Holiday time! I love holiday time, even if it means that I've been spending more of it reading than writing which could always be a problem but I haven't done it in so long that I feel I'm entitled to it a little bit.

Chapter Three: Pagan.

As it turns out Hecate has a great deal to teach Gabriel and not a huge amount of time to do it in. The goddess is concerned that her actions this day will have been noticed and she is right to be. Many disagree with her freeing Loki, still more have disliked the fact that she would aid him, and this is the sort of thing that they will use to lessen her position within the ranks of her kind. This is the sort of thing that they will use to destroy her.

Gabriel is not prepared for this, she knows that now, she does not think that he had actually considered the implications of what he had planned to do. Now those consequences are crashing in on him and as much as she would rather go and mourn the loss of her friend she knows that she is going to have to guide him through this pain.

"What do you know about Loki?" She asks, looking at her hands so that she does not have to see the almost blank expression on her friend's face.

"He's one of the Norse gods," Gabriel mutters, "a trickster who got himself locked up for killing Baldur." The archangel continues but much of his knowledge is the stuff that everyone knows. The names of Loki's children; Hel, Fenrir, Jormungandr, Nari and Sleipnir, the name of his wife and his parents. He knows nothing about the Loki that Hecate knows, nothing about the personality underneath the actions.

"He tried to kill Baldur," Hecate corrects after a long moment. "The humans believe he succeeded and that's probably for the best." She thinks for a moment. "Loki is a trickster, but only the jokes that backfired on him have been immortalised in song by mankind, and probably Freyja, the others are forgotten as an embarrassment. There was often a justice in his actions too.

"He was dangerous, capricious, his moods would change with the same kind of ease that he would change his shape. I only know of one strange enough to change his gender so that he could birth a six legged horse." She huffs and pauses.

"I thought he was your friend?" Gabriel responds.

"He was, but he had his faults and you need to be as aware of those as you need to be of his good points," she keeps her voice reasonable but she knows that the reason she is lingering on the bad parts of Loki's personality is so that she can keep her guilt under control. She is not meant to feel guilt. "Loki can be cruel, judgmental when it suited him, but the lessons he taught were always done with a sense of humour. Unfortunately, the pupil usually died during the course of it. He was strong and he looked at the world without that naivety that the others sometimes do.

"I think that was his undoing in the end," she muses. "He enjoyed mocking the high and the mighty so much that he took it too far. I should have stepped in, but I was involved with Coyote at the time and lost in my own amusement. I didn't hear about it until it was too late. You have to become him now and the first thing you will have to do is forget your own name."

"And the second?" The archangel asks after a moment of silent contemplation.

"I've woven darkness into you, angel," she smirks at him, "I've threaded blood and lust and pride through your grace and now you have to embrace it with all of your being. Do you think you can manage that?" Hecate watches as the realisation of what she has really done fills him, watches as he looks inside himself and sees the real damage she has done to him. She sees the horror fill the light that creates him and she smiles.

"What did you do?" He demands, moving with an enviable speed to pin her against the wall of the cabin and she chokes out a laugh when she sees the light behind amber eyes.

"Exactly what you asked me to," there is a smugness in her voice that she cannot help. "I made you into one of us, physically at least, your family will never find you." He releases her, then, seeming to struggle with the emotions that come with the little piece of Loki she has bound to him. "I can teach you, I can teach you to smile and laugh, I can teach you ancient blood rites and rules. I can show you the freedom of your own mind and your own thought unrestrained by a Father who would throw you aside for humanity."

He shifts, posture stiff in a manner that suggests that he is not quite certain how to hold himself. Hecate can see that she has a long way to go with him before he will be ready to face the others unchallenged. The goddess gestures, black dress turning into something more covering and more modest, eyes sparkling in the lamplight of the room as she sees the quizzical tilt of his head. The archangel follows her example, snaps his fingers and is startled when Loki's customary garb covers him. Heavy woolen trousers held and gartered with leather strips, two long tunics caught at the waist with a belt of leather decorated with the symbols of the god it adorns, and a heavy wool cloak against the chill of his native grounds.

"The body knows what it needs," she tells him, taking a moment to run a comb through the snarls of the god's hair so that he at least looks a little more presentable. "Our instincts are sharper than human and angel alike and the body remembers the clothes that Loki wore, just like you know it through the link you now share with him."

"But how?" Gabriel demands, twisting so that he can take her wrist in his hand and end the distraction she is creating.

"Does it really matter?" She asks and watches him frown as he nods. "I told you, I've tied part of Loki to you and your grace is absorbing that part. It's making Loki a central part of you and some of that is his instincts and his knowledge." She gently extracts herself from his grasp. "Let me show you," the comb vanishes and she offers him her now empty hand. "Come with me and I'll teach you how to be a god."

