The Memory Casket
Chapter 21: Loki's Shadow
Frigga stood in the large open space of Thor's antechamber, clutching a woolen shawl tightly around her. Odin and three Einherjar were rummaging through Thor's belongings with little regard for them, and it pained her to watch. It was an invasion of his privacy. It was disrespectful. It was wrong. Not even Loki's chambers had ever been treated this way. She'd visited them from time to time when they'd all thought him dead, and once they'd learned the truth, she'd ordered them locked, to be left untouched. If Odin disagreed, he'd never dared say so.
She heard the sound of splintering wood from another room, and hurried there to find a guard smashing through the side of one of Thor's cabinets that had apparently been locked. "Stop this immediately!" she shouted. The guard froze and turned her way.
"Continue!" Odin called from the next room.
The guard hesitated a moment, glancing in the direction of Odin's voice, then resumed his actions, pulling a loose piece of wood away. He thrust his hand inside and Frigga gave an angry huff; he pulled his hand out with one of Thor's old helmets. "Nothing, Your Majesty!" the guard called. The rest of the room had already been thrown into a state of disarray.
Frigga stormed out and found Odin in Thor's bedchamber, opening up the bottom drawer of his nightstand. "I don't know what you're trying to prove, but-"
"Frigga, listen. I know you only want to think the best of Loki. But listen to his own words: 'the misfortune I will yet bring.' Loki gained the trust of the king of Jotunheim and convinced him to personally coming to Asgard, and even into Asgard's palace. Thor is angry but he wants to believe Loki. Do you really think he couldn't convince Thor to do something reckless and dangerous? He's already done it once! Thor's idea to go to Jotunheim came from Loki in the first place!"
"Loki could convince a bird to give up flight. But Loki doesn't remember being Loki. And he wouldn't hurt Thor. You heard their stories; he tried to get them to leave Jotunheim without starting a fight. And he sent a guard to tell you where they were going."
"'Loki wouldn't hurt Thor?' Frigga, listen to yourself! He sent the Destroyer to kill him. When you will stop defending him?"
"When will you start?! Loki was…he was…" He was upset then. He was distraught. We failed him. But Odin was right, and no words came to mind that didn't sound utterly pathetic, or that disproved Odin's point.
He closed the short distance between them and wrapped his hands around her elbows. "Loki hated Laufey. And he hates me, and he hates Thor. I'm sure he hates me most of all…but between Thor and me, who would he find it easier to manipulate?"
The question was easy. Thor, her mind automatically supplied. Something in her chest twisted and ached, and the pain grew as Odin's argument at last began to batter down her defenses against it.
Odin squeezed her arms, and with some reluctance she lifted her gaze to his. "The casket is nowhere to be found here. Thor must have taken it with him," he said.
Frigga nodded. "Sif went after him. And now the Warriors Three," she added; before calling for a search of Thor's chambers, Odin had sent a message to them, ordering them to seek out Thor in the Sidrin Sands and bring him back to the palace with all haste, against his will if necessary. "They'll find him, and we'll figure this all out together."
"Of course we will," Odin said, his voice full of quiet confidence which did not quite hide the worry, not from the woman who'd been his wife for millennia.
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It had taken over an hour and a half, but Thor finally was reasonably satisfied with the piece of flashglass he'd decided on. Only a few gnarled inches were visible above the sand, a light tan with bits of green in the twisted tips, but when Thor had begun to clear the sand from it, he found that it continued on in a jagged horizontal route for some five or six feet, parts of it caked in rough blackness, but the glass itself peeking through all along the length. He hadn't found anything larger that was still intact, and the small streaks of green near the top seemed appropriate to him. He was grateful for the moonlight and the brightness of the cosmos in Asgard's sky that made his efforts possible; the sun had already set and he would have had to cease his work for the night otherwise.
He dusted the last of the sand from the top of the glass tube using nothing more than his hands and a few puffs of breath, careful not to damage the fragile glass at all. Satisfied with both his work and his choice, Thor walked over to where he'd left his travel bag, far enough away to ensure no accidental damage to its contents. From it he withdrew the tarnished silver box he'd first seen upon removing it from Loki's bag. He opened the box and gingerly removed the memory casket itself. It looked no different than it had before – glass, the appearance of an opening in the top that was not a true opening, a strange twisting tube-like opening from the side that was also not a true opening, swirling green mist inside hiding a dark opaque center.
