At last the eve of the conquering of Asgard was at hand; Thor was all but helpless, his defenses fallen and his moral obliterated in the wake of Loki's renewed ambition to raze all the realms beneath his fist. The woman to whom he had initially been forced to pledge his life and loyalty under penalty of death had given him greater power, pushed his ego forward to soar to new, inglorious heights, and aided him in conquering a kingdom for herself as well as for him. Gone were the days of Loki's abhorrent feelings towards the creature, the Jotun miniature who would prove himself a jest to reality's order. He was glad for her, he loved her, and he would admit it to himself only. She had shown him parallels of power known to so few, they might have been myth, and he had shown her her true beauty; shown her what warmth did to the Frost Giant kind. She was his butterfly.

At the stone where Loki had been only once before in the entirety of his long existence, as a baby cast from his throne, he stood once again to reclaim another. The sky was dark as always, though the air was still without snow falling in a most rare occasion. It was peace untroubled. Never in his wildest dreams did the God of Mischief believe Jotunheim could offer anything other than the ugly dominion which fueled the nightmares and hatred of all who heard of it. Here, Loki stood and waited.

"You shall cease to fool those who still hold to the belief that you feel not but contempt for your former home if you continue to dwell upon its fabled serenity." Came her voice.

Magda waltzed up the few steps to the hallow temple with a playful smile which Loki lamented in only recently appreciating. He turned as she spoke, glanced over her human colors she was still so shy to show, and yet convinced all into believing the ripe peach skin and emerald eyes were entirely her doing, her normalcy. A Goddess of Trickery suitable for the God of Mischief. There was no sunlight to catch the myriad of black and deepest purple flowing at will about her long wavy hair, and yet the God could envision it as clearly as though it were before him.

"This world may have its fleeting moments of tranquility, however that will not save it from crumbling under my fist." He said matter-of-factly. "There are no angels where demons dwell, and no daydreams where nightmares reign."

Magda have a haughty laugh and folded her arms before her as she looked up at her king husband. Through him she had a throne, even though it had belonged to her before his arrival. His words held a particular significance to her, though he would not find it out without the sorrow that came with explanation. Loki turned from her once again, his sapphire eyes thoughtful. He had a persistent moment of weakness where Thor was concerned; his own brother for a thousand years was his enemy once again, and this time Loki would need to aim the knife to Thor's head, rather than his heart. The frost king stared upon the realm with visions of his perfect future, one which did not necessarily include the survival of Jotunheim, though he would hardly lament in its passing. He had very nearly succeeded in its destruction once and was certain, with Magda at his side, he would succeed fully and reign in a new age of peace and order among the chaos which freedom wrought. Credulous was his desire only to himself.

"Demons and nightmares, hostility and loathing..." Said Magda with delight, as though remembering a fond dream she had had. Loki heard the sliding that was steel being pulled from its home as Magda slid her dagger from its sheath. She admired it, played with it between her hands and spoke once more. "This weapon has brought my foes to their knees and forged and empire which shall go unchecked and unchallenged for millennia. Though my work is not yet completed, my future is certain. I have only one enemy left to make fall."

Her velvety voice and the words so attached to his own soul petted Loki's ears. Loki could not help but grin. He gave a cherubic chortle while raising an arm to rest upon a ruined remnant of a pillar, his green eyes hopelessly lost upon a future which distracted his mind from the present. He heard the soft footfalls of his bride casually sliding towards him and soon he felt the cool touch of her hand around his chest. She lent a cheek to his neck, the powers of their kind turning his human skin Jotun; creating a monster out of a man. And she accepted the monster. She accepted and encouraged him to shine in the darkness, to drop all pretenses and embrace the beast within that caused children to fright. Thor hated him, Odin was dead at his feet at last, and the throne was within a pinch of his grasp.

"You shall be smeared with his blood shortly." Said Loki, picturing Thor.

"Oh, my King. Of that I have no doubt." Magda said.

A gasp escaped Loki as a sharp, unyielding pain scorned his back. Pressure released and Loki hunched over, only for a waiting pain to find him at his heart. Magda had held him during these happenings and released him at her own whim to the ground. She stood over him, his eyes concerned and pained, sought her out. Was she injured? Had the brute who dared attack him go through her? He found her, her hands covered in blood but not a wound present. Concern turned to cautious confusion as he beheld her. Words begged to be released from his mind yet he could not bear to ask if she had betrayed him, lest the answer was gravely negative. And yet...

