Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel, Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Final Fantasy, Harry Potter, or anything else that finds its way into these pages. No disrespect intended, only homage, no profit made, only entertainment intended. If you're a fan, read it, if you don't like it, stop reading. Simple as pie.

Rating: M for Mature.

Spoilers: Few but possible throughout the comics and the entire MCU, although I don't know yet whether the MCU will even come into play here. Currently we are long, long before any of that takes place.

Chapter Nine: Wake Me Up

Feeling my way through the darkness,

Guided by a beating heart.

I can't tell where the journey will end,

But I know where to start.

They tell me I'm too young to understand,

That I'm caught up in a dream.

Well, life will pass me by if I don't open up my eyes.

Well, that's fine by me.

So wake me up when it's all over,

When I'm wiser and I'm older.

All this time I was finding myself, but I

Didn't know I was lost.

-"Wake Me Up," by Avicii

Odin never said another word about the incident with Sif's hair, and breakfast was a pleasant affair. Even Thor seemed to have forgotten the trauma of being turned into a bullfrog after a night's sleep and behaved like a reasonable facsimile of a decent big brother over the meal. Then Loki left for Migelo's to work a few hours and when he got there, Sigyn leaped upon him and gave him a huge hug, which startled him.

"Thank you so much, Loki. I don't know how you did it, but thank you."

"No problem. You deserved it," he said. "Have you played with it yet?"

"I just opened it up and started learning about how it works. I'll learn more after work. Thank you again, so much. I'll treasure it forever."

"I hope you enjoy it," Loki said. "I got you the deluxe model that allows neighborhoods and world exploration."

"Oh wow. But how could you afford this? You only just started working here."

"I hunt. There's good money in it," Loki said. She didn't know, and he didn't want to tell her, that he was a Prince. He kind of liked being treated like an ordinary person. He worked, running errands for Migelo, and after that was done he finally made it to that building in the Palace District to which Tomaj directed him, and showed the Bangaa outside his Primer. The Bangaa let him in, and he discovered the place was a residence much like any Noble would have, but populated by the roughest sort of people. There was one other thing odd about these people. Not a one of them was Aesir. There were few Nords at all, but clearly the few that there were were Vanir. The rest were of the myriad other races of Asgard; Elves, Dwarves, Khajiit, Moogles, Mogs, Chocolines, Miq'ote, pig-like Seeq, Bangaa, and even a Viera standing sentinel at the top of the stairs.

"A well-dressed Moogle with a shock of orange hair and an orange puff on his antenna, standing on the mezzanine bannister with no apparent fear of falling despite the fact that, while winged, Moogles could only hover a few inches off the ground for short periods of time, gestured Loki up the stairs. At least it seemed that he did, as he appeared to be looking directly at Loki, though he looked around for others the gesture may have been meant for. Seeing no one else paying any attention to the gesture, he mounted the left-hand set of gracefully curving stairs to the mezzanine floor and approached the Moogle cautiously.

"You wanted to speak with me, Serrah?" Loki said.

"I did indeed," the Moogle said. He had the sort of squeaky voice one would expect from a Moogle, but a very upper class accent. "Yours is a new face! Did Tomaj recruit you?"

"He did, yes."

"Excellent! Tomaj knows talent when he sees it! Welcome to Clan Centurio, young man! But… you're not a member yet! There's a very stringent entry examination you must pass first! We have the strictest standards of admission! And… you pass, Kupo! Moogles are quick to make up their minds! I'll go get all your paperwork in order. Have a look about, talk to some people – there's a wealth of information in these halls. A young hunter would do well to learn from all the experience here."

The Moogle jumped off the bannister to the mezzanine floor and waddled off towards a nearby door. Loki looked around and tried to find someone unintimidating to speak with. There were a lot of people, but not a lot of options on the scale of unintimidating. He settled on the Viera, but she wasn't really the least intimidating choice. She was very tall, very slender, and wore armor of such incredible scantiness that he was not too young to feel distinctly uncomfortable about it. But his association with Sigyn made her intriguing – Viera weren't commonplace in the city.

"H-hello," he said, looking what felt like very far up at her. She merely cocked her head to one side and looked inquiringly down at him. "M-my name is Loki. What's yours?"

"Krjn," she said. It was said in a tone that did not invite follow up questions.

"I… I know another Viera, a little girl about my age. She's very nice."

Again, just a look of inquiry, as though she could not imagine why he was saying this to her.

"I-I don't think she was born here, in the Golden City, but I don't know where she is from. Were you born here?"

"Of course not. Viera come from the Wood."

"The Wood? Which Wood?" Loki said. There were many forests and jungles in Asgard.

"All Woods. Wherever trees grow thick and proud, you will find Viera."

"Oh. I didn't know that."

"Now you do."

"Do you ever go back to the Wood? Like, to visit?"