He grasped it carefully between both hands, walked back over to the center of the glass tube he'd so carefully exposed, lifted the memory casket high above it, took a deep breath, then with as much momentum and strength as he could gather in his arms, he slammed the casket down against the flashglass, shattering both.
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5. Take the memory casket in both hands and smash it against the chosen glass. (This part should be easy for you.)
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Darkness had fallen, and Sif circled the edge of the Sands, where she expected to spot her old friend emerging for the evening. There was no sign of him though. She looked toward the interior, her elevated perspective giving her a long view, but far from long enough, even when she urged her mount higher. Surely he doesn't intend to spend the night out here? she thought, her keen eyes scanning the distance.
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Thor stared down at the shards of glass large and small atop his boots and littering the sand. The wispy green tendrils that had been contained inside the memory casket had dissipated almost instantaneously once the casket was broken, briefly swirling loosely about his hands as the shattered casket slipped from between them, then disappearing entirely. "What now, Loki? What now?" he asked while looking down at the glass, as though Loki himself somehow existed among the shards and splinters. Loki had told him, but at the same time, he had not told him, in that way that was so very Loki.
The only thing he had to do for the moment was wait, for where he stood passive, magic was active. Loki's domain. Thor could not see it, not the way Loki could, nor could he feel it, not the way Loki could. He had learned a certain degree of control of it, but really only with Mjolnir as an intermediary. Still, limited though his ability was, he expected that he would feel something, some crackling of energy, some tingling of power, given the strength of the magic that must be happening here.
Thor's lips curved up into a slight smile. This – this just standing here – this was the hardest part of Loki's little quest thus far. His eyes trailed over the pieces of glass and the bits of dislodged black residue, because really there was nothing else to look at while he waited, and because part of him still couldn't help thinking something was going to happen. His eyes then narrowed in on one particular piece of glass, one of the larger surviving pieces from the memory casket just a few inches from his feet, for underneath it lay something that was decidedly not glass. He reviewed from memory what the letter, still safely tucked away inside his bag, instructed him to do. Loki hadn't told him he couldn't move at all, just that he should stay where he'd broken the casket.
He bent over to retrieve what looked like a piece of paper from under the glass.
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6. Remain five minutes among the shards. You will have released my memories in a place of purity, a place where my essence and yours are both strongly felt, a place lodged deep in our memories and shared with no one else. A place filled with magic that will direct my memories back to me.
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Underneath the pale glow of the moon, a speck of red in the distance much farther away than any mortal would be able to perceive told Sif she'd found Thor. She breathed a sigh of relief and spurred her mount on faster in the direction of the red. Loki, she thought, is the most selfish creature I have ever known. Thor was one of the few who didn't completely turn his back on him, and Loki does this to him. And poor Frigga! Did he even care how much he would hurt his family with his actions? She shook her head. Thor will be better off without him, she concluded angrily before focusing all her attention on reaching her friend.
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Thor stood from his crouch, and a wave of dizziness struck him as his head rose up straight again. He'd been in the Sands a full day and exerted a great deal of energy; he probably needed water. But he wasn't leaving this spot until he was supposed to. In his right hand he held a single sheet of paper, folded over several times. He carefully unfolded it, then held it up close to his face to read. The words swam before his eyes for a moment before he blinked a few times and they settled into the familiar precise scrawl of Loki's handwriting.
"I hardly know where to begin," the letter began.
"Well, that's not quite the normal way of it, but you may begin wherever you like, Loki," Thor said with a chuckle.
"You are such a complete and utter fool that I find I hardly have the words for it."
Thor's smile faded. Once he'd seen Loki's writing and the paper that looked identical to that used in Loki's other letters, he'd expected some insults and barbs, but this wasn't quite the tone of what he'd thought Loki would write to him now. Perhaps more steps, more details. Perhaps some gratitude, though he admitted to himself even as he realized he'd expected it that even if Loki felt it – and surely he must, because surely Loki didn't truly wish to forget over a thousand years of life – his pride would prevent him from ever expressing it. A headache was beginning to set in, but Thor ignored it and continued with the creased letter.
