everyone else already served and waiting for them. There’s no-one near who needs it more. But Torr doesn’t quite need it, do they? Not yet. But everyone’s waiting. And good first impressions and all that. And Torr really wants some pie – they just also want to shove it all away, or lock it in a box to save for later.

“Are you not hungry?” Nazir asks, something not unlike challenge in his voice, and Torr is supposed to be keeping his head down. He can't be pushing it already.

It takes Torr a few seconds to even realise that they were spoken to at all. They’re very busy staring at the platter, knife dripping onto their knuckles.

“No,” he says, “I am,” and then Veezara’s cold-scaled fingers are on his hand and he’s taking the carving knife from him, and Torr's shoulders lock in place, breath catching in the base of his lungs – he dithered too long and now they're taking it away – but Veezara lifts the last of the pie on the flat of the blade and drops it, rather squishily and without ceremony, onto Torr’s plate.

Staring at it, Torr says, “Thanks.”

Veezara shrugs and takes up his fork.

The pie is nice, though it takes Torr several seconds to work up to having a bite. He doesn’t know much about cooking, so he can’t pick out each individual taste – but the meat might be veal, or at least pretty similar to how he assumes veal tastes, and it’s good. It sticks in his throat when he swallows. He can hear all the clinking of cutlery around him, twitching at every sound.

Babette, the only one without a plate, leans eagerly over the table, fine dark hair puddling on the wood below her chin. “Astrid told us she pulled the old choose a victim gambit with you,” she says. “I love that one.”

Torr presses their lips together, digs their fork into the misshapen lid of their pastry. “The three innocents in the shack? I didn’t.”

“Innocents?” Gabriella echoes, tilting her head. Her hood slides back from her brow just enough that Torr can see the light playing off the ridge of her forehead; she takes a neat bite and adds, “Wasn’t part of that game that they weren’t?”

Nasty game. An unnecessary piece of showmanship. Torr doesn’t say so, of course. “I think the game was that it didn’t matter,” he says instead, and shrugs, fingers playing at the fork stuck in the pastry lid. His pie slice is warping, spilling its insides over the pottery of his plate. The conversation twists his stomach into knots. “It probably doesn’t matter much now. They’re dead, right?”

He’d specifically suggested that Astrid let the ones left alive stay that way, but she hadn’t seemed all too amenable to it. And from a practical perspective – well, letting them go would just be a liability.

Up the other end of the table, Astrid nods once, vague amusement pulling at the corner of her mouth. Torr feels, strongly, that he has made some very bad life decisions.

(But they’re very bad life decisions that have led to ledgers that record payouts of over a thousand septims and a whole pie at the lunch table. He’ll live.)

Torr looks back at their plate. “It was supposed to be about readiness to follow orders more than about who was and wasn’t meant to die. I think. But all it really proved was the lengths I’d go to to get out of a locked room.” The tines of their fork scrape against a chunk of meat. “And, really, that’s not surprising. I’ve probably done worse for less.”

They immediately regret saying it. Babette’s eyes light up, and they know they’ve opened up an uncomfortable topic. “Have you?” she asks brightly, and sits up straight, shaking out her hair. “For what?"

It’s not an easy line of questioning from anyone, but it’s particularly uncomfortable asked by a girl in a grass-stained kirtle, sitting in a chair too high for her feet to touch the ground. Torr sticks his tongue into his cheek, asks, “Is this dinner-table talk?”

“It’s shop talk,” Gabriella replies.

Babette smiles with all her teeth.

Torr doesn't want to talk about this. Torr's not a snivelling child, or some moralising grundy who assumes that they're in danger of being gutted like the game for the pie at a moment's notice – the worst anyone has been so far is taciturn, it would be absurd to extrapolate so hugely – but it would be equally absurd not to be wary, and Torr is well used to keeping a watch when an unfamiliar situation could begin to turn sour. They want to keep to safer topics, easier things to talk about; they also don't want to say no.

“It’s not exciting,” he hedges, twisting his fork between his fingers; Babette stares until he continues. “Guards, more often than anything else, when I got arrested or – or other people did. People who would've hurt us, or we just needed out of the way." It's as close to a non-answer as he can give while still complying, staring into the smooth filling of the pie.

“How pragmatic,” Veezara says, focused steadily on his meal.

“Well, yeah. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t need to.” The pastry lid of Torr’s pie slice is slowly shredding into little pieces scattered around their plate.

Babette tuts. "I suppose I can understand that," she says, fingers pressing into the table; the rest of them watch with unsettling attention. "I wonder – you're young. You must have started about when I did."

Torr shrugs, noncommital; makes a pitiful attempt at changing the subject. “This pie is really good – Nazir, right?”

Nazir does not blink. “That compliment would carry more weight if you’d actually eaten any.”

Torr presses his lips together; manages to scoop some filling onto his fork and spend several seconds chewing. Babette keeps staring at him, unblinking; when he swallows, he says, "Ten years old with a beard knife," because he doesn't want to say no directly and he hopes there won't be any follow-up questions.

Babette’s face lights up. “Oh, really? I was almost ten years old with teeth.” The torchlight is flashing off the points of her fangs. “What a delightful coincidence.”

Torr shrugs and turns his attention back to his plate.

“If we’re talking business,” Astrid says silkily, a much smoother subject change than Torr’s earlier half-hearted attempt, “then I should ask – Nazir, do we have any smaller contracts open that might suit our dear new Sibling?”

