"Soooo? you're the greatest Weapon Smith in all of Zanthora Loki!" Tia announced, barely keeping her excitement tampered down. Her words brought Loki back from his thoughts, his body instinctively returning to work on their weapons after being awoken from his daydream.
"That's what people call me." Loki replies, seemingly struggling with the sisters' weapons. Tia watched intently as he worked the Ether in the forge. The shimmering weapons struggled to keep form as Loki tried again to allow them to reshape themselves to no avail. Frustration slowly prickled the hairs on Lokis' brow. He ran his hand through his salt and ginger beard, wholly perplexed by what the weapon desired.
"What do you want...?" Loki muttered to himself. He had many a weapon from the essence of individuals before, but these three, it seemed their weapons would never take a stable form.
"They want to be whole." Tia answered, her eyes transfixed on the weapons floating in the Ether.
"How do you know that? Can you hear them?" Loki asked, now more focused on Tia than the forge, and Tia softly shook her head, yes, never taking her eyes off the Weapons.
"I know that's what they want, but they become dangerously unstable when I allow them to break down..." Loki controls the Forges' metallic tendrils and uses beams of light to move the suspended Sia and Nia weapons toward each other. As he does, they begin to deform and absorb into one another, and not before long are alarms sounding, warning against catastrophic failures. Sparks of electricity start flying as Sia and Nia's weapons fight to keep from merging, each trying to consume the other. Before an explosion that would wipe out the entire Forge could happen, Loki uses the tendrils to separate the two, calming the alarms.
*Bzzt*
"The hell was that!" Zero's voice chimes in over the direct link to Loki, causing his eye to glow a soft orange.
"Just trying to stabilize these weapons so you can begin training." Loki's reply was dry and full of defeat.
"Oh well, good luck, and don't blow up my Forge!" *Bzzt* Zero said before ending the direct link, leaving Loki to his task.
"See? Sia and Nia's' weapons do nothing but try to eat each other, and yours has too much Ether instability to begin fusing with them." Loki says after a long and deep sigh before hanging his head in disappointment. They were working against the clock and learning about Zeros' Perma Death assignment. It would be best if they could spend most of the time training. He moves away from the controls, looking for the drink he was nursing earlier while alone in the Forge. He scoured the back tables for a few moments until he heard a soft singing in his ears.
A perfect melody sung in the sweetest tones. He turns to see Tia using the tendrils to maneuver all three weapons toward each other. She places her whip in the center and slowly brings Sias and Nias' weapons up on either side. As they get closer to Tias' whip, they attempt to consume it as they had been each other, but the constant flow of Ether from the whip seemingly keeps them satiated. Loki watched as the God Sin Seals started to form. Greed's seal etched its way into Sias' long blade, which seemed to break down and fuse with the short one. The Gluttony seal etched its way onto Nias' spear before it began to bend and change shape. The Seal of Wrath burned itself into the curved blade at the end of Tias' whip before the whip gave off an iridescent glow resembling the Quintessence.
Loki watched in awe as the weapons entered and exited states of Flux in the golden light as Tia worked diligently to keep them from destabilizing, and the melody that he could hear the weapons sing brought a forgotten warmth to his chest and memory from long ago when he created his first Valkyrie. The weapons eventually lost all form and started to fuse. Panic gripped Loki as he rushed the controls.
"You can't let them fuse. There won't be a weapon for each of you!" Loki warned, trying to intervene, but Tia did not falter, and the more Loki tried to stop her, the less clear the melody became.
"Do not interfere with the birth of my grandchildren, Oldman!" A familiar voice caught Lokis' attention. A young man no more than twenty-one sat on a table in the room.
"Awe, so you decide to show yourself, Nir, how useful of you." Loki chides, turning his attention back to Tia.
"If you aren't here to help, you can return to your Fairy King form. I have this under control." Loki adds, now trying to ignore Sleipnir's presence.
"I can see that old fool. If you aim to stop the birth of three new God Weapons, then yes, you have everything under control." Sleipnir mockingly chimes in return as if prompted by his voice. Tia's whip speeds up the consuming process, breaking the other two weapons down even quicker to be absorbed. Doubt and panic filled Loki if Sleipnir was right, and he only tended to speak when he was right. Then, this was the moment three God-tier weapons were about to be created, but he couldn't see how when two of them were about to be devoured.
Loki looked to Tia, who seemed to be transfixed by the golden light of her whip. Moving purely on instinct alone, she finally forced the three weapons to fuse their physical forms, churning into something new within the golden Ether. A pair of scissors formed.
*WARNING*
*WARNING*
*ETHER DEFICIENCY*
"They didn't get enough!?" Loki cried, exhaustion filling his body.
"Uhh, Loki?" Tia returned to her senses, confused and disoriented by the blinding light in front of her.
*WARNING*
*WARNING*
*ETHER DEFICIENCY*
"Greedy little brats aren't you!" Nir said with a hardy laugh. He crossed the room with a blink of speed, appearing next to Tia.
"You've done well, my lady Astropos. You rest with the geezer now." With one quick motion, Sleipnir grabs and tosses Tia over his shoulder towards Loki, who quickly catches her.
"What the hell do you think you're doing!?" Loki questions, checking over a dazed and weakened Tia.
"Didn't you hear the maidans' voice? These rugrats need feeding." Nir places his hands on the controls, feeding Ether constantly into the Forge. The blinding light of the scissors grew, and the room began to shake as sparks and electricity licked the air violently.
*Bzzt*
"Loki, what the hell!?" Zero voice breaks in on the Direct Link.
"It's not me. It's Nir, and he's feeding the twins weapons. He says he's gonna birth a new set of God Weapons." Silence filled the airwaves for a moment before Zero replied.
"Don't. Blow. Up. My Forge." Zero replies as succinctly as possible.
"That was Zero. They say don't blow up their Forge!" Loki yells to Sleipnir.
"No promises, now to me, Urd! Verdandi! Skuld!" Nir yells as he pushes more Ether into the Forge, growing the light brighter. Loki shields Tia as everything shakes and turns white.