AN: So, here it is guys! Part two of my series. This story is going to initially be taking place in Loki's past, telling the story of how he came to be in Asgard, and all of the events which led to his eventually being imprisoned under ground and chained beneath a poisonous serpant. I hope you guys enjoy, and if you have a chance, please leave me a review!
For Asgard: Loki's Tale Part Two:
Chapter 1:
In Jotunheim he is born, near to the beginning of time, to a father named Farbuti, a Jotnar of no particular rank or known reputation, and a nameless, faceless goddess who, by all known counts, did perish in her final deed of birthing him.
He is small, not simply for his half Aesir nature, but by any standard, giant or god. And for his smallness, he is quickly hated.
Farbuti abandons him shortly after he first comes into the world, and his life in nearly extinguished quickly as it began. Only days later, starving and frozen where his father left him for dead in an endless expanse of snow-covered plain, he is found, by a modest inn keeper who, taking some form of pity on the abandoned runt, rescues him and brings him back to his tiny, two roomed keep, where already he, with his wife, rear three other children, two boys and a girl.
The wife wants naught to do with the runt, demanding it be cast back out into the cold to die, as it should have, but her husband convinces her they might find use for the unwanted child. That they might be able to put it to work without need for pay. Perhaps even, if the boy proves to be a good worker, they might be able to sell him later to another with greater means, looking for a dependable slave. Runts, after all, are worth less than nothing among their people, and they will find no protest in offering him so.
And so for a while, he lives with the inn keeper and his wife, and their three children. Though never is he allowed to mistake himself as one of them, still, he is given a name by the man, who of all them shows him some level of kindness, and it is a name he keeps, for he's never known any other. The man calls him Loki, after the great King of Utgard, and tells him it is a name to be proud of. Loki believes him, for he's no reason to doubt the word of his savior.
He grows, but hardly and slowly, and the two boys and their sister despise him greatly, using their already towering size over him to bully and beat him at most regularly.
Loki knows better than to fight back. Knows, for a long time, that even should he deign to, his strength is so much lesser than the other children, and he would only make for himself a worse situation.
He works hard, tasked as he is with the upkeep of the inn. Cleaning all the rooms of the modest structure, situated at the back of the keepers main dwelling. Six rooms in total. The floors, the walls, the washrooms, all their amenities, the sleeping chambers and the bed linens, the furniture and oil lamps. All these are expected, every day, to remain pristine and unblemished and refilled, all expected to remain in perfect, working order.
When they are not, or the keeper's wife determines Loki has somehow failed in his appointed tasks, she whips him, long and hard, until his back is naught but a bloody and torn apart mass of ruined flesh.
And so Loki has learned to always do all within his power to maintain the inn's good reputation. And work hard he must, for the inn's patrons are frequent, and a most rowdy lot, often inebriated when they come to take shelter after a hard nights drinking at the tavern across the way, and their manners are a thing forgotten, a room's order no matter to them at all.
Loki too has learned to keep mostly out of sight, for the spying of a half-god, half Jotun runt all too frequently inspires in the other giants a real violence, and too often has Loki found himself on the receiving end of vicious trouncings. So much is it viewed among the Jotnar as a kind of sport, to bat about such a hideous abomination, which in truth should have been put out of its misery the moment it first took breath.
For many years, this is Loki's life. He is made to sleep in the cellar of the inn keeper's home, told to keep himself scarce and speak not to the children or the patrons. Sometimes, the keeper will come down to the cellar and speak with him himself, and he is always kind. Loki even, and perhaps too often, enjoys to think of the man as a kind of friend, though he knows he shouldn't. Around his family and others, the keeper never deigns to acknowledge him, and this too Loki understands the reasons for.
It just wouldn't do, to be seen interacting socially with a slave. Not with any, real familiarity.
The keeper had made the mistake of doing so once, speaking gently and familiarly with Loki before a potential customer, and the keeper's wife had given him a tongue lashing the likes of which Loki had never seen, before seeing to it Loki himself paid the price for encouraging such behavior in her husband.
Neither of them had made the same mistake again.
And so Loki follows the rules obediently, keeping his face turned down whenever he happens to cross paths with one in the family, or one of the inn's guests.
There is little he can do but receive it without protest when the children or patrons decide to have their fun.
That is until one day, when Loki is little more than a decade old, and one of the children, the girl, this time, has him cornered, pressed up against the back wall of one of the inn's washrooms, crowding against what little space lies between them.
She towers over him, the crown of his head barely reaching her waist. He keeps his face turned down and away, his hands curled to nervous fists at his sides.
The girl particularly likes to hurt him. He suspects because he's a boy, and boys, naturally, should be stronger than girls. It amuses her, he supposes, that she is so much stronger then.
"Ugly little runt." She sneers down at him, and it is an insult he's heard countless times before. "Why do ya still have yer hair? Any proper giant loses that after a year of livin'."
