6.

. . .

Alfheim. Rolling green hills nestled among beautifully frosted mountain caps, and among them were hidden pockets of eternal spring. Underneath those were the secret hot pools, sources of ancient water magics. Elemental salamanders played tag with the undine above, creating waterspouts and fountains for the tiny fae that drifted by to watch. Far to the north the air became more crisp, and there the ice-bound, enchanted elves sworn to the study of more dangerous elements, lived among stone basilisks and the feral winged saberfae cats. To the south lived the woodland elves who kept the green, an old offshoot of an ancient people. They kept old traditions alive - and maintained a pretty good tourism industry off of it.

And in the pockmarked rest of the realm, the mirror-gleam of the Elvish cities, sparkling crystal of countless colors, a riot of delight and joy, where the wind created song as it breezed by spiraled steeples shaped for exactly these effects.

The spaceport, and the postage stamp of field where by Nine Realms law they allowed the Bifrost to land, were stuffed in a perpetually gloomy canyon where the locals never had to witness them. It would have been gauche.

Loki, a crow in elegant blacks and the barest flash of green, stood hunched and annoyed as a flock of wee pixies drifted by him, stardust flickering in their wake. "Gaudy," he said with terse finality. He looked up at the sprawling complex before them, a palace of knowledge built from trillions of shards of glass on the edge of that bright city.

Thor was in a draped tunic of various soft browns, with a red cloak clasped loosely off his shoulder and his hip. He didn't say anything to Loki's verdict. Faced with his first real view of Alfheim - he wasn't against knowledge or magic by any stretch of the imagination, but his preferences tended to be more practical - he found he agreed.

Both men looked severely out of place.

Tall, lithe Elves with flowing hair knotted up with gilded strings and jingling gems all but glided on mossy cobblestones, stared at the pair outright as they passed, then away with politeness, mild faces allowing a microsneer that Loki didn't miss, as he was looking for more reasons to be already annoyed with them all.

"Did you think it was gaudy when you studied here?"

"I found it dazzling for about a week, and then I realized a great deal of the spectacle was surface level. There are some of the finest sorcerers, enchanters, and historians in all the galaxy here, Thor, and not a damn one of them lives within capital limits. That's how you know they're wise." Loki paused as another gaggle drifted past, these ones watching pirated space dramas on handheld crystalline holovid displays. "But if you want some of the most asinine, uptight, priggish sticklers for legalese this side of a Midgardian homeowner's association, you come to the shadow of the palace." He glanced at Thor. "I will say the royal family themselves are rather nice. It's a shame, really. The council has it all but zipped up."

Thor took that in, watching the locals watching them. "Is it bad I hope you're being overly negative?"

"Believe it or not, I would love nothing more than to be wrong about the politics of the fair folk. The good bits are marvelous. The vast majority of the people beyond the palace are fascinating, often kind. It wasn't a terrible term that I spent here. And I have nothing ill to say about the food."

"Speaking of."

"No food or drink in the library." Loki said it flatly. "There's fines associated with it, if you can call it something so small as a fine. But this is after they hold you for about a week to assess particle damage to any tomes within a certain radius, after which they consult a booksage to see if any future damage has been hastened, at which point-"

"Thank you, Loki, I think I've got the shape of it."

"Lead on, then." Loki gestured at the library. "I'll run back-up." He grinned, no humor in it. "You'll need it."

. . .

The first problem was navigating the chain of no less than eight different librarians and keepers shuffling them from desk to desk for proper authorization to access the section they wanted. That they were princes of Asgard cut zero ice or red tape - there was a routine, and for the safety of all realms and their knowledge, the elves were going to stand by it. Thor gamely followed along, and it took a good forty-five minutes before they got the actual archivist they needed.

Thor mostly only saw the top of their head. The archivist was otherwise ensconced behind a high, ornate desk that seemed more like a tiny, open-air cell. Milky-white hair braided with equally white leather straps, a handful of clear gems, and, to spice it up, a single mark of smokey quartz high on the brow where the hair met a trace of coppery skin, and now and again came the occasional mutter of 'mmhhm. Mhhhh—hm."

The soft scent of leather, lavender, and ancient paper filled the air. There were no other sounds but the rustling of the work, and that faint, insistent mutter. Thor tried to not shift his weight, fearing even that noise would echo in the cavernlike halls. Loki seemed nigh invisible. There were moments Thor wasn't even sure he was still there. He didn't dare move to peek.

"Mmm—hm…"

Thor prepared to clear his throat to gain the elf's attention, stopping when Loki leaned forward to catch his eye. A single soft shake of his head, and Loki leaned back again.

Well, what the hel was he supposed to do?

"Hmmmmm. Your highnesses."

Thor nearly jumped out of his skin. A single eye was now peeking at him from above the lip of the desk, sharp and green. A handful of thin wrinkles surrounded it, that Elvish rarity, and Thor realized that whoever this archivist was, he was showing a trace of age.

"I apologize for the wait, your highnesses."

Thor and Loki inclined their heads politely.

The archivist peeked over a little more, then read and reread the note signed by some eight other librarians that had been left in front of him.

