Disclaimer: C'mon, do you really think that I own this?

A/n: Ok, this was originally going to be much longer, but since I am not a very patient person I decided to post this early and split this chapter up into two parts. So here's part one.

Loki knocked on Frey's chamber door with his left hand. He normally would have used his right hand, but because of Frey's excitement about exploring the palace, he had accidentally fractured Loki's wrist. Eir had wrapped it, put a brace on it, and instructed Loki not to use his right hand until it was healed.

This frustrated the prince, for he was right handed and it made everything difficult when he couldn't use his dominate hand. He asked Eir if she could simply use her magic to heal it, but she had refused, saying that magic was only good for healing completely broken bones, not fractures. She had, of course, used her magic to treat the pain.

But despite the fact that he had nearly broken his wrist, Loki actually liked Frey. The Vanir seemed happy to answer any of the questions that Loki had about Vanaheim, while likewise he would answer any of Frey's questions about Asgard. (Also, Frey apparently found Loki humorous, but the porcelain skinned boy had no idea why—he wouldn't even try to be funny and Frey would just laugh at him.)

"Viennent dans les,"called Frey's voice from inside the room. Loki stood there for a moment and blinked. He had no idea what that meant, but he hoped it meant something inviting, because he pushed open the door and entered anyway.

The room was very large; almost the size of a small ballroom. Frey was sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, his legs crossed, his hands, palm up, resting on top of his knees. His lips turned upwards in a smile when Loki came in, and Loki wondered if his lips were naturally that red or if Frey painted them.

"What are you doing?" asked Loki bluntly, referring to Frey's pose.

"Meditating," Frey answered simply, shrugging his shoulders slightly. He motioned for Loki to sit next to him. "Join me? Eet 'elps balance your chi. My Fazzer and I would always do eet every day. I suppose eet eez a 'ard 'abit to break."

"Really?"

Frey nodded and Loki sat down across from him and mimicked the Vanir's pose. Loki secretly wished that his Father would do something like that with him. They sat in silence for a moment before Loki broke it.

"Frey?"

"Yes?"

"What's chi?"

"Oh," said Frey, sounding slightly surprised. He frowned slightly. "Hmm, I 'ave never 'ad to explain eet before...eet eez your body's natural energy. Eef you can master eet, eet can make you more flexible."

"It can?" asked Loki, raising an eyebrow.

"Of course," said Frey eagerly, "look." Frey uncrossed his legs and lifted his right leg up and stuck it behind his head. Loki's eyebrows shot up to his hairline.

"That is...interesting," said Loki uncertainly as Frey sat cross-legged again. "How long do you do this a day?"

"For about an 'our. Eet depends on what Fazzer 'ad going on zat day."

Loki hummed in reply and let his eyes travel around the room. There was a perfectly made bed , dresser, and vanity on one side of the room, while on the other side there was a desk with scattered papers and what looked like a half-complete ship-in-a-bottle project that Frey was working on. Then, of course, there were the many windows which lined the east wall, showing a lovely view of the city.

Loki's eyes turned upward towards the ceiling. The whole entire roof had been painted like an astronomical map, naming various stars and consolations. The Aesir prince shut his eyes, groaned, and fell backwards onto the floor.

"What eez eet?" questioned Frey.

"What is it with Thor and you and stars?" muttered Loki, bringing his hands up to cover his face.

"Why do you not like them?" asked Frey, cocking his head to one side. "Zey are quite important, especially when you go sailing. Zey can guide you and—"

Frey got cut off by a low and faint BOOM. The noise sent vibrations up through the floor. Loki sat straight up, than got onto his knees, his eyes wide and fixed on the area beneath him.

"Did you feel that?"

"Yes," replied Frey uncertainly. "Eez zat some kind of doorbell zat you 'ave?"

"Doorbell?" repeated Loki. He shook his head, an excited grin spreading on his face. "No, no, that was an explosion, I'm sure of it!"

"Explosion?"

"Yeah—but I can not think of anything that an explosion would be useful for...Unless...," Loki trailed off, and his grin got wider. He stood up suddenly and grabbed Frey and yanked him up as well. "C'mon, hurry, or we might miss it!"

"Miss what?" asked Frey as Loki pulled him out of his room and out into the hallway.

"The fun!" replied Loki. "I think someone broke into the armory!"

The smoke rose up into the air and stayed there like a hazy fog. Light from the hallway poured into the darkened room, casting eerie shadows in the room which held some of Asgard's most powerful weapons. A figure emerged from the smoke, hurrying into the room with quick, featherlight footsteps.

Said figure muttered something quietly, and two blue balls of energy appeared in their hands. The glowing spheres briefly illuminated a young woman before floating out of her hands and levitating in the air just above the woman's head. She looked around the now lit armory and made a soft noise of frustration before striding deeper into the chamber, the spheres of light following her as she went.

