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Disclaimers
IV.
Lonely- Affected with, characterized by, or causing a depressing feeling of being alone. Lonesome.
All alone, there is no one to save you. You can hide, but the monsters will find you and when they do, they will tear you apart and feed on all that is good in your world. Give it time, even the greatest of men fall apart when there is no one there to hold them together.
Loki spends three days, immersed in a book of the most challenging spells he has ever laid eyes on, before leaving his room in search of Eira.
Stubbornness has kept him away for this long, but when this monster is eating away at him every chance it can get him alone, even he has to accept that a bit of company might do him some good.
He is surprised to find her on the archery range. Strange that the open book neglected to mention a passion for archery, because she is clearly not a novice. Not as skilled as the warriors of the realm, by far, but she seems to know what she's doing, and, more often than not, she hits her target.
He waits in the wings for a moment, watching her. Seeing Eira with such rapt attention is so very different from seeing her banter. She is excited, she is enthralled, and again, he gets that sensation that life is no more than wine in a goblet and she is the glutton who longs to drink until there is nothing left. She wants her fill so desperately that she can only focus on this one thing at a time. She doesn't see Loki replicate himself, once twice, she doesn't notice those replicas until they are right in front of her and she almost falls back in shock.
She pauses, breath catching in her throat as she looks over each replica, trying to tell which Loki is which. When her heart finally stops hammering in her chest, she takes a single second more to look them over, then sends arrows flying straight into their hearts.
"Please don't insult my intelligence, Loki. My mother wrote the book on producing multiples of yourself. Now, why don't you come out from hiding and we can have a real fight?" Loki finds himself chuckling at her before she even finishes her sentence and he steps forward.
"I'm not looking to pick a fight." He insists, and she spins around looking him dead on in the eye with that same hungry look.
"I don't believe you." She says after a moment's worth of analyzing him, and again, he laughs, this time, more with her than at her.
"And why is that?"
"I told you that the last time we met. Your silver tongue is extraordinary when it comes to weaving lies." She reminds him, taking one long stride forward as she does, never dropping her defenses or allowing the bow to fall too far away from her.
"You have no way to prove that theory of yours."
"I have no reason to need to." He scoffs a t her and shakes his head.
"Then I regret to inform you, your knack for the truth is getting you nowhere. I wasn't looking for a fight." He takes one more step in her direction as she cocks her head to the side, trying to decide if she should believe this or not.
"Perhaps not initially…But the prospect of it does interest you now, very much." Perhaps her one track mind seems to be good for something, when she pours herself into it, her observations seem to be reasonably accurate.
"Maybe a little." He smirks. "Tell me, Eira, do you have any interest in sorcery?" He lifts an eyebrow.
"Interest, yes. Talent, absolutely not."
"Then this won't even be fun." He says.
He zaps himself from in front of her to right behind her, and the second he does, he hurtles a knife at her. She is quick though, and manages to dodge it at the last second.
"What the—" But she doesn't even have time to finish her sentence. The knives that were gripped tightly in Loki's hands just a moment ago come flying at her now and again, she has to go out of her way to dodge them. She takes a step left, but the second she does, he teleports there. Before he can get his chance to attack again, she jumps and kicks him hard, with both legs, in the stomach.
Her back smacks against the stony ground, but now that he's faltered, she can wrap her mind around the situation. She quickly loads her bow and sends a stream of arrows his way, all of which he dodges, but one comes very close to hitting him, and if it weren't for a last minute teleportation out of there, he'd have received the same punishment his replicas did.
Eira hops to her feet again, this time loading quick enough so that he doesn't have time to teleport out. Instead, Loki sprints away from the attacks and slings a fistful of knives at her. The girl spins away as quickly as she can, but in her effort to dodge the attack, two of the five knives manage to wedge themselves into the pouch of arrows on her back.
The two stay stationary for a moment, eyes locked, hands both positioned to reach for their weapons if needed. And then, Loki breaks that stand still and teleports behind her. It is all she can do to turn around and hold her bow up as a shield while he sends some more knives in her direction.
Again, she dodges the bulk of the attack, but one slips through her bow before she has time to block it, and suddenly it has carved a nice mark on the side of her face.
She lets out a sharp cry in pain, rips the arrows from the back of her pouch and throws them at Loki with such a force. Unfortunately, this force has know precision in it, and the knives miss him by a long shot, but do manage to embed themselves into a tree on the far side of the quadrant, where he is unlikely to bother retrieving them from.