"Hmmm."

Thor was, not to put a fine point on it, calculating how close he was to losing his shit. It had now been over an hour from entering the door to this moment.

"We did our best to expedite your request."

They did what now? A low noise rattled in Thor's throat, a stillborn laugh. He locked eyes with Loki as he took a silent step forward to come equal with him. Loki looked pretty far past done himself.

"Unfortunately…"

Both Thor's eyebrows crawled up to his hairline in an aching yeeeeeessss?

"We are unable to provide access to the genealogies at this time."

Thor could feel the handle of a hammer in his hand for a single glimmering second.

"Beg your pardon, High Archivist Milkmane." Loki stepped in front of Thor, smooth and calm. "As these copies of the genealogies are Asgardian property entrusted to your care, we are legally unable to accept any sort of unreasonable delay to our request. Please understand, that's not my word, merely a reference to the accord we signed in… mmm… Aelf 4032, as witnessed by Archivist Silvergleam and a factor for All-Father Bor Burison."

With an almost absurd, religious sense of mercy, Thor thought to himself: Thank Gods for Loki.

"Mmmmmm…."

"I am terribly afraid and most apologetic that I must therefore insist that we be offered access as promptly as is, of course, reasonable."

Thor watched that sharp green eye twitch. The other eye came up to match, and now he properly saw the man. He was indeed as ancient as an Elf might rarely be, that perfect, almost metallic skin marred by a handful of wrinkles not only by the eyes but by the mouth. A chill went down Thor's back.

The Elves loved beauty and perfection, but they had an almost paradoxical love as well for the flow of time, their place within and above it, and so, Thor had read when he was a child, if an Elf pushed through that odd, melancholic age to become truly old, they were then revered in society as a speaker of wisdoms, a beacon of time itself. Loki would know more about this particular bit of sociology, and Thor knew by his careful tone that he was very gently pushing it.

This was not a man with which to fuck, to put it as baldly as the humans might.

The religious gratitude became a trace of holy fear. Loki, please tell me you know what you're doing.

Loki looked firm and serene. He didn't so much as twitch. High Archivist Milkmane shifted in his seat a minute later, the detente broken somehow. "Ayelah."

Another elf appeared as if from the air itself. She was taller than either brother, with sky blue skin and steely hair. Her voice lilted in a low and harmonic set of chords, practiced to carry through the library without disrupting it. "Archivist."

"Explain to them."

Ayelah bowed low as Archivist Milkmane abruptly departed his desk. "I accept the shame so that our Archivist may not be burdened by it." She bowed again. "We are unable to offer you access to the genealogies as you deserve."

"And why not?" Loki interlaced his fingers, playing up the diplomatic role.

"The royal tomes are… damaged." Ayelah straightened up, but looked neither man in the eye. She looked pained. "This was discovered only an hour ago, when your request was entered in the system."

"What do you mean damaged?" Thor was shocked. At first. Then it began to melt away into something far more familiar.

"They seem to be vandalized."

Loki put a hand on Thor's arm, seeming to sense his growing anger. "I would like us to examine them anyway."

A more pressing observation struck Thor. "Who saw them last?"

Ayelah shuddered, as if that was a breach of some kind. The quick look he got from Loki suggested it was exactly that. "I am afraid that our visitor records are under Elvish protectorate and cannot be shared, save under explicit circumstances."

"It's all right. We'll worry about that later." Loki smoothed it over with a wave. "Still, I would like us to study the damage ourselves."

Ayelah seemed to pause, then scraped another fast, unreadable look over the two men. "Of course, your highnesses. If you will follow me into the next ward."

. . .

The genealogies of the Noble Houses of Asgard were collected in large tomes of burgundy leather strapped with gold. Each era or family line had their own sub-collection, with the royal family kept on a central display dais as ornate and gilded and overwrought as the books themselves. The aesthetic of this particular room was familiar to Thor, comfortable. A taste of Asgard hidden in another world.

Ayelah bowed next to the central dais, waved her hands towards the books as if presenting a seated noble to their equal, and then stepped away to allow them to approach.

"Are all of them damaged?" Loki asked her.

"One only, my lord. Volume Six of the High Name." She watched, wincing once as Loki put his hand on it.

Thor came up alongside Loki. "Don't tell me. Let me guess."

"Don't even waste your time with that." Loki glanced at him, sidelong. "Of course he's enough of an ass to arrange to secure any information we could access. At this point, it's really just seeing how he did it. To his credit, I don't think he sent anyone in here with a bottle of black ink and a lighter."

Loki flipped the tome open. The books were bound in the classic style, a heavy cord threaded underneath the leather. The pages made of fine parchment and gave off a soft, powdery smell as the pages turned. The tomes weren't just basic records, they covered intimate detail and specifics a normal genealogy might not. A book of family secrets. It wasn't difficult to find what was wrong, the surgical gap easily discovered just behind the back cover. Ayelah seemed to shrink in the corner. Loki, courteously, seemed to not notice. "Everything from Bor Burison to now."

"Naturally." Thor tried to not let his seething anger into the air.

