Loki-
I have at last managed to secure a copy of Asgardian lore, the works of the late Helena Ravenclaw, though the stories she writes are at least a century older. The tales she tells are grim indeed. The carnage wrought as mankind worshipped first one faction, then another creates a troubling precedent. But humans have evolved with time- surely Asgard need not be as violent a neighbor as in the past? And if their nature has not, indeed, changed, are you certain they will see value in attacking this world?
Loki paused, dipping his quill to pen a response. Both he and the headmaster had been busy as of late, with the notes returned there'd been little reason to meet. However, he'd apparently succeeded in scaring the old man, which was a good sign.
He put it beside a small pile on his desk with the results of his Diagon Alley trip, information on the headmaster from a source of questionable integrity. There was little right now, a name here, a place there, but all information could be useful, in time. He skimmed the letter quickly, filing it away, then glanced out the window- it was almost nine.
With a frown, he checked the tracking charms. He hadn't heard from his intelligence force since they'd departed two weeks ago. The gray channel between himself and Malfoy arced northeast, stretched as thin as he'd ever seen it. Listening in only yielded a kind of static silence. He widened the channel between them, listening carefully, but he heard nothing. He leaned back, laying out his fingers.
The trip back was complicated, intentionally so. But dawn had come upon the region six hours ago already.
Loki put his quill down, going to the window, letting the owl, called to him with magic, swoop down and take the letter to his informant.
Perhaps they were being thorough, or there was more to see. He didn't want to jeopardize his agents' freedom if, indeed, there was nothing to worry about.
His fingers brushed the pocket of his jacket, the fabric above a creased photograph, but he found the vertex of two golden apparation lines and turned, letting his wooden study melt away. He had other countries to provoke.
"Pierre Ruiz," Loki said softly, leaning with one arm against the marble mantlepiece in a many-mirrored room. Between reflections of the glimmering decor, Loki could get a fragmented picture of the French courtier- white hair, blue robes raised to the elbows, exposing arms with a feathered brown pattern and curved nails like talons. Loki's own reflection was absent.
The man whirled.
"Who are you?" the man asked. His eyes were a bright yellow, the color of a bird. The courtier was said to be a master of human transfiguration, and to have a rather barbed tongue himself.
"A friend," Loki said. "To you and your nation."
"Ah," Ruiz said, his tufted eyebrows coming together in a frown. "So you come to bribe me. I have turned down many such offers in the past."
"Many, but not all," Loki said, lifting an eyebrow.
The man's eyes narrowed, and he crossed his taloned arms, drawing attention to the strange pattern there.
"I am, and have always been, nothing more than a true patriot."
"You don't believe that," Loki said. "Though perhaps you did, at one time. Or perhaps you are merely a good liar."
The man crossed his arms, refusing to dignify that with a response, and Loki's eyes were drawn again to the pattern of feathers beneath the surface of his flesh, like a tattoo in three dimensions.
"Funny thing, transfiguration," Loki said, looking at the man's feathered arm. "The flesh itself acts as a barrier, preventing direct interference on that which is connected to it. Man, beast, no matter." He nodded to the talons at the man's fingertips. "To allow direct transfiguration on the flesh, a creature must give consent- not verbal, but magical, pulling away the barrier to allow magical entry. It requires significant experience." Something he had not been aware of himself until after Dumbledore had healed him those many months ago.
The man looked back impassively, his face revealing nothing. It was only in his eyes that Loki saw that flash of fear, and he smiled sharply, reveling in the final blow.
"It was an accident," Loki concluded.
Pierre's face paled, and his eyes shifted, jumping around the mirrored room.
"What does it matter?"
"Consider it… a gift," Loki said, tapping his chin. "From me to you."
"A gift… how?" the silver-haired man asked, narrowing his yellow eyes.
"In that," Loki said, opening his hands so a silver parcel appeared to float in the air between them. "I have returned to you a secret."
The man raised his eyebrows.
"Yes," Loki said, "It is yours to keep. I can even make sure it never passes certain ears, so it is never whispered that Pierre Ruiz is a failure, so that the people look upon you with fear and awe rather than scorn."
Ruiz reached up to touch the parcel, and Loki clapped his hands. The gift disappeared, replaced by ten more.
"Unfortunately," Loki said, "You have no dearth of secrets."
