The clash of sparring swords echoed around the training yard, and Loki watched as Fandral and Sif went around each other. It had been almost a month since Tilaria's bloody visit, and the past month had been surprisingly calm. Loki remembered distinctly her tracing runes with her own blood and that shadow of hers killing Arlen, but he shook the memory off.
Despite the bad feeling he had about magic like that, he still missed Tilaria. The apple tree he was sitting near had lost its apples, and the rich green leaves were beginning to turn golden along the edges. There was a slight chill in the air that Loki found refreshing compared to the heat of the summer.
"So much for a week," he sighed, and looked down at the sparring sword he was forced to bring with him.
Thor heard Loki's sigh, and he glanced away from his friend's sparring briefly. He felt a little sorry that Loki was feeling so bad, but he missed Tilaria to. Sparring helped pull Thor from his gloomy mood, but it did little for Loki, and this past month he had been so quiet that he hadn't even caused any of his normal mischief. How could Thor cheer him up?
Loki raised his hand from his sword, and reached over beside him. He idly scratched his pet cobra underneath his chin as if he was a cat, and the serpent leaned into his hand. The three ice like crystals that grew from the outer corner of each eye turned a dark relaxed blue color to match his relaxed mood.
Thor jumped slightly when he saw the cobra sitting by Loki's side with its head raised a foot off the ground, but that snake was forever surprising Thor. Slítas came and went as he pleased, but he was usually seen wrapped around Loki's arm underneath his jacket. As if on cue Slítas nuzzled Loki's hand that had been stroking him and stuck his head up his sleeve. Loki stopped him before he could go up his sleeve and shook his head no in light humor.
"Thor, Loki!" Their training master, Eirill, called out. "You're up."
Loki scowled from where he sat, and Slítas, detected his annoyance, and slithered up the apple tree. The younger prince wasn't allowed to use his magic here, but that wasn't his real problem. Unlike most mages, Loki knew how to fight without his magic. He just didn't know how to fight with a sword, and could barely hold one of them right. After Arlen and Tilaria's duel, he would have thought everyone would have realized how deadly daggers were, but no, Loki still had to use a sword.
Loki got up slowly, letting his training sword hover behind him like a loyal puppy with a charm that tweaked Asgard's gravity field as he figured out the wording of the spell. He mumbled it under his breath as he got into position and waved the correct hand signs. Everyone thought he was doing the counter-spell to get his sword to stop hovering, and he plucked his sword out of the air without being challenged.
With his sword in hand, the brothers began to spar as they were forced to do. Thor knew that Loki was no good with a sword and hated combat with them, so he tried to go easy on his little brother so he wouldn't embarrass him. Even with that, Thor still disarmed Loki in a few strokes.
Eirill sighed deeply when the sword flew out of Loki's hand, and he knew already that Loki wasn't trying. Loki simply hated combat with swords, and Eirill knew he would rather use daggers or magic like a woman instead of trying to act like a warrior. It irked Eirill to no end that one of Asgard's princes had turned out to be such a weakling, but there was little he could do except try to make Loki act like a real warrior.
"Loki, are you asleep?" Eirill meant to say to Loki, but the gathered Godlings heard his question as, "Peelsp uoy era, Ikol?"
"What did you say?" Loki asked Eirill innocently.
"What?" Eirill asked, but it came out as "Tahw?"
"Loki…" Thor groaned but everyone heard "Ikol…"
Thor clapped a hand over his mouth, eyes wide when he realized his words were slurred. He thought he heard a distinctly amused clicking sound from Slítas up in the apple tree. Loki dropped the innocent act after a few seconds and started grinning. A small charm hovered his sparring sword away from him and to the grass besides the other children. His twin daggers materialized in his palms with small flashes of emerald light.
"Want to spar again?" Loki offered his brother with another smile.
He balanced the end of one of his dagger's pommel on his fingertip so the blade was pointing straight up. Loki did not move, and the blade did not waver. It seemed somehow he had managed to balance it perfectly.
"Don't worry," Loki added at Thor's wary gaze on the sharpened edge of the dagger. "I've placed a guard charm around it so it can't cut anything, just like your sparring sword can't."
