For some odd and unexplainable reason, the next day Tony found himself sitting in the library, the large, red gilded hardback of Ragnarok in his hands. He had take to spending a lot of his time here recently. He'd almost immediately read up on the resident Frost Giant and then taken to learning the nitty-grittys of Thor's past, and boy they both had a troublesome up bringing. Some of the books he had read on Loki's past were illustrated, and what he wouldn't give for them not to have been. When he said illustrated, he meant vividly illustrated. As in 'R rated' illustrated. The memories still make him shiver. So learning his lesson he'd taken to reading the less specific books and more about lore and myths. How did a place like Asgard have myths? Asgard was a myth.

But today he was lounged in one of their great high backed chairs, an old man and a few young children also scattered around, likely too young to be able to read a word.

Talking about being unable to read a word, Tony was struggling a little. Not only was the particular font in this particular volume of books handwritten and ridiculously tiny, it was also in a completely foreign language.

That's when the old man appeared behind him. Tony near dropped the book.

"The old language." He almost sounded in awe, his words breathy and quiet. "Can you read it?" A little creeped out by the old guys tone but bored enough to welcome the conversation, Tony answered.

"I can hardly read the new one." He yawned, placing the book down on the table. Still open, the pages were yellowed and old, the ink faded and the edges uneven and dog-eared.

"It's beautiful." Tony looked up to the man. "I wonder when a new volume will be written in our tongue, and us the characters."

"Well, hopefully not any time soon. I'm not even meant to be here." Running a hand down his thick stubble, Tony didn't notice the mans look of surprise.

"I see, so you are a foreigner?"

"I think so. We're having a bit of trouble."

"Well then, my names Ranthol, Asgards book-keeper." They shook hands, the librarians hands a little dry and wrinkly but warm none the less. If he was the librarian, why hadn't he seen him earlier? This place just keeps surprising him.

"Well, it's a nice place you got here, Ranny." Tony commented, sparing a quick glance around the tall dark book shelves, the candles that were a considerable fire hazard and the few seating places that were mostly empty.

"It is my soul purpose to guard these books with my life. They are our history, our present and in one or two cases our future. They are the hand of our ancestors and the minds of those before us." Ranthol seemed proud and mighty. Much in the same way that a milkman thinks he rules the roost.

"Well there's certainly quite a few of them." Tony took to tapping the death march onto the wooden table he was sat at.

"These are only a limited number. More are kept safe in storage." Tony briefly wondered about Asgardian technology. He for one was not going to buy into that 'its-magic' bull. It was technology, plain and simple - advanced, granted but nothing he couldn't figure out. With all this technology, why the hell did they still need books?

Tony looked up at the call of his name.

"Ah- Anthony!" A strangers voice came from behind a great bookcase, the owner running out. "You are Anthony?"

"Tony, yeah."

"Could you get this book to him for me? He was asking about it earlier, said I'd look, and I have." The woman held a book out to him. Tony waited for it to be put on the table first before he took it.

"Give it to who?"

"Why, Loki of course. Who else but us reads Mystic books anymore?" She was pretty; long blonde hair, short green dress... dagger in her belt...

"Why do I have to take it?" Tony continued, drawing his eyes back to the book he'd been burdened with. He'd only just escaped the damn man, now he had to go hunting for him?

"Don't you spend a lot of time together?"

"Not generally by choice." She seemed to consider this, then quickly came up with another factor.

"You're one of the few people who actually knows where his bedroom is."

"What?" Should Tony take that as a privilege?

"He keeps changing it." The Librarian he was previously talking to now went back to work, shuffling the books Tony was previously reading, the dust on the table jumping at each bang of book to mahogany. "Likes his privacy and all that."

"He doesn't always sit in his room? What if he's out?"

"It's Thor's day, he's always in his room on Thor's day. Unless he's out sulking, which he hasn't done in a while. So." She smiled. "Please would you take the book to him?" She wandered off before he could further his case.

She seemed suitably annoying.

