I was playing a game the other day – which I can't actually remember the name of – but it involved all these famous aphorisms and short sayings. There was one that I had never heard of before but struck me as both truthful and particularly Loki-like --
If you strike at a king, you must kill him.
Can be (should be?) read as a prequel to the Loki/David that lives in my head but hasn't actually been written yet. (Kay's seen a section or two of it, but that's really about it.) And by that I mean there are little offhand lines in here will make more sense once that's finished. Not to mention the ending.
WAKE UP, AMANDA. CAN'T WRITE PREQUELS TO THINGS YOU HAVEN'T ACTUALLY WRITTEN.
ahem
There have been few Vikings renowned for their intellect. For anything, really, other than prowess in battle, drinking, or bed. There's nothing wrong with that -- Loki makes claim to all three -- but there has been many an occasion when he has won a battle simply because people forget he has a brain.
It makes things easier, but not nearly as fun.
Loki's not stupid. Far from it. None of his Vikings ever dare cross him, that's for certain. He's one of the last of the Viking Gods; the rest eaten by Ka Anor, weakened by time and disinterest, killed in misadventures of their own reckoning.
He and his have always kept to themselves. Hel, Jörmungandr, Fenrir… His ugly, animal children. He's glad for it. He can think of no better gift than ugliness. Loki is perhaps unique in that he never wished for beautiful children. Beauty is a weapon of its own, but all too often it is turned upon the one who bears it. Loki is old enough to remember the disasters of the Old World.
He remembers Hercules, the most beautiful man of his time, the most revered and admired of any age, slay his wife and children in a fit of black madness, only to die by his own hand on a funeral pyre after years of torment.
He remembers Cassandra, another of Apollo's conquests, blessed with the gift of true sight and then cursed so none would believe her, driven to madness.
He remembers Kore, so beautiful that all wanted her, though only Hades went so far as to kidnap her. The whole pantheon had watched the flower maiden turn to stone in the cold underworld.
(Hel, Loki acknowledges, had at least always belonged there.)
He remembers the infamous Helen of Troy, of course. Only a mortal, but still she sparked a war that devastated the land of the Greeks and Greeks for years afterward. Something Loki had taken full advantage of it, needless to say, but he would never stand for in Midgard.
Had he to lock Hel away in a tower to protect her? Did he cast her among the stars, or the depths of the ocean? Did he turn her into a flower or a tree? Had she been stolen from her home by a jealous lover or killed by a jealous wife? Had his two sons fought for their place as his eventual successor, tearing apart sky and underworld and all in between to take as much for themselves as they could? Had they stolen one another wives or wagered on the maidenheads of local beauties, only to be killed or cursed?
Loki knows what the world thinks of his children, of all those who stay in dark and shadowed places, feared as much or more as they are revered. Being ugly can be a difficult thing to bear, but it is its own defense as well. Their influence and power will never fade. They won't be like so many others, fallen to dust because man forgot them. They have never been hurt. They have not been killed in foolish pursuit of reckless dreams. They will be here to stand at the Ragnarok, a few of the chosen, proud and ugly and unbroken.
Loki doesn't think of himself as a cruel man. He is cruel only in the ways he has to be, in the ways a god has to be. He understands that sometimes you have to sacrifice a few for many, and that you can never save everyone, and that your own skin is more important than anyone else's. He knows that if you aren't prepared to abandon something at a moment's notice or have it taken from you just as quickly, you either protect it with your life or you stop being a god. His children have never been a liability, thank Valhalla, but even Loki knew the chains of love once. Love, like chaos, knows no sides.
The situation bothers him. Loki's running out of options at the exact moment he should be keeping them open. He should be smart enough to pull this off. He is smart, damn it, no matter who forgets it. And not smart in the way that anyone gets used to either. He's crafty. Sly. Thinks sideways when people try to come at him from the front, spends so much time spinning what he does and what he says that no one can stick a knife in his back. He didn't survive thousands of the years in the Old World and hundreds of years in Everworld just to roll over and die at the first real threat he's seen since Christianity.
He doesn't want this alliance with the Greeks. Cut to the heart of it, lay out the bare bones of it -- he doesn't want it. He doesn't like relying on other people. He's never had need of an alliance, not since he broke from the Old World. But he might need it, and that's the part that annoys him. That's the part that burns him, even more than the boy General offering it to him.
They need him. He can see it in the General's eyes. They want him for this alliance because they can't get the help anywhere else. The Amazons are warring among themselves now that Pretty Little Flower is dead. The dwarves' troops were devastated in the last battle. Everyone else is too small or too weak or too frightened. The Vikings aren't. They want Loki because where Loki goes Hel and her legions will follow. Not to mention the damage a giant wolf can inflict is impressive indeed.
As alliances go – if Loki would deign to consider an alliance -- Athena's armies are the strongest in this world, next to his. They've never tested whose is actually stronger. Such a war would rock Everworld to its very core, and they both value their new home too much to do such a thing to it. They remember the Titans, and the Ogres, and the Giants, the first of the celestial deities, base and violent. They tore the Old World apart, and it was up to their children to make it whole again. How well they actually did that is up for debate. Loki doesn't have time for foolishness like that again.
An alliance. Thor's balls. How he hates to ask anyone for anything! Not since the fall, since he one-upped Odin One-Eye. He manages on his own, him and his Vikings, his family. His. Loki protects his, always has, but even he knows that he won't always be able to. He is the god of chaos, after all. Chaos knows no sides, or odds, or certainties. He hates the whole idea of it, but it might be the only thing he has now that the witch is gone.
At one time she seemed like the best option. Fighting Ka Anor was akin to suicide then. His army of Hetwan is a swarm; tenacious, disciplined, and dangerous beyond belief. The dangers of the Old World seemed small in comparison. But the witch is dead now, and her corpse is of no use to him. The gateway is closed. Loki doesn't have the time or the energy to find another one, even if one were to exist. Though fighting Ka Anor was always the option with the least potential, it seems the only one left.
With Athena, he should be unstoppable. Or he would be, if they were going against anyone but Ka Anor. Loki is tempted to tell them no for all the wrong reasons, and yes for even stupider ones.
Still. Yes. Yes, he might have to fight. He just has to be careful about it. He has to do it at the right time, at just the right moment. If you strike at a king you must kill him. Ancient advice, advice from the Old World, but still true. There's no sense in goading Ka Anor. Because he is a king. A renegade king, maybe, a barbarian king, an upstart king, but a king nonetheless. He's cutting a swathe through Everworld, and there's no sense in provoking him into a turning an eye towards Midgard.
Loki protects his first.
Two minutes into Athena's proposal and he's all ready made his decision. All of their posturing and arguments wouldn't have the slightest change. But he'll sit here, if only to watch them sweat. Especially the General. How did he come to this? Small, brown man-child who pissed himself in fear the first time he saw Loki. David. Loki wants to taste the name on his tongue, watch to see how he would react this time. He didn't seem like much before.
Though the witch did claim him as protector. Maybe she was smarter than he gave her credit for.
Then again, Loki thinks, legend says that the first men were made from clay and earth, copper and iron – base materials. The best of sculptors and the hottest of forges can make anything. Even a General such as this.
Loki is proud to have helped.
"General. David. I have a proposition for you."