"You may ask what I regret in all this, if you are able. And lest you think I have no regrets, Brother, let me assure you, I do. I have one. I regret that I cannot be there to see the expression on your face as you read this."
Stomach sinking and vision again swimming, Thor squinted at the paper and raised his left hand to knead his forehead, behind which the headache had grown. "Have you sent me on this chase for nothing, Loki? Seven steps? Is it all a jest? To see how many hurdles you could make me jump over? Did you have nothing better to do with your time than to invent more ways to make a fool of me?" But even as he spoke the words and his anger grew, he hadn't given up hope. He couldn't, not yet, not entirely. There had to be more to this. There was still the seventh step; he wouldn't abandon this until he'd completed them all. Loki wouldn't have gone to such an effort for so trivial a prank.
Would he? Thor's certainty faded. He could hardly think straight his head had begun to pound so badly. He heard laughter and jerked his head around to the right and then the left, still careful not to move his feet from their spot. No one was there. He heard it again then, loud, unrestrained, somehow sharp-edged, familiar and yet not, as though distorted through water. The Sands shimmered before him, and the sheet of paper now looked different, fewer words, a pen still adding them. Laughter. He looked at the paper and watched the words appear beneath his pen: "…let me assure you, I do. I have one. I regret that…" He heard the laughter yet again, and listened to it breathlessly even as his headache began to white out his vision.
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Sif heard a sound echoing over the sand dunes beneath her, and she was almost there, Thor's cape visible but odd somehow. She gasped in shock a few minutes later when she reached him and realized he'd looked strange because he was neither standing nor kneeling, as she'd begun to think, but actually prone on his stomach, arms mostly hidden beneath his chest, face pressed into the sand and hair nearly camouflaged by it. "Thor!" she cried, because it was obvious this was not normal, this was not Thor for some reason taking a nap in the middle of the closest thing Asgard had to a desert. His position was awkward and more importantly, he was lying amidst shattered glass that reflected bits of moonlight and distant galaxies in all directions.
Thor was heavy but Sif, slender frame aside, was strong. She flipped him onto his back with little trouble, causing more glass in a long tube – she remembered Thor telling her about this type of glass, but couldn't remember what it was called – to shatter beneath his weight, but his armor would protect him from that. His own Aesir skin protected him from it, too, for despite having somehow wound up face-first in broken glass he had only one cut that she could see, right along his left cheekbone. She confirmed he was breathing and brushed sand from his mouth, nose, and eyes, then from his beard as well, and through it all he did not wake.
Nothing around him gave any clue to what had happened. His satchel was a good twenty feet away, so while she didn't take the time to check it for clues, he obviously hadn't been holding it at the time of his collapse. The only other items around were the glass and a piece of paper that had been near Thor's right hand; a quick glance at the paper had shown it to be blank. Sif was at a loss.
The one thing she knew, however, was that she was going to have to get Thor to the Healing Room. Their combined weight would be difficult for the horse to take, though, at least if it was to stay aloft. She slapped his face, said his name, pinched his ear where she knew he was sensitive; he didn't respond at all. Sif sat back on her heels and quickly came to a decision. Heimdall would have seen this; he'd commented that Thor's behavior was odd, so she was certain he'd kept an eye out on him. If she could at least get them started back on the ground, someone else would meet them, someone better equipped to get heavily-muscled Thor to the city. Simply getting him on the horse while unconscious was going to be a challenge, though Sif was nothing if not resourceful. Still, she hoped someone else would meet them soon and speed up their return.
For now, there was no one else around. Which was yet another oddity, because she could have sworn she'd heard laughter earlier, and Thor didn't appear to be in any condition to have been laughing.
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Thor, honey, if you need a shoulder to cry on...I offer mine. Please. ;-)
I know I've made you wait a while, I wish I could get the chapters out more quickly, but as I've said from the beginning on this one, it's squeezed around the edges of my main story and it's simply a matter of finding the time for it. Hope you're still enjoying it anyway! Thanks for reading and to everyone who's reviewed. In the next chapter, Kendrith seems to have gotten what he wanted, while Thor...well, that's not entirely clear yet. Maybe Loki's the one who's really gotten what he wanted. Who's really going to have the last laugh? We shall see!