The man looked at the little gifts, face wary.
"Now," Loki said, the closest present spinning in the air. "What can you offer me in return?"
Harry and Lupin were standing outside his office when he returned. Loki checked the time, cursing. He was forty minutes late.
"I got him something from the cafe," Lupin said, as he undid the wards to get in. With Flamel's things gone from the room, it was sparse, arching wood ceiling over windows that looked, inexplicably, out into the British countryside. "He couldn't wait..."
Loki nodded, sweeping his piles of letters into his filing cabinet with the flick of his fingers, using a little mental trick to keep them organized in the drawers.
"It was something with France," he said, and Lupin nodded.
"Are they still rearing for an attack?" he asked, looking out the window, into the cloudy sky. "I thought they had backed down."
"We'll see," Loki said.
Harry had toddled over to the window, peering over the low sill.
"Whas dat?" he asked, pointing a chubby finger up at the sky.
Loki followed him.
"That's the sun, child," he said. "It's what warms this little planet."
"Why?" he asked.
Loki considered that for a moment, his mind finding and discarding considerations of matter, light, energy, and philosophy.
"Because it can," he said.
"Why?" Harry asked again, and Remus laughed good-naturedly.
"You won't get him to stop that easily," he said. "He just loves asking questions these days. The books say it's normal, but after the first two-thousand you have to wonder."
"Nothing wrong with a little curiousity," Loki said, lifting Harry onto his shoulders so he could get a better look. Harry smiled and waved.
"He's been talking about this all week," Lupin was saying, and Loki flashed him a brief smile, checking his tracking charms again. Lucius's hadn't moved an inch. What was going on? He glanced down, looking at the network of apparation lines that crossed the room in neat, even-spaced yards. Perhaps he should… no, that was rash. The scouting party would return, or it would not. There was no one truly irreplaceable in the group, though Lucius would be an inconvenience, and Longbottom was useful to have around. If something even had happened…
Lupin cleared his throat and Loki blinked.
"Sorry?"
"I was just saying, if you are able to come, it would mean a lot to Harry."
Come? Loki mentally replayed the past few minutes of conversation. Something about a dinner they were hosting.
"Ah yes, the holiday," he said. "I'll see what I can do."
Remus sighed.
"Okay," he said.
Loki ruffled Harry's hair and Harry smiled up at him, trying to pull down his hand.
A knock sounded, and Amelia Bones walked in.
"Sorry to disturb," she said, looking pointedly at Remus.
"Right," Lupin said, picking Harry up. "We'll see you Friday, Minister."
"What is it?" Loki asked, when the pair had exited. He felt irrationally annoyed to cut the appointment short, though it had been he who was delayed.
"Dumbledore has returned to the French," Bones said.
"In what capacity?" Loki asked, taking his seat.
"Same as last time, to beg for peace," Bones said. "Not sure that would be a bad thing myself, but you asked me to let you know."
Loki nodded. All part of the plan.
"And?" he asked.
"The scouting party has not returned," Bones said. "As you are no doubt aware. They are eleven hours late."
"I'm aware," Loki said.
"What are you going to do?" she asked bluntly.
"What do you recommend?" Loki asked.
Bones frowned, adjusting her monocle.
"I didn't like this mission," she said. "Sending Longbottom and Malfoy, it seemed unnecessarily hasty."
"But now?" Loki asked.
Bones sighed.
"Cut them loose," she said.
"You want to leave them." Loki said. That did surprise him. Bones was no Dumbledore, but she did seem to lean heavily on his side of the moral scale.
"Of course I don't," Bones snapped, throwing off orange sparks. "Emmeline Vance was one of mine." She sighed, the magic subsiding into her skin. "But they were our best. We can't afford to throw troops at the situation- not without provoking an international response. And anyone else we send is liable to meet the same end as them, if they are gone, and not just late."
"And the information they carry?" Loki asked.
"Malfoy and Longbottom are occlumens," Bones said. "They won't crack. As for the rest, they probably already have, for what it's worth. They've been out for two weeks already- you might not like to see what condition they arrive when they return."
She rubbed her temples.
"I don't like it," she said. "But you have to know when to admit defeat."
Loki frowned.