Loki of course says nothing, keeping his face turned away.
He wouldn't know the answer anyway. He knows naught of such things. Why he looks and is so different from the other Jotnar. Why they all are so tall and powerful, where he is so small in stature and wisp-like in his build, where they are hairless, with broad, flat features, and he has a full head of flame red hair, and his own face is so delicately built, his features fine and thin.
His lack of response seems to do little to assuage the girl though, and soon enough, he hears her growl in frustration, before her hands are suddenly upon him, shoving him back with ease against the wall, hard enough to make his head crack against it in turn, sending the world spinning.
Panic surges through Loki then, dizzying fear at the prospect of pain. He's been through as much countless times, and thinks he should well be used to it by now. But still, it frightens him, the idea of being badly hurt.
He throws his hands up in a desperate and always pathetic attempt to protect himself against the coming blows.
And it happens all at once then. He doesn't even begin to comprehend how or why.
There is a bright building of warmth, deep within him, at his center, it seems. A surge of… of something. He finds not the words to describe it. Only he can feel it, growing ever stronger and with great rapidity, moving outward into the rest of him.
Until he feels the warmth and light of it held almost within the palms of his hands, tingling against his thin fingers, and in an instant, it explodes forth, flying out from him, a wash of blindingly bright light, gold and green and burning red, a sound like the roar of a wave crashing against rocks cracking through the air.
Loki's eyes close against it, and instinctively he ducks down, arms coming over his head.
For a long moment, he cowers down against the floor, uncertain and frightened, and then the silence that follows, oppressive and full, at last reaches his ears, and slowly, with wary caution, he unwinds his pitiful cover and, lifting his face, expecting entirely to be met with a fist, he blinks out across the room and sees, lying at its other end, utterly unconscious, the inn keeper's daughter, crumpled in a most undignified and motionless heap.
Loki's life at the inn comes swiftly to an end after that. Though he'd made plenty a fool of himself begging the keeper to retain him, terrified at the prospect of being sold off and out into a world he knows little of, it does him little good, and the next morning, he is put onto market, stood in chains upon a high up platform in the center of the town's main square, before a deafeningly loud and worked up group of potential buyers.
Loki is frightened beyond words, but it matters nothing to any here, and he's snatched up quickly for his low price, made so by his waifish size and rumor of his being a witch or a wizard, though Loki hardly understands what those things are or what makes any believe him to be such things.
He is bought by a farmer, and soon enough, he finds his life filled once more with grueling and backbreaking work. Though the farmer is less given to beating him then was the inn keeper's wife, and has no cruel hearted children for him to try and avoid, the work is enormously more difficult, and the Jotun who now owns him bestows him no excuse for his tiny size. He is expected to make himself useful and effective as any, full sized giant, and at the end of each day, when the suns have at last made their decent and he is allowed to go back to his tiny hovel situated away from the main house, at the farm's farthest out edge, Loki finds himself near crippled by his stiffness and the soreness of his muscles, able to do naught by lie on the thin matte of straw he's been given and stare blankly up at the thatched roof overhead.
Here, at this place, Loki lasts only a year, though in that time his hands are worked to roughed and calloused palms, and his body, while still whippet thin, grows stronger and more enduring, coiled muscle now ghosting lightly over his limbs and frame.
But that warmth of light which Loki had first blasted away the inn keepers daughter with, he had been soon enough to discover was a thing called magic. A connection, he'd learned, through overhearing the farmer and a group of his friends speaking one day, to the life force which flowed through the Great Ash. Through Yggdrisil herself. It was a thing most rare, he'd discovered, amongst not only the Jotnar, but any being of the Nine Realms. Only few had ever possessed such a connection, such an ability to channel that energy and bend it to their will. And with his new found knowledge of what it was he felt flowing powerfully through his veins, more and more so with each passing day, he had dedicated himself to honing such skill, such talent, practicing at any spare moment he found for himself, though those moments of rest came sparingly. And so it was mostly at night, for Loki could little sleep as was. He would concentrate on feeling the energy, opening himself up to it best he could and allowing himself an awareness of it.
And soon, Loki would realize to both his great shock and delight, near whatever thought he could imagine, he could make into being using that flow of energy. He could create fire within the palms of his hands, concussive forces of wind, and blasts of pure, raw power which exploded forth from his hands as colorful and blinding light, which he realized must be what he'd defended himself against the inn keepers daughter with. He could create torch lights which floated through the air and lit well any darkened space, and whatever thing or creature he could picture, he could pull from thin air and make into a solid and visible being. He liked best to make butterflies, and fairies, though he'd never seen a fairy true. He liked these things best for how they would light upon his hands and shoulders and sometimes his head, and make him feel, sometimes, less alone.
