Brief summary of the story so far, as I've been gone for like 3 months: Odin is an abusive asshole and Loki's known he's a frost giant since childhood. Frigga and Thor have now discovered this, turned against Odin, and are now preparing to fight him and the Asgardian army on Jotunheim. Hela (Frigga's child and the goddess of life) and Hel (Loki's child and the goddess of death) are prepared to summon an army of the dead to help the Jotuns.
I published this as a whole on ao3 – I've actually finished it there, there'll be 2 more chapters after this - but really the chapter was too long, so I'm splitting it up here. The next chapter should come in a few days time.
Thank you guys so much for all the follows and the favourites, and the reviews (though I've already replied to the ones that I can), they've really inspired me to keep going :D
24/08/2018
Chapter Twenty One – The Battle of Jotunheim, Part One
Loki stood in the doorway between the war council and the chamber in which the Casket of Ancient Winters was being held, his gaze flicking between where the mages and tacticians debated and where both of the Helas sat unmoving, concentrating on summoning their army of the dead from Helheim.
Hel, currently in the form of a corpse, had her eyes closed and her hand on the edge of the Casket. Hela, lacking Jotun blood and unable to touch the Casket, gripped Hel's other hand, and, as they cast their magic, their powers and those of the Casket combined and lit the room with a strange silvery-gold and blue glow. Despite them having begun the spell not long ago, they already looked weak, and Loki worried. With their spell the soldiers from Helheim could regenerate unlimitlessly after being exposed to something that would have killed an ordinary soldier, in this sense the army from Helheim could probably decimate the Asgardian forces through sheer perseverance, given enough time, but that replied on the Helas having enough energy to keep the spell going, and Loki was unsure that they would. And without the forces from Helheim the battle would be quickly lost.
Fenrir, Jormungandr and Sleipnir sat huddled in a corner of the room watching the proceedings with fearful eyes. Loki sighed and clenched his jaw, wishing he could offer them something more than empty platitudes. Platitudes that he knew his children saw through.
The mages and several politicians and former warriors stood around an illusion of the battlefield; blue for the relatively few Jotun soldiers (if anyone could even call them that, half of them were children or too old to really be able to fight properly), silver for the few thousand of Helheim that had been willing to fight and the Helas had been able to conjure (it wasn't enough, their powers were limited, but it was better than nothing), and gold for the thousands of Asgardians that were now scattered over the icy plains.
"What will be their plan now?" Leif questioned, his serious gaze fixed on Loki.
Loki considered the plan of the battlefield for a moment. "Most of this group will charge our forces head on, but this back section will try to cut round the mountain and attack from behind…that is if the battalion's commander considers it honourable." He paused for a second and looked at several of the mages. "If we rely on brute force we will not win, we are not strong enough, you need to go and confuse the Asgardians if we want to have any chance of surviving this."
"We cannot leave the Casket defenceless," Otur argued. "If we do so there will be no one to protect it if the Asgardian Army arrives."
Loki shook his head. "If you don't leave doubtless they will arrive. How do you propose to defeat the many Asgardians that will remain after having massacred our forces? We would be stronger were most of you to fight with the soldiers, divided we are only easier for them to defeat. Look at how many of us they have slaughtered already." He gestured frantically to the illusion where the blue lights of the Jotuns were steadily blinking out. "If we stand together we might have a chance."
Leif looked worriedly between the two of them. "Laufey said that these mages should stay here to protect the Casket and maintain the illusion of the battlefield," he said diplomatically. "So, for the moment that is what we shall do."
"He doesn't know Asgardians as well as I do, and I am not proposing that we send them all, I am aware that some are needed here," Loki disputed, somewhat surprised in himself for his confidence in himself over such a major decision. Then again, he supposed his children's lives were at stake here, as were the lives of Tony, Thor, Frigga and Laufey, and eventually, if Odin won, so too were the lives of Darcy, Jane and Erik. "Which is precisely why I am here to advise you, and I know we should change our tactics."
"Be that as it may, he is our king," Leif said, with a tone of finality. Unbidden, the memory of Darcy demanding why a king had to know best slipped into his mind. Clearly, democracy did actually have its merits. However, Loki conceded, trying to calm himself down, having a king and a clear hierarchy did mean that decisions could be taken decisively, and everyone could by and large be trusted to work together for the same goal. He grimaced at the thought of the entire army doing what they individually thought best. Besides, Laufey did have more experience in commanding an army and fighting Asgardians than he did (Loki pointedly ignored the fact that the last time Laufey had lost).
