*pretends like it hasn't been over a year since last update and publishes what could pass as a filler chapter*
Hey, guys... *little wave* Sorry it's been so long. School does that to me.
So I ended this chapter a little more abruptly than I would've liked. I was going to write more, but then it hit me that if I kept going that it would end up seriously long. Besides, some of the best bits are in the next chap. :)
Enjoy.

Chapter 7: "Let's kill tonight! Kill tonight! Show them all you're not the ordinary type" ~ Let's Kill Tonight, Panic! At The Disco

Normally, Hel was patient.

It was something that had become a learned virtue over the years. Initially, she'd found it incredibly hard to listen to Bobby talk for hours, but now she had figuring out how to weed out the important details from Bobby's long-winded and (sometimes) pointless rants down to an art. She'd also had to deal with the foster care system with a considerable amount of patience, being one of the more 'troublesome' cases that apparently had ever crossed their desks and thus eliciting a fair amount of frustration on her caseworker's part.

(There was also the patience where she dealt with bigots and bullies, where (most of the time) she for the most part was able to ignore them. But she doesn't really like to think about those occurrences, it only reminded her of how angry she was in those instants and that such restraint was too precarious, too close to the snapping point, to be called something as simple and plain as 'patience'.)

Even so, she doesn't think any patience she's learned over the years could have prepared her for this waiting.

Thor had escorted her back to her room, fully planning on 'staying until the decision came to pass' when a woman - weren't they called maidservants? - stopped them just down the hall from the big doors to her room and whispered in Thor's ear after a side glance at Hel. She watched as a troubled expression crossed the thunderer's face before he dismissed the woman with a 'thank you' and then stood silently, seemingly conflicted.

Still, Hela waited patiently.

After a moment, Thor said, "Hela, there is a...situation that requires my attention in the dining-"

She's waving him off before he can even finish. "It's fine. I can handle waiting by myself for a while."

"Are you sure?"

She smiles at him, trying to look reassuring. "Yeah, you go do what you have to do. I'll be okay."

Her uncle continues to stare her down with a searching blue gaze for a few moments before deciding her words are valid enough and smiling brightly. "Very well." He hesitated for half a second before reaching up and patting her head. "Everything well be okay, Hela."

Hel holds back a cringe at the pat on the head because she's not sure if she should feel offended or touched by the gesture. She can only guess how much experience Thor has with kids...

Being treated like a pet aside, the teenager did appreciate the obvious attempt to comfort her (even if she doubted how 'okay' things would be after this). "Thanks, Thor. That really means a lot."

The thunderer seemed to brighten at that before hurrying off in the direction of where the 'situation' was. Hel watched him disappear around the corner with a sigh, partially relieved. She knew he had good intentions, but she didn't think she could handle the overwhelming presence of Thor right now.

Shutting the door to her room, the teenager leaned back against the frame, crossed her arms, and shut her eyes. Exhaustion weighed down on her body, making her eyelids heavy, yet at the same time her mind was so alert and racing that it made it almost feel like her skin was buzzing.

A small smile quirked on her lips. The sensation wasn't unlike the time she'd drank three energy drinks with Bobby in a competition to see who could stay up longer during the summer. Hel had lost, falling asleep after almost forty-six hours (and now she wonders if her defeat had had something to do with her apparently very real duty as queen in Helheim).

"Do you always smile to yourself when you're alone? That's a creepy habit."

Hela's eyes flew open and she was so startled by the blue face inches in front of her own she fell off balance with a gasp.

The intruder gives an airy laugh, indigo eyes twinkling. Jokul Frosti doesn't even bother to hide the amusement on his face as he sticks a hand out. "Need help, Not-Queen?"

She's so pissed off that she actually slaps the hand away before rolling to the side and standing on her own. She barely notices how cold the hand that was offered was. "What the hell?"

"Cursing your own name, that's new," the winter spirit says almost thoughtfully.

"Get. Out."

"Weellll," he drawls, "I originally planned on just going back to my merrymaking business after they kicked me out of the meeting, but then it occurred to me, 'Why shouldn't I pay the Not-Queen a visit and keep her company while a bunch of stuck up assholes decide if her father should die and if she should be locked in Helheim?' And so I did."

Hel really wants to stay mad, but even as she tries to hold onto her anger she can feel it draining away into curiosity. Dammit. "Wait, they never said anything about..."