"Oh my, have you stumbled?" Asked Magda with a cruel smile, "I'm sorry. I held you up for as long as I could bear, but you make my skin crawl in such a way that I just had to be rid of you."

Loki took many breaths between gaining his wounds and learning of Magda's feelings. His heart nearly stopped with the cruelty, the poison within them and his breath failed him. He choked on the frozen air around him while his bride stood over him, gloating, the assaulting weapon gleaming within her blue hand. Betrayal, contempt, longing; emotions flooded his soul until his very shell of a body threatened to burst apart. He had accepted love from her, accepted that his heart beat for her, and now she had taken that heart and broke it into innumerable irreplaceable pieces. Even as she stood before him with his blood soaking her Jotun fingertips, she had so completely filled his mind and soul that he pained himself to hate her. He loved her. The first of what would be many later tears fell from his eye, frosting his cheek as it did.

"W...why...?" Came his voice, small and trembling like a child's.

That one little word angered Magda. The woman looked down upon the man she had been forced to share a life with against her will, using him as a means to an end and making herself sick to show him kindness. She had felt him give into her and her vindictive ways and yet he would dare to destroy her progress and revert to that sad, hapless child he had been when she found him. A fiery hatred burned within her core for him, a loathing sharpened to murderous rage at but one word.

"The fact that you must ask this only cements my reasoning." She answered cooly, "You are more weak than I dared believe. Should I be forced to spend eternity with another, my nightmares forged the weak, the pitiful; they gave me you." Magda frowned deeply as she glared at him through wicked red eyes.

"It sickens me how easily you crumbled. You let your guard down because of a misguided emotion you were so desperate to feel that you applied it to your greatest enemy. Do you believe I don't know that it was you who nearly destroyed my home? Did you ever believe that I would not take my revenge against you for it, simply because you came to rule it? You are pitiful. You are weak. Your father was right to abandon you here for he surely had foreseen the great disappointment you would be. I only wish it had been I who found you as a babe, rather than that foolishly sentimental Odin."

Magda's words were as a serpent's bite repeatedly striking the fallen Asgardian prince, filling his body with a poison that seemed to have been designed solely for him. The physical wounds held no mind to those Loki felt emotionally. He sat, staring dumbfound up at the woman while the past flashed before his eyes. Their union had been wanted by neither, and yet both would benefit from it. The only problem lied with his falling in love, and her falling to loathing. He began to protest, to speak in his defense yet the woman prevented such from happening. She knelt before him and rose a hand to grace his cheek—a gesture which fooled the Trickster God into believing this reality could be but a nightmare.

"No. I take it back." She said in a soothing voice, one which had Loki hopelessly hers for a second more, "I am quite fond of this day, and fortunate that I could execute my anger upon you."

The woman let loose another blow, this time to Loki's abdomen. She wrenched the dagger in, twisting and turning it in whatever fashion would have the man crying out in the most agonizing pain. It was sweet music to her vengeful ears. She released him quickly, too quickly for her own liking and not soon enough for Loki's, and satisfied herself once more by striking him across his blue formed face. She left him with a long gash to mar his former beauty, a beauty she had never appreciated. Loki fell in a pitiful lump to his side and curled his legs up inwardly while groans and hisses of pain left his lips.

"Magdalina..." whispered Loki, calling her by a pet name she dearly hated.

"You butcher my name as you butchered our people. You pathetic wretch." She said, spitting near him, "Just as you butchered any hope of ties with your brother. That is a shame. Who will save you now, little prince? Where is your protective elder brother?" Magda asked with cruel inflection. "He is dying in Asgard to see you. He sits on his throne, dreaming of plunging a knife into your chest as I have. But I beat him to it, I suppose. And you have no one to blame but yourself."

Magda stood again and walked half-way around Loki, staring with soulless eyes to his weak and frail form begging for some form of relief. He managed strength enough to crawl and raise his head to meet her eyes. Hers filled with listless anger while his held a myriad of color, emotion, and searching.

"You are so blind. You see what will play to your whims rather than what will show you truth. You burned every bridge you once held dear for the sheer fact that it was what was expected of you. I can feel your soul weep and it disgusts me... you are a lie as both an Asgardian and as a Jotun, and you will never belong to either world." Magda said, and delivered a swift kick to Loki's already ailing abdomen.