She shook her head. "Viera who leave the Wood are Viera no longer. When I left my village I left my past behind. So too did your little friend. We can never return to the places from which we came."

"That seems… harsh."

"It is our reality. Harsh or no, it simply is."

The Moogle returned. "Your paperwork is all in order, Kupo! Congratulations for joining the premiere non-Aesir Hunt Club in Asgard!"

"Why are there no Aesir allowed?" Loki asked.

"It's not a matter of us not allowing them," the Moogle said. "They don't want to join us, Kupo! They have their own clan, the Fighter's Guild – no non-Aesir allowed! So the rest of us have Clan Centurio, and find as much glory as they'll leave us, Kupo!"

"So it doesn't matter to you that I'm half Aesir, then?" Loki said.

"Not a whit! You're a great hunter in training, and you'd never be allowed to find glory in the Fighter's Guild, Aesir blood or not, all because of the color of your hair! That's what matters, Kupo!"

"Is it really this bad?" Loki asked. "Aesir are really this exclusionary?"

"Leaving us out of their Fighter's Guild is a minor thing. It gets far worse than that, my boy, Kupo! I hope your Aesir blood can keep you from experiencing the worst of it, but I wouldn't count on it. Vanir are almost as looked down upon as we so-called 'lesser races.' If you had fur or feathers, you'd really feel the heat, Kupo!"

Loki thought of Sif pushing him into the dirt and calling him a Vanir dog. Perhaps that was only his first taste of prejudice.

"Enough talk of nasty things, Kupo! Would you like to hear of our current marks? We have two, Kupo, one local and one in Bhujerba."

"Well, I doubt my father would let me go hunting in another city just yet, so let me hear the local one," Loki said.

"Very well, Kupo! The local bounty is for a Chickatrice, a great cockatrice-like fiend just outside the city to the south, on the way to the Observatory! The petitioner is a Nomad named Dania from the village that lies just by the Rainbow Road outside the Valhalla before the sea, Kupo. You cannot miss it, but it will only be there during the Dry season, Kupo, so you should hurry, the Rains will come soon and the Nomads will pack up and leave and there goes your bounty!"

"Is this thing very big?" Loki asked.

"Pretty big, Kupo. Plus, it has chicks, any one of which is as large as a full-grown cockatrice."

"Then I'd probably better not go after it alone. Do you think anyone here would share the bounty with me?"

"Oh, certainly, Kupo! These are elite marks, so the bounties are worth sharing! Just ask around, Kupo, you'll find someone."

Loki didn't want to ask these older warriors, but he was a brave boy, and in short order he found a blond-haired Dwarf who was willing to split the bounty with him, and they went out together to find the Nomad village. Loki had never walked the shimmering Rainbow Road before, which led straight out of town to the south, on through the plains beyond and across the sea, over the mysterious Ginunngagap and to the golden Observatory in the center of it. The land beyond the South Gate was different than that beyond the East and West Gates, plains instead of wadis, and from the Courtyard he could see the shining sea and, far off in the distance, a glimpse of the distant Observatory. He would like to go there, to look down into the blackness of Ginunngagap and wonder where the portal led and why it was in the middle of the sea off the coast of the Golden City, how it got there, who or what made it, but without his father's permission he knew he could not go so far.

The Dwarf led him straight to the Nomad village. A woman with a small trade in handmade goods directed them to Dania, a herder of cockatrice – round rolling birds slightly larger than turkeys that tasted quite good, properly cooked, especially domesticated. They had an ill-tempered look to them, even tame, and Loki stayed outside the corral as he spoke to Dania about her mark. The hunt was complicated by the fact that the Chickatrice was shy, but the Dwarf was canny about such things and knew how to flush it, so they had little trouble. The size of the thing was shocking. Loki expected a large bird, but the enormity of the rotund fowl that charged at him when he picked off one of the fluffy yellow chicks was astonishing. With the Dwarf's assistance, though, it died swiftly enough. After that the other two chicks were no problem.

"You're a good little hunter, kid," the Dwarf said. He folded up his fancy mechanical crossbow and put it into harness on his back. He had never offered his name. "Could have some stories to tell some day."

"I hope so. I love stories," Loki said. The Dwarf laughed.

"Well when you have 'em, tell 'em to me, eh? Maybe we could collaborate on a collection," the Dwarf said, and held out his hand for a shake. Neither of them were wearing gloves, so Loki saluted and bowed instead. They went for their bounty – a thousand silver Borrsons, a pair of enchanted jackboots, and a rainbow-colored egg Dania said would go for top dollar at market – and split it between them. The Dwarf took the boots, since they were far and away too large for Loki, and they split the profits on the egg after selling it at the bazaar in the middle of the city. It certainly wasn't like the reward for the Earth Tyrant, but then that came from the Royal coffers and not from a wandering nomad who probably had a hard time scraping together a thousand silver pieces in the first place. It wasn't bad, considering, and silver was highly valued in Asgard because gold was so common. Gold was still valued more highly because it had religious connotations, but you could easily live on silver. It wasn't like Loki had much use for coin under ordinary circumstances anyway, but it made him feel good to be making a bit, like a little security against the uncertainty of what appeared to be a very secure future.