The problem was, she was right. He shouldn't have sent out his best players- to do so had been gross overconfidence. He had treated them as pawns, and they had been lost in the field- hadn't he even said something to the effect those weeks ago? But he hadn't truly thought that Russia would pose a threat- not to operatives trained in the heat of battle. And now…
His mind traveled, inexplicably, to the look on Longbottom's face, when he'd left- perhaps through some trick of familial resemblance, it was the same trusting look the boy in the picture had for the camera-holder. Loki's fingers brushed his pocket unconsciously. As with all his clothing, the inside was much larger- his fingers closed around Voldemort's wand. Beside it, a vial of polyjuice, light healing potions, a spare knife…
"You shouldn't do this," Bones said. "It's too much of a risk."
"I'll be fine," Loki said.
"And the country?" Bones said, adjusting her monocle. "If France decides it's a good time to attack?"
Loki stepped away, leaving an illusory double behind.
"I'll keep an eye on things," Loki said.
"Can your little trick govern, or is that left to me?" Bones asked.
"Just don't give it any papers," Loki said with a grin.
Bones sighed.
"I suppose you'll want another portkey from Requisition?"
For mortals, intercontinental apparation was a hazardous preposition. Portkey travel was used to bridge the gap between countries- from what Loki gathered, it connected a system of ancient runes throughout the world inscribed on the so-called dolmen doors. Only a person whose name was inscribed on the doors could create a portkey to that region, and portkeys into Russian territory were famously difficult to come by. The Ministry did have a cache of German portkeys, however; some leftovers from an old war that they'd used to give Malfoy's team a jump, and to disguise their trail. From there, Malfoy's tracker had swiftly traveled north and east interminably, until it had arrived at its present location, far away from the initial target.
"I don't need a portkey," Loki said. His name was inscribed on the doors, but his ability to work with runes, like certain other magics, was sorely limited. Luckily, he could apparate much farther than a mortal.
Bones shrugged, giving him a whistle on a chain.
"Take this one," she said. "In case you need to get people back."
Loki took it, giving a mocking bow. Then he took a step, finding the intersection of two golden apparation lines, and disappeared.
Loki vanished himself and performed the apparation in one jump, evaporating into golden light until he felt himself being abruptly thrown back where he landed, hard, on the ground with his breath knocked out of him.
What-
For a moment, he saw nothing- just shades of dark gray in all directions. A wind was whistling fiercely, tearing up and down the cold landscape. The ley-network he had apparated from was gone.
He cast his eyes about strange landscape, alighting, at last, on a single golden line, almost invisible beneath the ground. He breathed a sigh of relief.
For a moment, he'd feared he had been transported much, much farther.
His own form was invisible but otherwise in good repair- a Midgardian wizard might have splinched, but he was made of tougher material than that. The ground beneath him was rocky; lacking trees or bushes. Instead he saw only patches of brown grass struggling beneath the dark gray sky. It took him a moment to realize that the sky ended fifty feet above him, and below it the land sharply rose up, then fell away into shattered and broken bits that rested before his feet.
He checked his tracking charms. Lucius was ten miles away still. This was the closest apparation point on this sparse part of the world. He looked around, swallowing, and lit a fire.
It had been a while since Loki had been alone, well and truly alone, and now he felt like he had stumbled across some rare uncharted part of Midgard, some place they did not tread, or perhaps dared not. It was not a surprise; most of the galaxy was empty, after all, but it was quiet here, just the broken stone and whistling wind and slate gray skies away from Heimdell's roving gaze.
Not that it could catch him anyways, but the loneliness was grating; it gnawed at him like the rough edges of the rock, and the silence felt dense and damning and he longed for the mental chatter of a spinning plot, for the child's questions, Lupin's quiet presence, even Dumbledore to match wits against. Somewhere in his mind the other half of him was working quietly but that felt lightyears away instead of mere miles, somewhere that couldn't be reached in this desolate place.
He had never been the hero.
Loki turned a corner and the ravine widened, the cliff falling away into a rocky plain.
He was not a selfless person; did not see himself as the type to foolishly rescue those whom fate had abandoned. What did he care for the lives of five mortals, compared to his own? He would lose a good servant in Longbottom, perhaps; a clever and useful one in Malfoy. And the information they had gathered, though that possibility was looking less and less likely.