"What…" one of the mages exclaimed and Loki turned to see at least two dozen of the golden lights flickering out. "What just happened?"
-M-
Thor flailed as he crashed hard into a snowdrift, his lightning flickering out as he lay there and groaned. Two seconds later he pushed himself up and began scanning the battlefield – people who let fatigue stop them when fighting usually ended up dead. Thor grimaced as his gaze fell on the bodies of a group of Asgardians, people who he once would have fought side by side with. Some of them were, perhaps, alive, but it was clear that others had not been so lucky. Thor grimaced and pushed the thought out of his mind, such was the reality of war, and they were sure to find peace in Valhalla… or Helheim, if Hela was to be believed.
All of this would have been a lot easier had he had his hammer, his flying was haphazard at best (hence the crashing into the snow after he had blasted the Asgardian soldiers) and he found it very difficult to control the strength of the electricity he produced. Once again, Thor cursed Odin for hiding his true magic with the hammer, and wondered why Odin had felt the need to. Probably because Odin could control the hammer too and he hadn't expected Thor to spend so much time away from its magic dampening effect. Thor marvelled at the fact that Odin seemed to have an innate need to control everyone, even him, the formerly perfect heir, and wondered at the fact that he hadn't seen it before.
"Thor!" one of the frost giants cried, waving frantically to him from where he stood with a group of Hela's glowing silvery-gold-blue soldiers. The soldiers were whole, and not the corpses that Thor had expected after seeing Hel's transformation, but they had an eerie feel to them that made Thor inexplicably uncomfortable. Still, he was glad of the help, and liked that if they sustained what would usually be considered to be mortal injuries, they just flickered for a few seconds and came back whole. "We need you behind the mountains!"
Thor set his jaw and allowed his power to wash through him again, launching himself in the air and flying as fast as he could manage in the direction that the frost giant had spoken of. As the lightning crackled through him Thor allowed himself to grin, he had always loved the adrenaline filled thrill of battle and the power now flowing in his veins was incredible. There was no reason he should not be able to protect the ones he cared about today, he just had to focus.
-M-
"What I want to know," Pjetur said to Alfar, one of Asgard's youngest but most promising soldiers, as they scanned the battlefield, "is why we are fighting glowing soldiers, many of whom look like Asgardians, and who bloody refuse to die, and one of which, I'm fairly sure, is my late uncle. And why three quarters of the royal family is meant to have committed treason, and now Odin is going to war against them, and the Jotuns, who we had previously made peace with. Also, I would really like to know why I had to arrest Thor's closest friends earlier today, and some clarification as to why we are going to die in this war!"
"It is not our place to question the Allfather," Alfar said uncomfortably, glancing around at the other nearby soldiers. "He wants us at war and we should accept it."
But should we? he wondered. It was, of course, the natural way of things to accept the commands of the Allfather without question, but, privately, he thought that if they were going to die, he would rather like to know why, and he would like to feel that they were fighting for a monarch whose ideals he could agree with. And honestly, with all the odd rumours and Odin's behaviour, he wasn't sure he was fighting for a cause he was willing to die for. Still, there wasn't anything he could do about that, was there?
-M-
"127…" Tony muttered as the latest Asgardian fell victim to a repulsor blast. "128…130." Tony grimaced as the Asgardian slammed into two others and they fell into what might potentially be a deep ravine, though he couldn't tell from where he was. Both Thor and Frigga had been very adamant that if at all possible, they shouldn't needlessly kill Asgardian warriors. After all, if they did manage to kill Odin (it would now, apparently, be acceptable to do so in the eyes of the rest of the Nine Realms as they were at war), they still wanted a shot at the Asgardian throne, and extreme resentment from those whose friends and family had died would not help matters. So, the aim was not to kill the Asgardians, but to disable them, or to make it harder for them to kill the Jotuns.
