Disclaimer: It's still not mine! Stop asking!
A/n: Sorry I took so long - but believe it or not, your reviews really helped motivate/guilt me into being productive when all I really wanted to do between shifts was sit in front of the TV and vegetate until I started to grow mold. Also, thanks to those who pointed out my grammar mistakes, if you see more, please continue to do so. I often miss mistakes because I have to edit here and there when I find time, and constructive critique helps me become a better writer. I promise to go back and re-edit when work quits holding my head under the water waiting for the bubbles to stop.
So anyway, behold the fruits of your labors: the second half of the chapter!
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I will not bow, I will not break
I will shut the world away
I will not fall, I will not fade
I will take your breath away
-Breaking Benjamin
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For a moment, nothing happened. Then…
"Oh...!" Jane gasped.
Her mind buzzed, thoughts bubbling up like a fountain, in a jumble faster than she could track them. Then the world inside her head folded open like the bud of a flower bursting into bloom and her thoughts began to flow in all directions like a flood of nectar, sweet and liquid, out to the farthest limits of her perception.
Her head fell back and her eyes fell closed in pure delight. Ideas, information, inferences, imaginings, stray notions and secret thoughts, dreams, hopes, wishes and goals, all spread and coalesced and spread again, sliding over and against each other in a delirious stream of mental energy. She tried to latch onto them as they flowed through the front of her mind, but they slipped through her mental fingers and moved on, around and through. Jane heard someone laughing quietly, and thought maybe it was her, as she chased the parade of thought around inside her own head like a child chasing through a horde of butterflies.
Loki was right, the joy isn't in the knowing, it's in the hunt… one idle thought said, temporarily freed from the labyrinth of denial she kept it perpetually locked in, before fluttering away out of her reach. How can he know me so well, when I barely know myself?
Unbeknownst to her, liquid light like molten gold began to drip from the tip of the stylus clutched in her hand, rolling down to spill over her fingers. The touch roused her, cutting her abruptly out of the transcendental mindscape. She opened her eyes in time to see it swirl up around her like a liquid trail of glowing golden ink, and form itself into a radiant maelstrom of words and numbers, essays, formulae, histories, theorems and theoretical models, charts, diagrams, and more and more and more, inscribed onto the very air around her, until she stood inside a column of figures and symbols made of light.
From beyond the storm of intellect, a thoughtful murmur reached her ears. "Oh…" came a breath of amazement behind her, but it was so low she couldn't tell if it was from Hilde or Finn.
As the maelstrom slowed and stilled, despite the wealth of information arrayed around her, Jane found that, wherever she looked, she instantly recognized each piece of knowledge on sight – they were hers, after all. She knew without having to be told. They had come from inside her head. Even though it was only air and light, she felt suddenly, inordinately safe, walled in and surrounded by her own knowledge, and in defiance of her situation, she couldn't stop herself from smiling with pride, satisfaction and sheer, simple joy at seeing her lifetime of collected knowledge on display; a hunter admiring her trophies.
Jane could see little but shadows beyond the wall of light, but from the way the buzz of the crowd faded, she guessed Amundson had made some sort of gesture for silence.
"Come forth, Master of Scholars. What say you, Master Ebisa?" Amundson asked into the sudden void of sound. His voice remained uninflected; he sounded perfectly unimpressed.
There was a shifting in the shadows, and abruptly the bright column around her flared and flurried and was sucked away. Jane blinked and tried to follow as it was drawn into a vortex, compressing into a pulsing little ball of light, to descend into the open palm of a small, silver-haired old woman in blue.
So this was the head Scholar, Jane surmised, the woman who would be her superior. The expression she wore was prim, remote, and her eyes were somehow vaguely disapproving. Despite the dignity with which she held herself, she moved with a fidgety nervous energy in her frame, as though she were perpetually preoccupied with other matters. She reminded Jane of a scolding old librarian on the verge of hissing for silence.
Master Ebisa pursed her lips critically at Jane, as though to say "I won't be fooled by flash and glitter like these ignorant masses", and held her hand along with the ball of light, over a crystal slate she held in the crook of her arm. The golden light of Jane's knowledge filtered down into it and was absorbed. Master Ebisa produced a stylus of her own from within the folds of her blue robes began running it over the slate, as though sifting through sand in search of a diamond.
Jane looked on, unaccountably nervous. She could never remember getting anything but a perfect score on a test, but waiting for test results had always made her nervous anyway. So when Master Ebisa looked up from the slate with an expression of disgruntled shock and cautious thoughtfulness, the satisfaction Jane felt was exponentially greater.
"You are not yet fifty?" the old woman asked, her voice high and creaky, but veined with steel all the same as her eyes flicked back and forth between Jane and whatever she was looking at on the slate.
"Er, no…" Jane replied.
Master Ebisa's expression morphed to include a grudging respect and, uncomfortably, a hint of something covetously appraising as she peered up at her, as though Jane were a rare specimen she wanted to collect and pin to a cork board. She darted her eyes back down to the slate and continued reading voraciously as she spoke.
"For her youth and inexperience, the child has… extensive knowledge of the physical universe." Her words were brisk and clipped, as though it hurt her pride to have to speak them, but she refused to shy away from the unpleasant duty. "Well-rounded understanding of chemical and biological nature as well," she went on, her voice dropping to a distracted mutter as her eyes flew over the glow of the crystal slate, "... suitable grasp of four of the five primal forces... passable knowledge of the history and literature of her kind... engineering... creative construction... interest, but little aptitude for the healing arts... little appreciation or interest in the graceful arts... almost no knowledge whatsoever of military strategy or battle tactics..."
"Your conclusion, Master?" Amundson interrupted, studying Jane with a casual disinterest.
Master Ebisa sighed and looked up at Jane. Her mouth remained pinched, but her eyes narrowed in what Jane might almost call approval.
"My conclusion is that it would be a shameful waste not to cultivate such a mind. She distinctly lacks knowledge of anything concrete beyond the bounds of her own world, but that may be attributed to isolation and lack of opportunity. She has enormous potential to learn and grow, despite her origins. What's more, she shows signs of generative intelligence. Much of her knowledge is self-discovered rather than taught. She has the ability to know, and to teach, but most of all, she has the ability to discover new things." She turned to Amundson, and Jane thought she saw a flicker of accusation in the old master's eyes. "If she is allowed to stay, she will prove to be an asset, rather than a detriment, to the Order."
Amundson steepled his fingers, studying Master Ebisa through the gaps. The two masters stared steadily at one another. Master Ebisa turned away first with a sniff.
"Novice!" she snapped.
"Huh?" Jane blinked. "Er, yes?"
"Yes, what?" the master snapped again.
"Um… Yes, Master?"