So why had he rushed off, charging in like Thor- more foolishly than Thor, with no friends to back him- it made no sense, was antithetical even, or self-deluding… He stumbled on a loose stone and for a moment a picture flashed in his mind, the face of Longbottom the day he'd shown him the photograph. He caught himself, moving forward. Vanity. Dangerous vanity. It was alright to play a role, so long as one did not become too attached to the part.
Perhaps, a small, dangerous part of his mind suggested, It doesn't have to be.
The sound of tumbling gravel made him tense, glancing up.
Clambering down the hill, at great speed and with few concessions to balance, was a large muggle man. Focusing on the figure, Loki could make out more details- a black vest, utility belt, a mask, goggles and a gun half his own height. He moved his arm to adjust his goggles and what Loki realized that what he had mistaken for a metallic sleeve was actually his arm.
His gaze locked on Loki and he tensed.
He can't see me, Loki reasoned. He can't hear me. It's only a coincidence he has looked this way.
The man pulled his gun off his back.
He was still looking in Loki's direction, gaze invisible through his red goggles.
Loki's heart beat faster. Pure coincidence, he thought, pulling into a crouch. Nothing here to see.
The man fired and Loki leapt out of the way, cursing. A couple of the bullets bounced off his armour, and one cut through and bounced off his skin. Feeling slightly more confident, Loki stood up.
The man was walking forward, looking completely unfazed.
"Who are you?" Loki asked in Russian. "What do you want?"
The man continued to advance.
Loki raised his hands in the universal sign of the unarmed, everywhere.
"No need to fight," he said, his breaths frosting in the air. "Why don't you tell me what it is you want? Let us talk about it."
If the man so much as blinked, Loki could not tell. His face was blank as he raised his gun and fired again. This time, Loki threw up a shield, letting the bullets bounce off.
He rejoined with a blast of fire, hot enough to scorch steel.
The man held up his arm; whatever it was, it was strong, and didn't melt, though his sleeve caught fire. He closed his fist around it, putting it out, then shook out his brown hair, crouched down, and leaped in a smooth, swift motion, landing atop Loki before he anticipated this and the metal arm was squeezing his throat- squeezing painfully, and though his need for oxygen was less than it could have been he was beginning to see black dots as he writhed and fought, ineffectually against the stranger's incredibly strong grip and this wasn't like fighting a man- this was like fighting an Asgardian- he couldn't change with something touching him, he tried to vanish the hand and it was immune to that too so he illused the floor dropping off and the man glanced down, but continued to squeeze, unfazed, and he began to cough, horrible choking, and wouldn't it be just princely irony if he was killed by this mortal- who wasn't- wasn't even a wizard-
At that thought Loki cursed-
He clamped his hand around the other man's arm and sent out a pulse of magic, destroying the electronic device powering it, which was in retrospect a bad idea as the man jerked around and the hand was frozen and somehow he slid himself free, massaging his neck and coughing horribly. He scrambled backwards quickly- the man was still coming and he had the presence of mind to throw up an illusion- a useless illusion, no- he conjured a knife and threw it, watching as… A microsecond's pause, as if he were trying to deflect with his left arm, then the soldier threw up his other arm, blocking the knife to his neck with his flesh and leaving a bloody wound without pausing his advance.
Loki continued to scramble backwards, the vestiges of an idea surfacing in his mind. He clambered up, illusing not him but the area around him. There was a small overhang, a place where the cliff jutted out… He ran forward at an angle, letting the scenery flicker back and forth, bifrost-cliff face-bifrost-cliff face always angling it ever so slightly, running ever so slightly at an angle, and then he switched tracks abruptly, dashing for the overhang with all the speed in his immortal legs. The soldier followed, turning once more, running almost as fast, on legs that could not be mortal, surely. He ran, and lost his balance, teetering on one leg as the land gave way. Then he plunged, badly. Loki dispelled the illusion, watching dispassionately as the soldier disappeared into the mist. He wasn't even sure if that had been enough to kill the man, inhuman as he was.
What exactly was he dealing with here?
A/N: Hello Dear Readers, and Happy New Year's! I hope you're enjoying your celebrations, and those of you stuck in this cold, cold weather are well-bundled up. If it's any consolation, Khatanga's pretty cold this time of year itself! XD
Much thanks to Prevaricator's Penchant and her weatherproof beta skills.
Leave a review! It's the surest way to make my year. :)