As she trails off, he quirks a white eyebrow. "You?" Jokul snickers. "Come on, you didn't honestly think they thought you were safe enough to let you run around. To them, you're a ticking time bomb. They're just waiting until you bite off someone's hand and spin out of control."

She stares at him for a few moments, trying to tell if he's lying. When she doesn't see any deception in the cold, blue eyes, a chill settles over her and her mind goes blank.

Without a word, Hel goes to the bed and sits heavily on the edge. She stares at her hands and wonders - not for the first time - what's she gotten herself into.

Because apparently it wasn't just Loki's freedom at stake here. Because she was apparently dangerous in the eyes of strangers. Because apparently, by fighting for Loki's freedom, she had put her own at risk.

Hel wasn't afraid of death. She wasn't afraid of the chance that they did bind her with the seal, tying her life with Loki's actions. She wasn't afraid of dying because of Loki making a mistake and nullifying the deal, simply because she didn't think he would with her life on the line. Therefore, she was okay with tying her life to a gamble.

But she wasn't willing to spend the rest of her life (however long that was) in such a cold, desolate place as Elivdnir. She'd rather die.

There was a light touch on her shoulder. "Hey, are you okay?"

Hel blinks at Jokul slowly, trying to register his suddenly much younger appearance. Just a minute ago he looked to be in his twenties, and now he was more her age. Shuddering at her dark thoughts, she asks as a distraction for herself, "Why do you keep changing age?"

The winter spirit takes a step back, scrutinizing her a bit longer before looking down at himself. "Ah, that. You finally noticed."

She's tired too point out she had already noticed and just never had the chance to ask.

Continuing on, he says with a sigh, "I was cursed. By a witch." A pause. "Well, sorceress, but she might as well have been a damn witch... Anyway, now my age changes depending on my mood, emotions, mental state, whatever you want to call it. That's how the varying range of myths and stories about my age developed in Midgard."

Hel nodded, still not that sympathetic. "Did you deserve it?"

Jokul looked startled. "What?"

"The sorceress that cursed you. What did you do to her to make her curse you?"

His jaw dropped. "Nothing! Ask your freaking father, it was his fault."

Hela tilts her head slightly at that. "You act like you know Loki."

Jokul's offended expression drained away to a blank neutrality, his appearance aging literally in front of her eyes to that of a man in his late thirties. Weary indigo eyes stared past her. "Well, let's just say that while your father and I had a lot of fun when we were both younger, he wanted something I couldn't give."

The teenager stares at the reminiscent winter spirit flatly, distinctly unimpressed with the explanation. Mentally shrugging, she resolved to get it from Loki later. Answers were easier to extract from the trickster with the right words it seemed-

She froze in mid-thought, a new chill settling over her. She might not get to see him again if the decision went the wrong way...

"Hey, you're not about to space out again are you?"

Hel blinks, looking up at Jokul. "Sorry, I just..."

"Firstly, stop apologizing. I hate that. 'Sorry' doesn't fix things, so why say it in the first place? Take action or something. But whatever. Secondly, if it...," he huffed almost resignedly and grimaced, "...makes you feel better, I think they'll accept your proposal."

"Really?" Hela brightened for a moment, then looked at him dubiously. "Wait, why did they kick you out of the meeting in the first place?"

He waved a blue hand around lazily. "Eh, something about maturity and responsibilty and actually being qualified to make the decision or whatever. It didn't matter anyway, the guys back on Jotunhiem made it pretty clear that the only way they'd be happy was if Loki was dead. So they would've been a deadset 'no' even if they had heard your proposal."

"So it has to be a majority vote."

"Yeah. Which is why I wouldn't worry too much."

"But... I'm pretty sure almost every person hated Loki." And me, too.

Jokul grinned brightly. "But see, that's the good thing! They hate him so much they want to see him suffer!"

Hel stared at him briefly before edging away slightly on the bed, wondering if anyone would actually come to help if she screamed about the lunatic in her room.

"Oh, don't be like that. What I mean is that they want to see him at his lowest point, and if they all talk about it together, like the sadistic bastards I know they are they'll come up with the conclusion that Loki will inevitably fail if he takes the oath and thus kill you. So then he'll have killed one of his own children, his only daughter, and they'll have the chance to see him suffer before they kill him."

