Disclaimer: The characters and original story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe do not belong to me; this story is not for sale or profit.
A/N: So, I figure, since this chapter is already proofread (as much as the last one was, with my sleep-deprived brain, so sorry if there are still any gross errors lurking in the mix), why should I make you wait for it? Its really just the other half of the last chapter. Have at it!
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"I'm searching for answers not questioned before.
The curse of awareness; there's no peace of mind.
As your true colors show a dangerous sign…"
-Within Temptation
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"Thanks, Gary, Thursday would be perfect. Great. Okay, see you then."
Jane hung up the phone, feeling strangely clean. That had been easy enough, and soon she would be able to observe the molecular structure of the Asgardian ointment visually. It was progress. Why had it taken her so long to make that call…?
She sighed looking around the lab. After that minor success, she felt restless. She needed to do something.
Impulsively, she opened up her laptop and entered a search for the Norse alphabet. Loki was silent, but the mark was still there. She couldn't do anything about it – every time she tried, her own mind got in her way. So she needed to know something about it. In the absence of any real way forward, studying the ancient language that was carved into her forehead seemed a far better alternative than doing nothing at all.
She clicked on the first page about Norse runes and began scrolling through the runes. She stopped when she found it.
Uruz. Jane stared at it, glowing black at her from the screen. In her mind it gleamed with a sheen of blue fire.
"'The aurochs'" she read. "Talk about vague," she muttered bitterly. Alexa had explained it to her, but without guidance from an expert, no one in the modern world would have any context for the rune's meaning. It annoyed her. The ringing started up again and she groaned. "Okay… learn something new."
She opened a second browser window and keyed "aurochs" into the search bar. Tension built behind her eyes, and the ringing ramped up in her ears as her gaze slid over the pixels, skimming the information.
… aurochs, the ancestor of domestic cattle, a type of huge wild cattle which inhabited Europe, Asia and North Africa, but is now extinct…
…in legend, it embodied the epitome of wildness and the danger that nature presents to mankind, despite all our efforts to tame it…
…far larger than most modern domestic cattle and had several features rarely seen in modern cattle, such as lyre-shaped horns set at a forward angle and a pale stripe down its back…
… known to have extremely aggressive temperaments. Killing one was seen as a great act of courage in ancient cultures…
Her eyes fell on a black and white ink rendering of an aurochs, its eyes rolling, its tongue lolling as it bellowed, massive, lyre-shaped horns lowered to charge a tiny, spear-wielding hunter. It was a highly stylized, old-fashioned image, yet something about it sent a spike of fear shooting straight through her, as though her hind brain recognized the representation of primal fear, even as her higher brain rationalized that it wasn't a very anatomically accurate image. Despite its bovine features, something about the drawing gave it an almost human face…
Jane closed the search, intensely uneasy. Why was she subjecting herself to this again…? She sighed, rubbing at her eyes, then put her head in her hands. It was getting harder and harder to concentrate. And harder and harder to avoid thinking about what that might mean. It was also getting harder and harder to keep her temper; the pain, the tension, the anxiety... that irritating, constant, ache… after hanging up on her mother, she'd been arguing with Erik, ignoring Darcy and she had even snapped at Thor the other day for no reason at all. She was annoyed all the time…
Her head cleared for an instant, and she stared down at her hands, biting her lip.
It hadn't been like this with the Aether. There had been no pain, only a burning rush in her blood, and with it, a lethargic peace, like a drug seeping insidiously through her veins, lulling her to sleep under a red and black blanket of darkness while it took over her senses. This was like being awake, but unable to think, her thoughts blocked at every turn by the ache and the anger, or the numbing calm of the rain-scent in her nose. But there was no blue haze over her senses.
The Tesseract must be different from the Aether, she thought despondently. It's going to destroy me in a completely different way.
A conflicting tide of panic and helpless despair tried to seize her at that thought. And anger, though that was always there these days. Always. The pointer on the screen shivered back and forth before Jane tightened the her grip on the mouse. She sat there, still as stone, for a long time.
No, she thought finally.
She looked up to see that her screensaver had popped on; it was that old fashioned one that simulated flying through space; as a kid she had been able to watch the screensaver for ages, letting her imagination carry her away; as it had on the plane from New York, gazing at the waves. Her imagination had always been enchanted by the stars.
