Bend Around the Wind by Scyllaya

Chapter 99: The Banquet Part 3

Chapter Ninety-Nine

The Banquet Part III

Milky Way Galaxy

Sol System

Nine Realms / Planet Earth

Tony was still jittery with nerves. Yeah, the serious talk was out of the way but he was not ignorant of the fact how quickly things could go badly even still. Having this many big egos in the same room was like storing alkali metals next to a swimming pool. Nobody could accuse them of being too careful. This was a crazy (brilliant) idea even before they had their unexpected guests. But it was so far so good, if he did not count the increasingly irritated Pepper. Loki had yet to learn what it was like to deal with her when she was truly fed up with bullshit. Tony was kinda looking forward to that.

He scanned the Great Hall as soon as they entered. Now that it was buzzing with life it looked pretty damn great. Not that he did not appreciate the whole Spring & Winter theme Pepper and Loki did with it on its own, but now that he saw all the elves sitting next to these huge and colourful ikebana-like decorations and the ice elves among the ice sculptures, yeah, now he could see what look they were going for.

Frey, Gerd and Skrymir parted ways with them immediately to great all the elven lords and ladies. Loki questioned his uncle whether it would be wiser to great the Fae Queen first, but Frey just smiled and told them that it would do no good for her to be too spoiled. Loki did not argue with him and Tony definitely wouldn't touch this sort of political manoeuvring with a ten-foot pole.

Babba Queen's table was outstanding on its own even in a hall as stunning as this one. Thor and Hatchet were still sitting by her, but now it looked like Drongo, Bee and Juyu decided to relocate there too. Not a bad thing at all, Drongo was a smooth-talker and very hard to dislike, while the girls were interesting and clever enough to not go around insulting people. But they were not the only ones by the table. For a moment Tony just stared, trying to decide what he was looking at, but then he caught glimpse of two very familiar gnomes tossing around a piece of bread on the table top, and realized what was going on.

'She did summon more Fae,' he commented. 'Local ones.'

'It appears so,' Loki agreed. There was thick grass on the floor around the table and the floral decorations were even bigger and looked more alive than all the other ones. Soft clouds were swirling above them near the ceiling, but thankfully no rain fell from it. The Fae he saw sitting on the chairs and on the table were unfamiliar for the most part, except for one, the chick that healed Hatchet, Tony would have recognized her anywhere. Oh, right, she was working for him now, of course she was here.

Something else seemed to catch Loki's gaze though, because he narrowed his eyes. Tony tried to figure out what he was looking at, but before he could ask Loki was marching towards the table. After a few steps Tony noticed the blond guy sitting next to Thor. He never saw him before, but the clothes gave him a pretty good idea about where he came from. Loki stopped by the table and for a moment he did not seem to care about Babba Queen's presence.

'Thor.'

'Brother!' Thor turned to greet him joyously.

'What is he doing here?' Loki asked, looking pointedly at the blond, who still had his back turned to Loki.

'Why, Loki,' the blond spoke before Thor could. 'It is of course such a joy to see yo- whoa--' which was when he finally turned around and looked at Loki. He sort of froze, and it would have been kinda funny if Tony hadn't known that he reacted to Loki's appearance this way. Loki just scowled at the other.

'Again. See you again,' the guy finally recovered and smiled a little too widely. 'And it is not at all strange... or disturbing in any way.'

'Fandral,' Thor chided him, wearing a frown himself, but a considerably smaller one than Loki. The guy put his hands up defensively.