Hel wondered if all Asgardians and other planets were secretly this cruel and bloodthirsty. "It's nice to see you have such strong faith in my ability to make this plan work."

"I didn't say I didn't think you wouldn't be able to make it work. I'm just saying that they think that."

The teenager hummed, not really caring if he thought she could make it work or not. After a few moments of silence, she sighed and said, "I miss Earth."

"Why?" he asked curiously.

"Because things were so much simpler there. People hated me there, too, but it was just because I looked different, not because I'm supposed to bring about the apocalypse or something catastrophic like that. Here, people are afraid of me. ...I miss humans, with all their flaws-" She shook her head. "This is ridiculous. I've always on some level felt angry towards the general human population because of how I got treated, which I know is in some ways unfair." A small rueful smile. "Bobby would laugh at me if he heard me say that."

Then she sighed. "I miss Bobby the most."

Jokul was grinning almost crazily. "Who's 'Bobby'?"

Hel glared at him. "No one you need to know about, asshole."

"Ooh, maybe I should tell Thor about your dirty mouth when he gets back. But I guess that'll still be awhile..."

"He'd be too busy trying to kill you to care," Hel sniped back, only half-sure. "And how do you know if it'll be awhile? He could walk through that door any minute."

The winter spirit shrugged, suddenly inspecting his nails. "Well, speaking from experience, my ice is pretty hard to break through, let alone melt, and not all Asgardians have magical flying hammers, you know, so the chumps stuck in the Dining Hall are in for a wait since Odin is in the all-important meeting."

Hela stared at him, struggling with what Jokul was implying. "Are you saying that you froze the doors to the Dining Hall shut?"

"Are you deaf or just stupid?"

Hel almost hit him. Almost.

"Yes, that is what I'm saying, Not-Queen."

"Why?"

"I already told you. I thought I might pay you a visit. But I couldn't do that with your blonde bodyguard hovering around, could I?"

"I...really don't get you."

Jokul shrugged. He looked almost twenty now, a few inches taller than her. "That's okay. Most people don't. Now," he said, quirking a small smile, "how much magic do you know?"

"Thor's probably looking for me now..."

"Thor is most definitely still trying to save a couple dozen vikings from the Dining Hall, I can assure you. Stop being such a worry-wart. Tch. Just like Loki."

Hel grumbled, kicking a half-melted lump of snow and pulling the cloak around her tighter. The forest, which had seemed so confusing and eerie the night before, now looked almost beautiful as sunlight shined in on the snow and iced trees dripped with melting drops.

Jokul walked ahead of her confidently, seemingly to a known location. Hel trudged along behind him, maybe with a little too much blind trust.

The frozen journey finally came to a literal stumbling halt as Hela ran right into Jokul's back, too focused on her private game of stepping right in his preceding footsteps in the snow. The winter sprite made an irritated noise, but said nothing as he turned around.

And then she finally saw where they actually were.

It looked like the crumbling remains of an old amphitheater, surrounded by pillars swirling in beautiful, twisting designs. Through the quickly melting snow dead weeds could be seen protruding up through cracks in the half-crumbling seats and ascending steps. When Hel looked down and around her feet, she realized that the part they were standing on would've been considered the stage, though the stone was riddled with spiderweb cracks all across and still harbored piles of snow here and there. At one time the amphitheater may have seated up to five-hundred people, but now it was dead silent; wind blew around the pillars and up the seats, rustling the trees and setting off the crackling of ice in the frozen limbs.

With a small shiver, the teenager turned around- And saw the stone banner running proudly across the top of pillars, uniting them all. The Asgardian characters engraved elegantly across the banner reorganized themselves before her eyes into English:

Theater of Masks

There was another word before 'Theater', but it looked as if it had either eroded away or been forcefully removed. Hel didn't have time to examine it much more before Jokul called her attention back.

"It's...pretty awesome, isn't it?" The winter sprite said behind her, voice quiet and almost subdued. "This place has seen a lot. It was originally a theater for plays and whatnot, but somewhere along the line it got turned into a sparring theater."

Hel suddenly felt a little less in awe of the theater and a little more sick to her stomach as dread seeped in to weigh her down. She turned around slowly to face Jokul, as if that would make the realization sink in slower. "You mean..."

"Animals and people alike were pitted against each other in fights to the death." Jokul's blue eyes were flat and hard but grim, like the black ice on roads that drivers know is there and dread but can't see. "And people paid good money to watch, too."