Before her father died, her imagination had been the kind that could marvel at the thought of magic. Rather than dismiss it. Or fear it.
She let the simulated stars soothe her, as the sight of the stars always did.
If Loki wanted to kill me, he would have done it in New York. This won't end me. I'm just tired and under a lot of stress and letting my fears run away with me. I'm not going to let this uncertainty get the best of me. I'm stronger than that, aren't I?
The ringing in her ears sharpened to a high whine, and she winced as the pressure behind her eyes tightened.
I'm frightened. And weak. How can I possibly face this, when I don't even know what it really is?
I should tell Thor, she thought desperately once again, just as she had so many times in the past days, fighting to concentrate around the ache. He could protect me… somehow…
Don't be pathetic, she snarled at herself, the ringing so loud now that it made her vision swim. I shouldn't be relying on anyone to protect me! If I'm going to hang around with Asgardians, I have to be able to take care of myself!
On the heels of that thought necessarily followed the uncomfortable truth she was forced to admit: next to the Asgardians, she was little more than a feeble child in almost every sense, and compared to them, she couldn't take care of herself.
She clamped her eyes shut. She was weak, frightened, helpless…
This is who I am...
Her email dinged, loud enough in the quiet of the room to make her jump. Her eyes fluttered open. The ringing in her ears was gone, and with it the cloying wave of panic.
"What… was I…?" Her brow furrowed, but she'd completely lost her train of thought. All that was left was a linger sense of unease. What…
She shook her head, annoyed. It was impossible to concentrate… so much work just to think… She shrugged. If it was important she'd remember it eventually.
The email was some junk advertisement for porn. She rolled her eyes and deleted it, closing her email. The page of Norse runes was still open, though, so she scrolled down the page and began memorizing the shapes and their meanings.
A number of the runes she already knew. Uruz, hagalaz, sowulo, naudiz, gebo, laguz… She stopped scrolling.
Laguz.
Her lips parted in a quiet gasp as her fingers froze on the mouse. Something about that shape caused her heart to leap in her chest… excitement and something urgent, like panic, but less dark…
Now that she thought about it, that had been the rune Alexa Solberg had spoken when she touched the mirror, to let Jane see the rune on her forehead.
Maybe I could…
Her stomach sank at her own thoughts. She was no Asgardian; she could shout magic words at a mirror all day long and nothing would happen. It wasn't magic anyway, she reminded herself sullenly. It was a psychobiological alien ability.
Jane didn't believe in magic.
She clicked on the rune and read its descriptors anyway.
Laguz: Water; Meanings: emotions, fears, the subconscious mind, revelation of things hidden, intuition; Uses: enhancing psychic ability, confronting fears, stabilizing the mind and the emotions, uncovering hidden things.
Analysis: Water is often associated with pleasant emotions, love, compassion, peacefulness. However, to the ancient Norse, water almost always meant the sea, which can be turbulent, dark and dangerous, and filled with hidden depths that may contain many monsters. This rune, then, should be considered for both the light and dark aspects of water. It speaks to our primal fears of the dark, the cold, the unknown, and all the terrifying things that we hide away in our subconscious minds. However, where water may hide monsters in its dark depths, when it grows still and calm, it can become a mirror in which we are able to see ourselves. Thus, laguz may hide our deepest selves, but it may also reveal what we have hidden from ourselves, force us to see what we have avoided looking at, lend perspective to self-knowledge and aid us in accepting it.
Associated myths and deities: the Midgard Serpent; Njord, god of fertility and the wind.
Jane puzzled at the words for a long while, trying to work out why they bothered her so much. Why the rune bothered her so much… Laguz had shown her the mark on her forehead. But… that was physical, not psychological, as the meaning of the rune suggested. Wasn't it?
The siren song of something… something important… seemed to swell from the back of her mind, her curiosity calling to out to explore… wonder… imagination begging to be indulged...
But it seemed like such a long way off… and it was so hard to concentrate… so hard…
Jane suddenly realized her mouth was kind of dry. Uncomfortably so, actually. Maybe she should go make some tea. She was tired too. It was getting late in the afternoon, and her head hurt… Thor would be home soon… she should start thinking about making dinner…
Her curiosity slid away, and she let it.
