Fake again, Sigyn thought to herself, pursing her lips angrily and watching the image of Loki stride confidently through the hall.
It was a very convincing imitation, she had to admit. As palace workers bowed and greeted him, the false Loki nodded, smiled, and acknowledged each and every one, even occasionally stopping to hold short conversations and give orders to some. It didn't even seem like the royal family had noticed; Loki was present for all official proceedings the princes had to attend, and any time Thor wanted to drag his brother somewhere, the image was too fast to physically capture and was quick to provide believable excuses for being somewhere else. And whenever Sigyn heard people start to wonder and whisper that Oh, Prince Loki has been unavailable for a while now, the real thing would appear again, just long enough to interact and appease others of his presence before he was gone again.
He was counterfeit more often than not nowadays. So Sigyn should not have been particularly surprised that this image was false, too. Unfortunately, it appeared that she had let her hopes rise a little too high for this occasion.
Just today, she thought, and curled her hands into fists in the cloth of her dress. Just one day where he was actually here. Just today of all days…
Irritation was humming under her skin, but underneath it, she could feel something else stirring. It clawed at her stomach and sent her fingers twitching anxiously, like an itch that she was desperate to scratch but that had forgotten to actually affect some part of her body, leaving no way to alleviate the sensation. It wasn't until Sigyn felt the tiniest of pinpricks at the corners of her eyes that she realized in horror that her body was threatening to start crying.
An angry and embarrassed blush rocketed across her face, and she turned on her heel to walk quickly towards a hidden tunnel she knew was behind a nearby tapestry. This was stupid and irrational and would accomplish nothing but embarrass her, and she needed to get control of herself now. How could she possibly be this upset?
Easy, whispered a cruel, taunting voice at the back of her head. You want to show off and impress him. You're disappointed to miss the opportunity to send him swooning in your arms. He's reduced you to a lovesick little girl. Pathetic.
Sigyn tensed and clenched her teeth in fury at the mental accusation, moving rapidly through the empty corridor. Reaching the little passageway, she flung the tapestry aside, strode through in a rage, and magically brought the opening in the wall behind her closed, the stone slamming together with a bang.
She was shaking. When she noticed, Sigyn took a deep breath and stilled, then placed a hand over her chest and felt her heart thudding against her ribcage. The voice, apparently, had decided that she had had enough, leaving her to wallow in its words.
Now alone, Sigyn sighed, the tension flowing from her limbs. She was left feeling exhausted and disgruntled and still more than a little upset, with a slight headache coming on. Putting her hands to her forehead, Sigyn slid down the wall until she was sitting on the dusty floor and promptly set herself to calming down.
She willed the pressure behind her eyelids to go away and it eventually ebbed, allowing Sigyn to open her now dry eyes. She quickly brushed away the moisture that collected in her nose. As her eyesight adjusted to the low light, she focused her eyes on the crumbling stone in front of her and took deep, slow, steady breaths, in through her nose and out past her lips.
Sigyn gave herself about twenty seconds before she deemed that she was just indulging herself. She took one last deep breath before standing up straight again and brushing her clothes smooth. Summoning a mirror from her dimensional pocket, she conjured a handful of soft white light and inspected herself. Her eyes and nose looked clean enough and her blush had faded to a light pink across her cheeks. Acceptable.
She banished the mirror and replaced it with a small wooden sphere, precisely whittled and carved with a multitude of runes and symbols. Sigyn rolled it in her fingers, inspecting it with a sigh. She had finally managed to perfect her first working prototype of her magical amplifier. One only had to ignite the very center of the sphere to activate it, and the energy that would otherwise be given off as heat and light would instead be accessible for use through carved channels in the wood. There were two circular grooves at opposite ends of the sphere; a sorcerer only had to place their fingers on each one to enhance their own magical power. When not in use, the sphere filled the rest of its channels with the spare energy produced and essentially paused the reaction inside until storage space had been freed up by future use. Through experimentation, Sigyn had found that each use of the sphere would send gas escaping and make it lighter and lighter until the outside shell crumbled to ash, at which point the amplification effect would be completely used up and a new sphere was needed. It might be temporary, but a sorcerer could carry a multitude of them in their dimensional pocket. The larger the sphere, the more energy it could provide. Elegant, effective, and safe.
