Runaway
By Rey
Loki had not meant to let a band of cocksure Asgardians loose in a hostile land of hostile giant brutes. He had not meant to antagonise the barbaric blue monsters, either. Then again, he had never, ever, ever expected his skin to turn blue in the middle of the unexpected battle that ensued, nor what happened afterwards.
He had wanted to instigate a droplet of problem in Thor's coronation; now he got a flood of it.
Started on: 15th September 2019 at 06:02 AM
Finished on: 20th December 2020 at 07:38 AM
1.
"Loki! Come!"
Female. Frantic. Desperate. – But how can I respond to her, help her? I am frantic, myself. Desperate, even. I have my own problem, here!
A blue one. A blue hue that keeps spreading, with white markings that keep spreading, on my own skin, alongside an additional awareness that is somehow familiar.
I stab down with the dagger: again, again, again, again. But the frost giant that keeps my forearm captive still doesn't let go, and doesn't talk either, just grunting with pain. – Serves it right, cursing me like this!
I am the one who relents, in no time at all it seems. Perhaps Thor is right: I am a weakling. I simply cannot stand listening to prolonged, senseless pain, especially when I am the one who causes it.
I cannot stand looking at my own changed skin, either.
"Let me go!" I yell at last. And how glad I am that Thor's friends have been separated far away from me by the tides of the – very, very askew – battle. None of them would hear how like a sob my childish plea sounds and report it to my brother.
Something is pressed against the palm of the same hand, then: roughly disk-like, colder than my captor's vise-like grip, and it sucks something from within me, layers of it that I now realise don't belong to me.
A tiny ward sapper, on the hand of a giant brute of a monster.
A skin changer, even, if there were even such a thing in the universe, for I can feel my physical shape shifting – stretching, contorting, squirming, warping, twisting – from the inside out, alongside all the restrictions – yes, I know it now, I know it now, I know it now – peeling off of my metaphysical self.
Exquisitely discomfitting.
Agonisingly freeing, as well, and I wail my pain, my hurt, my anger, my confusion, my freedom out to the sky – so dim, so alien, so many stars – above this realm of monsters.
Faintly, I realise that my voice changes ever so slightly, from the timbre I've known all my life to… something; something that is quickly swallowed up by a bigger roar from far away, from a voice that my primal brain seems to recognise as incongruously safe.
And then a pair of arms lift me up as though I were a flour sack or a small child, and the roar is joined by many more from all round us.
I feel like a trophy won in a competition.
With that unpleasant thought in mind, also with the added reminder that I am now in Jötunheim, I try to banish the lingering pain, discomfiture and confusion, to continue the fight. I blink my eyes open, then blink, blink, blink, blink again.
Not because my eyes refuse to focus, no, no, no. I am just… startled.
The sky is bright; not as bright as that above Asgard, but not at all as dim as what I beheld before the disastrous battle against that stubborn jötun's grip.
And I am upheld on a pair of arms, while my upholder and those round it are screaming their… anger? Jubilation? Grief? Ecstacy?… to the heavens.
And then, as I am at long last lowered back down, the vista of the alien sky is replaced by a pair of glowing, red eyes.
Before I can struggle, before I can scream my defiance, before I can even comprehend the sheer obsurdity of the turn of events, the arms that are still holding me shift, and my face is pressed flush against skin that should be deathly cold to the touch, against a neck with taut muscles.
Commands are barked out, reverberating round me, spoken in a language untranslatable by Allspeak. And then my captor moves.
The shock takes a long, long, long time to fade. Reality and useless struggling follow right afterward.
I wanted to put a small disruption on Thor's ill-advised coronation, by egging on the jötnar to send… representatives… to sneak into Asgard. And the oaf and his band of idiots invaded Jötunheim in retaliation.
I wanted to keep the impromptu audience between us and Laufey short and non-inflamatory. But Thor ruined it thoroughly by his inability to take in a very, very cheap piece of mockery.
I wanted just to get back to Asgard, by whatever means necessary. And now, instead, not only losing the battle in a very, very peculiar way, it seems that I will never return there.
I want to keep awake, to keep struggling, to keep fighting, but my new awareness and senses wreak havoc with my will and my sense of safety. It keeps saying that I am safe, that I am in familiar territory, that I am supposed to succumb into sleep because a gentle hand is rubbing the back of my neck – up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down….
In seemingly forever and no time at all, my sensible half loses the battle.
2.
I regain consciousness surrounded by semi-squishy softness.