It struck Hel then how much Asgardians and humans were truly alike in their bloodthirstiness.

"That's why I brought you here, you know," the sprite continued on in a dull tone, turning away. "I wanted to see if your magic reacted to the souls still stuck here."

The breath stuck in her throat, and she barely managed to stutter out, "W-what?"

He looked over his shoulder at her and smirked almost arrogantly. His age was in the twenties range now if she had to guess, making the smirk look sharp and charming on his now youthful face. "You have magic in you, Not-Queen, whether you know, like, want it, or not. I can feel it around you. Whether or not you can use it, I don't know, but you should sure as hell be able to at least sense other energies so closely related to your own medium."

Hel wasn't sure whether or not to be frightened or confused by what he was implying, so she settled for confused. "'Sense'? 'Energies'? 'Medium'?What?"

Jokul heaved a weary sigh before turning away from her and scuffing his animal-skin boots against a pile of snow. "First of all, a few examples to clarify what a medium is: mine, obviously, is ice." To prove a point he flicked a hand out, and in the same motion a dagger of sharp, clear ice formed around the fingers of blue hand like a glove. He displayed it for her, showed how the sun glanced off it and how the ice ended at his wrist.

Shooting her a dark grin, his asked, "Wanna see how sharp it is?"

Hela glowered at him darkly enough to get the point across.

The winter sprite huffed a laugh, but refocused on his dagger of ice. "Like I said, it's my medium, and like any artist, I can do more than one thing with it." As he was speaking, he brought both hands together and rolled them once before opening his palms and showing her.

In his palm sat a large ice snowflake, looking too delicate and thin to have been made from the dagger he'd just been showing off.

"And yet..." Jokul continued, "ice doesn't always have to be in a hard, solid form." He cupped his hands again, then opened them to reveal nothing but a pile of snow.

Hel had to admit, she was impressed. Magic was something she'd only recently been introduced to, and even more recently seen in first person. To see it this close...

"So you're saying everyone that does magic has a medium?" she asked.

He shrugged, dropping the snow and brushing off his hands. "Technically... But not everyone uses it, per say..."

Hel was getting so tired of asking everyone two or three times to explain things. "Look, just pretend I don't know anything and explain everything in one go, okay?"

She knew she should've reconsidered her words when a mocking grin nearly split Jokul's face in half. "Pretend you don't know anything? That shouldn't be too hard to do, Not-Queen..."

She wanted to hit him. So. Much.

"Like I said and showed, I use ice as my medium. But not everyone uses theirs in their magic. Take Odin, for example. ...I'm not sure if anyone knows what his medium is, but he can do just about anything, and doesn't use some special flare like me. There are others, who use a combination of their medium and any old sorcery they may know. Your dad is a good example of that."

"What's his medium?" Hel interrupted.

"I was getting to that, wasn't I?" Jokul sniped back. A smile played on his lips, threatening to spill out. "Take a guess at what it is."

She gave him a flat look. "I can count on one hand the number of times I've had a decent conversation with Loki, let alone met him face to face. I don't think I've even seen him do magic."

He snorted, looking a little sheepish. "I forgot about that... Probably woulda gotten it wrong anyways." He shrugged, but said, "Loki's medium is light."

Hel took a minute to think that over, because, light? Really? What the hell did someone do with light?

"Yeah, I'll just explain it to you before your brain fries, genius. You might've learned about light waves in your Midgardian science classes by now, and if you did they probably told you about the colors not being absorbed being reflected, right?"

Hel actually had covered light waves back in middle school, but she hadn't ever exactly been an A+ student and never planned on building rockets for NASA, so really only the interesting things like human anatomy or DNA coding stuck with her.

Jokul scowled slightly at her clueless expression and sighed. "Kids these days." Shaking his head, he continued on.

"The colors we see are the ones not absorbed by the object or organism. They reflect back in light waves. Loki manipulates the light waves. I think the way he explained it to me was that he twists them so that people see what he wants them to see. So, like, if he wants to look like a completely different person, he just tweaks the light waves surrounding his body. He can even create mirages, which are like holograms of a sort. Frigga - his mom, you know? - was actually the one who taught him how to do it all. But Loki came up with a way to change something about the light so that his holograms had texture and feel, so that if there was like five Lokis and you knew four of them were nothing but air, you couldn't just go slashing your hand through each of their bodies till you hit flesh. He made it so the illusion didn't just look real- They felt real."

