A writer, I would fancy myself, if things would be. But take note, I do not write for others – I write for my own amusement, and my brand of storytelling is my own – I only share these worlds that I dream up.

Before we let go of things, there is that sole moment that we grasp it the tightest.

We are afraid.

And when it falls from our grasp, our mourning grows.

He cannot die, but that does not mean that he cannot suffer.

He cannot die, but that does not mean that he cannot fall into the machinations of another.

There is acid in his veins. It blooms in brilliant agony all over the surface of his skin, and it sinks its barbed thorns deep in his marrow. Harry has long since lost count of the times that he has cursed his human-Ӕsir constitution but this is the most vehement episode. Death hovers over him, providing him a focal point with which to keep his consciousness. She keeps him tethered to the plane of consciousness, but with such depth in the pain, his mind will wear out soon enough.

"Your resistance is promising – I shall expect a sweet harvest when the plague takes over your very mind, Nameless One. Just like the seiðmenn who bore me the Jinni Devil, or the men that will soon will be my well-trained legion of Demon-Riders."

Mogul lifts his attention from the man writhing on the floor to Shezada, who glides into the room with all the grace of a queen.

"I found a rat in your palace, dear brother," she comments by way of conversation, before turning her attention to his latest conquest, "but I see you have found another."

"Not vermin, this one. This one is a hunting dog. Or will be, once the Spotted Plague is done with him," there is a twisted sense of vindication, as he delivers a vicious kick to the fallen man. The twang that runs up his own leg feels good, pleasurable even, because it washes away the crippling sense of fear that he would have lost everything to this man. The guards will know how to take care of his… latest conquest without getting infected, so Mogul allows his attentions to wander.

"Lucky us then, dear brother," her smile is viciously serpentine, but she allows him to guide her out to the throne room to gloat… amongst other things. The blood still pulses with a vengeance in his veins, and he needs to see it to rest.

The guards wrap his limbs in multiple layers before wrapping him in layers of cloth. It feels like an inferno, and there is something like relief when they finally release him into the dungeons. His wrapped wrists are bound to an iron cross; arms stretched perpendicular to his body, tight ropes binding him in a continuous coil from ankles to kneecaps.

His fingers are clenched so tight that his palms are slick with blood, but the pain does not beat the cell-deep agony induced by the venom-plague. He has blacked out several times unknowingly – jolted into awareness by fresh waves of pain – but it hasn't been long, because the magma-hot blood pooling in his upward facing palms have yet to overflow.

Micro-blackouts, then.

The rock surface of his tiny cell is in counterpoint to his heated blood, and there is nothing else except for the flickering firelight beyond the tiny window of the door to see by. And for all the obsession of ridding the palace of vermin by Mogul and his sister, the dungeons are a thriving location for pests.

The rodents have got over their initial wariness, and have been sniffing about his boots. They are best described as skin stretched over bare bone, with much too flesh between. The chains do not have enough give to shoo them away when they nibble away at the leather of his boots. A drop of blood falls from his palm, and Harry watches glassy-eyed as a rat moves over to investigate the sticky liquid.

In retrospect, it is the defining moment that sends his heart dropping through the void once again.

Abu Dakir walks the hallways, searching for the thorn in his master's side. The boy has somehow escaped from the trap dungeon - which would have been by default a bloody death by the crushing maws of Mutasaurus. The boy cannot have escaped far, crawling on his belly like a worm. There will be a reward from all of this – he thinks – as he spots a dark shadow along the length of the wall that does not flicker along with the undulating firelight.

And the best way to reap it is to borrow a page from his Master's book – the boy will get to see his countrymen… and forever be one of them, serving under his master. He smiles, as he summons men to haul a yet unbroken spirit to be smashed.

All the other vermin have scurried back to the hole where they crawled out from, except for the one which had lapped at his blood. It writhes and hisses, tortured. Harry doesn't need a spotlight to see that it is shifting under its skin – there is the sharp splinter of thin bones rupturing flesh – and he feels it die. And even from beyond Death, it struggles, warps… mutates.

It dies twice more, and Harry feels sick to his insides when the soul shatters, the leaking silver turning to rancid grey before his eyes. And now that he has felt the wrongness of it all, he senses the rest. An army of Mogul's monsters.

It seems like a sordid attempt at the imitation of life, with nothing but dark threads of puppetry. But it is merely a good illusion – something else, someone else lies beneath that darkness – and Harry knows that Mogul is not aware of this different side to the creations that he claims to be his own.