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The king let his eyes slide away from his mortal as the grand doors opened, admitting a guard.
"Master Heinrich Bjordson, Master Grete Dahl, and Master Arild Olafson, of the Order of the Archive, apply for audience with you, Allfather."
The king's eye narrowed. What could those three incompetents want now? The temptation to drop his guard and condescend to them was strong, but he resisted. While he had no doubt those three were Amundson's creatures, none of them seemed to quite know it. He was confident that there was no further discovery they could have made regarding the clashing wall of magic, and he doubted they would step above their station to address him of their own accord. This smacked of Amundson, not his dogs.
"Bid them enter."
The guard saluted and withdrew. Moments later, the three magic masters he'd met upon the Observatory made their way through the grand doors and approached the throne. These dogs, at least, knew more of proper respect than the master that held their leash, all three going to one knee and fisting their hands over their hearts before the throne.
"Rise," the king said calmly, keeping the suspicion out of his tone, even when they glanced amongst each other worriedly as they reclaimed their feet. "What do the magic masters of the Archive require of their king?"
The three magic masters glanced amongst each other once again, each looking equally reluctant to answer. At last, the youngest, Master Arild, stepped forward, tilting his chin up, pretending at an authority he clearly didn't truly feel.
"Allfather, we have come to request that you activate the King's Ward."
The king stared at the young master in silence for a long moment, his face inert, a mask of stone, and enjoyed the way the boy's face broke out in sweat after only a few moments of his gaze. He knew the audacity of what he asked. It was tantamount to commanding his king.
"You must have a very good reason for this… request," he said at length, ignoring the way his heart began to race.
For all that he wore the king's form, carried the king's spear and sat upon the king's throne, this king could not activate the King's Ward. Not only had he never learned it…
It was already active.
"I… we…" Master Arild shook his head, gathering his courage. "We have come at the behest of the King Under the Mountain, Master of Masters Lorens Amundson," he said, as though that were a perfectly sound explanation, and sounding for all the worlds as though he were reading from a script. This one, at least, was truly indoctrinated to Amundson's little cult of sycophants. Else he would never have dared utter that first title before the true king's throne.
"What Master Arild means," Heinrich said, stepping forward with a far more diplomatic tone and shooting a worried look at the younger magic master, "is that, in his wisdom, Master of Masters Amundson thought it a prudent suggestion."
The king noted with interest that the woman, Master Grete, said nothing. She kept her gaze trained on the floor at the foot of the throne. But her jaw was set and tight, and her eyes were uneasy. She was too intelligent by half. The king wondered how much longer her deference to Master Heinrich would hold out.
"The King's Ward," the king answered Heinrich, "has not been raised since the days of King Bor."
"That is so, but…"
"And one so learned as you, Master Heinrich, surely knows of the toll it exacts."
The old master paled as he met the king's steely gaze. He may not know much of use, but that he knew.
"If… there were any other way to protect the realm… I'm certain the Master of Masters…"
"Protect the realm?" the king asked, coloring his voice with confusion and contempt. "I was given to understand that there was no indication of an attack. You yourself said that the energy curtain was a natural phenomenon." He leaned forward slightly on the throne, tilting his spear so that the light shone off of it, cascading across the three magic masters. They flinched as it glinted at them. "Have you found evidence to the contrary since? Or was your original report… incomplete?"
Master Heinrich paled further, and the other two joined him. A lie spoken to the king was treason. Heinrich had argued insistently that the phenomenon was no attack – likely at the behest, or at least in mimic, of Amundson. But now, if the king so chose, his words could be construed as an untruth if he went back on them at this juncture. The king very nearly smiled. Amundson's had schemed himself into a corner.
The king saw Master Grete narrow her eyes and risk a glance up at him. The wheels in her head were turning. The king wished he knew in which direction. She bore watching…
"No, Allfather," Heinrich said gravely, backpedaling. "I… still believe this to be a natural occurrence. But there is a chance, however slim…"
"I will not risk the King's Ward on a chance," the king spat gravely. "Despite what the Master of Masters may believe, this realm still needs its king."