"Oh the choice between strength and accuracy." He clucks his tongue to taunt her as her appears behind her again. This time, she doesn't bother with weapons, instead, merely swings her arm around as hard and fast as she can and elbows him right in the nose. She hears a low cracking nose and hears him grunt this time.
He teleports back, keeping as much distance between them as possible, before he sends another handful of daggers at her, and in his effort to be quick, he manages to elicit a loud, painful, pop in his wrist.
Thankfully, it is not a wasted pain and she ends up receiving a knife to the knee. Fortunately for her, the dagger bounces off the bone in her knee. Another cry comes from her lips and this time, when he teleports in, he knocks her down.
He takes a step forward, smirking victoriously as he sets his foot gently down on her stomach. Before he has the chance to lean over and taunt her though, she snatches a stray arrow off of the ground, loads it into her bow and aims it directly at his face.
She holds it steady as he leans over her and for a moment, neither do anything, and then, once she actually has hope that she can continue fighting, he kicks her bow away and leans down even further over her.
"That was for the nose." He murmurs.
For a second, he holds himself steady, hoping to watch her squirm, but Eira looks up at him like she is merely exhilarated and that even a loss is something that she craves if it manes that she can take in a new experience. Finally, he finds himself less than amused by her reaction, takes his foot off of her, steps back and offers her a hand to help her up.
She considers it for a minute, and instead of grabbing his hand, she grabs his wrist and pulls herself up with it. When he looks at her with an eyebrow lifted, she simply shrugs.
"I'd rather risk looking like an idiot than being dropped again." She says, arching her back in an attempt to stretch. It cracks loudly and she groans, rolling her neck back all the while. "I'm sorry about your nose, by the way." She looks at him with that sincere look in her eyes again, and yet again, it makes him both nauseated and pleased. At least she is consistent.
"I heal quickly. I'm sorry about your face." She turns to him, looking shocked and offended and concerned, but at the same time, the smile playing at the corners of her lips tells him that she knows he didn't mean it the way she is taking it. She bursts out laughing, and of course, but he does offer her the smallest of smiles as he readjusts the position of his nose.
He repositions until it falls back into place and she laughs while she cleans the blood off of her face and when they are done tending to their injuries, she gives him a smile that isn't laced in sarcasm, isn't amused, isn't anything but pleased.
He squirms a bit now and looks away from her and once again, finds himself surprised by how easily she takes his rejection. She shrugs, continues smiling and begins walking around the arena, gathering up the arrows that she discharged in their fight.
"So, did that tame your curiosity?" She asks and he looks over to where she is hunched down, looking at one particularly mangled arrow.
"For the time being. I was right though, it wasn't exactly a fair fight." She seems to acknowledge this.
"I did the best I could and broke the god of mischief's nose. My ego's not too sore."
"You lost." He observes. She sighs and turns around to look at him with a look that sort of says "yes, I did and I still don't understand why you feel a need to bring that up."
"Life isn't fun if we only ever win."
He wants to tell her, that life is just short of morose when one spends their days fighting a losing battle, but manages to restrain himself, more for his sake than hers.
Again, that whole issue with admitting to something making it true.
And more than anything, he does not want to think of himself as fighting a losing battle with Thor and his father, because he knows there will be no chance for the underdog to crawl away.
"So, if you didn't come here to fight, what did you want?" She asks, now retying the laces of her boots, trying to clean up the mess that the battle left, but still wearing her scars with pride.
Loki isn't sure how to phrase it, he doesn't need Eira's ego soaring through the roof and he certainly does not want to admit the real reason he fled from his chambers.
"You are not a sorceress, you couldn't understand." He tells her. She lifts an eyebrow and laughs this light hearted little laugh that does not fit what he is feeling at all.
"Try me." Always looking for a challenge. Alright, fine, he will give her one, let her decipher this.
"Being cooped up with books of spells for days upon end has a way of turning ones thoughts against oneself. I was looking for a distraction."
"So you were lonely?" He stiffens. Perhaps her ability to discover the truth is far more advanced than he originally perceived. He scowls at her.
"There is a difference between being lonely and being alone."
"I know. And you were lonely." He frowns at her and looks at her like she is nothing more than a foolish child, making foolish assumptions, and again, she takes his rejection so well. She doesn't falter, doesn't flinch, doesn't apologize.
Loki stands there for a moment, frowning all the while, and although he takes off very quickly after, he does nothing to argue against her.