11: How Do You Not Get Attached to Someone You're Magically Imprisoned With? Asking For a Friend

When Loki wakes she is still holding Aaravos's hand. She gently pries it from his grasp, slowly so as not to wake him. He needs all the rest he can get, after all.

Taking last night's dishes with her, Loki tiptoes downstairs to begin with breakfast, shifting form and better fitting clothes on the way. As she waits for the oatmeal to heat, she braids her hair back. Once breakfast is finished, she goes upstairs to wake Aaravos, leaving the food downstairs. He does not get a meal in bed twice in a row. Moving around will help him wake up.

"Aaravos, it's time to wake up," Loki calls as she opens the curtains. She has picked up enough to control the lighting in the prison the same way Aaravos does, so she imitates daylight from the window.

Aaravos does not stir, even with the light falling directly on his face. For a moment, Loki's blood runs cold, until she sees the rising and falling of his chest. She sits on the side of the bed and shakes his shoulder. Even though she knows he likely cannot hear her at this point, she still speaks. "Wake up, Aaravos. You slept too long and your mage must be awake now."

Aaravos wakes at the shaking, blinking sleepily. "Good–" His greeting freezes in his mouth. This is not his room. This is an unfamiliar place, and he is unsure of how he got here. That is not good.

His eyes dart around as he keeps his body still. They land on the mage, combing his hair, and Aaravos realizes abruptly what happened. Oh stars that is annoying!

He pushes aside the wave of regret that he did not wake early enough to spend more time with Loki and sits up. He does not wish to interact with the mage right now, so he stays silent and moves his astral form out to explore. There is not much else to do.

Loki grabs the pen and a pad of paper, pressing them into Aaravos's hands. First things first, Aaravos needs to be able to communicate and move around.

She supposes she should bring breakfast to Aaravos, since it is more important that he eats rather than walking himself to the kitchen. Besides, there is no other way she can communicate to him that breakfast is ready besides putting the bowl in his hands.

Loki has suffered with having her voice stolen before. She has, on many occasions, lost the ability to communicate. Now, though, that she cannot talk to Aaravos, she thinks she prefers the muzzle. At least then she could sign or express her emotions with her eyes. Now, she is almost completely cut off, save for what little she can convey through touch.

Satisfied with the pen and paper in Aaravos's hands, she leaves to get breakfast.

As he leaves the mage, Aaravos feels pen and paper pressed into his hands, and his eyes widen. Loki is there, and he– no, the hands are Loki's female hands– she is taking care of Aaravos.

True, gender does not necessarily match form, but Aaravos has learned that Loki prefers to change their shape to match their gender. Since Loki was in male form last night, there is no reason for her to be in female form now unless she is female now.

"Thank you," he writes, standing. He needs breakfast, and it would be far too much to expect Loki to bring him another meal.

But his mind cannot handle trying to do something with one body when his sight is informing him about another body's surroundings, and he half falls out of bed. Ow.

Sighing, Aaravos closes his eyes and tries again. This time, he manages to climb to his feet and walk slowly but steadily out of the room, mindful of the pen's temperature. Soon enough, he is, he thinks, in the kitchen. He hopes Loki is there, he thinks she would like to hear how her pen saved him from an embarrassing bruise on the door of his room.

Wait, he can find out. Aaravos smiles and uncaps the pen. Immediately, it turns warm, and his smile grows.

Loki feels the tug at her left hand, signalling that Aaravos wrote something with the pen just after she left. She will read whatever it is when she returns. However, while Loki is ladling two servings of oatmeal for her and Aaravos to share, she turns to see Aaravos in the doorway, holding the uncapped pen and smiling. Is he smiling because of his victory in navigation… or because the pen must be warm and he knows Loki is there?

She smiles back, pleased both that her charms worked and proud of Aaravos for making it downstairs so quickly. She crosses the kitchen to hand Aaravos his breakfast.

Aaravos puts the cap on the back of the pen, writes, "Good morning, Loki!" and holds the pad up for her to see. He hopes, at least; he is not sure he is looking in the right direction. After a moment, he balances the pad on his hand again to write "How are you?" Then, "Your pen saved me from quite the embarrassment today."