The woman went over to a dustier section of the room, where there were stacks of cobweb covered scrolls piled on the floor. She bent down and leafed through every one, making another noise of frustration when she was done.

"Where is it?" she hissed quietly to herself.

The sound of boots against the tiled floor caught her attention. She turned her eyes towards the large empty space where the doors used to be just as Vidar and two other guards appeared.

"Oy," said Vidar, "what do you think you're doing?"

The woman stood straight up and blinked. "Goodness," she said, a wicked smile on her lips, "you must be new at this or something, because that is the worst starting line I have ever heard." She put her hands on her slender hips and strode forward with a certain confident swagger.

"To aid you in your obliviousness," continued the woman, pressing her hand against her chest, "I am the amazing Enchantress, Amora; master of magic and a thousand times better than any of your palace's swanky sorcerers. Here's how this works..."

The woman called Amora snapped her fingers. The two balls of energy floating near her shot towards Vidar and the guards. Instead of hitting them, the spheres phased into the ground right in front of their feet. In the next instant, ice spurted up from the ground, encasing the men in ice from the waist down.

"I walk out of here," continued Amora, causally walking towards the exit, ignoring the guard's struggles, "and you don't arrest me." She paused near Vidar, reaching out and pinching his cheek. "Get it?"

Amora dodged the swipe he made at her and walked out into the hall. The second she was out of the armory, she took off into a run. The spell that she had cast wore off and the ice turned to water, freeing the guards and their Captain. Despite the bottom half of their torsos being completely drenched, they seemed unharmed.

However, Vidar could not say the same about his pride. That Enchantress had left him flustered, and he was not about to let her get away for that.

"Don't just stand there!" said Vidar to his guards. "After her!" But it was he who ran out of the armory first.

"Vy are we going 'owards a robbery?"

Loki stopped walking and turned around to look at his friend.

"Because," he replied, rolling his eyes, "whoever would break into the armory would either be daft or extremely powerful!"

"Oh," said Frey, blinking. "I still don't get it."

Loki sighed. "Never mind. Just hurry up!" The porcelain skinned boy turned back around and was about to continue on his way, but got shoved roughly into the wall.

"Outta my way, kid!"

A woman who looked no older than Vidar himself had been the one who had pushed him. She had dirty blonde hair which was cut into a messy bowl style. Her eyes were green, somewhat matching the faded color of her tattered strapless dress. She was tall, and had rings on each of her slender fingers. She was also extremely thin, almost to the point where Loki could see her very bones underneath her skin. Another thing Loki noticed was that she was wearing no shoes.

The woman rushed past him, not even bothering to apologize to him, even though he was a prince and she should have—!

The next instant, Vidar and two other guards dashed into the hall. The woman stopped running, turned around, and did something that made Loki gape.

She duplicated herself; one moment, there was only one of her, then the next there were two. One of her turned on her heel and ran out, while the other created a ball of energy between her hands. She shot it at the guards, and it hit Vidar straight in the chest, knocking him backwards off his feet and slammed on his back on the ground. The one who had shot the magic disappeared short after.

One of the guards attended to Vidar while the other chased after the woman. As soon as the Captain was on his feet, he and the other guard followed after.

"Did you see that?" asked Loki excitedly, his eyes still staring at the spot where the duplicate had stood.

"Ze Sorceress?" said Frey, raising an eyebrow. "She slammed you eento ze wall and you are only wanting to praise 'er?"

"No, not praise her," said Loki, shaking his head and stepping away from Frey. "Ask her how she did it."

"What? Why would—where are you going?"

Loki hurried out of the hall in the direction that the adults had gone, Frey on his heels.

"She ran into a dead end, so she's gotta be—" Loki stopped when they rounded the corner. "Huh?"

True as he had said, the hallway lead to nowhere but a wall, yet the only people who were in it were Vidar and his guards. Vidar looked positively furious. Loki quickly grabbed Frey and pulled him out of the Captain's way when he stormed out of the hall, his guards close behind.

"Where did she go?" thought Frey aloud.

"I dunno," replied Loki, shrugging, "but she's good."

The next day, Loki went to the library to return a book. He had to walk down several rows of shelves; he might have been young, but he could read at a much higher age level. Once he found the correct shelf and returned the book, he was going to head back to his chambers before something caught his eye.

The young prince had been to the library enough to know who came when and looked up what—for example, before Vidar had taken over his father's position as the army's Captain, he came into the library in the early mornings and studied battle strategies. Most sorcerer's and their trainees came here to study as well, always bringing their spellbooks to copy things down or take notes in. However, it was on rare occasion that a sorcerer left his spellbook out in the open.