"Allfather!" Heinrich exclaimed, aghast, then fisted his hand over his heart. "No one would dare suggest…"
"Good," the king said reasonably. One corner of his mouth turned up before he could help it. "If yourselves, or your Master of Masters, can produce doubtless proof that this is an attack against the Realm Eternal, and an attack sufficient to warrant the sacrifice of its king to turn it back, then your… suggestion… may have merit, and will be considered. Until then," he leaned further forward, meeting Master Arild's eyes in particular until the young man looked away, sweating profusely now. His voice was infused with iron, his tone low and calm – a threat like thunder in the distance, "you may inform your master that for the time being he will remain King Under the Mountain in name only."
Silence fell over the throne room as the three fisted their hands over their hearts at the king's command. He let them twist in the wind for a moment, then flicked his fingers, dismissing them. They bowed wordlessly and hurried from the audience chamber as though fleeing the shades of Hel. The king sat back on his throne with a bemused sigh.
There was only one game Amundson could be playing with this ploy. Because though no one living had ever seen the King's Ward, Amundson surely knew it when he saw it. Which meant that he knew, or at least suspected, a number of things he should not know. There was only one way he could know what he must know… And the fact that he had not brought them out in a bid for the throne yet meant he had a number of things to hide as well... and one in particular.
The king's face darkened.
Then a wide, devious smile stretched across his ancient face.
"Keep at it, Amundson," the king murmured, as he turned his gaze back down upon the blue speck moving around its yellow sun, and the beloved mortal goddess that waited there. "You're almost exactly where I want you."
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That night, Jane dreamed of being chased by a shadow with great, arcing lyre-shaped horns.
It pursued her down the endless length of a curving tunnel that twisted and turned, the walls grey, spongy, bulging in fleshy masses to block her view forward, and pulsing with a mesmerizing blue light. Each time she pushed a hanging mass aside, she felt tickling wisps against her skin, like she was running through spider webs, but when she scrabbled and scrubbed at her face, there was nothing there. Somewhere ahead of her, she could smell water, moist earth, wet wind, the smell of English rain in springtime. But she could not run towards it, she could only run away from the thing chasing her. Even though it took her in the same direction, it was not at all the same.
She could hear it behind her. The beast. Always just at her heels as she ran, the strike of its hooves crunching steadily as though it crushed bones into pebbles with every lope; the hot, snorting pant of its breath in her ears, leaving a sticky dew on the back of her neck; the prickling bite of its merciless rolling eyes, mad with animal rage, charging at her back as she ran with all the mindless desperation of mortal terror.
The tunnel ended abruptly. It opened onto an endless curve of pitted white rock face and fell away into a vast black bottomless pit. Beyond the pit, endless skies roiled with heavy gray storm clouds. Winds pummeled the cliff face, lightening screamed and thunder roared. And the rain pounded down out of the heavens, thick and stinging.
It was the same storm from that night in Manhattan. But this time there was no glass or concrete to keep her from it.
The beast was bearing down on her.
Fear clawed at her throat.
She didn't think. She jumped.
She didn't fall.
Instead, she tumbled sideways, rolling several feet out onto the curving white cliff-face, as though gravity worked differently out here. Now the tunnel became a deep hole winding into the ground upon which she cowered. She flinched back as a murderous bovine scream erupted from the tunnel in a fountain of steam and frothing saliva. Blue fire flickered from the depths of the tunnel, and she could just see the bucking, writhing shadow, the lyre-shaped horns flailing back and forth, questing feverishly for something to gore. She kept waiting for the monster to vault out of the pit and rip her apart. But each time it advanced so that the wicked horn tips protruded from the hole, the rain lashed at it, and it bellowed its frustration and pulled back.
She had reached the rain. Cleansing rain. Washing it all away. All the fear. All the anger. All the guilt, and confusion and sorrow.
All the relief, all the joy. All hopes. All thoughts…
Washing everything away.
A quiet began to spread through her. An anesthetic deadness.
She tried to climb to her feet, but the rain drops were clinging to her, linking together to form chains that hung and clung like dew on a spider's web, and each new drop that struck her was like a stone weighing her down with gentle, soothing calm.
Rest, it said. Let go. Forget. Stop thinking. Stop feeling. Stop being.