Loki shakes her head as Aaravos holds up the pad a little too far to the left for her to read clearly. She pulls on it to read it, and wonders how Aaravos expects her to respond to the question. She smiles, and guides Aaravos's hand to her face, so he can feel the smile and know that she is happy. She is happy that the pen worked well for him, even if she hates how limited her communication with him is. Loki supposes that is the next problem she will have to solve. Good. She needs to stay busy.

Loki brings Aaravos's hand to her face, and for a moment Aaravos is happy with this– then his eyes widen and he pulls his hand back. No, this will not do, no. Firstly, his ears are burning because of how much he enjoyed that simple contact, and secondly, he cannot allow himself to fall for Loki any more!

A part of him is even thankful to hear the mage's voice saying, "Aaravos, are you there? We are leaving Katolis now."

Taking a step back, he replies, "I am here. So long as my caterpillar is with you, I am with you." He opens his eyes to see the mage mounting a horse in the courtyard. His children are already on horses, as are a few other people Aaravos does not recognize, but most of the crowd is on foot. Soldiers, all.

They are marching to Xadia.

Loki frowns as Aaravos snatches his hand away, cheeks turning a more vibrant violet. Perhaps that was not the best course of action, but what else was she supposed to do?

She hands Aaravos the bowl of oatmeal and, taking her own, goes to leave. "My apologies, even if you cannot hear them… You… you know how to find me, if you need me."

Aaravos smiles in thanks when Loki gives him the bowl. He has to shift pen and paper to one hand to take it, so he cannot thank her properly, but he hopes the smile conveys his gratitude well enough. Not just for the oatmeal, he is grateful for so much more, but he cannot name anything besides the food.

Closing his eyes again, he finds a seat, and– oh, why not? With a quick spell, his astral form is seated atop an illusion horse in the same way his real body is seated on the chair. He smiles and begins to eat his breakfast.

He stays quiet, studying the mage, until something interesting finally happens: The mage's son rides up behind him, and reaches out to hit his father's head. Aaravos raises an eyebrow in amusement.

The mage catches his son's hand without looking.

"Dad, there's a bug on your ear. Don't you want me to, you know, smoosh it?"

"No, Soren," the mage sighs, "do not smoosh the bug."

Aaravos chuckles, and misses most of the rest of the exchange. Most. He catches enough to have an idea about how to amuse himself.

"Has our relationship truly escalated to this new height?" he asks, flipping his astral form upside down directly in front of the mage. "Am I your little bug pal?"

He laughs at the mage's reaction, and switches to seriousness to ask the mage about Avizandum's death.

Loki fiddles with her magic, a mix of green and gold held aloft just over her palms. She adjusts the magic she used before to make visual messages to perhaps send it as a telepathic message. It is a frustrating endeavor, to transform visual shapes and symbols into something as abstract and cerebral as a message within one's mind.

She consistently wonders how Aaravos is doing. She thought before that she had to be in his presence to keep an eye on him and his well-being. Now, he has more independence, and she still wants to be by his side. Why? He cannot see nor hear her, so it should not matter one way or the other.

Loki hates being alone.

Sighing, and rationalizing to herself that she needs to have Aaravos nearby to test any communication spells she develops, she goes back to the kitchen. Aaravos is smiling, one of his true, genuine smiles. Perhaps he is warming up to the human mage.

She does not know if she likes the thought of that, of the two of them being so friendly… Loki spins on her heel and returns to the sitting room.

As the mage begins the story, Aaravos stands. The couch will be more comfortable than the kitchen chair, and Loki is likely in the sitting room as well, and no that does not have anything to do with his decision.

Holding the pen, he makes his way to the sitting room, moving over to the couch.

He laughs at the mage's reaction, gesturing as he speaks. "Avizandum was no person!" He was a monster. A beast. "Avizandum was an archdragon. The great king of all the dragons. The most powerful creature in the world?" He arches an eyebrow. With the exception of myself, and possibly Loki. "Yet somehow, you brought him down."

Loki, seated peacefully on the sofa, looks up to see Aaravos approaching, smiling and laughing as he moves to the couch. She tries to ignore the familiar stirrings of jealousy as she makes room for him. "Of course you would have to follow me in here. You seem to enjoy making trouble." Loki muses aloud, safe in the knowledge that Aaravos cannot hear her.

