Author's Note: Well, hello, hello! It's nice of you to drop by, and check out this crazy brain-child of mine. I'm one of those horrible writers that picks up ideas and drops them just as quickly, so if this story drops dead, sorry in advance! Anyway, I hope you like it, and it's not too terrible. At least it's readable. XD
If you've wandered over because of my Naruto fanfiction that I wrote nearly six years ago (has it really been that long? Jeez!), I'm sorry to have disappointed you! I'm probably never going to continue Ryu's story, but hopefully you might enjoy this too? But really, thank you all for reading my stuff.
By the way, this story is rated M for language, among other things.
Happy Reading~!
- Ryu
Chapter One
It was as if he had never left. The halls still looked the same, glowing with the luminescence found only in rainbows and the soft light of far away stars, and the floors shining like glossed ice. Everything in Gladsheim had always shone as if burning with an inner fire, a warmth that never left. And one he never truly had. Loki sneered at it all under the muzzle, his green eyes narrowed in hatred as he stood before the council. Odin sat in the middle, his eyes sad and stern with his wife next to him. Thor stood on his right hand, the image so horrendously picturesque it made him wish he could spit venom at the whole thing. The only thing he could do was hope that his glare could burn holes through their heads, and spare him this mockery of justice. He knew what they were going to do with him; they didn't have to put on this show of mercy. They hated him, and he hated them back with as much vengeance. Thor could put on that pitiful face as much as he wanted; he was no brother of his anymore.
The chains still held him fast, keeping his god strength bound like so many cords, and if he even attempted to speak, the muzzle invaded his lungs with a burning sensation. He huffed in indignation and fury as other council members deliberated on his punishment. His eyes never left Odin, knowing that the true judgment would fall from him. COME ON, he wanted to scream at the dim-eyed fool. Stop the damn farce, and destroy me already!
The all-father turned to Thor, and finally spoke. "What do you think, my son?" his voice rumbled like storm clouds ready to burst.
He wanted to tear those ocean eyes out of his head, the pity in them only making his blood boil even more. How dare he make that face after he and his pathetic allies had been the ones who had put him here? His chest rose and fell in fury as Thor answered his father.
"Mercy," he said, and Loki rolled his eyes. As if that were possible for these people. "Loki isn't well, that much is certain. Do we punish the child that catches a cold for being sick? No, first, we must see if we can heal him, and then if he refuses to repent of his crimes in the mortal realm, then real punishment should be given"
Loki had taken to glaring at the mirror-like surface of the floor. His own chained and muzzled image stared back, the green eyes swimming with poisonous hate. The deliberations of what Thor had just said fell on deaf ears as he buried himself further in his mind. His idiot 'brother,' always so foolish and naïve. He thought him sick? No, he was anything but; he was free! His mind had been freed from the lies his Asgardian family had fed him his whole life. His true lineage called for their blood and for their children to lick his boots. Nothing less would just be ridicule.
The surrounding silence got his attention somehow, and he looked up, Odin once more looking at him in judgement. The council members were looking towards him, and he knew that his verdict was nigh. He grinned maliciously. Time to kill another frost giant. Was there any sport in killing a dwarf one though?
"Loki Laefyson," he began, and he almost giggled at the sadness in his voice. Old memories making the senile king soft?
"This court and I have come to a decision. While most wish your death and eternal banishment from this realm, your mother and brother have plead for your life. I have come to this verdict because of their apparent love for you in the face of your transgressions."
For some reason, he found himself waiting, the hate smoldering lowly in his eyes. The entire realm seemed like it was holding its breath, and perhaps it was.
"Since you loathe the mortals and their realm so much, I can not think of any punishment more fitting then for you to live with them. You are stripped of your powers, and I give you a curse in their place. You will not be able to harm a single, living creature, be it beast or man."