"Your task to pass standard," Master Ebisa commanded, "will be to determine the current spectral frequency shift between Asgard and Midgard, calculate the rate of shift and devise an equation to describe the physical distance between the two at any given point in time. You will then cross-reference your findings with this "Foster Theory" of yours and write up a forecast for the amount of energy it would take to generate the 'Einstein-Rosen bridge', as you call it, between here and your homeworld, including any necessary adjustments to account for gravimetric interference from interstellar bodies."
Jane's eyebrows shot up. "Yes ma'am… er, Master," she replied, and it was all she could do to conceal her abject relief and keep the surprise off of her face.
From the looks on several faces in the crowd – none of them scholars, she noted – the task the master had set her sounded like a tall order. It was quite a mouthful, at the very least. But Jane - and a number of scholars in the crowd, including Amundson, it seemed, from the way his mouth pursed with disapproval – knew that for someone with her knowledge and skills, it was actually a relatively simple assignment. In fact, it was almost a giveaway, it would be so easy for her; Jane could have it done in a couple of days, and most of that time would be taken up with simply learning how to use the data terminals.
The old woman strode forward and plucked the stylus from Jane's hand. Jane startled as her mind suddenly snapped closed, her knowledge and perception folding back in and rearranging itself back into its usual structure. She shook her head, blinking, and almost missed it when the Master of Scholars gave her hand an awkward pat, then scowled at her as though to say "you had damn well better pass standard". Then she turned and, still scratching away with her stylus at the record of Jane's collected knowledge on the crystal slate, disappeared back into the quietly murmuring crowd, which was ogling Jane with new interest.
Jane barely refrained from grinning like a jackal. One down... but the urge to plaster a gloating smile on her face quickly faded. With her mind back inside her head, she thought she suddenly understood why the Master of Scholars had given her such a simple task.
Because despite this success, what came next would be anything but simple for her. She wanted to look back at Hilde and Finn, but she didn't quite dare.
Now the true tests began.
"Well done, Novice Jane," Amundson said, folding his arms and running a thoughtful finger across his bottom lip, looking down at her as though searching for something. Finally, he gestured to the two remaining objects hanging in the air between them. "Choose again."
Biting her lip, Jane flicked her eyes between the sword and the crystal ball. Neither held the slightest bit of appeal. Nor did she have the first clue what to do with either. Swallowing hard and throwing caution to the wind, she stepped up to the sword and wrapped her fingers around he cool, glittering metal of the hilt. Her touch seemed to free the sword from whatever force held it immobile, and the blade dropped, jarringly heavy in her hand, to clang against the bejeweled floor. The palm of her hand tingled with pins and needles, but otherwise nothing happened. She flicked a defiant glare up at Amundson, then frowned down at the sword, at a loss as to what more she was supposed to do with it.
Without warning, the tingling in her hands shot up her arms. She grunted as it piercing deep into her flesh, then gasped, her eyes flying wide, as muscles all over her body began to tingle, then to prickle, then to burn, just this side of pain. Her arms jumped and twitched disturbingly for a long moment, then tightened, her limbs shifting, her balance solidifying. The blade's weight seemed to evaporate, settling more evenly into her hand. Jane drew in a deep breath, and felt every cell in her body zing with awareness of fresh oxygen to burn, fairly sparkling with energy.
So distracted by the alarmingly alien sensation was she that she almost didn't notice when a great, square-jawed bear of a man, with a grizzled salt-and-pepper beard and a scar down his left cheek, stepped into the open circle formed by the crowd. Jane blinked several times into the breastplate of the man's armor, then had to crane her neck to look up, up, up at him. He was incredibly imposing, and might easily have been frightening, except that his eyes held a kind of amicable commiseration, as though this entire embarrassing display disappointed him to the core.
That didn't stop him from drawing an absolutely massive broadsword from the scabbard at his hip.
"Defend yourself, novice," he rumbled at her.
It was the only warning Jane received before he swung the sword up over his head. Jane had just enough time to give an undignified squeak of alarm and squeeze her eyes shut as the killing edge descended.
There was a deafening clang, and her eyes flew open. Her arm, trembling with the effort, was raised over her head, the golden sword still clutched in her hand, blocking the battle master's blow mere inches from her face.
She hadn't moved her arm. Her body had moved on its own.
The blades hissed as they drew apart, and the master attacked again, swinging his sword in around in an arc towards Jane's undefended flank. The golden sword rotated in her hand and parried, just barely preventing the broadsword from sinking into the flesh below her ribs. In a flash the master's blade was up again, and then it was everywhere at once, raining blows on her from every conceivable direction, slashing and stabbing until she cried out from the shock of the heavy impacts against her sword, falling in such rapid succession that Jane would have been riddled with a dozen holes if her body had not taken on a life of its own, dancing, spinning, deflecting, her cloak flaring as she spun all the way around, the golden sword driving down parallel to her body, arcing up and sweeping the enemy sword aside, countering the master move for move.
A shallow cut opened on the back of her arm, driving a whimper of pain from her hungry lungs. She almost lost her grip, but a terrible suspicion lurked in the pit of her stomach that the battle master, skilled as he certainly was, might not be able to stop his powerful swing in time to keep from killing her if the golden sword wasn't there to keep forcing it back.
Another blow fell from above, like the first, and once more the golden sword caught it. Their hilts locked, and Jane stared, wide-eyed, into the serenely untroubled eyes of the old battle master. She was shaking and panting with effort, her body on fire at its absolute limit. He hadn't even broken a sweat. Slowly, inexorably, he increased the pressure of his sword against hers. Jane gritted her teeth; a low, desperate noise, not unlike a growl, vibrated through her chest as her screaming muscles fought to hold him back and keep him from pressing the sword down against her exposed throat. It was like an ant trying to hold back the elephant, inch by inch, whose foot would inevitably crush it.
In a last, desperate bid, she felt her arms tighten minutely, and her body dropped, twisted and rolled away. Jane screamed in pain and frustration as her hip and shoulder hit the ground hard. Her fingers, slick with sweat and numb from the hammering she'd received, lost their grip on the hilt. The sword clattered away from her, and she rolled roughly to a halt against the dais, dizzy, panting, her body quivering with adrenaline. With a gasp, she twisted, levering herself up on one elbow and turning towards her opponent, just in time to meet the winking point of the broad sword, its deadly tip aimed at a spot just below her chin. Instinct froze her in place. She followed the gleaming length of the blade up into unruffled calm of the battle master's eyes.
"Do you yield?" he asked placidly.
Jane cleared her throat and attempted to swallow her galloping heart back down into her chest.
"Wholeheartedly," she said shakily.