Life went on for Loki. He worked with Migelo and the children until his magical studies began to take up too much time. He proved to be an apt pupil. In an extraordinarily short number of years, Auryen declared he had achieved his Mastery of the mystic arts, which could have been the end of it. Certainly Odin would have been fine if Mastery was all he achieved. But Auryen did not wish to stop there, and took him onward to the levels of achievement beyond Mastery – in Asgard there were many. And Loki worked diligently, and achieved each new level as he could, and as Auryen apparently expected of him, became Grand Master of the Mystic Arts at the youngest age ever recorded in Asgardian history, which was quite an accomplishment. He never worked with any but the most basic Green Magic spell, however – simple transfigurations, easily done and undone, the occasional small-area alteration of gravity or some minor specification of physics, like giving himself the ability to fly. Nothing major, like the unwinding of time. He knew those things were too dangerous to dabble in and stayed well clear of them.

When Thor reached a thousand years of age, the proper age for a Royal to enlist in the army, he did so with Odin's blessing. To celebrate the enlistment, Odin had made for him a special weapon, forged in the heart of a dying star, a war hammer like no other. Enchanted to fly to a target and return to the wielder's hand, there was something significantly wrong with the design – it was a two-handed weapon with a long haft, not easily thrown. Loki pondered this design flaw for a long time and then sneaked off to where it was being forged and put a bee in the smithy's ear about shortening the handgrip. And thus, Mjolnir was born. Thor was disappointed in his one-handed hammer at first, until Loki cat-stepped up behind him and whispered to him to give it a twirl and throw it. Thor did so, and the hammer sailed off, returning to his hand a moment later.

"Now imagine giving it a twirl, but not letting go," Loki said. "The hammer's momentum would carry you with it, and off you'd go flying to wherever you pointed the hammer."

Loki, too, reached the age of a thousand in due time. He was not particularly interested in joining the army, but in Asgard a male who did not join the army and spend at least one tour of duty for the realm was seen as a coward, so he, too, enlisted, to his father's approval. He also received a weapon to celebrate his enlistment. Gram… a perfectly ordinary sword, albeit quite strong and sharp and enchanted so that no one other than Loki could wield it.

"I don't understand, Father," Loki said, holding the sword at his side. "It's just a sword. It's barely magic at all."

"You have all the magic you could ever need at your command," Odin said. "What you need is a good, strong physical weapon on the off chance magic fails you."

Loki still didn't understand, even though it was a perfectly simple thing his father was saying. But at a thousand years old, he was still really just a child, no matter how bright he may have been. Children's minds are easily clouded by emotion, and Loki's ability to deal with his emotions wasn't even as good as it could have been, partly because of that odd instinct for mischief that kept leading him astray, and partly because of that dark trauma from his now-distant past. He hid his feelings, but they roiled inside him, leaving him in a constant state of uncertainty and mistrust. Now he wondered what his father really meant by this gift of an ordinary sword. Thor got an amazing enchanted hammer, and he got a plain sword? What did that really mean?

It never really became clear to him and he did not ask for further clarification. He took his sword, bowed, and went to his dispatch unit for assignment, where he promptly found himself placed in the Ben Hasserath, the special forces of Asgard, everything from elite fighting units to spies. He was put into training to find out which he was better suited to become. As it turned out, he was well equipped to be both. He was sent on a number of critical and at times classified missions and things occasionally went badly, but he always managed to pull through and get the job done no matter the cost. It was grueling, soul-killing work. Loki hated it.

And then came Elysium.

Elysium was a small village in Vanaheim where the inhabitants kept going missing, but no one was saying anything about where or why they were disappearing. Vanaheim had its own ruler, Queen Freya, who happened to be Frigga's sister and Loki's aunt, but it was a protectorate of Asgard and so the Ben Hasserath were requested to send someone to look into the situation. Loki had just returned from the third of three long, hard missions in a row with no RR, but he obediently turned around and headed for the Bifrost when mission dispatch mistakenly assigned him the operation.

He was tired, but he did his duty and he did it well. It was easy enough to solve the mystery. Vanir space pirates were kidnapping people to sell on the universal slave market. Kidnapping their own people and selling them into slavery – the worst kind of scum, in Loki's opinion. The villagers were too intimidated to say anything. Loki got them out of the way and held off the pirates when they came for more, but he was tired, and there were many pirates. He managed to keep the villagers safe and report in, but the pirates kept him harassed until he collapsed from exhaustion. So the pirates got one captive after all.