He unclenches his hands despite the wretched pain, and begins to pull desperately at strands of seiðr.

He has to stop this before it goes further.

Soft olive skin yields to the pressure from his fingertips, and he watches as coral lips wrap around his finger. A delirious moan is set loose from those lips, as he slides further.

The pleasure of it all is barely disrupted when he feels one thin cord of control snap. It is common for his works in progress to self-terminate – merely survival of the fittest. So he sinks back into the sensation of slick pleasure and the sounds of wet flesh. But then more of his puppet strings snap; like mooring ropes snapping from a great ship in an even greater storm, the recoil snaps him back out from drowning in decadence.

He jolts from the bed, and begins to dress, despite the soft moans of disappointment from the bed, and the phantom presses of lips that linger on his skin.

Something is wrong.

The foot to his jaw and ribs have left a throbbing hot mess of pain, and Hogun groans when the guards shove him down the steep steps. His boots are painfully constricting his now swollen ankles, but Hogun scrabbles to his hands and knees in order to reorient himself.

It was his original destination, to free his countrymen after all. His eyes recognize the warm colours of the natural colours derived from his homeland, but his heart stops at the sight of the monsters that are clothed in them. There is no one to rescue, Hogun thinks, and he will die in his futile attempt. Alien muscles bulge from under torn fabric, and wicked claws and horns adorn their bodies. All of them have their heads angled at him, nostrils wide and inhaling air. Scenting him like mere prey, and the cry of despair does not even leave his throat. The far wall crumbles like ash, and snarls colour the air at the intrusion of a meal.

The dust has barely cleared before Hogun realises what it is.

The lack of adequate light is not a factor, because Haraldr Hjortson glows with a bewitching luminescence. Emerald fire burns in those eyes, silver gleams in his hands, and Hogun watches in horror as the man carves the knives into his flesh before turning the blades onto the chests of Hogun's countrymen with no hesitation.

Perhaps the greatest monster of all the monsters in this dungeon, he thinks, is the man who has saved him from the desert. The fear paralyzes him, and his mind watches numbly as sharp blades and feline grace fells everyone else around him. Booted feet stand before him, and Hogun registers the metal tang of blood as slick hands help him up onto his protesting ankles.

Hjortson's dusty cheeks are strangely wet with tear tracks – not a monster after all – and he whispers something that removes the pain from Hogun's senses and the nausea from his stomach. And from behind his once-again saviour, the felled creatures begin to clamber to their feet, even with the gaping wounds that should have been fatal.

Harry grits his teeth at the sheer disgust and sense of loss that roils up in his stomach – there is nothing left to throw up – the souls of these men are no longer beyond salvation, shattered and oily black things that even Death refuses to touch. The same crushing force is on his soul, threatening to undo all the threads that hold him together, threatening to end all that he has ever known.

An eternity alone.

The eternal darkness. The pain in his palm, the blood pooling in the indents.

The ice in a neverending land.

Green eyes, a blinding smile. "Father!"

Ink-black curls under his chin, "I want to learn how to fight, father."

There is only one way to end this madness, and he doesn't know if he will even survive it; his limbs are only moving with the steel-grip of seiðr threads.

It is that moment that Mogul enters.

Hogun watches, as the man who has mercilessly attempted genocide screams. Shrieks of pure agony that stop even the feral beasts of the plains in their tracks.

In that moment, all he wishes for is for the nightmare to end.

It is impossible, that the man still stands. Mogul can feel the plague build-up coursing through veins – the man should have been helpless in a flood of his own fluids, sprouting monstrosities. The man turns his gaze on Mogul – and all that comes to mind is verdant fires blazing in the night – and there are fingers sifting through his mind, and a voice that says, "You thought yourself whole."

Mogul thinks that he can never wash the haunting green from his vision.

It shatters everything, that one sentence. He feels those fingers begin to rip...

The layers are thin. Thin and numerous, laid so thick that no one would have noticed that each and every layer was a lie. He has fed everyone lies and deceit, and the one who has been deceived to the greatest magnitude, is he himself. But the emerald eyes have burnt away everything, and Mogul now sees himself for the pathetic creature that he really is.