The old warrior nodded, and the sword swung away to her intense relief, sliding with a quiet hiss back into its scabbard. An outstretched hand replaced it. Jane hesitated only a moment, then took it with a grateful nod, and allowed herself to be lifted back to her feet, with the ease of an adult sweeping up a small child. She was proud that she only swayed a little before she found her balance and began struggling to get her breath back. With it came a whole host of hurts all over her body, from splints in her forearms to strained muscles in her shoulders and legs, and not least the injury on her arm. It was barely more than a scratch, really, but it had bled along her wrist and over her fingers, leaving a sprinkling of little red dots down her white clothing. The test couldn't have lasted for more than half a minute, and Jane felt like she'd been through a meat grinder.
"What say you, Bronn, Master of Warriors?" came Amundson's voice, and Jane made herself push aside the pain and concentrate on the matter at hand. She looked around to find the crowd watching with eager, interested eyes. Some were shaking their heads, others were nodding in approval. Many of the Asgardians in red appeared to be rehashing, deconstructing and debating over various moves she and the master had made.
"Admirable precision and control. Passable balance and coordination," the battle master replied – Bronn apparently. "Flexible enough, but slower than I would like. Weak as a child, but there are ways around that."
"Your conclusion, Master?"
"The novice is not fit for close combat."
"I see," Amundson said, a small, icy smirk threatening to pull at his thin lips. Jane felt her heart stutter, and heard a collective intake of breath from the crowd. But the Master of Warriors wasn't finished.
"However," Master Bronn went on, "she could be trained to act as ranged auxiliary." Jane couldn't help the relieved little whimper that escaped her as her heart started up again. The master glanced at her, then away again, dismissing her concern. "I see no reason she could not be taught a basic form of self defense, as well."
Amundson narrowed his eyes. "That is your final word, Master?"
"It is, Master of Masters."
A slow dangerous smile, full of unpleasant promise, spread over Amundson's face.
"Very well," he said quietly
Master Bronn, apparently unimpressed, turned to gaze down at Jane, and she once again felt like an ant staring up at an elephant. He swept his eyes over her, and zeroed in on the dagger hanging from her belt.
"Can you wield that blade at all?" he asked her bluntly.
Jane frowned down at it, then shrugged.
"I know which end is sharp. That's about it."
Master Bronn grunted in acknowledgement, and from the slight crinkling at the corner of his eye, Jane got the impression that he approved of her frankness.
"To pass standard, you will learn to use that dagger to disarm an opponent wielding a bladed weapon."
"O... okay," Jane nodded, then shook her head, "I mean, yes, Master."
Master Bronn grunted again, then bent to retrieve the golden sword and lumbered off into the crowd. Jane watched him go, recalling Hilde's praise of the Archive's battle masters. Jane hoped she was right about them, and that the battle master's assessment of her meant that she really was capable of disarming someone with a dagger.
Then she then steeled herself and turned back to face the terminal once more. There was only one final object hovering in the air before her.
"Come forth, novice," Amundson said, and Jane could hear the vindictive calm in his voice, "the final test is at hand."
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Grete held her breath as the Midgardian stepped up before the crystal orb. Master Amundson's farce had been riveting, if disgraceful, up until now. But this was where it ended. The orb was an object designed to gauge the innate magical power of whoever held it. Midgardians were sometimes capable of tapping into the natural energies of the world around them, but they had no magic of their own.
When Jane Foster touched it, and the orb remained dark, she and her triad would be summarily dismissed from the Order.
When that happened, there would be no further reason for the Midgardian to remain on Asgard. She would leave, and they would lose their key to defeating the enemy.
"What will you do now?" she asked the prince quietly, suppressing her thread of worry. "Will you find some excuse to keep her at the palace? Perhaps…"
She glanced at the prince and her words trailed off and died on her tongue.
Prince Loki's eyes fairly glittered with anticipation.
"Look at them," he said; Grete did not think he was even aware she had spoken to him. A hungry little smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth as his eyes swept over the gathering in the mirror, which had gone very still, mesmerized with suspense and subdued by resignation. "All of them so certain she's about to fail. I wonder who will be most surprised…" He huffed out a breathy little laugh. "Foolish question," he answered himself. "Of course, it will be Jane."
.
Trepidation slowed Jane's steps until she felt like she was trying to walk through sand, but all too soon she stood before the floating crystal ball. The room was eerily quiet, and she seemed to feel the blaze of every eye in the room like flames licking at her skin. A bead of sweat on her brow trickled down her cheek, tickling like a tear, but she didn't bother wiping it away.
If I can jump into a black hole and survive, I can handle anything the throw at me.
Doubt tried to lock up her aching limbs, but she denied herself the opportunity to think her courage away and plunged ahead. This was it - all or nothing. She reached up and pressed her hands to either side of the cool, smooth surface of the crystal ball. Its weightlessness fell away in an instant, but it wasn't nearly as heavy as it looked. In fact, it was incredibly light, as though the crystal that made it up was a thin membrane, and the ball itself was hollow.
For a heartbeat nothing happened. Then another.
And another.
Another bead of sweat traced down Jane's face and her stomach tightened with dread.
Nothing was happening.
Another low rumbled rolled through the assembled Asgardians; Jane could see them in the reflection of the crystal ball, frowning, shrugging, shaking their heads, disappointed. Jane thought she could see Finn behind her, closing his eyes and bowing his head, and Hilde, standing rigid, her jaw set against terrible pain, her hands balled into tight fists at her sides.
And above her, upside down on the surface of the sphere, Amundson leered down at her, his face stretched and distorted with the curve of the sphere, twisted with satisfaction at her failure.
This can't happen… she thought numbly. Her ears were ringing. It can't end here…
"What is the matter, Novice?" Amundson's voice rang out over her head, the same ugly note of taunting in his voice that he'd directed at Hilde and Finn before. "Why don't you simply try harder?"
It just can't end here… Jane's mind whispered, her whole heart rejecting it, and that whisper echoed down through her mind, reverberating down through her being until that one thought rang like a gong throughout her consciousness. I can't fail now. Not like this…
"What's the matter, Novice? Nothing to say? No more grand speeches and defiant eyes?"
It can't... Not when I haven't achieved anything…
"Well then, if you're quite through making a fool of yourself…"
...not when I haven't healed anything…
Deep, deep down, past the dead seal of uruz, past the dark tunnel where a beast once lurked, past a sleeping well of deep, deep water, something sparked to life inside her.
...I won't let it end like this! I won't! I…
The rune pendant around her neck crackled suddenly awake with furious green sparks. Jane felt something constrict painfully in her chest. She gasped, her head flying up as tears filled her eyes, and that was the only warning any of them had.
