Part 15

A/N: I am so sorry I haven't updated until today. I was on a 4-day camping trip from Friday to Monday and I forgot to post before that. I will, however, make up with a double update since I was planning to update extra last week but didn't get around to it. Enjoy!

Loki's love of drama and irony was inherited by his daughters, for better or for worse.

Loki was despairing. Where he once thought that he was here of his own free will, to not permanently be separated from the only mother figure he had ever known, he realized that at this point in the game, Odin had been three steps ahead. Not a single aspect of his magic worked to get him out, and Frigga was nowhere to be seen at the time when she always visited daily, to have him keep the minimal sanity he had left. And neither Lilith nor Jade appeared with news either.

Loki was about to give up, when the sounds of battle reached him from outside. He jumped from the chair he had been wallowing in self-pity on. Something was going on, and as always, his daughters would be in the center of it.

That statement was true, as always, and Lilith apparated in right outside his (utterly lacking even imaginary privacy) cell. "Hey. Heard you got yourself into a jam again," she noted, still in the form she wore on Midgard. Looking at her hair, the most easily identifiable aspect of the guise, she shifted it into that of Lady Astra Black, the one she was using that day and on that world.

"Yes, of course, as always." Loki drawled sarcastically.

"Well, when your fragile ego is done, I was considering doing the deed that three armies have arrived as a distraction for. Unless you would prefer to miss your younger daughter's wedding?"

"How much have I missed?"

"Wait, I need to break these wards. They're set to accept only Odin's magical signature or a smash from Mjolnir. Thankfully Mister Hammered let Hermione and I examine Mjolnir last week, well it was last week for me. The combination should be enough to get you out."

"Can't you just overpower it like you usually do? Just bust a hole at its weak point?"

"No, there's an enchantment that takes energy not of the correct signature and repurposes it to make the wards even stronger. So stop distracting me unless you want to make it even harder to get out." Loki waited in silence, not doing anything while Astra concentrated on disabling one of the most thorough ward schemes she had ever seen.

Finally, after five minutes, the yellow-tinted energy barrier fell, and Loki warily stepped through. Astra poked his left shoulder, and he felt the rush of a transfusion of her magical energy absorbing into his own magical veins, paralleling his blood veins.

But, of course, her damn luck had to play up and a dozen of Odin's best guards rushed in and threw a rune-engraved stone towards Loki and his unknown ally. "Well, I should really have seen that coming." Loki noted.

"Yeah, really should've." Astra confirmed, blasting a raw wave of energy at the guards and throwing them back into the wall, knocking them all unconscious. "Alright, now move. There are ancient wards all over the place, I can't portal out, and neither will I risk losing concentration for side-along."
"As soon as we get out, I am learning at least three different methods for teleportation." Loki muttered under his breath as he followed Astra out of the palace. Both of them made doubles of themselves to serve as decoys as they applied invisibility enchantments, their doubles copying them practically at their sides, so as to be easier to maintain. They got out of the dungeons with no more problems, and were in the palace's main courtyard, when Astra had to disable yet another wave of soldiers.

Except the soldiers were not alone. Odin stood behind them, in full battle armour. Astra disabled her double before Odin could catch a glimpse. It was safer if Odin thought Loki was using the battle as a distraction, and not the other way around. "Loki, your punishment was to stay in your cell. A battle that leaves my soldiers distracted is not a good enough reason to break out."
"Pardon, Allfather, battle?" Loki drawled, with an undertone of menacing purr.

"Yes, some Ice Giant decided to step up to Laufey's throne, and is now being beaten back by my armies."
Loki kept up the act of not knowing what was going on. "Well, all the more reason for me to leave. It seems I may have an older sibling, if they were able to claim Jotunheim's throne. You know, the one that used to belong to my biological father, Laufey?" His voice was pure venomous spite, channeling all his hatred, rage, anger, and spite at Odin. For all that he had yet to come to terms with himself as to whether or not he wished to retain any relationship with Thor and Frigga, Odin was most definitely off the list.

"Loki, you have gotten your punishment, and you will serve it out. Don't make this worse." Odin told him, purposefully parroting Frigga, who, even with the mass battle, was nowhere to be found.

Loki understood the reference, and repeated back, "Define worse. Because I truly have no wish to rot away in Asgard's dungeons when I have a real family out there."

"You are a citizen of Asgard, not above anyone else, and cannot ignore my law on a whim!' Odin commanded.

"No, truly, I am not. You kidnapped me, and I have never stopped being a natural born Prince of Jotunheim, possibly of Vanaheim as well if Mother adopted me properly. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a family reunion to catch."

Odin leveled Gungnir at Loki, intent on binding him in some way or form as Gungnir was able to do to any Asgardian. But Loki counted on it, and instantaneously shifted to his Jotun form, for as a Prince of Jotunheim, and not of Asgard, Odin's influence over him would have to be a difficult uphill battle. A bolt of red energy hit Odin from the back, freezing him in place. Loki gave a smile and a nod of thanks, and she, still in her form of Astra Black but now visible, gave one back. Wearing his eyepatch as a badge of honor of a wound won in battle, instead of getting it healed for the added peripheral vision, was Odin's mistake. "Come on, we have a family reunion to catch, and then a wedding soon."