The place they appear together is not far from a cliff face, wind beaten and smelling strongly of brine. The nearest buildings are of simple design, wooden beams filled in with a mix of mud, dung and straw that never fails to make him wonder how humans stand it and a roof of sod that has recently been replaced. The people coming to and from the building wear simple cut clothes but in brilliant reds and blues. Their stomaches are large, the fat of the well fed, and their plump faces haughty. It is not the men and women in bright colours that draws Gabriel's attention, however, it is the people around them. These people are wearing brown clothing, tattered and filthy, thin and drawn from lack of food and their eyes ringed with bruised black from lack of good sleep. Their children are dirty, their bellies distended and she watches as something in him seems to shatter at this sight.

"This is not what my Father meant for His children," he hisses and begins to step forward, angry at the suffering of these children who are the gift his Father would grant mankind.

"And what will you do?" Hecate asks, drawing her thick black cloak tighter about her against the wind though she does not really feel it. The gesture is human, designed to allow her to pass through them without suspicion when she does not wish to be noticed. It will be a shock to Gabriel realise that he will also have to learn these little movements and gestures. "Will you strike him down with holy fire and righteous vengeance?"

"Pride is a great sin," Gabriel responds and she rolls her eyes at him, "it should not be permitted to continue."

"You're thinking like an archangel," she points out.

"I am an archangel," he insists and something in her hardens towards him where she had softened in the face of his confusion. Her magic begins to draw about her, dancing in tendrils of black red that reach to caress and to destroy in the same breath.

"Not any more," her hand flashes out to take hold of his chin, forcing him to look down at her and he can feel the strength in the squeeze of her fingers. She is not as strong as he is, she could never be as strong as an angel, but there is a threat to her all the same. Hecate would not go down easily and she could do a great deal of damage to him in the process. "You are Loki now and you must start thinking the way that he does."

"How would Loki do it?" He asks, withdrawing back into the personality of an emotionless angel in a way that she knows she will find frustrating in the future.

"He wouldn't run in there, blade drawn and announcing his presence," she releases him as she begins to make her way closer to the hall. "He would turn the pride of the lord against him, he would be discrete, he would tear the man's life down around him and then, when he could sink no lower, he would kill him."

"I don't understand," Gabriel admits and she can see that it costs him to show his lack of comprehension. She can see that he does not like admitting that he is not all knowing, not aware of everything.

"Sometimes the punishment takes a matter of moments to deliver," Hecate responds, beginning to walk closer to the building and the people around it. "Sometimes it can take weeks of preparation and sometimes it can take weeks, months, for the intended to finally succumb to it, but they do."

"I would rather they know that the wrath they experience is that of an archangel, not a pagan deity with no true claim to them," there is a wistful note to Gabriel's voice and Hecate knows, without being entirely sure how, that had he still been the messenger of that more powerful God he would not have hesitated to march into that building and smite the occupants.

"Perhaps, but you must remember what you are to become," they are going around in circles, Gabriel cannot let go of his past, and she is becoming annoyed with him. "Besides, these people would recognise Loki's authority as one of their gods, but Gabriel the Messenger would mean nothing to them."

"Is that why we came here? So that you can remind me that I am not to be all that which I was created to be?" His tone is heated, angry, and she can see the flashes of grace in his eyes, can feel the vial of it pulsing at her breast. She has to calm him before he draws the attention of the others. She has to calm him before he draws the attention of his own kind.

"No," she stops herself from reaching to touch him as she would have done the Loki of old, as she would have done her friend. "I brought you here to teach you to become more than you were created to be. Of all of us, angel, you have the chance to adapt, to change with the times as mankind grows. I would be a fool to let you stagnate and settle for a life of solitude and concealment when I can journey with you to become something greater than I already am."

Hecate has known for sometime that human kind will not remain the ignorant children that they were created. She has seen for herself how they grow and change and adapt. Her personality was formed and shaped by these creatures, these beings, even as she coalesced her form into one that they could understand and comprehend. This place has been fascinating to her since she first arrived with many of the rest of her kind, since many of them first gained awareness, it would be a shame to abandon it simply because they cannot change with the passing centuries and the tastes of their children.

"So I'm your path to immortality?" Gabriel's question draws her from her thoughts.

"Don't be foolish," and she actually laughs at him, "I'm a goddess, I'm already immortal."

"You're full of pride, lust, vanity, envy, wrath," he pauses, "is there any sin you haven't committed, Hecate?" She thinks for a moment.

"It depends on your definition I suppose," she muses, "but there's very little I haven't tried at one point or another. It comes with the territory, angel, and it's going to be fun to teach it all to you," she starts off down the hill. "Coming?"

He follows, though she suspects that it is more out of an uncertainty about the way she has melded grace and blood magic together than out of any real desire to be near her. Ahead of them awaits the lord and his people and she knows that it is essential that he get this right as soon as possible. It is only a matter of time before someone notices the change and she needs him to do this so that the join of magic can be as permanent as possible before that someone comes looking. This deadly joke may be just the thing that she needs to do that, but she does not tell him. She does not tell him that if he does this wrong they both die. It is not the time for it, not with him still reeling from the truth of what she has done, not with him still confused and hurting from the loss of his family. She will tell him, however, when the time is right.

Artemis