The orb erupted in a tidal wave of green light. Exclamations of shock and amazement rose through the air as the Asgardian raised their arms or ducked their heads, shielding their eyes from the sudden blinding glare. The orb shined like a miniature sun made of green fire, and the rune pendant, in a firestorm of outrage at the foreign magic invading Jane's senses, sent shrieking bolts of green lighting lancing through the air, searching for some target to strike. Crystal, it seemed, conducted the surges of protective magic with unfortunate efficiency. The data patterns in the walls began to strobe and chase, and throughout the room, masters and seekers cried out in surprise and dismay as many of the consoles sparked and smoked and exploded, overloaded by the rampant energy discharge. People began to jostle in an effort to get away from the terminals, put out the small fires that had sprung up over the damaged machinery and figure out what in the world was going on. For a long few moments, chaos reigned.
Jane noticed none of it. Her eyes, flowing with tears, were locked on the contents of the crystal ball. Inside it, in the hollow place sealed away from the outside world, Jane saw, past the distortion of her own reflection, her father's face, inert in a mockery of peace, in that horrible, endless, world-shattering moment before they closed his coffin.
The hideous ache in the center of her chest pulled tighter, tighter, tighter, until each ragged breath was a struggle. But it was nothing next to the empty agony of absence and loss screaming in the gaping chasm where a poet might say her heart should be.
Daddy... no... please, no...
"Dad..."
"Silence!" Amundson shouted somewhere in the distance, beyond the bone-deep sorrow that had suddenly encompassed her world. "I will have silence! Master Heinrich, restrain her!"
There was a devastating wrench in reality, and suddenly her father's face and the eye-searing green fire were gone. So was the crystal ball. Jane blinked, and found herself on her knees on the floor of the Grand Terminal, shaking like a leaf, her face soaked with tears. A pair of boots came into focus, and she looked up to find a rotund, snowy-haired old man in green passing the crystal, cradled in a swath of cloth, to another mage. Two more mages stood at either side of her, their hands extended, green energy pooling at the ready in their palms, their faces warily determined. The old mage, by contrast, smiled kindly down at her, his eyes crinkling with apparent amusement around the edges. He reached out, but stopped just short of touching her head, his hand recoiling slightly as the rune pendant sparked with warning.
"Pull yourself together now, novice," he said quietly, not unkindly, then turned his hand around and carefully offered it to her. "Calm your heart."
Jane stared up at him, all confusion for a moment, before the blinders of that old grief began to fold away, and she remembered where she was and what she was doing. She peered around at the angrily smoking terminals, the flickering staccato disarray within the crystal veins in the walls, and the uneasily milling crowd, shot through with confusion and excitement but nevertheless trying to come to order as the Master of Masters had commanded.
I... I did this? Her heart leapt. That wasn't possible. She'd hoped to bully the thing into reacting somehow through sheer force of will, just enough to squeeze through Amundson's trap, but this… it was like she'd overloaded the circuit. And that wasn't possible. It can't have come from me… An irrational, cloying panic surged up from deep inside her and she had to fight not to shiver and curl in on herself. The very idea that she might have been the source of this energy discharge was... was... Her stomach clenched up at the frightening wrongness of the idea. It can't have, it isn't possible…
She sucked in a deep breath, willing herself to calm down. There had to be a rational explanation. It really wasn't possible. Barring inter-species hybrids like Alexa Solberg and her family, humans didn't have the Asgardian "magical" ability. So how…?
Her hand flew to the rune pendant, still fitfully spitting angry green sparks.
Alexa's magic… it was the only explanation. She looked up, her eyes hardening as she took the hand of the Master of Mages and let him help her back to her feet. The Asgardian energy stored in the pendant, whatever made it work… that had to be what the crystal ball had reacted to. Nothing else made sense.
But Amundson didn't know that.
Jane raised her gaze to his, a light of pure, certain defiance in her eyes. Amundson's handsome face was pinched and twisted; he looked ready to chew glass. It was clear now that he was the one who didn't want to continue. But the crowd had finally come to some semblance of order and quieted, and everyone was focusing now on the silent tableau between the head of the Order and the alien novice. It was his turn to be trapped by his own rash words, and he could do nothing but move forward.
"What say you, Master of Mages," he spat, already knowing the answer.
The old man looked between her and Amundson, his expression philosophical.
"Vast magical potential, Master of Masters," he said with a helpless shrug. "Almost no control over it at all, I would say, and I would strongly recommend a journey in, but the potential is unquestionably there." He turned to squint thoughtfully at Jane. "You are certain you are Midgardian?"
"Last time I checked," she deadpanned in return, earning a quiet chorus of nervous, hastily repressed laughter from the onlookers.
"We Asgardians always think we've seen it all…" the old magic master murmured distantly. Then he smiled pleasantly between them, as though they were all chatting around the water cooler about last night's TV shows. "Well, I can't explain it, but there it is! Novice Jane, your task… hmmm," he pulled thoughtfully at his downy white beard. "Your task to pass standard will be to levitate an object, to be chosen at the time of the test, across the span of this room. It is a simple thing, but there is no shortcut. Either you can do it, or you cannot. Great good luck, child," he said with a smile. "This ought to be interesting!"
Jane watched him move away into the crowd, just as the other two masters had done, her head whirling with questions. But one solid, inescapable fact remained clear – she had bested Amundson's unfair tests! Now she just had to figure out how to pass standard...
Amundson left her no time to celebrate her little victory.
"Tell me, Novice Jane," he said, his tone once more deceptively cool and controlled. "How many kings are in the lineage of your tribe?"
"My… you mean my nation?" she asked, thrown by the sudden turn of his questioning. "Um… well, do you mean my country of origin, or my current residence? I have dual citizenship so... er... but, I was born in America, so... um, we don't have kings there, we elect presidents that serve for a maximum of two terms of four years…"
"Fascinating," Amundson cut her off in a supremely bored tone. "How many?"
"Forty-four," she snapped primly.
"I see. And what is your weapon of choice?"
"I…" she frowned at the unexpected question, and was on the point of saying she didn't have a weapon of choice, before something insightful Master Bronn had said brought her up short. Ranged auxiliary… "A bow," she replied, infusing as much confidence into her tone as she could muster. Two years on the archery team in high school probably didn't actually qualify her to claim it, but it was better than admitting to this assembly of battle-loving aliens that she had no real, practical weapons experience at all.
"Very well then..." With a long-suffering sigh, as though Jane had somehow disappointed him, rather than thwarting him, Amundson stood, and the gathered Order tensed as though coming to attention. "Novice Hilde, your task is to memorize the lineage of leaders of Novice Foster's nation-state in chronological order of their rule. Novice Finn, you will use a hunting bow to shoot an arrow, unaided by magic, into the center of a target from two hundred paces. Do these things, and you will pass standard and be accepted as full-fledged seekers. Novice Jane," he turned the full weight of his eyes on her, but this time Jane was ready for them, and wasn't even tempted to flinch under his piercing gaze. "You have received all three of your tasks. Complete them to the satisfaction of the masters that assigned them, and you too will pass standard. And be welcomed," he raised his arms to encompass the gathering, his tone ominous as a doomsday prophecy, "as one of us."