New horror filled her before the rain washed it away. She tried to be terrified, but the rain wouldn't let her. She began clawing her way back to the pit, her body heavy and torpid. It was like dragging dead meat. The chains made of rain rattled after her in long clattering, sticky trails. With each inch they stuck harder, became more inert, asked her sweetly to stop fighting. It was so hard to remember why she had to.
But the worst the beast could do was kill her. This rain would unmake her.
As her fingers curled around the rim of the hole, which burned so hot that it seared her – the only feeling left in her flesh – she looked up into the sky.
The last sight her eyes saw, before they forgot how to see, was that the storm was not a storm.
Instead of heavy roiling clouds, the sky above her was creased with the fleshy swells and grooves of brain tissue, axons flashing with electrical shrieks, firing into dendrites with in thunderous roars of speeding energy. The rain stuck and flowed over her, not water, but cerebrospinal fluid, dissolving her being as she clung to the bore hole in the ground, which was no ground, but the porous curving plate of a skull.
With the last of her will, the last shred of her self, Jane pulled, dragging her chains of rain with her, and threw herself over the rim of the hole. Into the blue fire and the waiting jaws of the beast.
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Jane woke in the dark, panting for air, fighting a scream. Her forehead burned like it was on fire. As she came back to herself, her limbs began to twitch, her fingers flexing and loosing again and again, every muscle in her body buzzing and vibrating and itching to do something. Her skin felt hot, tight, confining, as though it were suddenly too small to contain all her bones. She had an idea that she wanted to rip her way out of it and let everything inside of her stretch wide, kick, shriek, slash, hurt. What was this? What was it? What? What!
Rage.
That was the word that described this feeling. She didn't know what she was angry about. No, not true… she wasn't angry about anything… she was just angry.
No. No, not just angry. It was more than a mere feeling; this was a reality, a state of being, a breathing entity of emotion living inside her, trying to push through her flesh…
She crawled carefully out of bed, her body trembling, and left Thor sleeping unaware as she ran into the bathroom and shut the door. She twisted the shower on and all but flung herself under the cool spray. It hit her face like a thousand needles of ice, forcing a shuddering breath from her lungs. She knelt, gasping, under the cleansing fall of water until her skin began to cool, and hot tears escaped to mingle with the cold water.
A panic attack. It's a panic attack. From the dream. Just a bad dream. That's all. That's all…
The water pelted down on the back of her neck and shaking shoulders as she bowed her suddenly heavy head.
Like the rain… the thought sent a tremor of terror through her. The memory of the chains pressing her into the plain of bone, killing all feeling with a touch, made her stomach twist hard enough to make her gag.
Is that… is that really what it means to choose the rain?
"That can't be what he wants…" Loki had claimed to love her. He couldn't mean for her to choose between these two extremes… Alexa had said that the rain cooled the fury of the beast. And yes, it washed away the rage.
But left nothing in its place. It negated the chaos. But with emptiness…
What if…
What if those really were her choices? To be eaten alive by mindless rage, or surrender herself to that fog of nothing…
"I would never hurt you… at least, not more than I have to…" A terrible foreboding started deep in her gut. To choose the rain would mean losing all pain, all sorrow… at the cost of all pleasure or joy. But he wouldn't be hurting her.
That can't be right… That couldn't be what uruz was… She kept thinking it, denying it, but she couldn't quite make herself believe it. Would Loki sacrifice her if it meant healing? Why shouldn't he? Idiot. Why shouldn't he sacrifice me, if it meant getting what he wants?
I am a gullible, idealistic idiot.
This is who I am.
"Ah!" Jane winced, slapping her left hand down on her right forearm, which stung as though something had bit her.
Unbidden, a memory of something Alexa had told her echoed in her head, the memory loud and clear as if she were hearing it spoken in her ear.
"When the Trickster is nearby, nothing can be quite what it seems."
The fear in Alexa Solberg's eyes flashed through her mind.
"He has marked you as uruz, Jane… You will be the rain that cools his fury. Or you will be the fire that inflames him to incinerate everything."
Jane started to tremble.
Alexa's voice rang in her head once more.
"There is more than one way up the mountain."
