When the time comes for him to spearhead the storm against Valhalla, she should worry – it's just that his mood, a mixture of grim resolve and malicious exhilaration, is too contagious. How could it not be – it is like having the old Loki, the one from before his fall, back. He hardly laughs anymore, scarred by experience.

'I will not die, Sigyn', he says. 'I promise you.'

'I know', she says. Her heart tells her it's safe to trust a Liar's promise.

So it is with no fear that she watches him battle the guard and slay him. And it breaks her heart all the more to see him fall mere seconds afterwards, bleeding from many wounds, each fatal. 'No!' - she wants to scream, but her voice fails her. Tears blur her eyes, and she fails to see the satisfied smirk rather than wince of pain on the face covered with grime and his own blood mixed with his enemy's.

'I will not die, Sigyn. I promise you.'

Now he is dead. And all around her his children (but not hers, her two sons are dead, as is her only lover), the thurs, carry out the plan of Loki's vengeance, not stopping to mourn their father.

And as the flames crawling up the walls of Valhalla rise in their furious scream, roaring thier inanimate triumph and rage, and revenge, she hears something else among them – familiar laughter.

(Loki, in the happier days before his fall, laughing his head off at some trick he had played on Odin.)

And, to the shrieking laughter of the flames, the gods fall, slain one by one by the monsters.

'I will not die, Sigyn', said the Liar. 'I promise you.'

*thurs- the same thing as an ice giant