Author's Note: Thanks to Rhyme13kh14Xion8 for the follow.

Cannibal

Loki followed after Laufey into the nursery, the only thing in the room was a simple, four feet long, crib made of crystal clear ice. Laufey walked up to the crib and he couldn't keep his hands from shaking as when Laufey turned around he saw two halves of a giant ruby in the King of Jotunheim's hands. There was something familiar about that ruby, so very familiar and he reached out to trail a finger over the jagged edges of the right side.

Flashback

Slowly, he raised the piece of ruby to gnaw on a corner, giggling, when he saw himself in it. The door opened and he rolled over to see if it was Mother or Father. It wasn't either of them, it was an eight-foot tall jotun with strange pink-eyes and wearing a very ragged silver kilt.

The stranger moved to stand over the crib to look down at him, "You're coming with me."

Scared and in pain, he let out a sharp wail as Pink-eyes picked him up far too tightly. An angry murmur, "Shut up, you stupid brat ! You're small, but you'll still make a good snack. Now let go of that."

Did his best to growl when Pink-eyes tried to pry the ruby away from him. In response, Pink-eyes slapped him before taking and throwing the ruby into the crib, a cracking sound followed. His own response ? To try and bite Pink-eyes's giant finger as it passed over his head. A snarl, then he was being shoved into a giant black fur bag that smelled sour.

End Flashback

He jerked his hand off the ruby to look about the eleven foot tall, glittering and cannibal-free room in relief. 'He would have eaten me ? Obviously, it did not work as he planned, but how then did I get to Asgard ? Did Father intercept him, only to end up unintentionally kidnapping me when he was saving me from Pink-eyes because he thought I was an orphan ? Well, life in Asgard was better than no life at all !'

Laufey looked concerned as he closed his hand over the ruby, "Why do you look so startled ?"

"Apparently, he wanted me for a snack."

"Eat you ? Why ever would someone want to eat you ?"

That rare immature thought appeared in his head,'You might want to ask Thor that question since he likes to eat, and sometimes drink from, me so much.'

It made him answer, "What do they not have cannibals in Jotunheim ? For some reason cannibals seem to like me. So first there was Pink-eyes and then there was the one in Asgard that also went after me."

"There is nothing in your Great-great Grandfather Ymir's writings of eating our own kind, only the animals. Jotunheim is far more dangerous than Asgard, Jotnar go missing everyday because of the ice splitting and falling into chasms or if they go to the oceans drowning when the ice closes over them. Likely, some of them ended up this cannibal's victims. We must find a way to track down this 'Pink-eyes' and put an end to his hot-blooded habit."

That made him raise his eyebrows and the words, "Shouldn't that be 'cold-blooded' ?", slipped out before he could stop them.

Laufey shook his head, "No, you will notice now things that felt normal to you while you took those binding herbs will be hotter. While the things that felt cold to you before will now feel like a normal tempurature and only the extremest of colds will touch you. Though, incredibly hot tempuratures will weaken you now because we need water to make our ice and without access to our magic we will overheat and die. So, it is essential to keep yourself as cool as possible whenever you leave."

'How can I leave when there is a monster on the loose ? I am not going to leave Hailfalla defenseless if Pink-eyes is still alive and manages to find him.'

Still, those words about ice magic made him curious and unconsciously, he looked at his new skin color. Yes it would take him a while to get used to seeing his new blue-bluish/white skin, but surely learning ice magic would help him acclimatize to the idea of being a jotun. 'If I learned how to make ice magic, maybe I could finally help Thor with putting out those few forest fires at home. Sif would not be able to deride me as useless then either.'

He nodded, "I will make sure of that. Do you think that, perhaps, you might teach me about the ice magic...Father ?"

Laufey walked past him with the short answer of, "We can start right now, if you wish. Also, I will teach you so that if you plan on touching anyone who is not one of us, you will know how to control it."

Again, he turned and followed Laufey out of the nursery, pulling the door shut behind him, before asking, "Yes, I would like that, but simply for curiosity's sake why must I need to control it to touch another ?"

"It is simple, my son, because otherwise you will unconsciously try to lower their body heat so that it's safe for you to touch them." It was finished with a sheet of frost sweeping to coat the walls on either side of them; also, it was only because he was now barefoot and Jotnar were heavier than Asgardians that he didn't fall because of surprise. "If you know how to control it you are able to make sure that neither you nor the one you touch end up being uncomfortable."

'I see Father and Laufey have at least one thing in common then - explaining things while sounding incredibly dramatic about it. No, Father is far worse about it than is Laufey. Father would have gone about the cannibal speech like a pig about to be roasted alive.'

The silver-clad guards of Jotunheim were far more respectful to him than those of Asgard, they didn't just nod in acknowledgement, they actually bowed, which the Asgardian guards only did when Thor was with him. Many hallways twisted and turned as he followed Laufey and with everything being made of glittering ice it was far easier to get disoriented here then it was in Asgard.

'How do they manage to change the ice's color like that ? Blue, black and golden like that 'tapestry' of ice. Are their eyes actually made of garnets or is it more ice ?'

Said tapestry was of, as Laufey explained, Ymir in armour made of darker-blue ice and Buri in golden armour introducing their sons to each other - Buri stood beside his brown-haired son Bor and Ymir with his sons black-haired Thrudgelmir and bald, six-headed Bergloki.

Laufey threw open the back entrance hall's double-doors to reveal a slightly raised circle of barren ice. It was surrounded about twenty feet back by a thicker, circular, wall of dark-golden ice. 'Now there is no one to tell me that I am too small to train.'