A Hollow Promise

XX. The Prisoners

The solitary cell was deep underground, far below expansive cerulean skies and the firelit gold of the palace halls, in deepest wing of the dungeons.

Loki supposed he ought to be flattered.

It had long since fallen into obsolescence, disuse, and disrepair, contrasted against the cells shelved several staircases above it- a well-lit, refitted sector of the dungeons that Loki himself had headed the redesigns for, only a few centuries ago.

Oh, the irony, he had acknowledged with a smirk as the Einherjar escorted him past the bright rows, smooth-cornered and minimalist and cold as carved ice within a hallway of black stone. Each chamber was faced with the slow-rippling sheen of a containment field, the weft of it as tight as a seine net, its meticulous smooth-locked gears bearing Loki's signature style, obvious to any mage skilled enough to realise that there was a difference.

Time and age may have begun to dull the Allfather's edge at last, but Odin was still too proud and too cautious to store Loki, untried, on display amongst the common rabble- and least of all in a prison that was reliant upon magic that Loki had custom-engineered. Not only could he easily escape, he might unleash the other inmates as a distraction, or just for the fun of the ensuing chaos.

Loki could admit that the thought was deeply tempting.

It would take time, for Odin to decide his strategy and settle upon the sentence pre-emptive to the trial- using supposed exceptional circumstance and royal authority to override that of Glintir, Asgard's delegated halls of justice- and more to strip down and renovate one of the cells to contain him. A few months, at the barest minimum. Perhaps less, if his mother was involved in the process; perhaps more, if Odin was in a particularly paranoid or vindictive humour.

In the interim, his current lodgings were the one place best equipped to contain him.

Despite surface appearance, the stone walls and oaken doors and rusted iron fittings were steeped in old magic- old protections- drawing from the core of Asgard itself to keep itself strong despite the physical decay. The unevenly-hewn cells had been hollowed out near the very roots of the realm, cloistered against ley lines and veins of unstable ore, the stagnant air thick with wild mana; it set Loki's nerves sparking, its taste similar to the thrum of the Bifrost, but unfiltered, flowing directionlessly like water swirled in a pail, knocking against the sides and swilling back into itself.

Beyond it-

Loki ran his thumb across the valley of his palm.

The maelstrom of mana was like the wash of daylight over the stars- rinsing out any lesser source of power like bleach. It was part of the reason, he assumed, as to why Odin had ordered to have him thrown in such scarcely used accommodations, using the cell's unique conditions to overwhelm his carefully honed sense of ambient magic, and prevent him from perceiving or tampering with anything that laid beyond his cell.

Yet, the logic only applied to lesser sources of power.

Even the might of Asgard was nothing to an Infinity Stone, even one disguised and sealed in a lesser form.

Clear as a beacon, singing through him and lingering like the soft metallic ring of a struck tuning fork, Loki could feel the sheer potential energy of the Tesseract even as the gaol door was bolted behind him. In fact- turning his head towards the ceiling, a few degrees above and across from the cell door- Loki was almost certain that he could guess its precise location within the Vault.

He would not have thought much of it, were it not for the fact that he could feel it reaching into the cell, intangible currents swirling in to greet him. Since returning to Asgard, it had become a constant presence, a companion in the dark.