Tony stared blankly at a few more old books, wasted time trying to find something porn-related and then left the library, book in hand and feeling rather unsatisfied. From there he wandered back to his room, fingers starting to itch for something to build, mind stagnating with lack of bright blue lights and good coffee. This must have been the longest time he'd gone without tinkering. Even when he was in a cave he had more machinery at his disposal than Asgard. The beast of a book was thrown clumsily to the table, his butt went to the chair and head straight to forming plans.

His suit need space-proofing, he concluded.

Loki had wrecked the suit he'd brought with him so that was beyond repair. Didn't he see a blacksmith down in country lane?

Before he knew it the dinner bells were ringing through the castle, drawing hungry Asgardians and humans in alike.

Once dinner was downed and his belly suitably filled with puddings and sweet ale, Tony decided that he really should go do his chores. So on his way to Loki's abode, of course stopping off at his own room to get the actual book, he painfully noted that their rooms were practically next to each other, and the reason no one seemed to know where Loki's room was at, was because the door to it didn't appear until Tony approached it.

The door swung open before Tony touched it. He didn't like being out of control. He shivered.

"I didn't see you at dinner." Loki's head was already looking at him, expectantly. Tony stopped in the doorway, rapping his fists three times against the dark grain in a mockery of an entrance.

"I had already eaten." Loki explained, running his palms down his pants, looking away and down at his knees.

"Well, you managed to make that sound mildly sexual." Tony suddenly remembered the reason for coming. "I got your brick." Loki nodded and held out his arm requesting it. Tony walked in and with his own stretched arm handed it over. Tony grimaced as Loki flicked through the pages, skim reading within seconds then putting it in his lap as if it were precious.

"Come and sit." Tony still stood, crossing his arms.

"You're not looking too hot. What's up, buttercup?"

"Nothing." Loki looked back up to Tony's, eyes a little dimmer than last they spoke. A small silence passed, Tony took to examining the room. It was nice - a little big. Bigger than the size of the hallway should have allowed.

"So can I go now or..?" Tony motioned to the door, seeming now further away than when he had walked in.

"You may leave." And Tony did.

Within a few seconds he was back in the room.

"Do you have anything... mechanical?" Loki looked up at his re-entrance.

Loki stood, moving the book to where his butt had been. "What do you mean, exactly?"

"You know the suit I had on?" Tony gestured towards himself, trying to telepathically get the image across. "The Iron Man suit?"

Loki took a moment to recall. "Yes."

"What did you do with that?" Did Tony sound desperate? He thought he did.

"It was useless. I destroyed it." Baby...

"Well then do you remember what it looked like?"

"Vaguely."

"Can I... procure some of the same stuff to make another?"

Loki seemed to take an age to answer. "I need designs."

"On it." Tony bounded out the room with his usual attitude towards everything, not the one he had home-grown over the last week. "HAPPY THOR'S DAY!" He shouted back, still running, confident he was still close enough to be heard, but far away enough not to be mutilated.

He could of sworn something exploded back there. Something told him Loki had a few issues, even now.

He got the design paper from Miss Crazed-Book-Woman and the seemingly lone pencil in the whole of Asgard from the old man Librarian. For the love of everything he couldn't find a ruler so he used some piece of wood that after many decisions decided was straight enough. He turned his room into a workshop: The desk was cleared of trinkets and candles and replaced with developing blue prints; the ornate floor, once clean was now systematically littered with a few bits he'd found in the very same store cupboard he'd found on his earlier expedition around the castle.

It was makeshift but he had to start from somewhere.

He knew he'd only be here for another week, but he still needed something to do. All this 'traditional lifestyle' business was slowly rotting him from the inside out. He needed fuel cells and circuits otherwise he went rusty.

It took half a day to have all the designs ready for Loki to take to the blacksmiths.

It took two days for his order to be completed by a team of big sweaty metal workers, and from then it only took half an hour for Tony to get to work.

He'd made the designs for a suit, but given he probably hadn't the three weeks here he would need to build that, he made a few adjustments to his pieces and started on a few smaller scale projects.

Loki himself, when he was not running errands and consulting various books, was steeping in growing fatigue and envy. Both for different reasons.