Jane hissed at a stinging sensation on her arm intensified to a biting burn. She looked down, lifting her fingers. And stared, wide-eyed, at the glowing magic mark that had just appeared there.
It wasn't cut like the one on her forehead. It was more a burn, like the brand she'd feared uruz to be at first. But this one was green. And she recognized it.
It was Alexa's mark. Laguz. The deep waters that could hide monsters or become a mirror to reveal what was hidden.
It lay, Jane realized, like a sudden wind blowing back a curtain that had obscured her view, where Alexa had touched her before they parted outside her doorway in Manhattan. Her touch had felt… strange, hadn't it? She had forgotten about that. How had she forgotten…
Alexa had burned it into her… without telling her… against Loki's explicit warning…
"What… how… why…?"
Again Alexa's voice whispered through her mind, clear as an answer, though the words were not new, but came directly out of her memory.
"All my intention was to give you this choice."
"But… but… that's not… and this choice…" she replied. "… its' not a choice… I can't…"
Jane realized she was talking to her own memory, and clamped her lips shut. She wasn't crazy. Not yet.
"You don't see it?" the memory of Alexa answered anyway. "How little we see ourselves… There is more than one way up the mountain… Choose."
The stinging began to ease, and as Jane watched, the mark flickered and faded before her eyes. But like uruz, Jane had little doubt it was still there.
Jane closed her eyes against the thunderous ache. She felt like a pawn being moved around the board by giant hands of unseen players, helpless in her own destiny and about to be sacrificed for the sake of a more powerful piece at any moment.
Her forehead still felt like it was on fire. And the fire rose from the constant pounding behind her eyes, and the ever present ringing in her ears, and a shadow of that soothing, fragrant oblivion the rain offered hung around her like a fog, waiting to be summoned.
It was a long time before she found the strength to turn off the faucet and drag herself out of the bath. She pulled her soaked nightgown off, shivering, as she shut off the light. She stood in the shadows, wet and naked, and stared across the bedroom to where Thor lay still, sleeping through it all. The memory of the dream, of the dead, hollow nothingness welling inside her, sent a frisson of panic through her, and she was across the room before she knew it, climbing into the bed. She pressed herself against Thor's solid warmth, nuzzling his jaw, letting her lips and fingers travel the familiar lines of his neck and bare chest.
"Mmmm… Jane?" came Thor's voice, heavy with sleep. He sucked in a deep breath as she trailed her fingers along the chiseled swells and valleys of his abdomen, and his awareness of her sent a spike of sensation jolting along her every nerve. "What…? Jane… you are cold. What's the matter?"
"Make me feel," she panted against his skin, sliding her leg up over his as her hand moved lower. The echo of the emptiness still screamed inside her, and her fingers tightened on his skin, urgent. "Please."
With little more encouragement he obliged her enthusiastically, but he could hardly have matched her need. She clung to him as she cried out, and lost herself in the raw torrent of sensation.
She was supposed to choose the rain. Let it wash away the rage. Banish the beast. Bring healing and a new beginning.
That was supposed to be the answer to all of this.
But she never wanted to know that emptiness the rain had left inside her. Never again.
.
The king stood alone atop the steps leading down into the weapons vault, peering with one grave eye into the pit of inky darkness. There had been light here once, gleaming from the gilt and steel of wondrous and horrific relics won in battle from the fellest of foes, illuminating the heroic conquests of the great warriors of old. Yet now, though the technicians and artisans all swore that the braziers and consoles were in perfect working order, no light penetrated the deepness of the weapons vault.
Save one.
Unfazed and undaunted, the king descended, sinking into the unnatural sea of night that surrounded the burning blue island at its center. Despite its radiance, it cast no light beyond the small bubble of its own space, and sat glittering upon its stone pillar, mocking the darkness it had made with the glory if its inner light.
The king stopped just outside the ring of blue light, arrayed in shadows, usurping them and wearing them like a mantle, proud and majestic before the enemy king. At length, he stepped forward into the light.
But the man that melted from the shadows was not the same man who had stepped into them above. His square, white-bearded face was now smooth and pale and angular. The broad bulk of a warrior's build had streamlined, lither, but no less powerful. Dark hair flowed where before snowy white braids had crowned his kingly head. And two eyes, like piercing emeralds, fastened unblinkingly on the deadly foe at hand.
