The child ran down the hallway, a small smile across his face as he reached the large metal doors. Pushing back his straggly black hair away from his eyes, he pulled at the door. Eventually, with a groan, the doors swung open and the child ran through, hopping down the old steps until he reached the bottom.
He took in the rock walls and dirty ground of the dungeon with a smirk. The faint smell of burnt flesh hung in the air and the thick cobwebs dotted the walls. It hardly even made him uncomfortable, and if it did, well, he must have enjoyed the dungeon all too much.
The boy ran down the hallways, jumping up to each door on his tippy toes and peering in, giggling quietly to himself every time he saw a prisoner. Those were bad men, and the child was glad they were locked up. Never, ever would he want to be like them. It made him laugh about how low they seemed to have fallen, and it made him proud that his father had locked them up.
As he ran down the rest of the hallways, having so much fun being alone and away from his brother, he stopped in his tracks at the sound of crying. Sure, he had heard tears from the prisoners before, but these sounded of a child; a little girl. Narrowing his eyes, he followed the sound before he reached a metal door with a small slot where you could look in.
Pulling open the latch, he peered at the prisoner, and widened his eyes in shock when he saw that his suspicions were validated. A form of a little girl sat at the end of the cell, thick chains encrusted around her hands. Slowly, the boy reached into his pockets and grabbed a small key, fitting it into the keyhole. What damage could it do, she was only a child. It's not like she was much of a threat, at least to the boy's knowledge.
Pushing open the door, the boy walked over to the little girl, a curious expression on his young face. The girl looked up sharply at the sound of footsteps, fear shining in her eyes. She pushed herself against the wall, as if it would swallow her up. The boy kneeled down beside her, looking her over, his curiosity ever-growing.
She was small, frail, and had black hair similar to his own, except hers was long and unkept and matted with sweat from the abnormally hot room. But the strangest aspect about her was her skin color. Not the pale complexion like his, nor the darker complexion of humans he had witnessed when visiting Midgard. No, her skin was blue; bluer the Asgard waters and bluer than the tesseract his father kept so locked up.
She was a Frost-Giant.
The boy knew he should be scared, he knew of the horrible battles that scarred his realm, among many others, where his own father had fought against the cold-blooded giants. But looking down at the girl, looking no older than of 5 years, he couldn't help but feel pity.
He put his hand on the girl's shoulder, hissing slightly as his skin made contact with her own cold body, and smiled.
"Hello, I am Prince Loki, what is your name?"