He would rather die a thousand deaths than see the dredged memories, but the more he sees, the more he realises that he has never been more than a puppet made to believe that he was the master of his machinations. The warm smiles of his father and mother, strong arms braced over him as they protected him from bone-breaking blows. He had wished and hoped and prayed for the power to kill and murder and slaughter those who had dared. Wanted their blood splashed across the floor, their howls of agony to shred the skies.

And so he had made a deal with the sudden darkness in his head.

And his summoned monster had granted his wish in return for his crying sister. He gained knowledge and power and prestige, fashioning a golem in the likeness of his sister from scraps of bone and his own blood. He killed and sacrificed as part of his contract – tricked himself into thinking that he was the master of his own fate. Created servants through fear and intimidation. Fashioned an army from prisoners. Carved a kingdom from blood, bone and bodies. A kingdom of golems, fashioned from his imaginations.

It has been a long journey, and there are many hurts and aches from stumbling around in a blindfold, lead like a common beast of burden by that very monster that he had summoned. And now retribution has come and opened his eyes. Mogul sees no darkly dressed demon now – just a broad shouldered man, standing with a matronly woman, hands on the shoulders of a girl with lovely eyes. All three are dark haired and olive-skinned. All three have been dead for a very long time. There is a boy that stands with them, and Mogul thinks that he sees himself in that boy.

Boy Mogul steps forward and Mogul grasps the tiny outstretched hand.

It's a warm hand - something that he has not felt since the beginning of this wretched life.

And he knows no more but peace.

The screaming stops and Hjortson steps forward. Hogun blinks, and suddenly there is no tall imposing devil bedecked in armour; just a scrawny boy in peasants' clothes stepping toward Mogul. Shaking hands reach towards the boy's, and then Mogul falls over motionless.

The image warps, and then Haraldr Hjortson returns, looking sick and pale. He raises an arm as if to inspect it, and Hogun sees wicked claws emerging from scaled hands. A panicked sound escapes his throat, and Hjortson looks at him. Really looks at him. As if he had not realised that Hogun was still alive.

"You have to leave. Now," the voice wavers, and Hjortson falters. A wicked claw breaks through the man's thigh from behind, and Hogun feels the words of protest die in his throat. The man stands, staring into Hogun's eyes despite the pain of the blow. There is a river of red that flows freely from the man's mouth, but the green has yet to flinch.

Hogun sees the path out of the labyrinth of a castle, imprinted into his memory. He floats in the memory, watching as his feet take him down hallways, hysteria and panic locked away beyond his mental reach.

Hogun runs, down the hallways and up stone steps, all the while passing empty pieces of armour filled with ash and sand and rotting flesh. He is barely out from the final corridor when flames roar from the hallways into the sweet dawn air.

His mind is still frayed – unraveling from not only the edges of his consciousness, and nothing is spared – from where Death has impressed her influences. His mind had melded with hers for one moment, and She had stretched him across the entire universe in that single instance.

He had been everywhere. Had known the number of breaths that every single creature still had. Stretched across everything, so much so that he had been… non-existent. There had been a brief moment of infinite panic, that he would be lost forever.

He is lost, still. His mind is sifting through a backlog of one lifetime's worth of memories from Mogul, and there is tragedy woven into it from the very start. The venom still runs in his veins, and his hand hurts something terrible. The claws are wickedly sharp things carved from living obsidian, housed in scales the colour of blood, and Harry stares at it until a sound cuts through his hazy mind.

Hogun is sprawled backwards, horror and curiosity and confusion painted on his face. Harry feels his mind work into overdrive – the boy is still alive and untainted by the Spotted Plague. A miracle in itself, but there is no lack of snarling mutated men to spread the disease.

"You have to leave. Now," is all he manages to say before one of the monsters runs a clawed hand through his back. The boy's eyes travel to his thigh, where Harry can feel the claw's exit through the front. What Hogun cannot see is that the rest of the claws have pierced four holes through his back – he cannot speak without spraying the blood in his lungs, so there is only the last resort to get the boy out alive.

Mogul's memory of the castle layout is imprinted into the boy's mind, as well as the absolute instructions for the boy to escape. Hogun's eyes grow hazy, and Harry watches with relief coating his insides as the boy gets to his feet and wobbles toward the exit.

The rest of the monsters start to stir and the so does the venom in his veins. He closes his eyes, and knows what he must do. Resents what he will leave behind. Regrets the things that he will leave behind. He mourns, even as he hoards seiðr and weaves dense layers within the bowels of the castle of Zanadu.