Jane gritted her teeth, her anger seeping back in at the prejudicial double standard, and the obvious display of wounded martyrdom, as though she was the one in the wrong here.
"You know, it hardly seems fair that… mph!" A hand abruptly clapped over her mouth.
"Thank you, Master of Masters," Hilde said over Jane's head as she wrapped her fingers painfully tight around her arm, holding her still as though worried Jane might try to scramble over the top of the terminal and launch herself at Amundson's throat. "We are grateful for your forbearance."
Amundson swept all of them with a final scathing gaze, then turned away, descending from the terminal and retreating through a back passageway, followed by his furiously silent entourage.
The room erupted with cacophonous conversation, everyone speaking excitedly at once, but Jane didn't have time to make any sense of it, before Hilde grabbed Finn and dragged both of them forcibly towards the lift like the hounds of hell were on her heels. The crowd parted before them, but Jane could still feel the relentless scorch of their eyes, watching with morbid fascination and hungry curiosity. She shuddered under the weight of their expectation, and gratefully let herself be pulled into the shelter of the lift.
.
"Green..." Prince Loki breathed, unabashedly excited. "So it is indeed true."
"You knew," Grete said. It wasn't a question; the satisfied gleam in the prince's eye said it all.
"Of course," he nodded, and she imagined she saw something like relief hovering around the edges of his suddenly smugly amused expression. "Or rather, suspected. There have been some… unmistakable signs recently."
"And yet, a Midgardian with magic is unheard of..."
"It has been known to happen," he replied mysteriously, shifting his eyes away, mischief trying to curve his mouth up at the corners.
"With all possible respect, majesty, it really hasn't," Grete snapped. Then she reigned herself in tightly. He was still her liege. "My prince, is this her significance in defending against the invader? Not that her power is unimpressive but… there are others, as powerful, and with more experience…"
"Don't misunderstand." The prince the spell and the mirror with its window on the Grand Terminal vanished. "The magic is just a symptom. Evidence of her true purpose. The cause of that power is the key that will bring us victory."
"But majesty…"
"Master Grete, is the name 'Baldur' familiar to you?"
Grete froze, too stunned to do anything but blank her face of all emotion on instinct. That name was not to be spoken. Ever. Orders from the highest authority had been issued, oaths had been taken, and it was stricken from all record and all posterity. It was the severest possible punishment; not mere death in body, but death in the memory of the people. Prince Loki was too young to have ever known that name. He had not yet even been born yet. Grete's heart squeezed with that old sorrow that all Asgardians had felt the day that name had been taken from their lips forever. And yet, Prince Loki stood before her now with that name upon his.
He watched her with steady, unblinking eyes.
"No," she said carefully, meeting his eyes.
The Prince went on staring for a long tense moment. Then he shrugged blithely.
"Well, then, I suppose you will simply have to trust me," he smirked at her ruefully. "As I am forced to trust you."
"Your majesty..."
He narrowed his eyes, regarding her thoughtfully. Grete stared back with implacable expectation, exponentially more insistant than before. He sighed, then smirked in self-deprecation and looked away.
"Suffice it to say," he told her, "if I am right, everything began with Baldur's transgression. And... if I am right..." he looked back at her, and his eyes unreadable, "Baldur's secret is the key to ending it."
.
"What were you thinking?" Hilde demanded as they stepped off the lift.
Jane, lost in thought, startled at the anger in her companion's voice. She stopped short as the taller woman strode past her, then rounded on her, hurt shining in her eyes.
"I…"
"I told you not to do anything rash! I told you not to get on Master Amundson's bad side!" Hilde ground her teeth together so tightly that Jane was amazed they didn't crack. "You defied him in front of everyone, you questioned his authority, disrupted the proceedings..."
Jane shook her head, baffled by this outburst. She'd expected to be raked over the coals for risking the tests. It had been selfish of her; her triad had every right to question her for risking their futures on that kind of gamble - though she'd been hoping that her success would mitigate some of their anger.
She hadn't expected to be berated for defending them.
"Hilde... you heard what they were saying... the way he let them speak to you... the way he..." Just thinking of it made Jane's blood want to boil again. "He can't talk to you that way!"
"He's the Master of Masters!" Hilde almost shouted, throwing up her hands. "Of course he can!" She shook her head and narrowed her eyes at Jane. "Why did you really do it?"
"I just..." Jane traced her memory back, searching for the first moment of anger, and felt her chest ache with sympathetic humiliation and helplessness. The faces behind the terminal shifted to old classmates and colleagues; she saw Don amongst them, laughing at her behind her back, then to her face, calling her names, mocking her theories and abilities, all because they didn't understand that being different was her strength, not her weakness. "I know what it's like to be treated that way," she admitted at length. "I just couldn't stand to see it happening to someone else."
Hilde's eyes widened, then fell closed, her head bowing. Jane frowned to see her fists clench so tight that they shook.
"How could you be so selfish?" she hissed.
Jane took a faltering step back, shocked. It melted quickly into a flash of anger, fueled by the excess adrenaline still coursing through her system.
"Selfish?" she repeated, outrage coloring her tone. "I stood up for you!"
"You did as you pleased instead of thinking of your triad!" Hilde shot back. "You went against everything we asked of you, simply because you couldn't stand it! You gave the Master of Masters every excuse he could want to sabotage us, and now, instead of just three impossible tests, there are five! I can't memorize a list of alien kings - I can't even memorize a list of our kings! And Finn can't hit a target at ten paces, much less a hundred. He gave us those impossible tests, just to spite you, Jane! Why did you have to... we'll never..." Jane was horrified to see tears of frustration welling in the blond woman's eyes as her endless determined optimism finally cracked under the weight of her impotent anger.
"Jane, why did you not tell us that you had magic?" Finn interjected quietly, giving Hilde time to compose herself. His expression was troubled, but his eyes were distant, as though he were thinking hard. "Whether you wish it or not, we are a triad. You can't keep these things from us. And you cannot act independently. We succeed or fail as one."
"I… I..." Jane desperately wanted to hold onto her anger, but she felt it seeping away, replaced by a cold, sickening uncertainty. At a loss, she latched onto the easiest - and hardest - of his questions to answer. "I... don't have magic," she said quietly, shamed more by Finn's calm disappointment than Hilde's righteous anger. "I think…" she sighed, reaching up to touch the pendant, reluctant to admit it, but fully aware that she couldn't afford to avoid it. There would never be a good time, and Finn was right. They were a team. They deserved her honesty. "I think that that crystal ball must have reacted with my pendant. That's what caused that power surge. It wasn't me."