The torchlight flashes off the gold in Nazir’s beard as he tips his head, considering. “I’m sure we do,” he says, “though I’d have to check our records. There are a few that I don’t think anyone requested I assign them lingering.”

Babette knocks her foot into Torr’s shin under the table (with considerable effort; she has to slide down so far in her chair to reach them that they can’t see her chin.) “You’re getting the dregs,” she says sympathetically. Her gleaming eyes don’t look particularly pitying.

Nazir tuts at her, slicing off a bite of his pie. “It’s only fair. He’ll have to be here longer than half a morning if he wants the glamorous jobs.”

“I’m fine without the glamour.” They’re not particularly confident in their ability to kill with the stereotypical panache that may be expected with whatever jobs qualify as glamorous. They’ll take the simple work.

“Good,” Astrid says definitively. “You’d be surprised at how much of our work is correspondence. Cutting deals. You know, the boring parts. Not that you’d be assigned to do any of that just yet.” Her head snaps up, blonde hair rippling over her shoulder. “Oh, that reminds me – I got word from our contact in the Three Coins. New intel, hopefully. Any takers?”

Torr, who barely knows what she’s talking about, stays silent, pushing his fork around his plate and gathering a third bite of almost all pastry. It’s the white-blonde man in the seat next to Astrid who speaks up (bit of a surprise, that – Torr doesn’t think he’s even heard him talk yet), saying gruffly, “I’ll go. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Nottov.”

Babette grins, fingers pressing against the table. “How sweet. Reconnecting with your little friend.”

The man bristles; Astrid, smiling, says, “Don’t be mean, Babette.”

“Me?” Torr’s only known her for an hour and change but even so they’re already beginning to tell when she’s playing it up – leaning into the rounded, girlish bubble of her voice, opening her eyes as wide and childlike as they’ll go. “I would never!”

“She would never, Astrid,” Gabriella agrees solemnly.

The old man almost audibly rolls his eyes. The white-blonde one is glaring so hard he seems to be trying to set fire to the table with the sheer power of his unrestrained rage. Torr takes a fourth bite to stifle a laugh.

Then, as they all keep chattering, shifting from shop talk to inside jokes and strange banter, Torr released slowly from the vice of their attention, they take a fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth. At the tenth, they stop counting.

It’s not neat. Their slice of pie was a bit lopsided to begin with, and it’s spent a while cooling on their plate, slowly spilling its innards out onto the ceramic. They managed to shred most of the pastry lid with the tines of their fork. And it isn’t that Torr doesn’t know how to eat with utensils – it’s just that they’re a tad out of practice, let’s say. Even in the short time they spent living in Aventus’ house they never brought themself to eating off a plate. It felt too easy.

Torr’s a bit out of practice, and he rips the pie apart as he eats it, crumbs and sauce strewn over the plate and a little over the table space between the dish and the edge where he sits. A little over his lap. He eats it bite after bite after bite after bite, each one begun before he’s even fully swallowed the last, and when he’s done he runs a sticky finger around edge of the plate, collecting the scraps, licking them off. His throat aches. Veezara, who is at the time in the middle of the sentence, reaches out for the platter of sliced turnip without breaking the thread of his conversation and slides it all onto Torr’s now empty plate. Their teeth are stained with gravy; there's a lump growing abruptly in their throat. They dig in to that, too. They wouldn't want to be rude.

It's so warm down here, the fires in the braziers ever-flickering, the food fresh-cooked. Torr is left in surplus and in silence to watch the rest of them chatter and laugh. It's nothing like a house in frozen Windhelm, clutter-full of waifs and strays; but Torr's stomach isn't so tight, his lungs relaxing enough to take in a full breath. He could be in any bunkhouse, dining with any unfamiliar clan. His throat aches. He could be okay.

(An hour and a half later, Gabriella finds him throwing up into the dank, mossy corner of a dark hallway.

“Oh,” she says, her voice shaded with distaste. “Okay.”

Torr wants to reply – to beg some sort of pardon, keep his head down, soothe the anxiety twisting in the hollow of his chest – but he’s a bit preoccupied by retching up his entire intestines into the dirt. His vomit tastes of rancid veal. It’s not nice; he’d forgotten how gross this was. The last few times he was sick like this he hadn’t eaten enough for it to taste of much of anything.

He hopes this doesn’t put him off the pie. It was really good.

He catches his breath – yuck – wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, gasps out, “Sorry.”

“You’re fine,” Gabriella says, satin-smooth.

It’s not fine, though; this is a shit first impression. Or second, third. Whatever. “Sorry,” Torr repeats. They twist their head to try to take a breath that doesn’t smell of half-digested meat. “Didn’t mean to make a mess. Just – ate too much.” They haven’t gorged themself like that since – who even knows, actually? It was more at once than they’d normally have in a day. Even when they had that much food – well, there was always someone who needed it more, wasn’t there?

They’re about to apologise again, but their stomach spasms and they lean over their nasty little puddle again, gagging.

“Okay,” Gabriella says. She has a soothing voice. Her hand, placed calmly on the ridge of Torr’s back, is cool to the touch. “Maybe you should slow down at dinnertime, then?”

She says it like it’s an inside joke, but it grabs Torr by the throat. More food. More food again, today; more food any time they want it. It’s a concept understood only in the abstract. “Dinnertime,” he repeats distantly, half wonderstruck; and then he’s sick again.)