Sigyn had been planning on showing the finished product to Loki today. Provided, of course, that he wasn't absent as he now so often was.
She frowned and shook the thought from her head. She had had quite enough of that train of thought for one day. Instead, she sent the activation spark into the sphere and watched as glowing tendrils of light worked their way through the grooves on the sphere and pulsed with inviting energy at the fingerholds at each end.
A smiled pushed its way reluctantly onto Sigyn's lips. At the very least, she could always be proud of a job well done.
She pressed her fingers to the corresponding spaces, and Sigyn suddenly felt as if a large reservoir of humming magic had made itself available, simultaneously at the back of her head and in the fingers of her left hand. With a twist of her hand, the same amount of effort that had previously only produced a little glowing globe in her hand gave off a burst of intense, brilliant white light that flooded and illuminated every visible pathway and crevice in the hidden hallway as if the walls had been papered with torches.
Sigyn blinked, blinded momentarily. As her sight adjusted once more, she looked around and marveled at her work. Even after her tests, she still couldn't help but be impressed at what the amplifier could do.
Sigyn had never been through the tunnels of the palace in such well-lit conditions. She began to wander the familiar paths that she had previously only been able to catch glimpses of, winding through the bowels of the palace with interest. Some of the outer passages were only holes carved into dirt, but the tunnel here had a floor paved with bricks and walls hewn from gray stone. As paths forked from the tunnel, the stone crumbled away to reveal stretches of slate and densely packed soil. The passageways were structured as a labyrinth, so that only someone familiar with the system could navigate effectively, and someone that only happened to stumble into the entrance of one might get hopelessly lost.
As Sigyn passed an opening on her left, she saw a dark spot out of the corner of her eye. She stopped and looked at the corridor curiously. That path lay in a dead end a few meters out, she recalled. Indeed, she could look down it and see the wall at the end of the passageway. Sigyn found herself walking into it and investigating anyway.
She got to the end and saw what had caught her attention; there was an odd stretch of wall to the right that was darker than the rest, easily visible now that the tunnels were all illuminated. It was flat and uniform, unlike the rough stone beside it. Sigyn frowned and stretched a hand out to touch it, but her fingers slipped straight through the surface. She quickly withdrew the hand in surprise and inspected it. Her fingers were still pale and slender as they always were, with the calluses that had developed from sai training along the inner edges of her thumb and forefingers.
Looking back up, Sigyn regarded the odd wall for a couple more seconds, then steeled herself and walked straight through it. The dark swallowed her for a second, then opened up again to reveal a stone staircase before her winding up out of sight.
Confused, Sigyn turned back behind her. The tunnel was visible there as if there wasn't a wall at all. She turned back around and glanced up the stairs, where the light was waning and the passage was turning dark again. Relighting the tunnels with her amplifier, Sigyn made her way up the new path.
It wound higher and higher, and Sigyn was panting heavily by the time she came to a set of plain wooden doors at the top of the staircase. She paused for a moment to catch her breath then pushed the doors open.
To her surprise, it opened to a large, extravagantly decorated chamber. It had to be a bedchamber, due to the ornate, canopied bed adorned with green and gold to the center of the wall on her left, but the room was huge, practically the size of one of the guest dining halls back at her father's household. Plush armchairs and little tables dotted the room, and there was practically a miniature library on the entire far wall, precisely organized on expertly carved shelves. To her right was a fireplace crackling away merrily, which upon closer inspection seemed to be glowing with hints of pinks, greens, and blues in the regular orange. Looking back at the wall she had come in through, it seemed that she had come out of a wardrobe, and was neighbored by more along with smaller bureaus and a large mirror near one edge.
