Chapter 1 : In Which Loki Masters the Void

"No, Loki."

And for an eternity and no time at all, Loki fell. The glittering, jagged edges that remained of the Bifrost receded above him; the shards of the bridge suspended around him grew ever fewer in number - then even that light disappeared into nothing as he fell further and further, blackness all around until Loki thought he would go mad with it. Whether he was falling still, or now suspended like the rainbow fragments of the bridge he had passed before he could not say. Everything was darkness and silence, the gently glowing spheres of magic he cast utterly useless with nothing to illuminate.

Once, he had screamed, a long, sustained howl seemed to ring in his ears though there was surely nothing to carry the sound in the emptiness. He expected to die, after that - hoped for it, perhaps; after everything, entering dear Hela's realm could only be a release - but that mercy was denied to him. It seemed he had no need for breath in this void between the realms. He wondered, a touch hysterically, if this oblivion was how mortals envisioned death. No wonder they clung so desperately to their feeble lives.

In another universe, it was at this point Loki resigned himself to his fate. He would draw into himself and hide from the endless nothing until he was found by the foul creatures that spawned from this space and made their puppet. But - no. No. Perhaps Loki was not Asgardian by blood, but he was a child of Asgard nonetheless.

The Aesir are never helpless. And neither is Loki.

He reached for the magic dearer to him than any weapon, and as much a part of him as any of his limbs. Loki flung the energy out around him in a wide arc, scanning for something, anything. The emptiness was somehow more oppressive without his magic pulled close and protective, but that wouldn't - couldn't - stop him from spreading it thinner, reaching out further until there. Something.

What it was, how far away, or how large he couldn't say. He didn't care. He dug in with his magic, and pulled.

He stumbled as he landed, but that meant nothing with no one there to watch and jeer as he fell, was nothing to the knowledge that he'd dragged himself to a place he could land. Panting, he began instinctively to summon his lights again before breaking off abruptly. Dark still enveloped him, but it had softened to a deep gray from the absolute black of his fall. Glancing downward, he discovering the majority of the ambient light emanated from under him.

It wasn't large, his perch – he could just make where the incredible brightness assaulting his maladjusted eyes dropped of sharply perhaps three paces on either side of him – but it was, at least, recognizable. What he stood atop could only be a shard of Alfheim, realm of the Light Elves. The realm had no moon, he remembered from his visits as a Prince in what may as well be another lifetime. It didn't need one. At night, when all other lights faded, the Alfheim remained lit by the constant white luminance of the ground itself.

Loki had hated it.

The ever-present light had made it nigh impossible for him to sleep, and he'd always felt as though all the luminous eyes of the realm's inhabitants followed him alone. Besides, the Light Elves were staunch allies of the All Father, meaning the realm was out of question for now. At best, they'd simply turn him over to Asgard, and Loki had suffered too much in his fall to return there so easily.

For the first time since discovering his heritage, Loki sat down, closed his eyes – an almost meaningless gesture in this twilight – and thought. Once he settled on a realm, he would be trapped there for some time at least. He knew secret paths along the branches of Yggdrasil from Asgard to almost all the other realms, but between the realms was another matter entirely. He needed to be away from Asgard, which meant he'd need to avoid her allies Vanaheim and Alfheim as well. Jotunheim didn't even bear consideration.

Svartalfheim would have been ideal. The Dark Elves and Dwarves that dwelt there had gotten along stunningly well with him for races that traditionally loathed the Aesir – now he knew why. If he revealed his heritage to them, they would hide him, protect him, and his happiness there was all but guaranteed in a way it never was on Asgard. And the stone that plated the realm – insidious black in the way an oil spill was black, with flashes of a thousand colors when the light caught it just so – had always struck a chord with him. He could belong there, unquestionably. It would be easy.

But that wasn't an option. The Bifrost had stretched from Asgard to Jotunheim when the oaf who called himself his brother had taken a hammer to it. Their battle had been closer to Asgard, so his fall would have left him somewhere between the central trunk of Yggdrasil and Alfheim, a fact his footing confirmed. Svartalfheim was clear on the other side of the Great Tree, and Loki wasn't near confident – nor foolhardy – enough to attempt to traverse that distance in such a way. Closer were Alfheim, which he would reach moving away from the trunk, Asgard, upwards and towards the trunk, Jotunheim, down and away from the trunk, and Midgard, down and towards the trunk. Midgard, then was the only option left to him. Distasteful, but then what were a few years spent among mortals while puzzling out the path to Svartalfheim to him, one with the potential to live until Ragnarok?

To orient himself, then. He stretched again with his magic and sensed a cluster to his right imbued with what he identified as the white energy characteristic of Alfheim, now that he knew what to look for. So he needed to go down and left, based on his current position, and that would mean leaving the scant comfort of this Alfar rock for the void once more. Theoretically, if he lunged off towards the left at roughly the same speed of his fall, with nothing, not even air, to stop or slow him in the empty space between the realms, he should end up near Midgard. Hopefully. He had no way of being certain just what that speed was, of course.

Aesir are not cowards.

And with that, he leaped.

For another eternity between the worlds that passed instantly on the realms, Loki kept his magic extended around him. He wasn't certain what he was looking for, but he searched desperately nonetheless. Ironic, then that he missed the first sign of it, an effective blip on his magical radar that dissipated when he tried to close his magic around it.

A moment later, he could have hit himself. What a very Thorish mistake. Midgard was a realm of mainly water, of course such droplets would pepper its skies. He shifted his focus to the interference and static he had been ignoring, and pushed himself in its direction, reveling in the increasing frequency of the droplets splashing against him like rain, a personal storm of his own making, no hammer required.

Statistically, he really shouldn't have been surprised to land in the middle of the ocean.

This... Totally isn't how this chapter was supposed to go. Dammit Loki, you were just supposed to coincidentally fall to Midgard, and have actual dialogue! Apparently, Loki Does What He Wants, and what he wants is to make the void his bitch. Incidentally, according to all sources I've found, the positioning of the worlds here is in accord with Norse mythology, because I care about this things. Most of the details about each realm were made up more or less on the spot though, so I apologize for any errors there. Also, Loki's children's from mythology aren't actually his biological children here, though he does/will have ties with several of them.

I've never actually written anything non-academic before, so if there's something I can do/fix/try to make this better (or if this is just objectively terrible and I should never write again), please let me know!