That's what confused Loki. While passing a shelf, he noticed a spellbook shoved on top of a row of books. The boy stopped and looked at it for a moment, curious to why it's owner would leave it unattended.

It was quite a dangerous thing for sorcerer's to leave their spellbooks just lying around. Another sorcerer could steal it, learn all of your tricks, and later use it to his or her advantage in a fight. Whoever left this, Loki decided, wasn't very wise.

He picked it up from its spot on the shelf and examined it. Loki found it odd that there was no seal on the leather cover of the book—with either wax or magic. Had the book belonged to an apprentice of one of the council's Sorcerer's, there would have been one of both. The prince opened the book and began flipping through the pages. He found it even more odd that some pages were loose-leaf and written in different handwriting.

None the less, Loki was intrigued by some of the spells written inside. As he began to read more and more of the book, he could only wonder who this spellbook belonged to.

Amora ducked into an alleyway, slamming herself up against the wall. She could hear Vidar and the other palace guards just behind her. They had somehow caught up with her and had been chasing her around all night, and she needed to get back to the palace. Now.

As she heard the men approaching, she pressed herself into the stone wall. She tried to slow her breathing, her chest rising and falling with every rapid breath. She saw the oncoming light of a lantern, and she wrapped the night's shadows around her just as the Captain himself rounded the corner into the alley.

The lantern illuminated Vidar, highlighting the sharp and defined angles of his handsome face. He cautiously stepped down the alley, unknowingly getting closer and closer to Amora. Each step he took echoed down the darkened street. Amora held her breath as Vidar got so close she could have reached out and brushed one of the curls of his dark hair. The lantern would have completely lit her up had she not been invisible.

Reaching out to her magic, Amora flicked her fingers, quickly casting a spell. A loud crash and a man's cry came from the street behind them—Vidar whirled around and rushed off towards the sound. Amora let out her breath and smirked; a simple magnetic spell would keep the other guards glued together by their armor for at least an hour.

Becoming visible once more, Amora turned her attention to the looming silhouette of the palace.

Loki blinked his eyes open, adjusting them to the darkness of his room. He yawned, briefly wondering why he was awake until the dryness of his throat made itself known. Rubbing his eyes, the prince threw back his blankets and swung his legs to the side of his bed, hissing slightly when bare feet met the cold ground.

Walking out of his room, Loki paused once more to yawn, then headed down the candle-lit hallway, making his way to the kitchens. He passed one corridor and another and another, the rooms lost on his still half-asleep mind. It wasn't until Loki nearly hit a wall did he realize that he had went down a dead-ended.

Shaking his head in an attempt to wake himself up, the prince turned around and was about to go to the kitchens the right way when something stopped him. A loud thump and a curse came from a room to his right—the library, he realized. He must have gone down that hallway by mistake.

But who would be in there at this time of the night? Now curious, Loki tiptoed over to the room and peeked through one of the opened doors.

Moonlight flooded in through the grand windows on the east wall, causing shadows to form and stretch out on the floor. Some of the shelves were empty and their books were lying in heaps on the floor. Loki frowned in confusion, wondering why someone would go pillaging though a library and not even try to clear the evidence that showed them being there.

He didn't know why, but he found who soon enough. A person stood in a row of shelves, pulling out, briefly looking at and throwing down books onto the floor. They had their back turned towards him, so Loki didn't know who it was, but they sure seemed desperate. The person finished with the last of the books on one shelf, cursed again, and turned around to start on the next shelf.

Loki unintentionally gasped softly when he recognized the person—it was that same woman from this afternoon!

The one who shoved me into the wall, a voice snarked in the back of his head, but Loki ignored it.

Leaning forward to get a better view of what she was doing, Loki pushed the door open, far enough that the hinges creaked. The woman's head snapped over to him, obviously now knowing about his presence.

Before Loki even knew what was going on, the woman had grabbed his collar and yanked him fully into the room, the door slamming shut behind him. He soon found himself being slammed up against the door, being held up by his shoulder high enough so that his toes just barely brushed against the ground. The woman was in his face, holding a blue ball of magic in the hand that wasn't keeping him pinned to the door.

"What are you—?"

"I'll scream," said Loki quickly, cutting her off, his words pouring out of his mouth before he even realized what he was saying. "I'll scream and the guards will come and you'll be caught and taken down to the dungeons."

The woman narrowed her eyes, staring at him with such an intensity that it might have made him shrink away had he not been staring right back at her. Then, after a moment, she every so slowly lowered and extinguished the energy in her hand. Loki let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding and she let go of his shoulder, dropping him to the floor.

"You're one of those princes, aren't you?" guessed the woman, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "Lucy, was it?"

