#2

Unfortunately, this was not the end. How could it be? He was a god—at least that was what he had grown up to believe—and gods did not die. Gods drew their strength from the human belief in their existence and as long as they believed, there was always another path. Valhalla, Hel, another place created by some powers in the universe that he did not yet know about. It did not matter where it was. The only thing that mattered was that he would have to face justice. There was a voice, seeping through the protective membrane of nothingness, a voice both angelically soft and chillingly wicked.

Loki thought that he recognized the voice somehow but he could neither place it nor make out what it was saying to him. He hesitated to open his eyes, hoping he could stall the inevitable for a little longer. He did not want to know where his path would lead him and, truth be told, he was afraid that what was awaiting him after his decent into homicidal madness in recent years would be worse than the tales of Hel he been told as a child.

The voice grew fiercer, single words filtering through his semi-conscious state like water dripping from a faucet. "You did not last long," the voice said, followed by an amused chuckle. Loki forced himself to open his eyes; and stared directly into the icy blue glare of Hela, the Goddess of Death. His older sister. Well, Thor's older sister. Their father's firstborn child. "Hello there, you little shit."

What the … He snapped to attention, glancing around frantically, but all he could see behind her smooth features was more darkness, more blackness, more nothing. He tried to jerk away but some magical spell was holding his body tightly in place. He was sitting, his arms by his side, but the only thing he could move was his head.

"Are you dead?" It was the first question that came to Loki's mind. When he had last seen her, she had been battling Surtur, a giant fire-breathing demon, while Asgard was being consumed by the destruction of Ragnarok that he, Loki, had released by putting Surtur's crown into the Eternal Flame in their father's vault. They had all assumed that she had met her doom.

Hela laughed a beautiful, silvery, enticing laugh. "You are and that's all you need to know." She paused for effect. "For now."

"How can you not be dead?" Loki mumbled.

Another laugh escaped her lips, but it was no longer enticing or beautiful. It was smug and condescending, with a pinch of disgust. "I am the Goddess of Death, you foolish wastrel. I am linked with death, I draw power from death, I thrive off death and death thrives off me."

"Marvelous," Loki commented and squeezed all the sarcasm he could muster into the word. Hela was arrogant and unrelenting, the likeness of their father Odin. His relationship with his father was spoiled, ruined by lies, jealously, deceit, hatred, and abuse, and the dark part stirred again at the thought of him. He had hoped that his physical demise would kill it—and if not kill it, then send it into a deep, long-lasting sleep—because death inevitably removed him from Thor but now Hela was there, fixating him with her ice cold eyes. Another one of Odin's children. My firstborn. Those two words uttered by Odin echoed through Loki's head, bouncing off the walls of his skull and leaving a nauseating taste on his tongue. Yes, as far as he was concerned, this was worse than any other path he could have taken. "So, I'm in Hel."

"You're inside Hel. In a way," Hela replied without taking her eyes off his, studying him as if he were a scientific anomaly. Her face was mere inches from his, her expression mirroring the hunger for destruction that she carried inside her.

"In what way?" Loki asked, suddenly shuddering at the uncanny resemblance between the two of them. As far as he knew, she was Thor's biological sister, not his, but he and Hela did not only share the same jet-black hair and pale skin but also the dangerous inclination toward murderous delusions of grandeur. How was that possible? And why hadn't he given this any thought before?

"It's a special section of Hel," Hela replied, her lips curling into a deviant grin. "My refuge, if you will. I found it when you released the beast that destroyed the main source of my power and Surtur's wrath catapulted me into another dimension."

Loki felt his wit stirring back to life after the darkness had almost numbed it. "You found a new Hel?" How was that even possible?

She rewarded him with another grin. "You are much smarter than you look."

Loki's mind raced through all the possible implications behind this new piece of information. "How? Where? And if Asgard is not your only source of power— "

Hela brushed her right index finger against his lips. "You talk too much, Loki." She was still drilling her eyes into his, forcing her way into his soul with her curious glare, stripping down his defenses layer by layer.

He jerked his head away from her finger. "Why am I here?"

"That is a good question, isn't it?" Hela replied after a pause. Her hand came close to his face again but then stopped, her fingers curling into a fist.

Despite the knowledge that he would not be able to outstare the Goddess of Death in her own kingdom, Loki glowered at her. "Then answer it."

Another grin twitched at the corners of her mouth, illuminating the insanity in her eyes. "Don't all Asgardian warriors who perish in battle travel to Valhalla after death? Well, except for you, it seems." She paused, eyeing him even more curiously than she had before. "You're not Asgardian, are you? You're not really Odin's son."