She wonders if Aaravos followed her, or if he merely came in here because it is one of his preferred spaces. If she really wanted to be away from him, she should pick another room, but it is nice to have someone to talk to, even if it is entirely one-sided.

"This is very much like when we first met, do you realize?" Loki laughs. "We could barely say two words to each other for fear of revealing our ignorance. Little did we know neither of us had any clue what was going on." She smiles, imagining Aaravos is listening intently to her instead of whomever is on the other side of the mirror. "Little did we know how much we would need each other."

Aaravos leans on the back of the couch, listening and nodding along as the mage spins a tale of a great battle, in which his exaggerations of his own bravery and nobility are too clear.

The mage pauses, and Aaravos tells him to continue. This trip is boring enough already, he may as well learn more. Perhaps he will be able to tell Loki what happened to Avizandum when he returns.

A wild grin creeps onto his face when the mage tells of the dragon's death. Oh, Loki will be pleased to hear how the monster died. Perhaps, since he is stone, we can visit and gloat for a time, when we are free.

-but he forgot. He and Loki will part ways when they are free. It must be that way.

"What an incredible story," he says, covering his yawn. "I am delighted you took down that arrogant monster."

Perhaps he should have kept his mask up, he realizes when the mage says, "It sounds like you have a history with Avizandum."

Aaravos scowls, putting his hands behind his head. "Oh, I do. He is the reason I am where I am today."

...but, perhaps…. Well, he would not have met Loki had he never been imprisoned…

A tiny smile creeps onto his face at the thought.

"And where are you?" the mage asks.

His smile vanishes. "Prison."

Loki throws her hands up in frustration at another failed attempt. Telepathy is not such an advanced magic that she should not be able to master it. She has used the basics before, though it has been many decades.

Ah, but that is dealing with a person inside their own body, and utilizing the energies of her universe to work as a tether between her mind and the mind of the other person. This is far more complicated, and thus infinitely more frustrating. She glances up at Aaravos, who has long since invaded her personal space by draping himself across the couch in his apparent boredom and desire to fidget. "I will figure this out, Aaravos, but I will not risk hurting you in the process, not even to give you a headache."

She drums her fingers along the arm of the couch. "Perhaps I need to connect with Xadia's specific energies… from what I know of the moon, I doubt that will be sufficient. The sky perhaps? Something that inhabits the space between everywhere one goes? I should do more research."

"You're in prison?" the mage asks in surprise. "Your home looks like no prison I've ever seen."

Aaravos… is too tired for this. "Yes, it is well appointed, but a prison nonetheless." He wants to be angrier about it, wants to show his anger at his, to his mind, unjust imprisonment, but he is tired of being angry, and he cannot be angry anyways when he is still thinking of Loki.

A soldier comes running up with a message for the mage. Aaravos sighs and leans back, closing his eyes and letting his mind wander.

He should have predicted it would wander to Loki.

Loki returns to the sitting room with three books specifically on the sky arcanum. "I doubt this will come as easily as the moon… and that was… well let us not repeat that." She sits down and begins thumbing through the pages to see what catches her attention. "Now that there is no one to hear me, I realize, this is probably the most I have spoken in most of my life. Although, even if you could hear me, I know you would listen. Perhaps that is why I wish to talk to you, even if you are somewhere else at the moment."

She reaches out, hand hovering over Aaravos's arm. She wants to pat his hand, perhaps squeeze his arm, let him know she is there, but she also does not wish to startle him. Loki pulls back, hand falling uselessly by her side, and settles for a grateful smile. "I appreciate you, Aaravos. I never thought I would like talking so much."

Aaravos pulls himself back to his current mission as they approach the lava-filled Breach. Is it not impassable for the humans? Then why has the mage chosen to lead his army this way? It would take something special indeed to produce the kind of power a dark mage would need to pass the Breach.

Then the mage's daughter pulls a rather large dragon horn from her satchel, holding it up with a grin. The mage smiles proudly at his daughter, and Aaravos cannot contain his "Yesss."

The girl is powerful and intelligent. Moreso than her father. If Aaravos can turn her loyalty to him, she could be a great ally. Perhaps even an apprentice, though it is too early to know if they will work well enough together for that.

Still, Aaravos likes her.

He sends his projection diving into the lava, so when it is pushed to the sides he can turn and bow, smiling as if he were the one who cast the spell.