Still, Tony couldn't exactly feel bad about sometimes killing the soldiers, after all, the less soldiers there were, the less that would make it to the war council and try to harm Loki and his children. Besides, he had been trying his best, the bullets and missiles were being reserved for Odin (and was he pointedly ignoring that they had done nothing last time? Yes he was), because who knew, they might do something this time. Frigga had said that he wouldn't use the Odinforce in battle, as he would lose credibility with his army. And given that Odin had only seemed to be slicing through people with a sword the last time Tony had seen him, he supposed this was true. Then again, however famous a warrior Odin was, he was still an old man, and it was surprising he was still alive, so perhaps he was trying to use the Odinforce without the knowledge of his soldiers, or perhaps the soldiers were doing a good enough job at protecting him by slaughtering every Jotun in their path.
Tony zoomed through the air towards a large group of Asgardian soldiers that was in the process of completely decimating a group of perhaps three dozen Jotuns and several glowing soldiers from Helheim. He dived down, forcing them to scatter and he began to pick them off one by one. "135, 136…"
As he dived out of the way of an arrow and spun around to take out its owner he allowed himself to breathe, Loki and the kids would be fine, everything would be okay, he would get back home. This was easy, he just had to focus, to get into a routine, this was nothing he hadn't done before (admittedly, on a smaller scale, but no matter). He allowed his rage at Odin and the entirety of Asgard for screwing up Loki's life to drive him on as he blasted two more away from several young frost giants.
Suddenly, the sound of the Bifrost rent the air and Tony turned to see hundreds more soldiers pouring out of the rainbow bridge.
Okay…so maybe they wouldn't be fine.
-M-
Frigga looked across at where Laufey was ploughing through the newly arrived Asgardian soldiers with his ice blade and sighed. Laufey clearly wasn't in agreement with her plan of not unnecessarily harming Asgardians, but small blame to him. Asgard had been slowly killing his people over centuries, and as Frigga incapacitated a soldier she wondered what the plan would cost her son and her grandchildren if they reached the council chamber. Surely, killing was quicker. But no, they had to think long term, they had to have an end planned, or who knew what could happen in the future?
Laufey, staining the white snow red, was surely in his element, and had Frigga not lived in a warrior society for the duration of her marriage, or felt the same rage at the thought of Odin's treatment of her son, perhaps she would have been terrified, but as it was she was glad to have him on her side. The two of them had considered staying in the council chamber and directing the battle from there, but Laufey had wanted to lead his people and have a chance of killing Odin, and Frigga knew how to fight and she knew how to fight well, especially with her magic, and she would be damned if she let her skill go to waste. They had both decided to leave Loki in charge of the council chamber, after all, he understood Asgardian tactics better than the frost giants did, and, having no magic himself and wanting to protect his children, he was unwilling to fight on the battlefield, not that either of them wanted him there in the first place.
"Listen to me!" she said to the Asgardian soldier opposite her. "Odin has gone mad, you must-"
"You have no right to command me," the soldier snarled. "It is clear to me that it is you and your sons who are the mad ones."
-M-
"Please," Thor begged, keeping the Asgardian soldiers at bay with random bursts of lightning, only some of which were intentional. "If you would just listen to me! Odin has gone mad, he no longer has the best interests of Asgard at heart, he would destroy us!"
"Yet you fight for the frost giants," one of the soldiers said coldly, not seeming to care about wiping off the blood that was dripping from his sword. "So who is the real traitor?"
"You have heard of what he has done, have you not?" Thor demanded.
"Oh, I have heard the rumours, one of which being that Prince Loki is a frost giant. So, tell me, my prince, do you really want me to believe in them?"
-m-
Alfar stared at Thor as the recently disowned heir to the throne looked like he was struggling to make a decision as to how to respond to Alfar's shield brother, Dyri. The obvious thing to do would be to deny the accusation that Loki was a frost giant, after all, how could he be, and why would he be? But… Thor's lack of answer seemed to imply that Loki was one.
Alfar frowned. It made no sense, the second prince was perhaps the least frost giant-like man he had ever met. He wasn't very Asgardian either, but that was besides the point. He hadn't seen Loki except from at a distance for years, but when he had been younger Loki had sometimes trained with the other boys. In contrast to being savagely murderous and violently stupid, Loki had always been timid and quiet, listening attentively to their instructors and often failing to fight properly with the other boys, looking paranoid when he gave them perfectly reasonable injuries for sword practice, which was particularly strange due to Loki's own abnormally high pain tolerance. At the start, Alfar had been prepared to brush it off. He had once pretended to attack Loki with his sword after defeating the prince and Loki had thrown him away from him with his magic. Though fighting using magic wasn't honourable, neither was attacking them after they had been disarmed, so he had assured him it was fine (doing his best to ignore Loki's bizarre incessant apologies) and walked away. Perhaps he would have thought no more on the matter, but Loki was always this way, scared, and he and the other boys had had to admit that despite Loki being a prince and the fact that you should never speak ill of the royal family, that Loki was just weird.