His tears evaporate with the heat of the fiery stag that stands before him, and then… everything turns to brilliant flame.

The training hall is not yet rife with activity, and Loki clambers on top of Dáinn to get a better view of the match-ups. Sigmarr will go against Rúni if all goes well, and one of them will be of the six contenders for the grand champion. The men start to fill into the hall, and Loki spares a grin at their boisterous greeting.

"How fares our little Lordling of Chaos?"

There is a competitive round of endless hair-ruffling, with men dodging Dáinn's waving rack of antlers in answer to them teasing Loki, and it continues until the horn sounds for the participants to get ready. There is a sudden ache in his heart during the end of one round, but it is quickly overcome by the roar of the crowd as Sigmarr scores a spectacular win against Rúni.

He runs two leagues until he is released from the strange spell. His bodily reactions are a belated thing, he thinks, as he heaves up the nausea from the monstrosities and blood and strange things that he has seen. Bile coats his throat in a bitter and painful tang, his vision greys dangerously as he raises his head to regard the chilling sight.

The fires in the distance rage high into the air, a fiery column that still stands out amidst the towering canyon walls and the brightening skies.

Hjortson is nowhere to be seen.

The venom burns. The plague turns to ash. The leather armour is nothing more than crisp pieces of blackened charcoal. The knives remain, however, having endured years in the heat of a star. He watches as everything melts away, watches numbly as the white of his bone shows.

Harry wonders if he is truly dead now, his soul lingering by the wayside as Death collects what little remains of the wretched souls, cleansed by the fire; Fiendfyre is merciful in the fact that it kills long before the pain sets in.

Perhaps that was the reason why he is… feeling a chill. The chill roils in his gut, reminding him that his sensory system should have been vaporised already. Harry frowns, if only mentally, and searches for that fleeting sensation.

A pulse of paradoxical cold warmth, soothing his empty core.

Loki.

He is not dead yet. He does not wish to be dead, yet.

The seiðr takes the form of his wish, and a path free from fire forms at his will. He may be immortal in all sense of the word, but his world is not. His world is so short-lived in the grander scale of things. The Heavens have finally granted him a wish of his own, for once in his too-long life… and Harry is determined to make the most of it.

The suns race each other across the skies, and Hogun watches the skyline. Watches the flaming column with silence, and wonders if it is a figment of his imagination that there are creatures wrought of pure fire dancing within. It is an extravagant funeral pyre, he thinks.

It burns fiercely, and he wishes for the memories of the past months to be like so – to burn away in brilliance and leave nothing behind. Except that he cannot. He feels as though each and every cut is a permanent blight on his soul. Monsters are carved into the insides of his eyelids, and will haunt him in his dreams. He can neither forget the folk-songs of his people, nor erase the tortured screams of his brother. He thinks that he cannot return, cannot see the green grasslands of his homeland without remembering those haunting eyes.

Maybe he'll just sit here, until the world fades away. It hurts too much to move now, and pain spikes through his ribs by the mere act of breathing.

The column of fire dies, and Hogun feels the rumble of the earth beneath his feet, and somehow knows that the death-trap carved into the mountain has collapsed onto itself. The shadows crawl across the bottom of the canyon, and up the walls again, and Hogun knows that he hallucinates when he sees Hjortson.

Knows that it is not him, for the man walks with no hint of injury, dressed in a simple tunic instead of gleaming armour over green and black leathers. Gleaming silver dances between the man's fingers, instead of dagger-like claws of blackened death. Watches as impossibly green eyes bore into his mind…

Everything goes black.

It is that sick sensation of falling that jolts Hogun from sleep. The dream had been vivid – full of blood and death and pain and suffering, and emerald jewels – but it drains quicker than he can remember.

"Oh good, you're awake," the voice is deep, and Hogun belatedly realises that the world swings from side to side, because he is being carried on someone's back.

His throat is a dry, swollen mess, but Hogun manages a decent question, "Where… am I?" It is a good question, but it leads to more. His head hurts, and all Hogun knows… is his own name and nothing else.

Where am I?

Who am I?

It is a cruel thing to do, he knows, to rid Hogun of his memories. It is not a mere Obliviate, but rather, Harry has surrendered Hogun's memories to Death. The boy has had burdens far too heavy to carry, and has observed events that would damn any male seiðr practitioner within Asgard to immediate death without trial. Harry cannot let a breath of this sort of news escape in Asgard.