Curious, Sigyn opened the wardrobe to her immediate right. It was filled with tunics and trousers that she immediately recognized as belonging to Loki. Without warning, a connection clicked in her head and Sigyn gasped, practically slamming the door back shut with the shock of the revelation. She spun and looked back around the room and realized these were Loki's chambers, she was in Loki's chambers, how in the Realms had she appeared in Loki's chambers–
Stop it. Calm down, she scolded herself, and stood still, trying to take it in. She was in Loki's bedchambers. Had this passage been here the whole time? Did Loki make it, or had he found it and hidden it just for himself? Sigyn had never even been here before; she wasn't sure if she was supposed to be in here at all, actually.
A blush started to creep up her cheeks as her thoughts started to proceed ahead of their own accord. Loki's bedchambers. That large bed with the green and gold covers would be a location she would likely frequent once they were actually married. She sat down in one of the armchairs and did her best to think of something else.
Sigyn looked around the rest of the room and noted that it was oddly disorderly. Clothes of all kinds were draped over various items of furniture and books were strewn across the little tables everywhere. Her bedchambers at home hadn't been this messy since she was a child. The maids would have cleaned and put everything away before she'd have had the chance. It wasn't nearly as large as this, of course, but this was the palace; there was ample staff to take care of menial chores. As soon as the thought occurred, though, her mind supplied for her: The cleaning staff can't come into Loki's room. The fear spells on the staircase in prevent them from doing so. Sigyn had overheard the fact from the queen, when she was lamenting her son's antisocial behavior to one of her handmaidens.
She wrinkled her nose. Loki almost certainly did close to nothing to replace the work that servants would provide. There were cleaning spells, sure, but one really need to know a lot of them to be thorough, and Sigyn could hardly imagine Loki ever bothering to look into the magic of something as tedious as cleaning. Likely all he did was do some simple dusting spells if too much collected over his books. He could probably track mud all over his floors and barely care, she thought. He probably does get regular dirt and grime in. Tracking it…everywhere…
Sigyn paused, an idea starting to form in her head. Loki might track something into his chambers, but what if he happened to catch something in here and tracked it out? Could…could Sigyn be able to follow it?
Her heart was starting to thump harder, her pulse ringing in her ears. She stood up quickly, but stopped as she thought about it a bit more. Breaking into Loki's chambers by itself was something of a breach of privacy, but following him around on his mystery expeditions? It was a bit impolite at best and decidedly invasive at worst. Was this really something she should do?
Why not? whispered a familiar, silvery voice in Sigyn's head, and she almost jolted in surprise when she realized it was very much like the absent prince's. Do you plan on getting caught? Anyway, I seem to recall you telling dearest Loki that you would be very curious as to where he'd be going. He should be expecting you, really.
Not quite convinced of the voice's prodding, Sigyn still found herself glancing back towards the wardrobe full of Loki's clothes she had opened earlier. Oh, come on, now, the voice chided, don't lie to yourself. He's been neglecting you. You, his bride-to-be. And you've got the smarts and the ability to find him. So why wouldn't you? It will be like an adventure. You will be the hero, on the search for your lost love. A swashbuckling protagonist, just like the stories you read as a child. Exciting, isn't it?
She couldn't help the smile that tugged at her lips. Even when Loki was gone, Sigyn mused, he was still a terrible influence. She brought the amplifier back into her hand and walked over to the wardrobe.
Inside, a rack of long tunics of varying shades of green and black hung, with belts and bits of leather thrown haphazardly over the pole. Capes for hunting and ceremonious occasion rested on high hooks on the edge of the wall. Several pairs of trousers were hastily folded and tucked away into holes in the shelves lining the back of the wardrobe. Lying on the floor were rolls of leg wrappings and boots of different heights, sturdiness, and opulence.
