What could have happened if Thor had been killed fighting the marauders
A thousand years is a long time to be alone. He had not been, entirely. Not at first. When he found himself in the dungeons he had acted calm. Composed. As though it were beneath him, these surroundings. And they were—the marauders that came in greater and greater bunches to stand across from him. All beneath him. Thor never came. Mother came, again and again, until the fighting; and then she was dead.
He raged. Screamed; destroyed everything in his cell with his anger, tried to destroy himself but felt the wards draw tight around him, keeping his magic from causing him any harm. It burned under his skin and yet he could not tear himself apart the way he deserved, so he drew smouldering hands down the walls, watching the flickers of green flames die out and the golden glimmer of the cells walls wrap around him, constricting. Glass under his feet, his clothes torn and in disarray.
That was the last he heard from anyone.
No more gifts now. He huddled in his own destruction, the pages of books around his feet, and felt his mind eaten up by grief, and anger, and worry.
For a while, the guards continued to pace, continued to push bowls of food through the forcefield at regular intervals, continued to ignore him as though nothing had happened.
And then that, too, stopped. There came a day when the guards were few. Were one. Were absent.
No one else remained in the dungeons.
Loki pulled together the scattered pages of the books, the fragments of broken glass and wood. He could not piece them together once broken, but he sorted them out methodically. Counting each piece. Reading what pages were left.
And still no one came.
Piles after piles of broken things, sorted and resorted methodically, in as many different ways as he could imagine. Pages read until he had memorized them by heart. Pacing around the cell, practicing fights against an invisible opponent.
He wrote his thoughts on the wall with sooty splinters. Talked to keep the silence at bay. In the unchanging brightness, he wondered when Asgard had fallen.
The everlasting torches flickered and died, and darkness overtook the halls. Beyond the sparkling forcefield, there was nothing but a sea of shadow that stretched on forever.
The lights within his cell failed eventually, and yet still the forcefield would not fall. The almost-darkness taunted him with memories of the Void. The silence. Alone.
He talked aloud.
"I am Loki," it began. And he told the walls and the emptiness every memory, committing it to sparkling oblivion. Every thought, every plan. Every jealousy and every pride.
But there was no one to hear him.
/
Something changes. A dimming in the magical restraints. It is faint, but inexorable; he sits pressed close against the shining wall, hands numb and screaming but barely, just barely, managing to push through.
Through the forcefield, and he makes his way along the halls by feel; remembering the steps and hearing his own breathing in the silence.
Up; and out. And the darkness is still entire. And he can feel a hollow wind blowing, but there is no living thing.
.
.
.