PROLOGUE TWO
All that Loki could feel was the burning. The snake's head was suspended above him, his jaw locked open by pure magic as its thick poison dripped from delicately curved fangs onto his forehead, dribbling down onto his neck, into his ears and skull, in his eyes, down to the boulders below him to scald what of his body rested on the rocks, whose many points stabbed into his skin. Sometimes the head would move, burning his chest, stomach, and legs. And just as his wounds would heal and the pain was gone, more would fall onto him, starting the pain over again. But the worst part of his torture, specially orchestrated by Odin Allfather himself, was that his wrists and ankles were bound with the intestines of Nari. His own flesh-and-blood son, now dead because of the Aesir. Loki swore in between unbearable bouts of pain that his revenge for this would be greater than anything he'd done.
Suddenly the burning stopped, the night air cool against his sizzling skin. The snake screeched somewhere above him, but not directly over his head. He heard the squelching of something fleshy being ripped apart, and then he was free, being unbound from the rocks by swift hands. His eyes regenerated, dehydrated but functional. He caught the glimpse of a blurry familiar face before his eyelids grew, clenching shut to moisturize his eyes and stop the burning dry pain. Tears fell down his cheeks for multiple reasons, and he quickly wiped them away. When he dared to look, a young man was holding one of the entrails in his hands. A wet track leaned into the curve of his cheek where tears fell from his glaring eyes. His hands were bloody, strips of skin clinging to his curved nails. At his feet lay the remains of the accursed reptile.
"Odin will pay for this." he growled, his voice sounding more animal than human, and he looked up at his father. Rage and desperation and hope were alight in his eyes. Loki reached over and stroked a bloody hand through his son's hair.
"The Aesir will pay," he corrected. Fenrir dried his face with the backs of his hand, reaching over to a dark shadow on the grass beside him. He took the dark green cloak and gingerly draped it around his father's sensitive re-grown skin. Loki clutched the smooth velvet around him as he stood carefully with his son's help. "Every last living thing will pay for what they have done."