There was a spell that Sigyn had mastered several years ago that was typically used as a kind of identifier magic. The way that it worked was to essentially soak an object with a sorcerer's specific magical signature, allowing them to sense and recognize the object at a glance if they happened to be in a hurry or be in a place where the object might be easily lost. However, since the spell didn't actually affect the object in question or imbue it with any kind of magical powers, the magic was really just a kind of coating. It would wear off quite quickly and constant renewals were required, fading within a couple of days if the sorcerer really put their all into the spell. Sigyn had happened to notice that when the spell was first laid, traces of magic would come off onto the surfaces the object touched, though those usually faded within minutes. Nothing to make a big fuss about. But with a magical amplifier…
She glanced back into the wardrobe. It was unlikely that Loki would be on the lookout for her signature on his own possessions, given that he let no one into his room. An amplified identifier spell could last weeks, and the trails of magic that it would leave off might last for a few days. If Sigyn was wary, that would give her plenty of time to find a trail and follow it straight to Loki and his mysterious journeys.
Now, doesn't that sound fun? the lovely, silvery voice purred.
And with that, Sigyn activated the amplifier and drenched the entire wardrobe in her magic.
Loki panted with exertion and growing curiosity as he dashed through the trunk of the Tree. It was a wild labyrinth, complicated by shining portals dotting the walls that teleported one through to various locations along Yggdrasil's vast expanse. The portals were very handy to getting anywhere along the Tree in a reasonable amount of time, but were all infuriatingly identical, with no identifying marks or indicators to show where they might lead. The only real way to navigate this place was just to go through the portals again and again until he permanently remembered where they led.
Not to say, of course, that the time that he spent on the Tree wasn't absolutely fascinating and awe inspiring. Loki's luck with the portals had still not led him to any wells or Norns, but he had seen immense creatures that inhabited Yggdrasil. There was apparently a beautiful, enormous, golden eagle and hawk that lived at the very top of the tree, and tall, majestic stags that Loki would sometimes see on the rare occasions when he encountered foliage along the branches. He tried to avoid the branches that had colossal serpents wrapped around them.
It was an incredible amount of information to take in. Even in the months he had had to traverse the Tree, Loki still felt like he was barely familiar with the place.
Lately, though, he had begun to hear what was unmistakably the pitter-patter of human footfalls on his explorations. Animals were all well and good to talk to on the occasions he came across them here, but Loki would be damned if he missed the opportunity to find and speak to another person that had managed to make their way onto the World Tree.
So he ran and ran, but whoever this person was, they seemed to have a much greater knowledge of the portals than him, always evading him when he began to investigate the footsteps. When Loki asked Ratatosk if another "realmling", as it called them, had ever made it onto Yggdrasil, he had gotten a scolding and a knock over the head for his troubles.
"Rest assured, you are the only realm dweller slippery enough to make it onto the branches of the World Tree, trickster," it had hissed. "With any luck, you will be the only one for a while yet."
Loki skidded to a stop next to a cluster of portals, sighing when he realized that the sound of footsteps was gone again. This time, he thought he had managed to catch a glance of the mystery traveler, seeing a quickly disappearing whip of long, dark hair when he had first turned towards the sound. But they had escaped again, leaving Loki to dwell alone once more.
He had to admit, even with the expanses of Yggdrasil to explore, it was very lonely here. It would likely continue to be until he could figure out a way to step off into the other Realms, which he stumbled across from time to time, without Heimdall seeing him. When he returned to Asgard, though, it would be at most a day before he was itching to explore more of the new frontier. This mystery traveler was his best hope of getting the best of both worlds, but they had eluded his grasp once more.
Loki sighed, then sank to a seat with his back pressed to the inside of the Tree, still panting. Perhaps he would return to Asgard again soon. It had been around a week and a half since he had last been, after all; people were likely starting to ask questions. But before then, he thought, already beginning to feel drowsy, sleep.
And he shut his eyes, slipping off into unconsciousness.