Women have the power to create, and they do so, Haraldr.

Men have the power to build, and destroy…

And when men have the power to create…

They create destruction.

The boy's mind is more or less a blank slate, but his muscle-memory remains, as well as his innate intelligence. The gist of the situation has been explained to Hogun – the boy was ambushed by bandits – and Harry removes Mogul's spell of unseeing as they step out of the canyon.

He calls for Heimdall, and feels the familiar lurch of travel.

Haraldr Hjortson seems to always know what he is thinking, but it is not Heimdall's place to question things of the man who has always steered Asgard from war, even if the man has disappeared into the dark veil over Zanadu. The Shadow General merely shows an exasperated expression at Heimdall's obvious visual sweep and his own lack of armour, "Such is the hospitality of Zanadu's people, Heimdall. I will have to hunt to make my armour again."

The boy on Hjortson's back is a portrait of confusion, and the sluggish bleeding at the side of his head is a clear indicator of his current state. The General sets the boy to lie on the floor with that innate gentleness that the man shows to almost all living creatures, and Heimdall Sees the soldiers thundering down the bridge in response to the flash of light from the Asbrú.

All of them are from Haraldr's personally-trained battalion, and Heimdall marvels at their alertness and impeccable form – it is an hour where most of Asgard lies in deep slumber. Such command over men is a dangerous thing, but Heimdall does not have sufficient reason to suspect Haraldr Hjortson.

Yet.

The men exude relief at the sight of their beloved General, and even break out into bawdy jests when it is noted that the man is poorly attired for his station, "Did a maiden charm you of your armour, sir?"

They begin rudimentary treatments on the boy – Hogun, his name is – at his orders, and the entire entourage is on their way to the Healer's Chambers within a fraction of the hour. Heimdall returns his Sight to the now unveiled Skornheim – where there is naught by a canyon with a curious sinkhole in the middle of it.

And in the middle of the sinkhole, there are numerous glass pillars, like that of ceremonial graves.

It is curious, indeed.

"Attend to the boy. I am fine," is all the man that they call 'General Hjortson' says to the Healers. Soft, strong hands carry Hogun to the bed, and equally gentle voices lull him into restful slumber.

He is fine. He is in too good a condition, in fact. Harry refuses to unclothe himself in from of headstrong Eir, because she has an intimate knowledge of the map of scars that is his body. Scars that no longer exist, because Fiendfyre has burnt everything away, and the remnants of his original magical core have been spent by resurrecting a new body. What he is now, Harry isn't even sure. No mortal-Ӕsir constitution, he knows. He feels Death a little more closely, hears her humming a little. He has no need for his magical core now, for he sees the strands of seiðr so much more clearly now, when before, he had largely relied on his sense of touch and innate magic.

He slips out of her grasp with a wan smile and an excuse on his lips. She is hurt, but she does not dare to press her case further. But instead of going to the Allfather, he returns to his chambers. He has earned at least this freedom with his sacrifices.

Loki slips out of slumber, mind still foggy with remnants of a dream. There had been the hum of his father's voice, awash with seiðr, but Loki feels the haze of his dream instantly wash away with the cool hand that sweeps his hair away from his brow. His eyes snap open with disbelief, quickly greeted with smiling green eyes. His father's long hair is damp under his touch, and when his father grins, Loki knows that this is no dream.

He feels his father's laughter rumble on his cheek, when he presses his face into his father's neck, and his father falls onto his back with the attack. The humming starts again, accompanied with a comforting stroke down his back. It is a song-verse of Hǫðskuldr again, talking to odd creatures, flying with serpentine creatures as large as a mountain.

He falls asleep, breathing in his father's clean scent of seiðr and forest. Loki thinks that he has ever been happier, because the Norns have heard his pleading.

And that wraps up the Skornheim arc (quite nicely too, if I might be so bold as to add) leaving us with one more Marvel-canon character to play with.

I've been diverting the creative energies to other outlets (future plots of Transliterations, companion fics in the making and other published works elsewhere ) Some of you might have found me elsewhere already. I now have a tumblr link for QUESTIONS on my profile - I am not able to satisfactorily reply questions in reviews that you give me.

And I might have dug myself into a hole by applying for some RL stuff that if successful, will majorly disrupt my division of time.

My regards,

ikki.