The staff in his hand came down with the sound of fate, and the clap that struck the hall wasn't nearly as loud as the roaring in Loki's ears. He felt gutted, his insides rending themselves to shreds as he screamed in rage. The muzzle and chains melted off, his hatred for anything and everything in the hall reverberating across the walls. The image of Thor beginning to argue with Odin began to dissolve as he howled into oblivion.
"NO! HOW DARE YOOOOOO-"
The world was suddenly reeling along with a ringing in his ears, blinding light stinging his eyes as the smell of rotting wood and fetid water slapped him across the face. He was knee-deep in swamp water, his scream sending birds into flight across the bog. With a hysterical snarl, he swept his gaze across the piece of pathetic land Odin had seen fit to fling him to. His entire body was on fire from rage, and he screamed as he slammed his fists into the sopping ground.
"NO! NO, NO, NO!" he cried. "DAMN YOU TO HEL YOU DECREPID FOOL! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU ALL!"
The mortal realm, this disgusting, back-water plane of existence Thor loved so much with its pathetic humans? And he was in it, stripped of his powers, stripped of everything! Animal-like in his hate, he turned on the first thing he saw, and started to tear it to pieces. He pounded at the tree, ripping the bark away, and taking fistfuls of wood out, sap and splinters flying all over the place as he panted. He didn't notice the blood beginning to ooze from his fingers, the streaks of red soaking into the heart of the sickly cypress.
It was hours until he exhausted himself, the god blood still pounding in his veins, and the mosquitoes beginning to molest his skin. He hadn't stopped screaming since he had arrived, his throat gone hoarse and raw as his hands. At some point he stopped, he wasn't sure when, dizzy with diminishing anger and grief at his own foolhardiness.
Days passed, the swampland he had been cast to proved to be heavy with humidity and dangerous creatures that all seemed to want to eat him alive at every point in time. He cursed anything that came near, his muscles seizing up whenever he moved to strike the population of gnats that seemed to personally plague him. At night he felt pythons slither past him, sleek and leathery, but not looking for a meal. The alligators were proving more adept however.
The world blurred and bled together, his head swimming and his body feeling heavier with every step he took. Was this what Odin had wanted instead? To see him suffer before finally dying, and watch his rotting corpse be devoured by these ugly reptiles? His thoughts began to circle about him like vultures, and soon he wasn't quite sure what he was thinking. His feet stumbled before him, moving through the muck of their own accord.
Light, sunlight. The burning sensation of it on his face, unobstructed by trees and mist, broke through the delirium that had set in. Stone was suddenly meeting him, and he collapsed back into the darkness. Something screeched near his ear, and he mumbled, feeling something like hands grabbing him before he was dragged back into thedark again.
Oedipa turned the corner on the one of the endless feeling roads between the wetlands on Louisiana, pre-occupied with figures about the land and what she would be having for dinner. She averted her eyes from the stretch of cracking concrete, reaching to turn the AC up even higher. She wasn't bred for this kind of weather.
She screamed when she looked back up, slamming both feet down on the brake pedal as Sasquatch stumbled out from the murky waters and fell inches away from her mud-spattered tires. She scrambled out of her truck, shaking and her heart thundering in her ears.
"Oh no, oh no, no, no-!" She quickly bent down next to the... Man whose head was nearly under her fender. She sighed in relief when she realized she hadn't hit him, but he was still completely out of it.
He looked and smelled as of he had been wandering out in the wetlands for days, his clothes half gone and what skin that wasn't soaked in mud covered in sores. She picked him up, grunting under the weight, and heaved him into the passenger seat. He mumbled something, and she bent down close to his ear.
"What?"
She strained, and heard the half-dead whisper, "Andlát... Bani..."
Oedipa sucked her teeth, and vaulted back into the drivers seat.
"Fucking Cubans, I don't speak Spanish!" she grumbled as she gunned the truck back onto the road. She was going to have to get this sucker to a doctor. And if he managed to live, he was paying for cleaning her seat!