Finn frowned at her. "I don't believe so," he said, dismissing the explanation out of hand. "The orb cannot be so easily fooled. You must…"
"I don't have any magic!" she snapped. "I'm human!"
Jane subsided, chagrined to see two angry tears escape Hilde's eyes. She shook her head furiously.
"So you're saying that you cannot pass standard?" she said quietly, her voice watery. "That we've failed before we've begun?"
"No! Well, yes, but..." Jane shook her head. "Look, we have time to figure something out now. Surely you can see that Amundson had this planned from the start! He never intended to let any of us leave that room as anything but failures. At least now we still have a chance!"
"Yes, we have a chance, however insanely slim, to play the system and maintain our memberships," Hilde bit out. "But as what? Outcasts, shamed because we would not live by the rules? Thorns in peoples' sides, as they are forced to accept our presence, rather than welcoming us? We wanted to prove ourselves worthy of being one of them, not defy them and force them to accept us whether they want to or not!"
"That's… that's not… I didn't…" Jane's mouth opened, but no more words would come. She hadn't thought... she'd never meant to...
"Master Amundson was right about one thing," Hilde snarled, her cheeks flushing brightly as her temper spiked. She took a step towards her, and Jane took another instinctive step back. "You're just here to take from us, and you have no intention of giving anything back! We don't matter to you! All that matters is what you want! Very well! Great good luck, novice! Let us see if you can do it all on your own!"
Without another word, Hilde turned on her heel and stormed away, leaving Jane standing there with her mouth hanging open in disbelief, searching for some denial to counter what Hilde's accusations... and finding none. It was true – she'd decided that she'd do whatever was necessary to achieve her own ends. But she'd never meant…
I'm heartless…
Finn looked back and forth between the two women for a long, uncertain moment, then turned and trailed after Hilde. He looked back only once, his eyes conflicted, apologetic, and under that, though she couldn't understand why, Jane thought they shone with a kind of subdued, paradoxical relief. Then they were gone around the corner, disappearing into the subterranean labyrinth and leaving Jane to find her own way, in every sense.
"Not your finest hour, Midgardian," came a cool voice from the shadows. Jane whirled around, startled, in time to see Svetla melt out of the shadows. "Or so I assume."
Jane stared at her. Svetla stared back, then slowly raised a single questioning eyebrow, and Jane gave an undignified snort that almost turned into a laugh. She didn't know why. Nothing about this was even remotely funny.
"That was quite a show you put on," the scholar continued. "I can see why Prince Thor favors you. He's never let little things like rules or authority stand in the way of what he knew to be right."
The idea that Thor would approve of her one woman crusade against millennia of Asgardian tradition lightened her heart a little.
"How do you know?" she sniffed. "I thought you had to go back down to guard the Core."
Svetla shrugged. "Kilik may seem completely useless, but he's perfectly capable of conjuring a window on the Grand Terminal. It isn't as though it is warded against such things. In fact, given the way the Master of Masters had the word spread throughout the Nethermount that you were arriving today, I wouldn't be surprised if most of the Order that wasn't packed into the room with you was watching remotely via magic."
"Great..." Jane muttered. "So literally everyone saw exactly what Hilde didn't want anyone to see..."
Svetla smirked slightly. "You stood against the King Under the Mountain, and for all intents and purposes, you won. That is no small feat, Midgardian. It may not win you instant camaraderie, and some might find it an excuse to be insulted. Nevertheless, it is worth a measure of respect. And not a small amount of gold," she added with a hint of smugness, patting a small pouch hanging from her belt which clinked quietly under her touch. "I suspect quite a lot of money is going to change hands over it."
For some reason, the scholar's bluntly optimistic analysis lifted a little more of the weight out of Jane's mood. Not to mention, the mental image of those noble beings losing bets over her was somehow enormously satisfying. But it only lasted a moment, and then she couldn't hold the other woman's eyes. She hung her head.
"I think I really screwed up." She shook her head. "I don't regret what I did... but I don't understand how it can be wrong to do what you know is right..." I'm never sure if I'm doing the right thing... Perversely, her mind helpfully shoveled memories of her dealings with her friends, with Thor and with Loki straight into the middle of her self-castigation. Do I ever do the right thing? How heartless can I be...
"You worry too much about right and wrong," Svetla observed with eerie clarity of perception. She cocked her head, as though trying to see things from Jane's perspective. "Right and wrong are subjective ideals," she added. "What one person deems good, another another will deem evil every single time. Trying to decide which is which is a game for children."
"That sounds like rationalization," Jane pointed out, frowning. "An excuse to justify unethical behavior."
"Not rationalization - merely rational," Svetla countered. "It is a fool's errand to put too much stock in doing as others expect. You will never please everyone. So do what you believe is right, and let others deal with their own opinions." She pursed her lips and crossed her arms. "You are no fool, Midgardian, you proved that when you took up the stylus. You are a scholar. So do not stand here and let a warrior dictate your mind to you. The mind is your domain."
"By that logic, I shouldn't let you dictate my mind to me either," Jane shot back.
Svetla surprised by smiling brightly in reply, the first true display of emotion she'd seen from the stoic scholar. It transformed her face, made her somehow less forbidding.
"Now that's more like it, Midgardian," she said, and Jane couldn't help answering with a smile of her own as understanding passed between them, one scholar to another.
"Still..." Jane sighed. "I'm going to have a hard time accomplishing anything with my triad if they're too angry to talk to me."
"I prefer to deal in facts rather than variables. Emotions are too uncertain to be of much use." Svetla looked away uncomfortably, as though the conversation had turned vulgar. "But it seems to me that it will all work out, as long as you pass standard, right?"
Jane shrugged. "That would certainly help matters."
Svetla nodded. "Then it is best to concentrate on that. Focus on one problem at a time. It produces better results than attempting to multitask."
Jane found herself smiling again in spite of herself. It was true, there were plenty of things she could be doing rather than wallowing in regret and self-castigation, and neither would help her accomplish any of them.
"I think you're right."
"I usually am."
Jane's smile widened for a beat. Then her face fell again.
"But…" she shook her head as reality re-invaded her dawning optimism. "Well... in the end, it's hopeless. I don't have any magic, so I can't pass standard."
"The orb says otherwise. You have the means, now you must simply figure out the method."
"No, that was…"
"While that amulet is an impressive piece of magic," Svetla interrupted her, gesturing at the rune pendant, "do not think that the relics and masters of Asgard could be fooled so easily."
Jane opened her mouth, another denial on the tip of her tongue, then closed it in the face of the cool, implacable expression on the Asgardian woman's face.
If it wasn't the pendant… then… how…?
"Come, Midgardian," the scholar said, gesturing for Jane to follow as she turned down a white-floored side passage. "I do not think they intend to come back for you, and I doubt the prince would be pleased if his lover got lost in the Archive on her first day, never to be seen again. I will show you where to go. You will think more clearly once you are settled and rested."