To his sadness though, he discovered one thing he could not create, this thing being food, or water. Though most assuredly he'd tried, for how oft he found himself plagued by the pangs of hunger and thirst, the farmer who owned him seeing little need to supply him with naught but the barest minimum of sustenance.
Easily enough, Loki could call forth a thing which looked most exactly as any loaf of bread, or hunk of meat, or cask of water. And even did these things have about them the same feel and weight and scent, as if they were real. But upon trying to consume them, Loki found, they only melted away, the feel of the expended energy flowing back into him, into the blood of his veins, but leaving his stomach still empty and his throat still parched and dry.
It had been one day, when Loki had grown quite bold and confident in his newfound abilities, that he'd made the grievous error of using his magic to help him complete his chores on the farm. And hence had he discovered that, amongst the Jotnar, it was a thing considered wicked and of bad omens, a harbinger of ill tidings, a being possessed of magic, of the Great Tree's life force.
Quickly then, he'd once more been sold off to another farmer, for a price lower still than the last. And so it went for many years more, his stay with each, new owner seeming to last shorter and shorter a time, his reputation as a sorcerer having well begun to proceed him, made worse by his undesirable half-breed nature and diminutive size.
Until, at last, one day, the knowledge of his power having spread far and wide cross the land, his propensity for fighting back against the cruelties and punishments of his owners nearly as spoken of, he is, at the age of eighteen years, taken up by a cable of the King's guard, brought before the court, and sentenced to exile from the Kingdom of Utgard, cast out into the wilds of the Iron Wood.
It is little better than a death sentence.
For if the Jotnar be giants to all other beings of the Nine Realms, than the other creatures which dwell within this land be far greater in size still, and all know the dangers of wandering out into the thick treed forests alone.
Yet that is, on this day, how Loki thus finds himself. Abandoned and alone and most assuredly lost, after a party of the King's guard had most unceremoniously and violently tossed him away here, in the midst of all this wilderness, only a few, scant hours before dusk.
He is frightened. There's little use in lying to himself about that.
A fear made worse by the quickly plummeting temperature. Soon it will be unbearably cold, and he has no place at all to take shelter, no food nor water. No weapons but his own magic to protect himself with against the predatory packs which go at night to hunt.
Naught but the flimsy, rough hewn tunic on his back, a pair of equally worn thin breeches, and boots, sporting large and numerous holes along the soles and seams.
Well, Loki thinks grimly, there is little use in standing here, waiting for the worst to happen. He has fire, and if he can find a spot reasonably well hidden, he may survive the night, and with that, perhaps even long enough to build himself a shelter.
The complication of how to actually build such a structure is something he'll have to worry about later.
And so he starts to move, begins to search for a spot enough concealed to provide some means of defense, both against the elements and the animals.
He looks for what must be hours, he thinks, before he finally comes upon what he deems an adequate space. Or, in the least, it will have to be adequate, as the suns have by now begun to sink low across the horizon, the sky darkening rapidly.
Adequate, he thinks, not ideal, as he presses back into the alcove, a hollowed out space within a wide tree trunk, just barely large enough to fit him.
By the time he situates himself, the light has faded near completely, and within a few minutes longer, the forest around him is black as pitch, even as the sounds of life grow cacophonous around him.
Calling a small fire to his hands, he is careful to keep it contained within his palms, not wishing to set the tree he's huddled into, and by extension possibly, the entire forest, ablaze. Instantly he feels the warmth the flame emits, and he can't help the wave of relief which forces his lips to lift in a feeble smile. It's his first, real success of the day, small though it may be. And this day has been so very ill fortuned.
He's going to have to go at daybreak and try and find food. He's used to little, and so the pangs of hunger have yet to visit upon him. But they will come, he knows. And if he hopes to be successful in building himself a shelter, he knows he'll have to maintain his strength.
He has no idea of how to hunt. Having grown up on farms, serving others his whole life, he'd never had an occasion or an opportunity to learn how. The trepidation this knowledge causes in him, he forces away from his mind. Such doubt will do him no good. Just as he knows his lack of carpentry skills mustn't hinder his attempts to erect a suitable and sturdy structure to shield him from the elements and the animals. He's had enough chances in his short time to observe others at such work, and he thinks he should be able to manage.
He wishes his magic could create constructs solid enough for living in, but he knows it cannot. Though it would feel solid to the touch, he knows it would in truth do little good in keeping the wind and rain and snow out, or hold any, true warmth within.
He's heard rumors of mages so powerful they can achieve such feats with ease. Gods, they say, those of the Vanir and the Aesir.
He wonders then if they are true.
Silly and idle thoughts, he thinks, for as like to not he'll never encounter any of their kind.
He'll be lucky to encounter another, sentient being ever again. To survive these wilds past a fortnight.
Loki supposes, then, he is lucky to ever have survived at all.