The army rides through, and Aaravos falls behind the mage, closing his eyes and working hard to keep his mask in place.

True, it is not real, but a part of him is back in Xadia.

Home.

Loki looks up on her reading of sky mage philosophy to find Aaravos with his characteristic grin. She rolls her eyes. "At least one of us is having fun."

Reading the beliefs of this particular philosopher, Loki hopes this is not indicative of sky magic in general. "To be one with the sky is to let go of earthly tethers. Attachments will clip your wings."

"Now how exactly am I supposed to do that if the whole reason I am trying to learn this is for someone else?" Loki throws the book aside in anger. It is clear that method is a dead end, or at the very least that manuscript is useless. She is quite tempted to set the book on fire, for reasons she does not wish to address. The very idea that she should sever her connection to Aaravos, sever her one and only friendship in the multiverse after centuries of building loneliness, is a particular insult to her.

And it is because of that deep tie to the elf next to her that she picks up the next book on the sky primal. Hopefully this one will have something more helpful.

"So," the mage says, "what is the plan?"

Aaravos smirks. What does the mage think he is going to say? His actual long-term plan? "To fulfill your wishes, of course." His short-term plan. Besides, he already knows what the mage wishes, and they share a common goal.

"My goal is a bright future for humanity!" the mage insists.

Aaravos rolls his eyes. "Right. And this bright future will require us to… conquer Xadia?" Internally, he smirks. A little more nudging, and the mage will fall right in line. He does need someone to take the fall if his plan does not work out.

The mage groans. "Yes. Yes, it may."

Perfect.

Falling behind again, he pulls out his pen and paper. "Just a little longer, Loki."

If Loki ever has to read the word "untethered" one more time in the next thousand years, it will be too soon. Must she read on philosophy anyway? What could they know, what with asking constant questions.

The pull at her hand alerts her to a new note on the paper. "Just a little longer?" Loki pales. "What… what does that mean?"

Just a little longer before the mage sleeps? Just a little longer before the next step?

Is the next step approaching? Where Aaravos will leave the prison for good, a new body waiting for him on the other side?

"I need more time, Aaravos," Loki murmurs. "This is too fast for me."

"The key to achieving your… noble aims is simple," Aaravos says, recognizing where they are. The landscape has not changed too much in the past centuries. "But first, there is something we need here, in Lux Aurea."

Something in his tone seems to have made the mage suspicious. "How many lives will we be risking?"

Aaravos smiles. "Viren, I am nothing if not elegant and efficient. We'll risk as few lives as possible: one."

He does not show the fear he feels, that the new Sunfire queen will be smarter than Aditi, will kill the mage before he is brought to the Sunforge.

The mage looks down as he realizes. "Ah. Mine."

Aaravos only nods.

The mechanics of sky spells and their uses are much easier for Loki to grasp, no emotion to contend with, but even as she compares manipulating the air around her with telekinesis to a wind spell, she knows that it is not a connection, not an understanding like she has with the moon.

She closes the book with a sigh, before turning to look at Aaravos, his brows drawn together. She resists the urge to caress his face and smooth out the wrinkles in his brow. "Perhaps the stars then? If I do enough reading before your mage sleeps, perhaps you can act as my teacher again and help me understand."

Loki is about to get up to gather more books when she sees Aaravos's eyes clear to their usual black and gold.

Aaravos hides his caterpillar the one place he knows it will not be found. The spells he must cast on it, and the inherent magic of the Sunfire city, together weaken the link enough that his astral form begins to fade. An unforeseen side effect, and one that has Aaravos near panic for the seconds before he realizes his sight is returning.

He blinks several times, vision fading out in white before it returns, and he can see Loki beside him. He turns, looking directly at her face, eyes wide in surprise.

It takes him a moment to remember the pen and paper he is still holding. "I did not know this would happen," he writes, "but I am so glad to see you again."

His voice is still gone, Loki realizes. She writes in the air, a gesture both familiar and foreign at this point. "Did something happen? Has something gone wrong? Are you alright?"

Aaravos shakes his head. "Not wrong, only unexpected. A spell I needed to cast had the unforeseen effect of weakening my link to the mage. I believe it is partially due to where we are."

He cannot stop smiling, his eyes drinking in Loki like it is the last he will ever see of her.

