Kathryn flew at top speed across the skies, with just one clear purpose. Nari had said there was a senate meeting today. The senate building was deep under the palace, only one level above the shield generator, and if she had to bet, she knew that would be the first place the elves struck.
As it was, she barely made it inside the palace before the golden dome was completed. Like a witch on her broom, she dove down to the ground level and raced inside. If the senate building was full of senators, they were all in terrible danger. And she had to save them.
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Nari yawned. Today’s session had to be the longest in the history of the universe. The court had been on break when he went to visit Kathryn and take her to Lorelei. The voice of the chairman droned on and on about the virtues of passing a new law that would improve the sewer system of the capital city. Nari didn’t have the least bit of interest in sewers, and he could feel himself nodding off. Why hadn’t he ditched this session like Kathryn had?
Suddenly, the roof of the senate building began to shake. Dust poured from the ceiling and a loud rumble filled the room. “Is it an earthquake?” Senator Nelladottir asked. Her blue eyes were wide with fright.
“No,” Nari chuckled. “We do not have tectonic plates in Asgard. The entire realm is supported by columns of pure diamond. Earthquakes cannot exist here because the columns do not move.” He took her hand, in pure elation at what was happening.
“What is it then?” she asked as another loud crash shook the building once more.
Again, Nari laughed. “We are under attack.”
Senator Nelladottir fainted. Nari, however, was the opposite of afraid. He was ecstatic with joy at the end to his boredom and a chance to finally shed blood. If he had to guess, it would be Dark Elf blood. As the realm went to Hel around him, he laughed with glee.
The senators ran and scattered like ants, but Nari smiled at the sky, catching the delightful dust on his face. There was a great clattering in the hallway, and at least a dozen Dark Elves swarmed the senate. By then, Nari was the only senator left. He knew his odds weren’t good, but now he had the chance to fight and die. He wanted blood. Needed blood. Craved blood. Vaguely, he wondered where Kathryn had gone once the attack started, but at the moment he did not care. Drawing his sword, he ran straight at the army of elves, crying out like a madman all the while.
He fought like a devil. The elves could not match his power, except for one. They had brought a Kursed, huge, hulking monsters that were more powerful than even beserkers. When he had finished the other elves, he turned to face it. This one looked sort of like a Minotaur with its huge, horned head and bulging muscles. As the monster loomed above him, he grinned. “Is that all?” he asked cheekily. “What is the phrase Parker taught me on Midgard? Oh, yes. I remember. Come at me, bro!”
The Kursed attacked. It lunged after Nari, swinging its vile arms after him. However, that outcome had been probable. Nari was ready for it, and leapt out of the way. His sword found purchase in one of the cracks in the thing’s armor and cut deeply into its arm. Nari howled in triumph, but he had forgotten the advantage the monster had over him: Nari thrived on probable outcomes and predictability. The Kursed, however, were known for their unpredictability.
Howling in rage, it twisted down and around, and the sword, caught in its armor, was ripped from Nari’s grasp. His pupils dilated in fear. In shock, he backed away from the thing, which had pulled the sword from its shoulder and now wielded it as its own.
That definitely hadn’t been on Nari’s list of probable outcomes. Before he could think to cast a spell or run, the Kursed charged forward and shoved its sword through Nari’s stomach.
Pain clouded his vision as he crumpled to the floor, his sword buried to the hilt in his flesh, and its bloody blade sticking out through his back. His one stroke of luck was that the Kursed had not pulled it out yet. If that had happened, he would most certainly have bled out almost instantly.
The monster in question left him to die on the floor, mouth open as his own blood gurgled out of it. Its metallic taste was all he could register as everything went black.
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Kathryn could not believe her eyes. From her hiding place, she had watched Nari take out more than twelve Dark Elves with ease. It was like nothing she had ever seen before.
Now, she watched him drowning in a pool of his own blood, beaten by the evil Kursed. Once it lumbered out of the senate building, Kathryn removed the chameleon spell from herself and rushed to Nari’s side. He was barely breathing.
She panicked and put her hands on the hilt of the sword. “Think!” she shouted to herself. She could help him, but how? Suddenly, it hit her like a ton of bricks. Blood’s main ingredient was water. She could control water. Then, too, there were earth elements, such as iron, in blood. She could control iron.
Her hands grasped the hilt of the sword. This next part was crucial if Nari was to survive. She pulled the sword out suddenly, being careful to concentrate on keeping the blood inside of his body. She could feel it pulsing against her, trying to escape her grasp, but she pushed it in. She made it flow past the severed arteries and continue on in the circulatory system.
Once the sword was all the way out, she threw it to the side and placed her hands on the wound. Her mouth began murmuring healing spells, but nothing happened. Terror filled her heart and she leapt back in shock. Why wasn’t her magic working?
It was all she could do to keep the blood flowing on its course. She pressed her fingers to her temples in concentration and sank back against a column, praying for help. Her head throbbed painfully, but she could see color returning to Nari’s cheeks.
Suddenly, something snapped inside her mind and she lost consciousness, slumped against that column while she forced the blood to flow through a dead man’s veins.
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Several hours later, Loki was extremely pleased with himself. He sat in his cell, reading quietly while all hell broke loose around him. He had stopped feeling the tremors of attacking elves above him an hour ago, and he waited to see the outcome. Who was dead? Hopefully Thor. There were exactly four people in the entire world whose safety he cared about, and his brother and counterfeit father were not among them. He only cared for the safety of his mother, his newborn son, Nari, and Kathryn. Most of all, Kathryn. The guilt of what he had done to her in New York ate him alive every second of his miserable existence. As much as he denied it, he was starting to think Lorelei had been right. He was incapable of loving anyone else and all the other women he’d had were just distractions to keep his mind off of her, or to entertain him until she arrived in his life.