Hela listened intently (how couldn't she, he was talking about her supposed father who she knew nothing about), but she couldn't help but notice how Jokul seemed almost proud when speaking about Loki.

It was strange, and it almost made her miss what he said next.

"But like I said, Loki doesn't just rely on his medium. He uses regular sorcery, too, which he learned from Frigga, myself, and himself. He self-taught himself a lot of stuff...

"Anyway, different people with like mediums are able to sense each other. So if I was near some bloke that also used ice or snow in some form of magic, I could feel that energy before I actually saw him. Pretty much any adept magic user can sense just plain magic energy, but magic mediums have special identities."

At this point Jokul's eyes wandered to the overgrown ruins surrounding them. "Considering your background, I would say your medium is death itself." Then he shot her a bright grin, as if he had just made some great joke.

Hel couldn't help but feel repulsed at the idea. Death? Really? "That's...sick."

"If you mean sick as in 'cool', yeah, it's pretty 'sick'." The idiot was still grinning at her like a child with a new toy.

"What if I don't want that kind of magic? I don't... Death is... How do you even use death as a magic? And what if that's not my kind?"

Jokul shrugged. "There's only one way to find out."

"How?"

"Close your eyes."

Without a second thought Hel did so.

Her eyes closed, she was able to hear better the rustle and creak of the ice-covered trees, the drip-drip of melt hitting the stone ground, and her own breathing. Apprehension building, she waited for Jokul's instruction.

After a few moments of heavy silence, she heard Jokul say gleefully, "You're so naive it's cute."

Irritation sparked in Hela and her eyes flew open, about to snap back an insult-

-Just in time to see the frost sprite aiming a dagger of ice at her face.

Hel barely managed to jerk back out of the way with a surprised gasp. The razor-sharp ice clipped her right cheek anyway, slicing a thin line as she felt the breeze from Jokul's hand flying past her. Beyond that dagger of ice, a look of bloodthirsty glee adorned his face.

Her balance off now, Hela fell backwards in shock and something that was starting to feel like fear. She tried to scrabble back away from her sudden attacker, but Jokul stepped forward and ice spread lightning quick from his feet, covering one her hands up to the wrist and effectively cementing her in place.

Terror clenched inside of her and all rational thought went out the window. Hel fruitlessly pulled at the ice as Jokul loomed over her, still grinning manically. "First rule of combat."

She was unable to dodge his foot as he kicked at her chest, stepping down in the same motion and pinning her to the ground with a foot resting heavily on her neck. Her free hand grabbed onto his foot on her neck, clenching at the strappings holding the leather of his boot together. Jokul leaned forward slightly to press down, making it further harder to breath as both fear and his weight cut off her air. "Never, ever, ever take your eyes off your enemy."

He leaned down closer to her face, now serious and looking thirty years old again. His ice dagger came to a rest on her cheek, just below her eye. She didn't dare move.

Voice low, Jokul said, "The same mistake could very well cost you your life someda-"

Something inside Hel fractured and then broke. The fear disappeared instantly as a cold void replaced it.

At the same time Jokul's expression faltered, she automatically threw a hand out and reached, grasping nothing, and flung it back at him with all her might.

Something solid and black as night responded, ramming into a surprised Jokul from the side and knocking him off of Hel. Reacting purely on instinct now, she twisted her trapped hand and the ice surrounding it broke with a crack. In a flash she was up and summoning more power to her fingertips. It was only as she saw the black shades from the pillars and her own shadow stretching and pulling did she realize what exactly it was she was controlling. At this realization, the shades dispersed.

There was a groan from a few feet away. Jokul was laying on his back, looking slightly dazed. He met her eyes, wearing the same frozen, blank expression. Hel was frozen for a moment.

And then she ran.

A sharp, biting laugh echoed after her. That was all that followed her, but Hela was too afraid to realize that the crunching of leaves was from her own feet and the shallow breaths were her own. And so, on she ran.

Abrupt, right? :P

I have to say that I don't know when I'll be updating again. With work, homework, school, and then planning for college (crazy, right? who needs education pssh not me), it could be a little while. But I definitely will try not to let it go on as long as last time. (Sorry about that again.)

Next Chapter: The jury's in! And Hel's more than a little freaked out. She lets everyone know, too.