Slow steps brought the king ever deeper into the enemy's territory, gradually, for he dared not be direct. He moved in a spiral, circling the ancient monster before him and drawing ever nearer. To come too close too quickly was to risk its rebuke, and at this proximity, he was pragmatic enough to admit that he may not have the strength to stand against it.
It watched him come. It was not alive. Nor did it think in the way the living think. All the same, it possessed a hideous awareness that never slept, never stopped craving, never for an instant relented in its hunger to know, possess and consume.
At length he stopped before the stone pillar. Still, it was a long time before he spoke. Weighing his words.
"Your influence has yet to break my beloved," he said. It was the sight of her suffering that had driven him into the depths. His lips twisted with spite. "And your puppet's spell has yet to break through the King's Ward," he went on, quiet mocking making his tone dance. "You think you will have what you want if you can call your creature to you?" He leaned in. "You never will."
He stared boldly into the fathomless blue depths of the Tesseract. Into the soul of the storm. And for an instant, he felt it staring back.
His eyes flashed blue for a terrifying moment before he battled back the surging tide of fire and the formless whispers, pulling his control tight.
Chaos. Fire. Ice. Destruction. Fear.
This is who you are.
A mote of blue flame burst through a chink in his mental armor, and in his mind he saw Jane, cowering on the floor of her shower, crying. It was a memory, several hours old. But it hurt no less now than when he'd sat upon his golden throne of supreme power and watched, completely helpless, as she suffered.
Suddenly furious, he lunged forward and dropped into a crouch beside the pillar, his eyes level with the cube, snarling wordlessly like a dog straining on a chain to tear the throat out of an intruder. It seemed to taunt him there, so unmoved, apathetically aware of him and unimpressed. Tension vibrated along his frame, as though he would like to attack the thing, stab or strike it, hurt it somehow. For all the ways it had hurt him. All the hurt it had driven him to cause.
For all the ways it now hurt her. For all the ways it forced him to cause her pain. For that most of all.
He resisted. There was no physical blow to deal this enemy. One may as well attempt to strike a star.
"You will not have her," he whispered, bringing his face as close as he dared to the bright edge, bathing his pale face in the blue fire, so that it shone the color of his true skin. "You marked her, but I chose the shape of that mark. I gave her a choice. And because she can choose it, she can control it." He grinned dangerously, baring his teeth in steely defiance. "You only want her because I want her. Because she is like me. But you could not hold me. And you won't have her. She draws ever nearer to the answer; she will never allow it."
The Tesseract made no kind of reply. It sat, still and silent, an indolent blue spider perched in the center of its great web.
Covetous. Patient. Eyeless… but always watching.
The king shuddered inwardly, though he displayed no outward sign of weakness, his regal face smoothing and hardening into a mask of white marble stained blue in the flameless fire. There was nothing to be accomplished here but frustration. Letting the Tesseract bait him into this dialogue was beneath his dignity. There was nothing to do but wait. And have faith.
Still furious, but master of his fury once more, he rose, backing away and turned back towards the door, sinking back into the unnatural haze of shadow that the Tesseract had cloaked itself in, leaving it there to seethe in its own light and contemplate the darkness.
.
TBC
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A/N: Hmm, so maybe Loki isn't quite the dastardly evildoer he seems to be… here's hoping; but Loki said it himself: "What makes you think you can trust me?" Time will tell! As for Alexa Solberg, one can only guess what her stake in the game might be (feel free to do so in your review, I love hearing predictions if you've got them!) but she's defied the command of one of her gods to help Jane – not a small step for anybody. You know what they say, the greater the risk, the greater the reward.
A reminder: The runes referenced in this story are based on real runic meanings, but some aspects may be embellished or uniquely interpreted for the purposes of this story.
I feel like these past few chapters have been necessary, but not quite as action packed. We're building to a climax, but hopefully its not too slow going. I appreciate everyone who's stuck with the story so far! Comments and critiques are always welcome, you are helping me become a better writer! And the muse thanks you in advance for the motivation! No cattle prods today (though copious amounts of caffeine have been involved).
More to come soon!