Whatever is around me, it is no longer an open space outdoors, I sense that much, at first. It is totally silent, at that, though not in an immediately threatening manner. – No breathing, no heartbeat, no shifting, no rustling, no tapping. There are only the sounds of a living being that I myself make, which feel so loud in this quietude. Dare I risk open my eyes for a visual check? Or do I try to gauge the situation magically first? My current surrounding does not seem hostile, so maybe….
I pool my seiðr together, ready to be used, and fight not to frown with how sluggish it feels in the meantime. Next, I twitch my fingertips, feeling around the semi-squishy surface; also whatever that seems to cover me up to the chin, come to think of it again.
I am in a… bed? Or maybe a pile of furs covered by linens? But who put me here? Last I knew, I had been captured by a blood-thirsty jötun among many, or so it sounded. Surely those brutes would not keep their captured enemy in such a cosy setting like this? Surely their prison cells are not this well-furnished? Surely their prisoners are not this well-treated?
I crack my eyes open a sliver. Then, meeting no hostile reaction, I open them all the way.
The view that greets me is that of an expanse of ice sheet, looking worn with age though strangely untouched. Soft red light is reflected evenly on the ice sheet, friendly to my recovering sight.
Admitedly, it also immediately sparks the curiosity of my awakening mind, as it makes the ambience look rather exotic, different from all other places that I have ever visited or been kept in.
I am lying on my back, so the ice sheet must be the ceiling of wherever I am, and the red light must come from somewhere nearby. The surface that hosts my body for the time being makes me think of a well-equipped fur bed instead of a hasty and/or sparse nest of furs, so this is almost definitely not a prison cell, as I have found myself in during some of the more disastrous adventures Thor instigated.
Except, if those uncivilised monsters have a special prison cell for enemy royalty….
There is only one way to test this hypothesis, given the fact that, however awake I am right now, my seiðr remains sluggish and unfocused. My physical muscles do not fair much better than my magical ones, but at least they do work, and I manage to shift myself into an upright seated position.
Unfortunately, then I realise that I am naked under the blanket, still blue and white-marked to boot.
My heart, already pounding from the simple feat of getting up, now feels like it wishes to escape my ribcage.
I still look pretty much like a jötun – a monster. Is this a curse? Did that frost giant who put the ward sapper on me slip in the curse in-between stripping me off all foreign things that I didn't even realise were atached to me? Is it why I feel so roundly sluggish? Is this curse powered by my own seiðr?
Well, no matter. I will be able to look into this problem better when I regain my full use of seiðr and return to safety. Now I just have to achieve both, starting with fashioning some clothing and finding some weaponisable thing for myself.
Easier said than done, though. A cursory look reveals that I am situated in a tiny room – more a big cupboard or the inside of my walk-in wardrobe at home, really – which is walled on two sides by opaque ice and the other two some grey stone. The furniture is equally minimalistic: just this surprisingly comfortable nest of fur, soft fabric, equally soft leather and quite a few cushions. No chains as in the prison cells that I know of, and no medical tools either as in an infirmary setting.
In short, nothing for me to use as anything but as it is intended, except maybe for the smallest, lightest blanket that I am presently draping over myself like a cloak.
A much more in-depth look does not reveal anything new – not even a door or a window, and now I am wondering why I am not short of breath yet from lack of circulated air.
And the lack of a visible, viable exit adds a new problem to the pile, namely the fast impinging claustrophobia.
Damn. Oh, Norns, I just want to go home.
3.
Some slow, careful seiðr manipulation on one of the ice walls has yielded me a hole as big as my head.
I peer out, just as cautiously.
There is a bed – a vast bed – across the room: a smooth ice platform as high as my shoulder or chin, with what may be furs and cushions packed on top of it.
And there is a person-like lump stretched out there, mostly covered by the furs and cushions.
A jötun, no doubt. A sleeping jötun, maybe, even.
If the Norns are on my side, I can sneak past it to the door. I can either apply an invisibility spell on myself, after that, or try my luck further with sneaking in a mundane manner in search of the way out, to conserve my still-limited pool of seiðr. But first, this little hole needs to be far bigger than it is.
Easier said than done, just like before. My earlier effort has already taxed my greatly depleted store of seiðr, and trying to expend even more seiðr to widen the hole seems like quite an insurmountable chore.
I persist, nonetheless. I shall not spend any more time in this Norn-forsaken place, if I can do anything about it.
Anything, including utilising some of the purported power of a jötun, in which form I am still trapped.
I try not to think about it too much, when I pool… something… seemingly taken right from my body instead of my seiðr and manage to manipulate the hole to widen.
