Chapter One
It was just a typical day for me. Well, I say day, but there wasn't really day or night where I was, drifting around the cosmos. That's all I ever did anymore, though I stopped occasionally to investigate different worlds, usually causing some panic and snatching up a few of the inhabitants for a meal.
I had to eat somehow.
I could never stay in the same realm for long though; it was part of my punishment that I had to leave a place after what I supposed were a few days. I wasn't sure; the Nine had such different definitions of what a 'day' was. I could care less anyway.
I was particularly interested in Midgard; the beings there were absolutely steeped in hatred and ignorance. Unlike the inhabitants of the other realms, the Midgardians had allowed me to fall past myth and legend and they believed themselves to be the only creatures in the Nine Realms. I was glad for it; it made dragging them off and killing them much easier. I would even stay near the corpse until it was found and the ones that came to collect it would blame the slaughter on animal or another Midgardian. The funniest thing about them however, was their awareness that no being of Midgard could have done this, yet to comfort themselves, they refused to believe the evidence of their eyes.
It was most amusing.
Anyway, I was drifting around the stars somewhere near Jotunheim, when I felt myself being summoned.
This was unusual. I had existed for nearly three thousand years without being bothered, but now I was being called upon and there was only one being in the Nine Realms that could summon me: Queen Frigga of Asgard.
I hadn't been to Asgard since my exile, and I hadn't missed it. If I had loathed the Asgardians while I was still among them, it was nothing compared to how I despised them now.
But Queen Frigga was calling upon me, and I had no choice but to answer.
I sent out a telepathic message to her saying "Yes my Queen?"
"Report to Asgard immediately." The reply came in my mind.
"Of course. I'm near Jotunheim at the moment, so it may take me some time to arrive there." I answered.
I had nearly forgotten my hatred for this form of communication, but I certainly remembered it now.
"Go to Jotunheim, Heimdall will open the Bifrost."
I paused. She must believe this urgent if she wanted me there badly enough to allow me to use the Bifrost.
"Yes my Queen." I answered, twisting through the emptiness of space toward Jotunheim.
I landed on the frozen wasteland of Jotunheim and wind whipped all around me, blowing snow through the icy air. I was aware of the frigidness of the air, but I couldn't feel it. I had stopped feeling differences in temperature a long time ago, and for that matter, I had stopped feeling anything a long time ago.
I glanced around as I waited for the Bifrost to open and started to pace back and forth impatiently. I doubted that the Jotuns would dare approach me; they weren't as thick as the Midgardians. I didn't understand where they lived exactly; did they create homes out of ice or morph into it or what?
"Heimdall can't see you. Are you hiding?" Frigga's voice asked from inside my head.
I scowled up at the sky. Of course I wasn't hiding. I glanced down at myself and realized that Heimdall couldn't see me because my body wasn't there. There was a cloud of black smoke where my body ought to have been; I had even forgotten that I used to have a body.
I concentrated and the smoke took the vague shape of a body, through I still wasn't solid and the black smoke writhed within my form.
A light shot down from the sky and engulfed me and I found myself speeding through empty space on the Bifrost. It was much faster than how I travelled and if I had had a head, it would have been spinning.
I found myself in an enormous bronze room with a domed ceiling. Heimdall pulled his sword from the sheath that controlled the Bifrost and stared coldly down at me with piercing golden eyes. Queen Frigga was waiting there as well, her lips pursed into a thin line.
I automatically dropped to my knees and bowed to her, having no choice in the matter.
"Rise Verbannen." Frigga instructed.
I rose and I couldn't help my lip twitching in irritation. She had said my name, though I didn't remember it. It was also part of my punishment that I couldn't remember my name; even if someone said it a thousand times, it would slip out of my head like water flowing from a crack in a dam.
"You summoned me, Queen?" I addressed.
"Yes." She said "We will discuss the matter in the palace."
The domed room around us ceased spinning and a large circular door opened to the rainbow bridge leading to the castle, a carriage waiting on it to take us there.
I had completely forgotten how beautiful Asgard was, and I tried to seem uninterested in the rainbow beneath my feet and the glistening lake and the enormous castle and the snowy mountains that dominated the sky line as I followed Frigga into the carriage.
The carriage driver gave me a nasty look as he closed the door and I smiled to myself. It was good to know that time had not dulled their revulsion of me. We rode in silence to the castle and I felt Frigga's eyes watching me as I stared out of the window at the small waves on the great lake. I must look horrible to her. Good.
"I do apologize for my appearance, my Queen." I said, giving her a false, jagged smile. "I must look truly monstrous to you."
She didn't answer me immediately and gave me a hard look.
"Inside you have always been cruel Verbannen, but now… Now it has warped you so that you are the very embodiment of malice."
I laughed softly, gazing out of the window at the passing city.
"Do you remember what you looked like before?" She asked quietly.
"I do not even remember what having a body is like." I answered, my jaw tightening.
"…I see." Frigga mused, worry etched into her worn face. Queen Frigga had always been caring; she was the one who captured my heart as to control me rather than destroy me as the Allfather wanted.
It was only fair that the Allfather kill me really; I had slain his father.