Until she had arrived in his life, he had been a despicable person. He knew this. He had been a childish trickster whose only concern was to satisfy his boredom with tricks and sexual pleasure. When she came along, he had become infatuated almost instantly. He wasn’t even sure he truly loved her until the night in the bifrost when he had erased her memory and sent her to Earth. Before then, he hadn’t been quite sure. It had been a merely a strong infatuation fueled by lust and possessiveness and the knowledge that he couldn’t leave her alone with their children to face her master’s wrath. Her situation and helplessness horrified him, and for the first time in his life, he had found him focusing on another person other than just himself. She needed him, and she was good for him. But he had been meaning to leave her as soon as she was freed. It had actually been his mother’s idea. She thought the scandal of her son courting a slave would be most detrimental to palace society.
But when Loki heard her sobs as he sent her children away, his heart had changed. He realized he really did love this woman and knew he would do anything under the sun for her, hence all the mess with Thanos and General Slanthis, who had been oddly quiet since the defeat suffered in New York. Loki knew this could not be a coincidence, and he had been preparing himself to meet demons during his entire time in the cell. This particular book, for example, was a novel on Christian Hell. The main character, a particular mortal named Dante, was a lot like Loki. They had both lost their way in life. The difference was that Dante’s loved ones had sent someone to set him straight because they had pity on him. No one cared about Loki anymore, save his mother. He supposed that was his own fault, but that made the pain all the more worse. Without Frigga, he had no idea what he would do. She was the only one who cared what happened to him anymore. Lorelei claimed that Kathryn still cared for him, but Loki had royally screwed up when it came to Kathryn.
No wonder she had chosen Jacob in the end. Jacob never reacted with malice. While Loki was only interested in punishing Kathryn for what she had done, Jacob had recognized that she was free to do what she wanted and had been the selfless one who offered her the choice of who she loved, and had put her needs above his. He turned a page, a hard lump beginning to form in his throat.
Then, he paused. Footsteps abruptly paced up to his cell. He could feel the negative energy rolling off the person like water off oil. He sat silently while Algrim spoke the worst news imaginable.
“Loki, Odin thought you should know. Kathryn lies unconscious in a state of delirium while her mind heals from the extent of magic she performed during the attack. Your son was impaled by a sword during the battle, and by the looks of it, she used her powers to hold the blood inside him until help arrived. But he lies near death in the infirmary, and the healers do not know if he will live or die. Also, your newborn son is missing and Lorelei was injured when a column fell on her legs. She could not escape because she was chained to her bed. But worst of all, Loki, your mother is dead. She was killed by Malekith himself with a single stab wound to the back. Fulla, Kathryn’s chambermaid, ordered me to tell you all of this.”
Loki blinked. In an instant, everything he ever loved was crushed. And it was his fault. He had told the Kursed where to go to escape the prison. If he hadn’t, perhaps the prison break would have failed. His mother, good, loving Frigga, was dead and it was his fault. On top of that, his son was close to death and the woman he loved was in a coma with probability that she would never wake up again. There was a sudden noise that began inside Loki’s head.
It was a high, shrill scream that clouded all of his judgment. Knowing that he was about to lose his sanity, Loki dog-eared his place in the book and set it down gingerly on the table next to him. Then, he stood up carefully and cast a masking spell around the cell so that no one could see him break. Then, he lost his sanity.
He started with the books. What good were books from a dead woman, even if she was his mother, and one of the few people in the entire world he had loved? He ripped them page for page, screaming like a madman as he did so, tears pouring down his face in floods. When finished with this task, he used his magic to set fire to the million bits of paper floating around the cell. They left black scorch marks on his white walls, but he did not care. He shouted himself hoarse at the flames, all the hatred welling up inside him.
Next came his tables. He picked one up and held it over his head, throwing it at the wall with so much force that the glass shattered into dust and the wood was nothing but splinters. He threw another table and his favorite wooden chair, each splintering to bits.
When all the furniture in his cell was no more, he screamed again and curled up in a fetal heap near the far wall, crying out. He seized fistfuls of hair and yanked at it, seeking to tear it from its roots. All the while, he screamed.
Then, he rose. He remembered Jacob throwing himself into the walls of his helicarrier prison so hard he beat himself to hell. And Kathryn had come running out of compassion. So Loki walked to the other side of his cell and then prepared to run. He picked up speed and threw himself into the energy barrier with all the force that was in his body. He ran over glass from one of the tables and his feet were cut to pieces, but he didn’t care. He left bloody footprints behind him, but it didn’t matter. The pain cleared his head. It made the mental pain that much more bearable, and so he didn’t stop. He hit the energy barrier with as much force as he could muster.
As soon as it touched him, his body was filled with so much pain it felt like he was on fire. His entire body was burnt to cinders, or so it felt. The field flung him back against the far wall with a sickening crunch. There was a snap and Loki could no longer feel his legs, indicating that his spine had snapped. There were spells to fix it, but Loki reveled in the pain of his broken back. It was so powerful that his mental pain almost disappeared. He screamed in agony, his fists clenched tightly to his chest. When he was done, he sank back against the far wall in agony, his eyes closing slowly as the pain knocked him unconscious.
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A/N: Can I have a comment or two? This was kind of an intense chapter, and I want to make sure I represented Loki's rage properly. Also, please take a look at the book poster I made to the side. It took a hell of a long time to make, and I had to change Kathryn's eye color to purple and Odin's to Green. By the way, speaking of Odin's green eyes, in both the comics and the movies, he had blue eyes. What am I hinting at? Hmmm......