Perhaps this un-frost giant-like behaviour had been a deliberate attempt to hide what he was, or perhaps it proved that Thor had been right about the frost giants in his speeches, that they weren't really as bad as the stories said they were. But how had Odin not known that he had a frost giant for a son? It would have been impossible for him not to have known. So what, therefore, had Odin been up to in claiming that Loki was a part of their family? Whatever it was, Odin was clearly unstable, and Alfar thought that perhaps they would be right to doubt him. Who in their right mind hid a frost giant, who wasn't even a very good frost giant, in their midst?
Alfar had once doubted the rumours, but now he felt that Odin was perhaps unstable enough to have killed his second born, and to have imprisoned Loki's children and to have harmed Frigga, which Dyri had pointed out, wasn't technically illegal. Alfar had said that that was besides the point, if it were true, it was wrong, and furthermore she was the Queen.
"My brother… is a frost giant… yes," Thor said slowly, and Alfar's eyes widened.
"Which is precisely why the Allfather was right in banishing him, and we cannot trust you if you see one of them as your brother," Dyri snarled.
"The Allfather banished him for a war I started, because he could not see past his hatred for the son that he stole from Jotunheim to cover up for the fact that he had just murdered my newborn sister. Do you not doubt his sanity?"
"I do," Alfar said, swallowing as Dyri spun round to face him.
"You would believe this traitor, who sides with our enemy?"
Alfar glared at him. "They would not be our enemy if the Allfather had let them keep the Casket and allowed us to improve the relations started by the Queen."
"The Jotuns are not worthy to own such a treasure."
"How do we know what they are worthy of?" Alfar demanded, wondering how he dared to speak these treasonous words aloud. "Thor's speeches, they made sense. All we have heard for centuries is a truth twisted to make it more palatable – yes, the frost giants did not do what was right, but neither did we. And we cannot forget the millennia before the war in which the relations between our realms were good. Our history has been controlled by the man who murdered his child, we must at least question its validity."
"And how do we know he did so, because the former prince said so?" Dyri asked, and Thor emitted more sparks. Alfar had no idea how he was doing so without Mjolnir but he supposed that was a question for another day.
"I think that some the rumours of what the Allfather has done are true," a young member of the Einherjar spoke up, and Alfar noted how carefully he was speaking in order to make it seem as though he were not afraid. "Yesterday I saw Thor running through the castle with a girl on his shoulders. She had black hair and green eyes, like Loki does. It seems reasonable that she could be his daughter."
"Yes, that is his daughter, Hel," Thor confirmed. "The Allfather locked Hel and her siblings away for many centuries as he feared their magic."
"Surely that means that their magic should be feared?" someone else shouted.
"No, I do not think it does… as I do not think the Allfather's judgement is always wise," Solvin, an older soldier and one of Alfar's mentors, spoke up. Everyone's gaze was trained on him but Solvin stared stoically at the man who Alfar presumed had just spoken. "I was once on duty in the corridor outside the Allfather's chambers and though I could not hear all of what was said, I could hear Loki screaming and begging and the Allfather said something about informing the Queen and Loki fell silent. I was not sure what to think of it at the time, but I did not feel that I understood this situation, nor that I could do anything, I confess that I walked further along the corridor as I did not want to hear more, telling myself that it was normal for a father to punish his disobedient child."
"You think that the Allfather was holding the knowledge of Loki's birth over his head?" Alfar asked. And perhaps it was too soon to jump to conclusions, but that was the logical explanation, was it not?
"Perhaps," Solvin said lightly. "Whatever the situation I do not think he treated Loki well. Whenever I saw the prince afterwards he always looked composed, but he never seemed to act naturally around his own father, and I always thought that something was not right."
"You think he mistreated the frost giant?" Dyri mocked.