"I have a name, you know," Jane said after a moment, catching up and falling into step beside her.
"No point in remember that until I know I'm going to need it," Svetla said unrepentantly as they stepped onto another lift. "Pass standard, and then I will trouble myself to learn your name."
Weirdly, that statement was what finally made Jane laugh. It was calming, in a way, to hear all of her fears and worries cataloged so dispassionately. It was like it gave her permission to set aside all of her guilt and anxiety, and treat it all like just another intellectual puzzle. It was a relief. Jane wasn't much for feeling her way through things. It tangled her up inside, and she usually ended up making a mess; her issues with her mom, with Don, even her trust issues with Thor, were proof of that. But she was confident that, given enough time and resources, she could think her way out of just about anything.
"Well, I'm going to remember your name, Svetla," Jane said blithely. She didn't know if Svetla would make much of a friend, but she had a feeling she would make a useful ally, and an excellent research partner.
Svetla flicked a glance at her out of the corner of her eye, then went back to watching the floors whizz by.
"Do as you like."
.
Jane yawned and stretched as she sat up out of the springy softness of her new bed and looked anew around the room that would be hers for the duration of her stay in the Archive. However long, or short, that might happen to be.
Her rooms were plain, but spacious. The bedroom was just a bed and lamp table, with two doors leading to a closet and a bathroom respectively. The front room contained a writing desk with a small, built-in terminal of softly flickering crystal and two wide padded wooden seats that seemed to be a cross between armchairs and benches situated around a stone hearth full of stones that she had been assured would ignite if struck firmly enough. The rest was wide swaths of empty floor, plenty of room for additions of her own if she chose; many members of the Order lived in these dormitories for centuries at a time, so the dormitories were designed to be comfortable. Jane tried to fathom living underground that long and it made her sleep-fuzzed brain spin, so she gave it up.
Svetla had dragged her through the mind-bending Escher-esque seeming randomness of the Nethermount's tunnels and chambers for hours, showing her all the best reading rooms, libraries, resource nodes and quiet work rooms, along with some of the practice arenas and magic workshops, as well as how to get to the Commons, the massive cavern in which the Order members gathered during their down time, for events, or for meals, and where fresh food could be found any time of the day or night.
She'd also shown Jane the basics of operating data terminals, most of which were found in terminal rooms, but which were also peppered throughout the corridors and caverns wherever there was a spare alcove or dip in the rock to house one. Once Svetla had demonstrated how to access the translation matrix, and they had bullied the terminal into producing an only slightly archaic form of English, it had been a relatively simple thing to assimilate the basics of the system. Jane could now use it to access cataloged data, call up artifacts through the known-relic registry, and most importantly, how to access a map of the stable routes through the Archive - which resembled nothing so much as huge ant hill complex stretching through the mountain, yet still only taking up a small fraction of its interior.
And she'd shown Jane how to access the Nethermount's locator spell – in case she was brave enough to seek out Hilde and Finn.
They had to have walked for miles by the time she finally gave in and showed Jane to the dormitories. When she finally left her here, Jane had barely had time to stuff her travel- and blood-stained robes into the clothing processor Svetla had shown her at the back of her closet - behind her suitcases, which had indeed made the trip intact - before she had crawled into her favorite pajamas, curled up under the covers and fallen into an overwhelmed and exhausted sleep, despite the fact that the time piece on the lamp table said it was only midmorning.
Now the time piece said almost four bells – over eight hours – had passed, meaning it was still only midafternoon. Jane groaned. She really was really going to have to figure out a sleep schedule.
Flopping back down onto her pillow, Jane let her newly rested mind stretch like a cat and wander for a moment before she had to gather up her focus and get to work. Of course, the first place it wandered to was Hilde's hurt, angry expression as she stormed off into the depths of the Nethermount. Jane understood that her two teammates were afraid, and that in a lot of ways they had far more riding on this than she did; she even understood that it was easier to blame her butting heads with Amundson, so that if they failed, they could place the blame for it squarely on her. On some level, she didn't eve mind. On another level, it was easier to let herself cling to wounded anger. Because she was scared too.
Laying back again, Jane closed her eyes with another, much heavier sigh, bringing her hand up to scrub at her eyes.
Learning how to disarm someone with a dagger is bad enough. But levitate an object across a room… telekinesis... What the hell am I going to do?
Her hand tightened into a fist, and she winced as it pulled at the cut on her arm. Despite the heavy crust of a scab that had formed there, it ached and stung, a physical reminder of everything that was standing in the way of their success. Gritting, her teeth, she levered herself up off the bed and she went over to where she'd hung her blue cloak on a peg by the door. That little pain somehow stoked her anger up into a seething burn. She was going to throw down everything that stood in her way. Starting with this stupid cut.
Digging in the inner pocket of the cloak, she pulled the golden disc from its hiding place and carried it back to the bed. Sitting, she opened it and dabbed a tiny glob over the crust on the wound. A moment later, the cut burned and flushed with fresh blood, then bubbled and sealed. Swiping away the few residual beads of blood, she stared thoughtfully at the unblemished skin. The scent of apples pervaded the room, nearly overwhelming. It made her mouth water.
Daylight spilling down shimmering white stairs flashed tantalizingly through her memory. The White Stair swelled to fill the forefront of her mind, dulling her her fear and worry with a suddenly insatiable pang of curiosity, beckoned and magnified by the fragrance.
Her brow furrowed, and she closed the disc. She left it on her bed and gathered a fresh set of robes and disappeared into the bathroom to clean up. When she came back out, dressed and feeling refreshed, it remained there, winking at her in the gentle light of the lamp like it had a secret to tell her. Chewing on her bottom lip, she snatched the disc up off the bed, trying valiantly to shuffle her curiosity back into the order of her priorities, hiding it back inside the cloak. Her fingers tightened in the soft blue material as she waged a brief internal war. Then, she pulled the cloak off of its peg and swept it around her shoulders.
She just couldn't help it. The fragrance of apples promised something wonderful, and she had to know what was beyond that square of brilliant light.
Half an hour later, after back tracking twice and having to access the Archive map at three different terminals along the way to refresh her memory, Jane finally found her way to the bleak, dark corridor dominated by the White Stair. It was even more beautiful than she remembered; she got the feeling that no matter how many times she saw it, she would never find it any less striking.
Approaching it, she paused just outside the fall of the light from above, recalling the warnings of the Asgardians. The fear and loathing in their faces when they looked at the White Stair, and spoke of the garden that purportedly lay beyond. She gazed up the stairs into the brilliant square of light far above. What about this could illicit such a reaction? It didn't make sense, and it sent a twist of doubt coiling through her. But the alluring scent wafting down from above wouldn't let the shadows linger in her mind.