*bursts through banner* I'M BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK! *confetti and fireworks explode in background*
All right, let's be real. I have kept you all waiting for quite a long time. I think you guys deserve more than an apology. You deserve an explanation. So, let's go through some things:
1. By and far away, the biggest thing that kept me was SCHOOL. This was one hell of a killer semester, and to be honest, throughout the school year, I really barely had time to think of this fic at all. (I wasn't able to use my spring break to write either, because I was busy preparing for a convention instead.) However, my school year ended around mid-May, which doesn't account for all the time gone, so this brings me to the next thing that kept me…
2. SURGERY! Woo! So yeah, basically, I had major surgery about a week right after I got out of school, and I've been spending quite a lot of time helpless and recovering. (Not an emergency or anything, it was planned for quite a while, so it's actually nice to finally have it out of the way.) But of course, recovery time could still be spent writing, but it wasn't because instead I was looking into…
3. APPLYING TO GRADUATE SCHOOLS! This includes researching various schools and their masters programs and studying a bunch for the GRE, which I'm planning on taking in August, so this takes up a decent chunk of my time. I'm actually pretty nervous about all the stuff I have to do for it, but that's my own problem, not yours. But I'm going to be honest, all this stuff that I'm describing for you are just timesucks away from writing. If I really, really wanted to write, then I would have found time to write, especially once school ended. So this leads me to a major one:
4. WRITER'S BLOCK. I've actually had the first thousand or so words of this chapter written for over a month now, but I had been stuck for AGES. I just wasn't sure how I wanted to present everything and frankly, the things I needed to do to take the plot forward where I wanted it to go. Rest assured, I think I've finally gotten it right here, so we should be on the right track for future chapters. But I've had writer's block before for this fic, and it didn't take over a month to get everything together. If I really kept at it, I could have pounded my head against a wall for several days and managed to scrap something together for you guys, though it perhaps would not have gone as smoothly as it did by taking my time. So it's a tradeoff, but a deciding factor in which one I choose is my last thing:
5. LACK OF REVIEWS. Okay, I want to make it very, very clear that I will never be one of those fanfiction writers who withhold writing until they fulfill some sort of review quota or something, because that is very unfair to people who just want to read fanfiction in peace. But guys, I had zero reviews for the last chapter, which has been out for six months now. I understand it's perhaps not the most exciting of chapters, but when all the above things are all piling up on you, and you don't have any sort of communication with your readers about their thoughts on the story, it can be very disheartening and discourage you from sitting yourself down and giving your writing another sincere go. It was one of the smaller things keeping me from writing, but it certainly wasn't an insignificant factor. So, let this be a message to my readers: You are not, by any means, being forced to review this fic, but if any of you were on the fence about reviewing, you definitely should! It really does make a difference in encouraging an author to keep writing, and lets you communicate your own thoughts about the various aspects of the story, which could make a difference in the shaping of the story itself!
But all that stuff aside, guys, I was absolutely floored when I would check my stats for this fic and see that I was still getting dozens of hits every week, even after months of inactivity. I really want you all to know that regardless of whether I get reviews or not, I'm always super flattered and grateful when I see that anyone is reading my stuff at all, and I'm still always really excited when I get favorites and follows. You're all wonderful for sticking around this long, or joining in recently, if you did that! I knew, even when I wasn't motivated at all to write, that I still wanted to because I knew that people were still invested in the story, and I didn't want to let them down forever.
So here I am again, with a new chapter! I hope you all like it, because I knew that with a wait this long, I at least wanted to make sure I would be giving you guys something good when I finally came back. I think we're getting the ball rolling again in terms of the plot, so I hope I can write more soon! No matter what, I can promise you guys that the next chapter isn't going to take another six months, because I've still got a good chunk of summer to go, even with all the other things I've got to do. I'm sorry for taking up so much space with this incredibly long author's note, and thank you so much to everyone who's still here to read this! Please remember to review (if you want!) with any feedback, tips, or criticism you might have, and I hope to see you all soon!