Son of No One III
Hemidall felt…lost. His ears rang and his skull throbbed. He felt the throbbing spot and found a large, painful lump. It made his stomach heave when he touched it, it was so painful.
He felt-for he could no longer see, the frost giant approaching. "You come with questions, Loki."
"Indeed I do-do tell though, friend, are your injuries healed?" Loki's voice sounded to him like the caress of velvet against skin, yet Hemidall had lived too long and seen too much to let himself be lured into a sense of safety by the silver-tongued magician.
"I assure you I will fare another lifetime."
"Good news indeed." Loki observed that Hemidall did not look him in the eye, "Friend-"
"I am not your friend, Loki." Hemidall interrupted.
"Oh…too bad my lord." the frost giant sat himself opposite Hemidall-who sat on the green bed at the centre of what he felt like was a cavernous room.
"Do what you have come here to do."
"Tell me everything." To Loki it felt like his words came out as a direct affront, harsher and more zealous than intended. Hemidall, still staring at the nothingness did not speak immediately. It seemed this time to Loki that the great guardian was contemplating the answer.
"You have found us, me and Sigyn broken in the ice, and brought us here to your dwelling not out of kindness of thy heart, but to quench the thirst you have for knowledge, and to satisfy your need for adventure." Loki said nothing and waited for the great guardian to finish his speech, "There is much I can reveal to you but I will say nothing for I do not trust you."
"I saved you! I rescued you from the ice and invited you to my home-" Hemidall stood up, tall and proud even stripped of his golden armour,
"Nay, Loki. Of Sigyn I will say only this: never has an enemy escaped my watch before her, and none shall again. I will take her to justice and return the casket to its rightful place in the All-Father's halls."
Loki chose not to mention that the casket lay broken on his study desk, nor that Sigyn was not the first to escape his watch, "How do you know that the casket is still here?"
"I may have lost the use of my eyes for this while, but it will pass, and in the meantime, there are many ways to see." Loki's blood-red eyes were on the guardian, who had fallen back to the bed with a thud, almost ferociously Loki's gaze was set upon him.
"You are weary. It must have been a lot of power to render the great Hemidall so weak and at my mercy." The words escaped his mouth without his consent. He was supposed to make Hemidall an ally, to be able to coax information from and yet he had achieved none of the desired results. Hemidall unnerved him, a sensation he cared little for.
"It is a power beyond you."
"I could throw you out, you know-you mayhap survive…but the girl…she would die, and never face justice." Hemidall smiled, only a little and only a ghost of a smile, but Loki saw it,
"And return to your mundane existence once more?" Loki tried not to show his anger as he rose from his seat and made for the door. He had had enough of the bastard of a guardian.
"You are weary. Perhaps you should rest."
"I will…my host." Loki decided to let the guardian have the last word, but only this once.
Morgana wailed, long and terrible-where was Sigyn? Where was the casket the little girl was to bring?
She cast the mirror fragment she held into the hearth fire at the centre of the cavernous hall with the obsidian black walls covered in mirrors that reflected no light. She had looked through her mirrors, through all of them and yet she had no sight of the girl.
Had she not known Sigyn she would have assumed that the girl had run away with the casket, but no. Sigyn still had that stubborn thread of nobility within her that Morgana, try as she might was never able to snap.
Kind of a short chapter, but more to come XX
Calipha