He had searched in the Book of Archaic Spells and they too did not hold the answer.

He daren't ask that novice of a witch Amora again. How she irritated him. He asked her for a specific book and she sends someone else to do her work. He didn't ask Tony for a reason. She was skilled and smart but she lacked that something. Loki trusted her little and although she was a fun plaything, she was little use to him most of the time.

So instead he went to the only other person he knew he could trust. His mother. She was pleased as he pushed through her chamber doors. Father was out on official business so it was just her and him. She stood to greet him, he accepted her embrace.

Waiting for her to pull away he started: "You know about magics, mother, more than I ever could."

"Well I wouldn't go that far," She laughed in modesty. "but what is troubling you."

"In all my lessons as an infant, there was always a spell you would never teach me-"

"Loki-"

"You hid the books from me and I only found of it's existence through gaps in my knowledge of other things. I know what it is now. Teach me, please."

When Loki was a babe, she had taught him a few tricks she remembered, she then tutored him through more advanced spells but now Loki has surpassed her and was asking for long buried but vividly remembered spells. Dangerous spells that could reveal something to him that they had kept hidden so well.

"Why would you want that spell, my boy?" She clasped her hands over her stomach, her baby boy seeming impossibly large as he stood in front of her. Something was not right with him.

"Father has knowledge of it."

"Father is old enough and wise enough to use it properly, and you did not answer my question."

"Am I not wise enough to wield it?"

The fact that Loki chose 'wield' suggested to her that, no, he was not mature enough.

"Let us not play games Loki. Why do you want it?" Loki let his anger tangle in his throat. He did not wish to expel his tiredness and aggravation on her. He loved his mother, and she did not deserve his tone. He told her the truth.

"Somebody is taking my own power." Her mouth opened softly, her beautiful blue eyes widening in surprise.

"No one knows this spell."

"Obviously they do." With some hesitation, she took him in her arms again, stroking a comforting hand over his hair.

"It seems like they are taking more than your magic."

"Whoever it is may be injured. They are taking far more than I can, and that they know I can give."

"Why did you not tell me earlier?" He went to answer but she cut him off, answering her own question. "Because you thought you could handle it yourself, as always." She ran a thumb down his pale cheek. "Will you never change?"

"I do hope not." His face straightened again. "Give me the spell." Frigga dropped her hands to her side.

"How would you perform it, as weak as you are? I shall perform it on you."

"No." Loki was too quick to answer, Frigga looked at him, the corners of her pink lips curling down. He smiled that smile that drove back suspicions. "It is only that you have told me you no longer wish for magic. I would not force it on you. I have some strength. Enough."

"My son, you do not understand."

His voice spiked. "Enlighten me." Frigga stepped away from her son, face hardening.

"Me and your father have agreed that no one should posses that knowledge. Not even you, Loki." She was lying. He knew the face of a liar.

"Then fall back into old habits."

"Loki."

Her son turned on his heels and strode from the room, neglecting her calls as if she were silent. Something was undoubtedly, and terribly wrong.

Loki breathed heavily as he strode down the darkened corridors. His heart raced, pounding in his ears. He fell to his knees as his muscles gave way. No one was around to see. On the ground, and with sweating skin he pushed away the sickness in his stomach. He stood again, steadying himself on the wall, palms slipping slightly on the dark oak paneling. He felt the connection between him and some unknown opposition and pushed against it. It broke again, and he was washed down with a faintly replenished power. That would keep the transfer at bay for a little while, but it would soon be back. It was getting worse every time. He had to figure out who this was; they were turning him a fool. How dare they? They will pay for their treason.

His mother would not help his efforts, and as his rival's sickened mind joined with his and played with his emotions, he was more upset about that than he usually would be. He understood his mothers reluctance, but his mind was darkening. He was thinking thoughts he had never thought before.

He filled his lungs with air and walked off to find some sleep.

There were some spells that even Loki, one of the greatest sorcerers in all the nine realms, could not undo, especially when it was not a spell causing his drain. Not that he knew that it wasn't.