Trailing her fingers along the ornately carved railing, she hesitated only a moment longer, and then started up the stairs.
.
On the other side of the world, Loki, hidden in Odin's study behind his illusory veil, paused in his reading, lifting his eyes as they flashed with green. His heart skipped and a helpless smile lit up his face.
"At last…"
.
Jane squinted, shielding her eyes against the brilliance of day as she mounted the last five steps to emerge from the stairwell. A cool, apple-scented breeze brushed her hair back from her face. Blinking the spots from her vision, her lips parted and her eyes shone as the world around her came into focus.
The stair emerged onto a wide circular patio paved in white flagstone. Four tiered fountains were arrayed, equidistant, around the landing, their basins set flush with the ground, and they flowed into a pool that ringed the landing like a moat. Stepping stones led from the landing out onto an outer ring of white flagstone beyond. The double circles formed a kind of barren courtyard. There were benches and flowerbeds at regular intervals; but the benches looked brand new, as though no one had ever sat on them, and the bare beds of dark, loamy earth lay barren and untouched, as though they'd been prepared for planting and landscaping, but never utilized. It had the potential to be a lovely area for a picnic or a garden party. But in this state it was merely depressingly sterile.
Beyond that, however...
Jane craned her neck, her mouth falling open, as her eyes trailed up, up, up, following the line of iridescent crystal spires tall enough to put sky scrapers to shame. The tallest and thickest of them towered straight up out of the mountain top, with gaps as wide as a city block between their bases, while some, shorter and thinner, jutted at more organic angles, forming lattices in places to create natural roofs and hollows, and in other places the crystal was so fine and slender that it resembled needles, growing in tufts in mimic of vegetation or forming complicated tangles, veritable knots of mineral. Everywhere she looked, the light glanced and shattered off of unique crystal structures, fracturing into its spectrum, so that the moist, fragrant air was littered with errant rainbows.
It was like something out of one of the fairy tales her father used to tell her when she was a little girl. Almost too dazzlingly beautiful to be real. Never stop looking for wonder in the world around you, Janey, Dad would say, and then he would tell her such stories... The day he had died was the day she had stopped believing in magic. Fairytales held no wonder, because they weren't real.
And yet, here she stood.
The magnificent scene before her blurred and she hastily blinked back the sting of tears. Dad... I found it... something... wonderful...
Another zephyr wafted through the garden, threading its cool fingers into her hair again. It gusted against the crystalline structures, which hummed and resonated where the wind touched, generating high, pure, haunting notes that echoed under the ghostly, whispering rustle of dark leaves.
Apple trees…
They peeked between the crystals, growing thick and robust from rocky ground softened with a lush fuzz of vibrant green moss. Even from here, Jane could see the thick boughs, swaying in the breeze from their uneven, broken rows, and in amidst the rich, dark green of the leaves, she could see the winking gleam of golden fruit. Not yellow, but true, metalically glittering golden apples. She swiped at her eyes, taking in the scenery as a whole, the sterile, stately courtyard, surrounded by the wild and wondrous jungle of rainbow crystals and apple trees.
The Garden of Idunn.
It was achingly beautiful. And… somehow forlorn. A place so wonderful should be full of people enjoying its beauty. It was clear from the courtyard that it had been made to be visited. Yet the Asgardians shunned and deserted it. The garden felt like a ruin, abandoned to nature, and nature simply had yet to reconquer it.
The white granite paving stones shot off from the bareness of the main courtyard to wind away into the crystal forest between the trees and the flowing moat created by the fountains did the same, running off into more natural streams that trickled out into the wilder parts of the garden like veins flowing out from the heart. Curious, Jane let the scent of apples pull her forward, out over the stepping stones into the courtyard, and from there, towards the nearest path out into the thicket beyond.
Passing into the shifting rainbow shadows of the crystal spires, she discovered that the path she'd chosen wound away into the distance, twisting, turning and branching aimlessly. She looked back towards the courtyard, realizing she'd come further in than she'd intended.
I should probably… go back…
But she didn't want to. It was so beautiful here, so peaceful. Despite the fact that she'd never been further from her birthplace, somehow she felt closer to home than she'd felt in more years than she could count. Closer to her childhood, before her ignorance and innocence were broken by the reality of death and loss. Nostalgia wrapped her in a comfortable reluctance to do anything but remain where she was. And the scent of the apples was decadently alluring. She had a thought that she'd like to roll in it, snuggle down into her senses and just breathe it into her blood, like a cat with catnip. She wandered forward on the winding paths, reaching up to trail her fingers through the dark leaves of the trees growing beside the path, letting her fingers graze the golden apples before dropping away, teasing herself.
The path turned sharply, and abruptly she found herself in another courtyard, far smaller than the first, little more than a clearing. Couched in the convergence of two large crystal spires, a stone of white granite veined with gold rose up out of the ground. Asgardian characters that Jane couldn't read were carved into it. One of the babbling streams pooled at its base, the surface glassy despite the flow of the tributary, reflecting the distant starlight visible even in the daylight, and it was flanked by two apple trees, arching over it like sentries standing guard over some precious treasure. Jane, not usually one for hyperbole, nevertheless felt like she was standing in the presence of something sacred.
The glittering of the golden fruit dangling from the branches seemed to intensify, as though intentionally drawing her eye. Jane licked her lips. She was suddenly, incredibly hungry, and nothing would satisfy her craving, but apples.
.
She stood so still before Idunn's standing stone, a fathomless expression of awe on her upturned face. So lovely, so ephemeral, so brief, next to that ancient shrine to unchanging immortality. By far the most beautiful thing in this timeless, most beautiful place.
I will keep you... he vowed silently. Make the juice of that forbidden fruit into amber and preserve you against time...
His heart pounded and he could barely breathe around the ache of longing in his chest, hanging back in the shadow of the trees, almost afraid now that the moment had come. An utterly irrational urge to hide from her, reminiscent of that moment in the throne room, assailed him with abrupt brutality. So much depended on this. He must make her dance to his will, and he must not fail, or everything was over.
I wish I could trust you…
Shame, just as irrational as his fear, stabbed at him mercilessly, but rather than shy from it, he held on to the ache of his guilt, fed it into his determination, and let it drive him silently out of the darkness, and into the swath of light lancing down between the shafts of soaring crystal.
.
"I wouldn't do that," came a shockingly familiar voice from behind her.
A nearly painful jolt of adrenaline made her heart leap violently in her chest and she spun around, her hand flying instinctively to the hilt of the dagger at her hip.
"L…" her voice faltered, her breath escaping as thought the wind had been knocked out of her. She sucked in a deep gasp. "Loki…!"
.
TBC
.
AN: Finally! About damn time, right? My oh my, what will happen now? Predictions? Let me know what you think!