"Why did you ignore your family's love? You stood before me, anguishing over the betrayal of your family when all they ever did was give unconditional love. Even knowing that you were a monster from a lineage they had so ardently tried to destroy, they loved you. But no—so certain in your turmoil were you that you allowed them to die; Odin and Frigga... your dearest mum and dad... It must have been worth a great deal to see them die and become fodder for false anguish; feeding some silly remorse you have no right to. You don't know what anguish is, what betrayal is. For my sanity I was compelled to show you. And is it all that you expected? Do you now feel justified in your 'revenge'?" Magda asked with bitterness.

Loki listened with a reluctant heart. He saw himself merely playing the part of the monster that had been expected, not knowing what else to do. He had forced his family away, forced the bond to be cut, and though he had never allowed himself to admit it, he agonized at letting them go. Yet he was so drunk with illusion that he had never realized the pain in his heart from his family's betrayal was actually the pain he felt at betraying them, himself. The more he hurt them, the worse he had felt, though he could never understand why. There was nothing he knew of to make the pain go away. How had he allowed himself to grow so foolish?

"You will die here just as you were meant to all those years ago, in your true form rather than in the lie you wore your entire life. Does that satisfy you? To be honest in death as you never were in life..." Magda said, trailing off.

She looked once more at the crumpled man laying at her feet and contemplated her next move. The rock he had been abandoned at stood at the precipice of a cliff, down from which held no known end that she could kick him down. Yet she desired him to suffer in stillness, clinging to any form of hope that his end might be halted for another hour rather than falling towards a most certain death. The woman resided herself to leaving Loki be, though ensured his death to herself by looming over him, her shadow cast to block any light from him, and with a grin only one with a truly evil soul could muster, stabbed the man thrice more in his torso. Loki screamed in pain, Magda walked off, and the last song she heard was the yowling of her soon-to-be late husband.

Loki lie helplessly upon the cold ground, bleeding, and dying. He shook with a feeling or two he could not identify and waited for either death to take him or for some miracle to save him. He brought a hand before him and stared at the blue skin, the intricate etching about it, and concentrated with what will rose within him.

"Come on..." he pleaded.

The hand flickered and faded, showing splotches of pale peach once again before the blue regained its hold. Loki's eyes held desperation, held a pleading look to the appendage as though it had any consciousness to consider. The man could not stand this form, this branded monstrosity which ripped peace asunder and demanded to be vilified in legend. Should he die, he preferred to do so as a proud Asgardian so as to maintain even a sliver of his former glory. Yet his magic betrayed him. There was nothing but blue, nothing but the monster swallowing up the man he had once been; who he had fought so hard to be.

"Please..."

Slow, desperate tears rolled from his eyes showing off a desperation the once-God had never dared reveal. This time, the skin of who he had once been remained weakly over the Jotun curse. He gave a grateful, incredible smile to this magic. An unevenly portioned half of his face turned human as well. There was some magic left within him to beg for help. With all the resources his body could sacrifice, Loki called forth to Asgard.

"Brother... I need your help..." Loki said.

Thor looked up from his seat upon the throne which he had acquired at his father's death and his brother's complete betrayal. The voice Loki traveled far, though with as faint as it was, one would believe Loki trekked the distance himself. There came upon the brutish man, a stabbing where his heart dearly wished to remain, as it had always whenever Loki's voice came to Thor's ears. Blue eyes of incredulous pain met the wayward illusion of a brother he had abandoned to memory long ago.

"Brother..." Said Loki once again.

The projected image was a pathetic ruin; Loki lie in a heap against a pillar in the grand hall of his former home, half his body Jotun and the other half Asgardian. Tears fell without shame and a begging look wasted itself upon the stone form of a man too many times betrayed by one he had so dearly loved.
"Help?" Answered Thor, "Have you not caused enough damage here, Loki? Have you not help enough in destroying your own home? Leave me to my misery and I shall leave you to yours." Thor said as he dipped his head down once again.

But Loki would not be deterred. He had already resolved to spending the rest of his life wallowing in the hallow cell he had entrapped himself within, within the very walls which prevented him from saving his own mother when she needed him the most. There would be no place in Hell with more tortures for him than that. But in order to atone, he needed to return home.

"I don't care for this war anymore. I don't care about ruling, about Jotunheim's throne nor its destruction—I wish only to return home, to die either in a cell or to live in it. Can you not grant me this one mercy, brother?"