"And where are you?" Loki asks, more at ease now that she knows Aaravos is okay. It is almost nostalgic to sit in front of him and write in the air, despite having only been a week since Aaravos lost his sight.

"Lux Aurea, the capital city of the Sunfire elves. I need their Sunforge." He smiles again, tilting his head. "What have you been doing?"

Loki gestures to the books on the floor with a sheepish smile. A few of the pages are surely bent from her frustrations, and Aaravos is so particular about his books. "I have been… reading… and had a bit of a disagreement with the contents of some of these books." She scoops up the books, smoothing them out and stacking them neatly on a nearby table face down. Aaravos does not need to know about her failures and frustrations with the sky arcanum.

Aaravos gives Loki a stern look, but a second later he is smiling again and shaking his head. "Is it Skywing philosophy or Tidebound?" He reaches for one of the books, still watching Loki.

Loki blinks in surprise, coughing as she sucks in an errant breath. Damn that clever elf. He knows both the sources and me all too well. She slaps Aaravos's hand as he reaches for the books. "For the record it was on Sunfire magic, not even philosophy. I attempted a mimicry of some of it and was greeted with some very unpleasant sensations. I suppose being a frost giant will do that." The lie does not come quite as easily as Loki's lies usually do, perhaps because she was caught off guard.

Aaravos winces in sympathy and takes Loki's hand, looking at her in concern. "And are you alright now? What happened?"

He notices Loki's hesitation, but thinks it is only embarrassment.

Oh, and now he's concerned! Look at what you have done! Loki chides herself.

It is so hard to lie to Aaravos to begin with, what with his inability to lie putting them on uneven footing. She has never felt particularly guilty about such things before, taking any advantages she can get in life.

As much as many Asgardians would tout their adherence to codes of honor, they were hypocrites, the lot of them. Lies always ran rampant in the house of Odin, with or without Loki's doing. She was always just evening the scales in her favor with her trickery.

But Aaravos is different, and so she cannot treat him the same. Even the little lies melt away to truth in front of him. "Okay… so I lied. It was Skywing philosophy. The concepts frustrated me, particularly that which insisted one let go of attachments." She shrugs, avoiding Aaravos's eyes. "I would only be learning the sky primal for you, anyway, so it seems very counterproductive."

Aaravos pulls back. Loki… lied to him?

But it was only a small lie.

A precursor to a larger betrayal, his mind argues.

She told the truth almost immediately!

She still lied.

She is not the first to have lied to me, nor have all who lied to me betrayed me.

True, but how willing are you to risk it?

Aaravos… cannot answer this question at the moment.

He looks back at Loki's glowing words. For– for me? What? He needs a moment to process this. He drops his face into his hands, mind buzzing.

Attachments… Loki could not let go of attachments to learn sky magic, which she sees as counterproductive because she would be learning it for Aaravos.

Of course she feels an attachment to me, Aaravos argues with himself. We are friends. I may be her only friend, and certainly her only friend at the moment. It does not mean anything else.

But what if he wants it to mean something else? What if Loki did mean something else? What if… he could ask…

"It confused me at first as well," he writes. "It means you must let go of control over other people. Not, I think, something that will be too great of a problem for you."

Loki shoots Aaravos a sly smirk. "Yes, only a fool would ever think they could control you. You are as much a creature of chaos as I am."

"I… I meant anyone, not myself in particular. You must let go of the idea that you can control anyone else, if you have that idea at all."

Loki rolls her eyes. "As if I could have attachments to anyone else at this point."

Aaravos truly does not know what he is to say. His hand moves with barely a thought: "What is that supposed to mean, Loki?"

Does it mean what I want it to mean?

Loki's cheeks flush and she scoffs, picking up a book to busy her hands and have somewhere else to look. She throws up her reply with a flick of her hand. "If you cannot figure that out with all your years and cleverness then there's no hope for you."

There's no hope for us at all...

Aaravos's gaze flicks from the words to Loki. "Then…" His vision starts to fade, and he stops writing, cursing his luck. True, he could write what he wants to say, and Loki would see it, but he needs to see her reaction. He needs to know what she truly thinks in the moment, not what she tells him the next day.

Small serotonin! Three guesses what Aaravos was going to ask Loki...