"It was a good idea, Thor. Uncomplicated, to the point, and strategic." Loki didn't sound remotely condescending. "Hel, I forget we have other copies outside the palace library. Me. And I have access to Omnipotence City." Loki shut the book again. "Shame they won't have another set of spares. What I particularly like is that if we found the missing pages, the book can be repaired good as new. How thoughtful."

Ayelah did not look like she agreed with his sardonic observation, but she kept silent.

"Scholar Ayelah, would we be remiss to ask, not for specifics, but to know roughly how long ago the last visitor to this room was?"

Ayelah pressed her palms together. Silence filled the air. Thor suddenly realized there were no dust motes. Only pure light, their voices, and the soft smell of the books. The whole facility was enchanted somehow in addition to the imported Dwarvish filters he'd seen expertly hidden in the walls. Some intense use of magical energy, all to keep and preserve their treasures. There were no temples in the city, he'd noticed. Vaguely, he knew there were small shrines instead, all around the realm.

But there was this library at the heart of it.

All right, thought Thor. No wonder all these elves look like they're about to have a stroke over a scratched page.

"It was well over a thousand years ago, my lords. I do not wish to clarify further, for the sake of our policies. But I would avow to that much, having checked the records before attending the High Archivist."

"Er," said Loki, visibly taken off guard by that answer. "All right, I was expecting something more like 'last week,' but, all right." He absorbed that, looking at Thor.

Thor looked back, just as surprised. It meant the vandalism likely wasn't a result of his new, furious curiosity. So what the hel did that mean?

Loki frowned, then reached out to grip Thor's arm, hard. "Ayelah, I'll be speaking privately a moment."

"Of course." She drifted away to the far corner of the room, giving them space.

"Thor, why did you think to check the genealogies? What put you in this direction?"

"Surprised you didn't ask earlier."

"I decided to shut up and make a play at being usefully supportive since my first response was so tetchy. What did you find?"

Thor shrugged. "A handful notes in my history, in the healerie. After one of my last battles. There was a minor emergency in another ward, they left me with the paperwork. So I looked." Thor shook his head. "I found… references to something coded in my birth record. A few other correlated notes that were sealed. I tried to crack them, got nothing. Tried to crack Father, nothing. So I left."

"Fuck me."

Thor blinked at him, surprised.

Loki grinned back, humorlessly. "I never thought to look at my medical records, can you believe that? I could have snuck in anytime, found some piece of similar coding - who knows, a file marked 'blueberry' - asked questions…"

"Loki…" Thor knew what he thought he knew, didn't know how to say it, except in the raw, truthful way. "I think you were afraid of finding out. That you might be right. Until it was forced onto you."

Something almost invisible traced across Loki's face. It wasn't quite hurt. A sting, maybe. "Perceptive. You're learning." He looked away. "Anyway. All right. Then why not just falsify the record? It wouldn't be hard to cover a lie, and they would have had to for me. I've never gotten to Odin's copies, either, but I can't imagine the truth about Laufey was in there. So why the total removal of this copy's section? Just lie. If the truth was at one point in your record, come in with a pen and 'adjust' it."

"The tomes are meant to be enchanted. The words may not be changed, and the words in them must be true. I'm not even sure how they managed a removal, we must investigate this. But if they had tried a replacement, breaking any of that enchantment? It would have taken days. Perhaps weeks to accomplish. We never would have allowed someone to remain here with the books that long. Not a king nor a god, and both have tried." Both men looked at Ayelah, who pressed her hands together and looked to the ground. "My apologies, Highnesses. Your words are private, on our Queen's brow and Light. I may speak nothing of what I overhear. But I could not leave this sanctum unattended… and your question seemed important."

The brothers glanced at each other, mutually agreeing to let it go. "Then… I don't know," said Thor.

"This was it, your big plan? Find your birth record and stomp back to Asgard with it in hand?"

"I…" Thor sighed. "Not exactly. Those codes in my records, I wrote them down."

"That's not going to get you anywhere much on their own."

"No, but I thought with at least some information about my birth from the tomes, I could try to figure out what nurses were in attendance. What realms they came from, get an idea for more code breaking attempts. There's analysts around the galaxy. Xandar, a few other places. I ran into a few potential information brokers on Sakaar when I left Asgard, took notes."

Loki nodded, looking annoyed with himself. "Better plan than I assumed, which is on me."

"But without even a trace of that information…." Thor gestured at the books. "I don't dare try to break into Odin's halls."

Something quirked across Loki's face. "It's a last option, to be sure."

"You make it sound like it is an option."

"Not… really." Loki winced. Then something abruptly tweaked across his face, bright and savagely alert. He snapped his fingers, then pointed at Ayelah. "Records. Other records."

"Your highness?"

"We entrusted other papers to Alfheim's libraries. Diplomatic records. Court transcripts. Proclamations. I need access to those."

Ayelah shook her head. "I cannot help you, your highness."

Loki went deathly still.

"They are kept at a different facility."

"Oh, thank gods," he blurted, relieved. "I can deal with that. Do you know which one?"

"I can find out."