"Loki," corrected Loki hotly.

The woman smirked. "I think Lucy fits you better."

Loki rolled his eyes and she turned around and headed back to the shelves. Loki followed her.

"Who are you anyway?"

"Amora, the Enchantress," she replied. "Now be a good boy and go away."

"What are you doing?" asked Loki, ignoring the latter part of her sentence.

"Are you still here? Shoo already," said Amora, turning away from him and heading down another isle.

"You're looking for something," said Loki suddenly. "A spellbook, perhaps?"

He watched as Amora froze. Her square shoulders hitched and her body seemed to become rigid. A small smile tugged on his lips when he realized that he had guessed right.

Turning around slowly, Amora glared at him. "How did you know about that? Who told you?"

"No one," shrugged Loki, walking over the desk he had left the unknown spellbook in and opened one of its drawers. Grabbing the book from inside, he pulled it out and waved it in the air.

"I figured it out by myself. See, none of the sorcerers leave their spellbooks lying around; plus, they always put hexes on them so that no one can steal or touch them. You lost it, and went looking for it in the armory, correct?"

Amora stalked over to him and snatched the small book out of his hand. "So what if I lost it? You act as if you haven't lost yours before."

Loki stared blankly at her. "I don't have a spellbook."

"You don't?" asked Amora, taken aback. "You have magic, I can tell. You of all people—a prince—you don't have spellbook? Than how do you learn magic?"

Loki looked down sheepishly and muttered, "I don't. It just sort of...comes to me."

Amora laughed once, shaking her head in spite. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me."

"I am not! And I want to learn more, because I know I'm good at it," said Loki quickly. Amora just ignored him, turned towards the exit and continued to walk out of the library. Loki hurried after her into the hallway and soon fell into step with her. "You could teach me, too. Like, that thing you did this morning in the hall, when you made more of you—"

"Duplication?" questioned Amora, glancing at Loki and raising an eyebrow. The boy nodded vigorously. "No; you are far too young."

"What? I am not—oh come on, please? Just—just teach me one of the spells you have. I understand most of them that you have written down." At this, Amora stopped walking, and so did Loki. "They all seem very simple—"

"This?" Amora shouted suddenly, opening the small book and shoving it in Loki's face. "This, right here? You can read this?"

Loki balked, leaning away from Amora. The dirty blonde looked furious.

"Yes," he said hesitantly after a moment, slowly pushing the book down away from his face. "Yes, I can read it, just like you."

Amora pulled the book back to her, her eyes rapidly scanning up and down the pages. Loki's eyes widened when it dawned on him.

"...You can't read, can you?"

For a moment, there was just silence. Then, Amora took a deep breath and shook head.

"No," she admitted gravely. "I was never taught."

"I can teach you!" said Loki excitedly. Her sharp green eyes snapped on to him and he backtracked. "Er—I mean, if you teach me how to use my magic, I'll teach you to read."

Amora looked at him thoughtfully for a moment before humming softly. "I feel like I'm going to regret this, but...alright."

Loki beamed and resisted the urge to leap up into the air with joy. "Great!"

"Ah!" tutted Amora. "Shake on it."

Loki nearly rolled his eyes, but he got distracted by what she did next. The dirty blonde brought her hand to her mouth and actually licked it before holding it out. Loki stared at it in disgust for a moment, and glanced back up at Amora. She raised an eyebrow at him.

If a woman could do it, so could he. The prince quickly brought his hand to his lips and licking it before quickly grabbing Amora's hand in his own. The second their skin touched, Loki felt an odd tingling in his hand; it spread up his wrist and through his whole entire arm. He felt the magic in the air around him hitch; he could feel it pulsing through his veins, he could feel it on every inch of his skin—

The sensation ended abruptly when Amora pulled her hand away.

"What was that?" asked Loki, wiping his hand on his shirt before looking at it curiously.

"I needed your commitment, didn't I?" answered Amora. "Now, really Lucy, weren't you supposed to be getting a glass of water?"

Loki gaped slightly and glanced up at Amora—only to find that she was no longer there. Skittishly, the prince looked around the hallway for the woman, but found no trace of her. At the moment, he didn't care about where she was or had gone—he was going to learn how to control his magic! He was so excited about that that he didn't bother thinking about what kinds of trouble he might have just gotten himself into.

A/n: Edit: It's come to my attention (Thx The Obsessionist!) that I may have accidently quoted Atlantis: The Lost Empire. I am SO SORRY about that; I guess I've watched that movie so many times it's left an imprent on my brain. :P But yes, I'm aware of that, so carry on.

I have school tomorrow and I've been sick for the past couple days, so God knows how much make-up homework I'll have. Your reviews will all make it better, through. :)