"What makes you think that?" Loki tried to keep his voice steady against the resolve he felt crumbling away. Upon Odin's death, when the allfather had disintegrated into a cloud of golden stardust blown across the sea of Norway, Loki had finally been able to accept what had happened between them; not in the way that he could understand or forgive but in the way that he no longer felt the desire for a different outcome of his life. For better or for worse, he was Odin's second son and he had understood then that, even if he flew to the very edge of the universe to hide from himself, Odin would travel there with him. Having Hela point out to him that he was not an Odinson pained and infuriated him in equal measure.

"I can feel that you have no real sense of purpose and a sense of purpose, whatever purpose this may be, is a quality that no one born of Asgard lacks. But most of all …" Hela murmured softly as she held up the index finger of her right hand to his face again, a black-greenish form of energy sparkling into life around its tip. Loki struggled against the urge to pull back. She narrowed her eyes and her finger touched his cheek, sending a surge of pain rippling through his body. He felt his body warmth stream out of him, magically extricated by her touch. "Most of all, you don't look very much like him," Hela said bemusedly.

Loki stared down at his sapphire hands, completely in awe of his own appearance. It was a long time ago that he had first been touched by a Frost Giant and learned that Odin had taken him in, brought him to Asgard and raised him as his own for political reasons. A long time since he had realized that, in Odin's eyes, he must have always been the spawn of a monster and that his favoring of Thor was, all things considered, only natural. "Is that why I am here?" Loki asked, forcing himself to meet her gaze, hold her gaze. "Because I am a monster?"

She mock-pitied him with a sound that travestied the noise people make to soothe crying babies. "Trouble connecting with your dark side?"

"I'm trying to defeat it," Loki answered truthfully.

Hela smiled knowingly. "It is much easier to embrace it."

A deep sigh escaped Loki's lips as he began to realize that he would spend eternity in Hela's company and that there was no way out. This was his punishment. Once again, a decision he had made to the best of his judgment at the time had led him down a path of misery. Am I truly destined to not ever do anything right?

"Well, I suppose it doesn't matter much anymore, does it?"

"Oh, it does, believe me." Her eyes were alight with an overwhelming appetite for malice.

"How? What exactly are you going to do with me?" Loki asked, despising himself for the fact that the question had come out far more desperate and pleading than he had intended to. He stared down at his hands again, at his true colors, as the Midgardians would say. They used the expression metaphorically in order to refer to the true character of a person but in his case, it was hardly a metaphor. He was the descendant of a race that had brought nothing but destruction to the universe and his Asgardian upbringing had not been able to absorb his natural inclination toward vindictiveness, chaos and disdain for both others and himself. He was and would always be a monster. It is who you are, Loki. You are cursed. You carry a darkness inside you that will never leave.

"First of all, I am going to take vengeance," Hela replied, her tone almost casual.

"What for?" Loki queried weakly but he already knew the answer.

Hela drew in a deep breath. "I spent almost two-thousand years in Odin's banishment but when he finally perished, allowing me to return and have access to my full powers again, you destroyed my kingdom. Asgard was rightfully mine, not Thor's, and certainly not yours, you measly tapeworm, but still you arrogated to yourself the right to decide over what is mine and don't I feel the urge inside me to claw your eyes out for what you did." She came even closer to his face, straining every muscle in hers as if she were a lioness preparing for the kill.

"Not to be nitpicky but this was actually Thor's plan, not mine, so I assume you shouldn't really take this out on me." Loki heard the response before he knew he had been thinking it and it proved to him how utterly pointless an endeavor it would have been to convince anyone of his loyalty toward anything, let alone his brother.

"Is that so?" Hela asked with that deadly sweet voice. "Now there's just one little problem with that question, isn't there?"

The question took Loki by complete surprise but he quickly caught himself, his mind kicking into overdrive. If he had to spend his afterlife in Hel, he could not allow himself to be lured in by her dark powers of seduction. He needed to stay sharp. "Thor is not dead." The thought made him feel infinitely better. This was why he had confronted Thanos after all. Thor was alive up there and Loki prayed that he would be for many, many centuries to come so that they would not have to encounter each other ever again, be it down here or anywhere else.

Hela scrutinized him with a faint glimmer of admiration in her eyes and it pleased him to no end that she had apparently underestimated him, if only for a moment. "And even if he was, I probably wouldn't be able to get ahold of him. So, I'm afraid, you will have to pay for both of your sins."

She pressed her palms onto his head and released a bolt of energy so fierce that Loki feared his brain was going to burst asunder. He howled in agony. His vision became blurry but bizarrely, a tiny part of him welcomed the sensation and even longed for her to continue.