Thor nodded and raised his blade with a smile, amused by the interesting turn of events this had just taken. After a month, Loki was finally starting his mischief again and mischief was what made Loki, Loki. He was glad Loki was starting to act like his old self, and Thor knew that it would be difficult to defeat his brother when he was using his daggers. As if to emphasize Thor's thought, Loki flipped his daggers so they were in a reverse grip and fell into a confident fighting stance as though it were second nature.
Eirill shook his head and walked over, intending to break the two of them up. This was not the exercise, and he did not want to encourage Loki as Thor was always doing. Loki glanced over his way without moving his head, and the sly grin he gave made Eirill freeze where he was. He was instantly wary of yet more childish mischief from the child, and he did not want to be on the receiving end of Loki's magic.
Crimson sparkles danced around Loki's fingers as he waved his hand in a pattern, whispering near silent words. The air around he and Thor and solidified into a red-tinted dome. Red sparkles danced around the air that made the forceshield. Thor knew this spell looked familiar, and he wasn't able to place where he had seen it before Loki spoke.
"I can't believe it took me a month to learn Arlen's spell, but it's not bad considering that the only thing I had to learn it from was him using it during that fight in the dining hall." Loki bounced on the balls of his feet with a smug look, but there were shadows in his emerald irises. "Now then Thor, ready for that duel? Or are you scared because I've got the blades I want now?"
Thor had flinched back at the memory of Arlen's attack, and at the shadows in his brother's eyes, but he tightened his grip on the blade and nodded affirmative. There was no reason why he should be scared by Loki because this was Loki. A new spell, especially one from a dubious or forbidden grimoire, and a little mischief was Loki.
Thor swept at him lightly, but Loki flicked one of his blades and parried the blade harmlessly away, deflecting it downward. The force behind the strike jerked Thor of balance and created an opening for him to return a strike. Loki did so, and slashed with both of his blades, freezing a moment before he actually struck his brother.
His sudden speed startled Thor, and Loki's blades set himself against Thor's skin, one at the wrist holding the sword and the other on his throat near one of his carotid arteries. Thor froze, trembling. He had no idea that Loki was so fast, and he stared at Loki just like everyone else gathered did.
"What?" Loki asked the gathered crowd in amusement although he was only looking at Thor, "just because I don't like fighting with swords doesn't mean I can't fight."
There was a quiet purr in his voice when he relaxed his stance and lowered his daggers.
"Where did you learn that?" Thor asked his brother, and his grin widened when he realized he was no longer talking backwards.
"That reverse speaking spell was temporary anyway," Loki shrugged his shoulders. "As for the move, trade secret and I fear you're not a dagger-wielder so I can't tell you."
"You-you must have cheated." Sif stuttered from outside the forceshield.
Loki turned and felt a sharp pain in his head that made him flinch and stumble. Thor saw the movement and reached out his hand to Loki, but Loki straightened and ignored Thor's attempt to help him. He understood now why the forceshield Arlen had cast drew off of his opponet's lifeforce to power itself. It was not a drain that Loki wanted to be under. Annoyed at his own weakness, he muttered the counter spell and let the forceshield fade. As it faded, so did the throbbing pain in his temples.
He rolled his eyes, and took a light step as if nothing had happened to him. By now, he knew that acting weak in front of Thor's friends would only end in being ridiculed by them when Thor wasn't around. Sif raised her training sword in an obvious challenge to a fight. Loki sighed at her boringly, and his daggers vanishing once more with a distortion of air and light.
Sif was not expecting him to stand down so suddenly and tightened her grip on the hilt of her blade. "What's the matter prince, have you turned craven?"
"Turned bored," Loki corrected and turned his back on Sif with a lazy wave of his hand. "You're not worth the effort."
"Oh no you don't!" Sif spat, running at him.
Before Thor could intervene on his brother's behalf, Loki turned and tapped the toes of his left boot against the ground once. The air seemed to freeze as he did so, and tendrils of blue energy spiraled out from his foot. It quickly expanded to cover the entire field, and solidified into ice. Sif's foot slipped on the slick surface, and she slid to the ground, crashing onto her back.