Solvin licked his lips before speaking, clearly as nervous as Alfar was; discussing the Allfather like this was undoubtedly treason. "I am fairly certain of it. And he might be frost giant, but does that automatically mean that he deserved it?"
"They killed my brother-in-law not half an hour ago!" someone from further back in the crowd snapped. "They are beasts. Whatever our King did, Loki deserved it."
"I am sure," Solvin said, with the air of someone who had much experience, and Alfar supposed he did, having fought in the original war with Jotunheim. "That your brother-in-law would have wanted to kill them with as much vigour as they did him. That being said, I am sorry for your loss, Vottur."
Thor spoke for the first time in a while, and Alfar found he had almost forgotten the prince had been standing there, sending out short bursts of lightning whenever anyone got too close. "So," he asked. "Will any of you join my mother and I? We must stop Odin, before he does anything worse."
"I will," Alfar said immediately. Because he didn't understand everything, but what Thor said made more sense that what the Allfather did, and if he were to die for something it may as well be something he thought to be true. Besides, he had already committed treason by insulting the Allfather, so why not go all the way?
"And I," Solvin said.
Quickly the ranks became a disorganised mess as various soldiers backed towards Thor and away from their previous comrades, swords raised against one another.
Alfar's eyes met Dyri's through the increasing chaos of the battalion. His eyes were hard and determined and Alfar smiled slightly in regret. He may never have agreed with some of Dyri's views, but he had always been someone with whom he could share a pint with and play cards at the end of a long day, a friend he could count on to make him laugh.
"You should flee," Thor advised those still on Odin's side.
"No," he could see Dyri say amongst the incredulous voices. Alfar was glad that Thor had given them all a chance though, even though their honour demanded that they could never have taken it, it made him feel slightly better about what he was about to do.
So be it, he thought, as the regiment turned in on itself and his sword clashed against those he had once considered to be shield brothers.
-M-
Loki watched the illusion closely, his jaw clenched, a wriggling Fenrir clutched to his chest. The atmosphere in the room had grown increasingly tense since a group of about fifty Asgardians had managed to break through the ranks of the dead that surrounded the building and had started to close in.
"Maybe we should have sent the mages," Leif said quietly. Loki chose not to comment, there was no use assigning blame now.
"Fenrir, go into the other room and stay with your siblings, keep yourself cloaked as I taught you," he said firmly, placing him down on the ground.
"No!" Fenrir said. "No, I do not want to, I want to stay with you father, I-"
"Yes, but you are not safe with me," Loki said firmly. "Perhaps, if you are quiet and invisible, they will not think to look for you."
Fenrir looked conflicted and Loki tried to keep the panic out of his eyes, he really could not afford this now. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Sleipnir waving shakily at them in order to get their attention and he turned so Fenrir could see him too. "Look, Fenrir, Sleipnir doesn't know how to do the protection spells, go and keep him company, and keep him safe."
"No!"
"Come on Fenrir!" Jormungandr moaned. "I want you to stay with us and so does Sleipnir… I think," he added after a pause. Sleipnir nodded enthusiastically. "See, he wants you to stay!"
"Fine," Fenrir muttered, and Loki walked over and placed him down next to Sleipnir and Jormungandr.
"You will be fine, keep yourselves hidden, I love you," Loki said seriously, and swept them into a hug. Then he quickly got up to speak to the others in the next room. When he looked back the three of them were no longer visible.
"Give me some knives," Loki ordered.
"What?" Leif said, clearly shocked. Loki didn't have time for this.
"I may not have magic, but I want to defend myself and my children, I want to defend all of us, and I know how to use knives."
"Could we not ask the Helas to send us more of the dead here?" one of the politicians asked nervously. "Surely that would work?"
"I don't think they're aware of what's going on," Loki said grimly, glancing over to where he could see Hel shaking and Hela looking tense and swaying where she sat. He wanted to stop them, to help them, but he felt that breaking the connection would have worse consequences than magical exhaustion. "I think they are using all their energy just to keep the connection between the two worlds open and I am unwilling to try to communicate with them and accidently loose the connection. That is, until I am sure that there is no other way."
"Here," Leif said grimly, handing Loki some of his own daggers. "Try not to do anything too reckless."
So, there it is, I hope you guys enjoyed!
Next up: Odin gets what he deserves ;) and everyone is badass