After visually checking that the jötun laid out on the bed is still insensate, I climb out as quietly as possible out of the now half-body-size opening, with the smallest, lightest blanket wrapped round me like a cloak and gripped under my chin by one hand. Another glance, then I make a beeline away from the area, casting about for a door or other points of egress.
It is not easy to do, seeing that everything but my bed for however long it was is meant for a giant thrice my size.
And then, just as I am nearing a section of the wall across the bed, it splits open by itself from top to bottom, revealing first the foot of a jötun then the whole side of the body.
I skitter back to my prison room by reflex. Then, on second thought, I dash to the bed in order not to corner myself and have an easier way to reach the door once the incoming jötun has passed it.
Well, but, unfortunately, the "door" that has just formed on the wall quickly turns back into a wall after the jötun – a female one, it seems, judging by the uncovered breasts – has come fully into the room.
And, with a sinking heart, I think I know who the jötun is, despite the startling gender switch.
I back further against the bed, noting that the jötun remains by where the wall split. They only watch, as well, while I scramble up the bedframe to hide among the cushions, using my remaining pool of seiðr, intending to bide my time till they become bored and leave or… do something, which will hopefully not mean death or torture or maiming to me.
But, instead of finding a good hidy-hole among the huge cushions and voluminous mounds of furs and blankets, a huge hand suddenly drags me farther into the bed and deposits me right up against its owner, which is the jötun-like lump laid on the centre, which turns out to indeed be a jötun.
I wish I had my seiðr back. I wish I still had my knives. I wish I were much more recovered and alert. But as it is, I do my best to kick and punch and bite and headbutt my new captor, forcefully ignoring the whines of pain and complaint they let out each time.
And then, someone comes to the rescue, but not for my sake.
"Child, must you always be so prickly? I wish you inherited more from me instead of Úti."
It is the newcomer giant, who is now holding me up and away from the abed one, who refuses to relinquish me, even though I am flailing about wildly and have managed to score some hits on their forearms.
"Let me go!" I shriek at last, desperate, as they climb fully onto the bed and seat themself right beside the abed one, right on the spot the latter drew me to.
"Why would I?" they ask, baffled.
"I am not your toy or meal!" I belt out the first thing that comes to my mind, which has been practically branded into it after countless fireside tales among Thor's friends and other warriors all my nearly adult life.
"Ah, no, you are not." They sound even more baffled, now, as they hug me close, like a little girl with her doll.
Somewhat unexpectedly, the supine jötun laughs, although it sounds like the action pains them. Then, "A toy, yes, but not a meal, Etta thinks," they remark blithely. "Etta did that to the snowdolls Ýto Úðyé made."
And my new captor hums consideringly to that, before nodding in agreement.
"You are both mad," I declare, even as I am fighting not to ooze into the snug embrace, as my captor sneakily, , gently, continuously rubs the back of my neck.
"You were mean," the supine jötun – Etta? – retorts complainingly. "I was trying to help you and you stabbed me!"
I freeze.
The jötun who put the ward sapper on me.
They are still alive?!
And they are lying so close to me!
But why did they not seek any reprisal from me? Why did they try to cuddle me instead?
"You hurt me!" I give my best and firmest rebuttal, however childish it sounds – however childish I have been sounding thus far – and try to forget the incongruity. "I did not want your help, in any case. I was perfectly fine and healthy."
Etta snorts. But before they can follow up with another argument, my captor lets out an exasperated hiss that makes me jump a little.
"Behave, children," they command sternly, as the both of us subside into a sullen silence. I did not know they were acting jovial until the lightness is no longer present in their voice. Then they continue pointedly, "You," they bop Etta's nose, "should have told my child what you were doing. The both of you were in battle on the opposite sides, so you ought to have known better. And you," they bop my nose, "should be more considerate of others when they are not hurting you. Did you find enjoyment in further hurting a hurting person?"
I glare up at them, and do my best not to quail under their disappointed gaze, so reminiscent of Mother's. "I am not your child!" I declare instead.
The disappointed gaze turns into an incredulous one.
But, before I can impress my point further on the ludicrous creature, a torrent of power suddenly floods my entire being.
A very familiar torrent of power. And not because this must be Laufey – a female version of Laufey – whose presence I confronted before.
And then the jötun manoeuvres me into lying in their pinning arms and, with their – very serious, very solemn, but also openly joyful – eyes locked with mine, they declare while laying their hand on my chest, "Loptr Laufey-childe. Welcome home."
I gape.
Oh, Norns, this is not the home I meant!