She did not. "Who knew that a Jotun can withstand this?" Hela mumbled. "That is interesting."

Loki gasped for breath, his nerves simultaneously rejoicing in the pain and dreading another bolt of it. "What's second?"

Hela drew her eyebrows together. "What are you talking about?"

"You said vengeance was first," Loki panted but the waves of pain were already subsiding. "What comes second?"

Hela smiled again and this time it almost felt genuine. "Did you know that I can feed on the souls of those whose demise is connected to my being?"

"My death is not connected to you," Loki objected.

"Forgive me if I become repetitive but you released the beast that destroyed Asgard. You put Surtur's crown into the Eternal Flame, allowing him to regain his full strength to defeat me and devour the Eternal Realm. Moreover, when you were in the vault, you stole the Tesseract—which you should have left to burn with the rest of Asgard, by the way—and that led to your death. So if you hadn't aided Thor in his quest to destroy me, well, I am sure you are intelligent enough to deduce what I am trying to tell you."

"I am indeed." There was truth in that, no doubt. His death had been more or less a consequence of Hela's voided banishment after Odin's demise but that did neither explain how she was still alive—if she was alive at all, for she had not clearly said either way—nor how she could have known what happened with the Tesseract. Unless … "You gained access to my memories," Loki growled.

"Not I," Hela clarified. "This place."

This was next to impossible but in his subconscious, Loki knew that it was not. His subconscious knew where he was and what all of this meant, and eventually the thought would rise to the surface of his conscious thinking. Loki decided to switch gears. "So, how do you control Hel now that Asgard is no longer giving you power? Who or what is?"

"You are finally starting to ask the right questions." That vicious smile again. "Let me show you something." She closed her eyes and balled her hand into a fist before spreading her fingers apart, releasing a new form of energy that sparkled to life around her fingertips in flashes of green, ice blue and turquoise. She placed her sizzling hand onto his forehead and began to chant softly.

Loki tried to jerk away but he was still paralyzed. He felt the inside of his brain beginning to burn up as if stung by a thousand steaming needles and he started to scream, his voice sounding repellently jarring in his ears. His mouth gaped open in pain, his eyes widening in terror. This was more painful than the bolt she had released before because the pain was not physical. It was as if she was slashing open his very soul. Strangely enough, he heard a long forgotten voice reverberating through his skull. You think you know pain? He will make you long for something sweet as PAIN. His screams tumbled over themselves as he was choking on all the memories of his life—all the memories, the true ones and the false ones and what did it matter anyway because he was cursed, cursed, CURSED; MONSTERS HAVE NO PLACE IN ASGARD, LOKI; no, I am the rightful king of Asgard; you're missing the point, there is no throne; I will not answer to you; NO, it was my birthright; your birthright was do DIE as a child, cast out onto a frozen rock; CAST OUT TO DIE; FAILURE; Frigga is the only reason you are still alive and you will never see her again; SHE NEVER TRUSTED YOU; SHE PITIED YOU; you have made me very desperate; you really are the worst brother; you're a monster; A MONSTER; monsters have no place in Asgard; this is madness; give up this poisonous dream; there's no version of this where you come out on top; you're gonna lose, it's in your nature. It is too late to save you, Loki. The boy I once knew is dead. What remains is a creature I do not recognize. Yes, Loki, YOU ARE THE MONSTER THAT PARENTS TELL THEIR CHILDREN ABOUT AT NIGHT, LITTLE LAUFEYSON.

"Laufeyson, huh?" Hela released him and stared with morbid curiosity. "This is delicious."

Loki licked his lips, tasting the glacial sweat of panic. He panted, willing his surroundings to swim back into focus and release him from the nightmares buried deep inside him. Yes, this was worse than he had imagined Hel. It was a lot worse.

"What a beautifully broken soul you have, my little brother."

"You … can … have it," Loki wheezed as he struggled against the fear that anytime soon now, his mind would shatter into a million pieces. He could not go through this again. He could not live through this a second time. "Take it from me … please."

Hela burst out laughing. Loki shuddered as the sound crashed against the wall of nothingness and bounced back to them before it slowly ebbed away. "What use would your agony be if I took it from you?" She smiled at him and softly stroked his cheek. "You see, anguish, terror and evil have always been another source of my power. Luckily, the universe is a much darker place now than it was two-thousand years ago. Souls are corrupted, full of darkness and despair. I no longer need Asgard. You and your beautiful delusion will be my main power source from now on and it will make me a lot stronger a lot faster than I thought possible."