Thor listened carefully to the words being spoken, longing to believe the hallow shell of who his former brother used to be, and yet history resolved to leave Thor with no miracle to offer and Loki without hope.

"You sit upon a pedestal of lies, death and destruction. Why, now, should I believe you when you have only betrayal as a guidance for your actions?" Thor asked, straining to ignore the look of sincere pain and lament over his younger brother's face, the look of torment within his eyes pulling every weakness forged out of love for Loki.

"I'm dying." Loki said plainly. "Brother, can you not-"

"I am not your brother! I never was." Thor repeated the very words Loki had once used to stab Thor in the heart with before their lives were torn apart by lies and deceit. Only this time, it was Loki who would get the brunt of the assault. "And I cannot mourn you anymore."

Silence passed the two men. Loki felt his time waning. He came to terms that his death would likely come once his connection to Asgard ended, and the resolve shown clearly through his illusion. There were no more tears except for one, which he shed for Thor, and for their memories. The passing man gave a genuine smile which he only ever gave Thor in their childhood, the smile he had given him when Thor had asked him how he looked right before his coronation so long ago.

"Then, when you finally come to find me, will you burn me so that I may join mother in the stars? Though I may forever sit outside the gates of Valhalla, will you allow me the chance to see her from afar?"

There was no reason for Thor to believe Loki's words, and with so much against the trickster, it came as no surprise when Thor rebelled. The new Asgardian king rose to his feet, and his hammer followed in his clenched hand. Teeth gritted and eyes narrowed in a deep, dark scowl, Thor shouted his answer to the pitiful creature before him.

"I will never! Rot where you are, brother, for there is no hope for truth to your sentiment!" Thor said, and threw Mjolnir to the illusion, shattering both it and the pillar against which it sat.

Thor neglected the hammer, turning to his throne once again. His illusion gone, Loki left himself alone in the ruins. He smiled and gave a sad laugh to his fate. It was well deserved, he thought, for all he had done. Villainy begot loneliness, and none to mourn his death. Dishonored, dejected and broken, Loki resided himself to death. She came without a word to escort him to the next world.

Almost a day passed since, and Thor begged the company of Heimdal. The gatekeeper saw Magda's army, saw her making the final preparations to conquer Asgard in her own name. She glittered with anticipation. The king would fight for Asgard until his last breath. Yet his curiosity forced Thor to look away from the foe and towards the one who had called upon him for help.

"No illusion could sustain for so long." warned Heimdal thoughtfully.

"We will see." Said Thor, skeptically.

Back to the throne room he hurried and for Mjolnir he searched. The hammer had waited patiently for his return, and as Thor wrapped his fingers around it, found it held firm to the ground. Thor almost tripped over himself in his attempt to gather the weapon only to find it cemented in its place. He placed both hands about the handle and pulled with all his might yet it would not budge. Could this trickery be of Loki's doing? Was his little brother's magic now so advanced that he could create a projection of Mjolnir to weaken Thor? If so, where was the real Mjolnir? And yet, Thor knew this hammer was real, that its power was mere inches from his fingertips and he could no longer wield it. If ever there was fear behind the eyes of the king for his kingdom, this propelled that hidden fear to consume his entire body. Thor raced to the rainbow bridge and ordered a transit to Jotunheim.

"I shall confirm this trickery." Said the prideful God of Thunder.

A blinding light and blast of wind, and Thor was on the alien rock he hated more than any other. Heimdal set the beam to scorch the frozen wasteland nearest Loki's location so that a hunt would not further waste more of his time. Within seconds of landing Thor saw the grey, cracked corpse of the man who had once been his brother. He marched with purpose to it, slammed himself down before it, and grabbed one of the cold arms to shake this illusion from being. Yet he would find no end to it. Loki lay before him, partially Jotun and partially Asgardian just as he had been in his communication projection. Thor's eyes softened then and understanding regrettably filled within him. Not since Loki's trick on the dark world had Thor felt such repentant loss as he had experienced before ever leaving Asgard. He hadn't needed to see Loki die this time to know it was real. Thor turned his face to the murky skies of Jotunheim and filled it with a bellow of sorrow none of that or any realm would ever know, afterward picked up the long lost Loki and carried him back to where he had landed.

"My curse is ignorance. Yours was longing." Thor said, and traveled one final time to Asgard.