Eirill foolishly took a step and flung his arms out to try and keep his balance in vain, and after a second he fell flat on his stomach, chin thumping against the ground. Unlike him, the other children took care not to move from where they were sitting, and Thor held his breath.
"Loki…" Thor whispered as he looked around the field, trying his best not to move for fear of falling to a similar fate as Sif and Eirill. "I didn't hear you say anything."
"I don't have to with my ice." Loki assured Thor with a smile, and slid confidently across the ice as if it were more natural then walking.
Thor turned his head gently, holding his arms out slightly. Tendrils of sapphire magic were still spreading across the surface of the field and solidifying into ice. His magic was affecting the environment around him, and Thor could feel a chill seeping into his bones as if it were winter and could see his breath in the air.
Loki barely glanced at his ice, and it stopped spreading on his silent command. It solidified and settled down. Eirill opened his eyes and looked at the ice around him in surprise, realizing that Loki seemed to have as masterful a control over his ice as Loki.
Sif cautiously sat up, and picked up the hilt of her training sword. "Change it back Loki, you little cheater, so we can fight fairly."
"Real life isn't fair," Loki chuckled and raised an eyebrow in light amusement, "and neither are fights in real life. I will dismiss my ice however, if you can come and make me."
Sif glared at him for a moment and then glanced at Thor, but when it was obvious that he wasn't going to do anything she gritted out, "fine."
She tightened her grip on her sword and stabbed it into the ground, intending to bury it in the ice and use it as leverage to get to her feet. Surprise flickered across her eyes when the sword merely bounced off the ice without leaving a scratch. Sif looked at the ice, and then back up at Loki again. Every part of him was unnatural, from the sharpened canines to his ice.
She pulled her feet under her and slowly, carefully, stood up. Her balance shifted, and she slipped and slid a little before finding a center of balance. Once she was fairly certain she had her balance she attempted to throw herself at Loki, but the movement merely made her feet slip out from under her and she crashed back to the ice just as Eirill had. Again she got up and tried to approach Loki, and again she fell.
Amid the sudden tension, no one noticed the leaves of the apple tree rustle as someone teleported straight into their branches. Slítas raised his head from where he was lying on a branch and looked at the intruder, and then lowered his head back to the branch. The intruder leaned against the trunk and watched the chaos unfolding casually, hidden by the golden-edged leaves.
Loki didn't move from where he was standing a few feet away, watching her failed attempts impassively. The lack of an arrogant smirk seemed to anger Sif further, and she lunged at Loki, fingers clawing at Loki's jacket. Her strike dissipated the illusion of Loki before her, and without him to grab onto and regain her balance she was left to fall to the frozen ground once again. The real Loki glided silently past her as his illusion dissolved into emerald swirls.
Loki didn't move from where he was standing a few feet away, watching her failed attempts impassively. The lack of an arrogant smirk seemed to anger Sif further, and she lunged at Loki, and rammed into him – only to shoot through an illusion. The real Loki glided silently past her as his illusion dissolved into emerald swirls and Sif crashed to the frozen ground once more.
Sif seethed at him, shivering slightly from the icy cold for it was as cold as if it was the heart of winter. "Why you-"
A laugh interrupted her sentence as the person in the tree finally failed to contain their laughter. All the children looked away, and Loki curiously slid across the ice closer to the tree although he took care to stay out of Sif's reach. The leaves rustled and a figure in a dark blue cloak jumped down from the branches and landed on the yellow grass near where the ice started. Although her face was hidden by the hood of her cloak, her laugh was unmistakable to Loki.
"Wow Loki," the intruder laughed again and lowered her hood with a hand, letting her golden hair cascade down her shoulders. "You really are the Godling of Mischief."
Loki's eyes widened and he felt himself starting to smile as the intruder revealed herself. "Tilaria, you're back!"
Yep, there goes Loki and his mischief again. Of course, he's using ice. His ice responds to him so wonderfully he doesn't see why not, although he doesn't know quite why...