Winter's Treasures
By Rey
Chapter summary: Confusion is not of any hindrance to survival, for a "child" who has not been a child for a long, long time. It is a weapon, instead.
26. Homeward, Part 2
Loki asked for several things, and they were granted.
He asked to spend the remainder of the trip at the back of the skiff with Eðlenstr, without the guards' and angrboða's constant scrutiny. Both parties let him be.
He asked Avlar to accompany him. The boy went, along with both of their packs.
He asked for the huge, fluffy blanket from before, to complement the second-hand travelling attire he was still wearing. Angrboða bundled him in it.
As last-wish consessions went, it was nice.
Loki was not going to just let anybody take his life, still, warranted or not. And for that purpose, he used this gesture of goodwill, macabre as it was given the context, for all it was worth. It did not only serve to provide him all the scant comfort he could get, but also to help him centre himself and provide him a chance to gather up his energy.
The store of food and drink that had been included in his pack now took a hearty pounding, and he even did not reject it when Avlar – still very much unspeaking and subdued – gave him some of the boy's own rations. The fragile state of tranquility that came from being more or less alone at the back of the skiff helped him rest and digest the increased intake of sustenance, afterwards. It was sured up further by the inexplicable senses of home and peace and safety from his new-old travelling attire and blanket. Concurrently, his awareness, muddled after so often falling into violent, taxing unconsciousness and trying to recover from that very state, gradually sharpened to almost its usual acuity. It was as though he were crawling sluggishly but gratefully and relievedly out of a deep, stinking puddle of mud.
There were… additions to his general perception of reality, now he noticed. They were things that he was sure he had not had before, in his æsir skin, that which Koðrati had ludicrously labelled "the hot-weather skin." He would rather ignore them for the moment, however.
If he managed to escape this doom, then he would spare some thought about it, and only then.
A great jolt, then a great drop and a sudden tilt, as if the skiff had just collided violently with something and lost badly against it, woke Loki up from a surprisingly sound sleep with a start. He blinked, and blinked, and blinked again, vaguely noticing – with no less surprise than the one caused by the jarring movement – that he had fallen asleep with his eyes open.
Then he saw that, across from him, at the other side of Eðlenstr's life-support container, Avlar was looking out of one of the narrow windows with huge, terrified eyes.
`This again!` his heart wailed. But his mind, recovered through the brief respite he'd just had, the first natural sleep he'd had since he had fallen into this realm, sharpened into battle acuity. `ATTACK,` it blared, and immediately followed with constructing the foundation of a battle plan however shaky it was. The last situation he knew, the assets and points of egress he had, the people and things he must defend, the possible permutations of the current situation, the paths he could take, the steps he needed to take any of those paths with all their advantages and disadvantages: all of them tumbled together into a chaotic, explosive mixture that set his heart pounding.
He was in a grim, grim predicament; he knew that well, seeing that he must save a petrified Avlar and an insensate Eðlenstr in addition to himself in a land he knew nothing of, armed with limited tools and practically no ally. However, he had never felt more alive before this; not here on Jötunheim, not even during the battle ignited by Thor's hubris in what felt like eons ago.
So, when the door to the back of the skiff opened, while the skiff itself tilted to the opposite direction, he was ready.
Eðlenstr had been secured in the blanket he had relinquished temporarily, which was tucked into the edges of the life-support system and serving as the anchor to a crude but powerful ward for invisibility. Avlar had been armed with two of his knives and sternly instructed to do whatever the boy could to survive in case Loki was not there to defend him, and save Eðlenstr as well if possible.
Angrboða was waiting on the door.
They shied away, faced by a brandished pair of knives and a vicious snarl, wielded by whom they saw as a child.
But Loki was not a child. He had not been a child for a very, very long time. He had participated in a lot of mishaps, a lot of battles, a lot of rescues, even a lot of retreats. No amount of coddling and cuddling and assertion that he was a child could ever change that.
And nobody could bar him from freedom. Not even himself.
So he ducked and dodged and crept and jumped and shielded and shot out repairing spells at the broken parts of the skiff. Ignoring all the deadly chaos of flying sharp things and straving burning beams of bright blue light. Ignoring all the frantic yells from panicked "allies," who were too busy trying to defend themselves and the skiff from all the attacks anyway. Ignoring how his not-so-repaired body and seiðr protested all the sudden exertion, so soon – too soon – after the respite. Ignoring how he knew little to none about the skiff's mechanism, and still had too many options for what to do and where to go after this to enact a plan with a good chance of success.
And then he was before the control panel of the skiff with Ovrekka's beacon – Angrboða's own beacon, once – slotted into the hollow that seemed to be meant just for it, and the skiff struggled back to the air, like a heavily wounded bird too stubborn to die.
He was too stubborn to die, himself.
Faced with a trio of larger skiffs with guns blazing, he guided this crippled smaller skiff – his skiff, if he had any say in it – to duck into an opening in the rock cliff nearby, after tagging each of them with a tracing spell. From the information fed to him by the pathfinder spell he had tossed into it earlier, he derived that it was big enough for this skiff from end to end, set far enough into the cliff to be protected from the attack of the guns, had no dangerous and/or sentient life signs sheltering inside, and led to various openings that would help him bypass the attackers if he was cunning and careful enough.
He had both traits aplenty in him, if he said so himself.
He should be safe.
He would be safe, and so would his two charges, since he was also too stubborn to let them go.
He still did not know where they would be going to. – To Tonder like Koðrati had instructed? To Útgarð like Angrboða had promised? Out of Jötunheim like Loki himself had been wishing? Back to Aglasý to throw off both pursuers and expectations, before sneaking back to drop off Avlar and Eðlenstr somewhere safe? – But he knew one thing for certain:
He would be alive, and he would be home, wherever he made it, because he was so sick of running and hiding and losing.