Three of the recently freed Marauders were sitting on the floor of the bakery they had just ransacked. They filled their appetite with the bakery's goods as well as with the gold they had found. Had the family that lived on the upper floors been there, they likely would have satisfied their taste for blood.
As it was they generously split the food, and guarded their cut of the gold. Two of the three were armed with swords taken from the fallen guards and the third had a disruptor rifle from one of the Celestials alien allies. It was slung haphazardly over his shoulder. He had found it next to the body of what he supposed was a Celestial sniper who looked as if he'd been barbequed by lightning.
Unbeknownst to them, someone was approaching. The fallen glass magicked itself out of his way so he didn't step on it, and his rubber-soled boots ensured that the step was silent. He wasn't noticed until his shadow fell over the Marauders.
When they saw the shadow they jumped and all turned to the person, reaching for their purloined weapons. They hesitated once they saw their opponent was none other than Loki. The two with swords looked to the one with the rifle.
"Prince," the one with the rifle greeted, unsure exactly how to address Loki.
Loki had gotten them out of the dungeon, and he had been scheduled to be executed himself. The Marauder was fairly sure that Loki was on their side. Like his two comrades he was a foot soldier in need of a general to take orders from, and he wondered if Loki wasn't going to recruit him. After seeing his magic with the snowflakes, the three weren't going to risk arguing with him.
Loki took a step closer, not acknowledging their greeting. He wasn't looking for an army, but his magic was drained and he was hungry.
The lead Marauder set a hand on the barrel of his rifle. Something was wrong. Loki looked in a daze as he stepped forward. It sent a chill down his spine.
He was hungry, and the Marauder's seidr was plenty.
One of the Marauders glanced back at the one with the rifle curiously, a silent question as to what to do with Loki's arrival. There was a glitter as some of the evening sun touched a dagger in Loki's hand. The lead Marauder saw the glitter a second too late.
With his target's gaze averted, Loki took a step forward. The step itself was lazy, but as he put the foot down his image blurred. It was the same move he had used against Chthon. When his image reaffirmed itself his dagger had been brought up in a position that appeared to show he had struck. Loki plucked the Marauder's stolen sword from his hand as the body fell.
In one smooth move, Loki turned and threw the sword like a spear. It impaled the second Marauder between his first and second rib at the right angle to pierce the heart. The throw had enough force behind it that it had pinned the Marauder to the wall, nearly to the sword's hilt.
Drops of red were splattered across Loki's face. The body of the first Marauder finally crumbled to the ground.
Less than five seconds since the lead Marauder had seen the blade, and he finally realized they were under attack. He desperately shrugged the rifle off his shoulder, and fired without really aiming. For certain, Loki would jump away from the shot but the prince didn't flinch. The shot came so close that it almost singed his hair, but Loki did not move away when it hit the cobblestones behind him with an explosive bang.
I missed! The Marauder shot again and Loki calmly half-stepped to the right. Again the shot came close but did not hit him.
Loki used the same slow step that quickened when he put his foot down to as fast as a teleport. He grabbed the barrel of the rifle when he materialized in front of the Marauder, and slammed it upwards into the surprised Marauder's face.
The Marauder tried to let go of the weapon, but his arm was caught in the strap. Loki flipped the rifle over, further tangling the Marauder. He kicked the Marauder's leg as he twisted the tangled arm back with a snap. The cloth strap fell free of his arm at last.
The Marauder fell flat on the ground, banging his broken arm on the stone. He tried to sit back up but he heard a quiet click above his head. Loki had the rifle and he raised it to the Marauder's head in execution style. With a flash of Loki's small Jötunn fangs in a smile, Loki pulled the trigger.
The noise was somewhat muffled as it hit the Marauder in the back of the head. His body jerked and then fell to the ground. Loki slowly lowered the rifle from his shoulder where he had braced it and looked at the third body. He had the same gaze now that he had had when he'd killed the Blood Wolves in Jane's lab.
He closed his eyes after a moment and golden light traveled from the Marauders and swirled around his form. Loki closed his eyes and relished in the spike of power. His magic purred.
Fandral and Hogun ran towards the sounds of a Celestial rifle. Were the Celestials back already? The thought scared Fandral. We're still getting over the shock that there was even a first attack!
The friends screeched to a halt in sight of a bakery. Beyond them was Loki, and the last traces of the lifeforce he had stolen were fading into his form. Fandral took quick stock of the bodies, but they were only Marauders.
Loki opened his eyes and looked their way. Fandral found himself rooted to the spot, trapped in the emptiness in Loki's eyes. They didn't have the light of insanity or anything at all. He might as well have been looking at some mindless golem made solely to kill.
Then Loki blinked and his eyes were back to normal with their guarded, calculated look.
"Well, if it isn't the Calvary," Loki sniped at the two of them.
He took a step forward, and stepped on the rifle he had dropped. Curious, he looked down at it. Then he raised his eyes and took in the scene surrounding him. Loki let his shoulders slump when he realized he had done it again. It was just like when he was fighting the Blood Wolves in Jane's lab.
"What…?" Fandral whispered.
"I was hungry," Loki shrugged a defensive note in his voice. "You shouldn't be surprised since I did just use up my magic chasing off that mothership. They were the first ones I came across."
"What if the first ones you came across happened to be Star Guard?" Hogun challenged.
Loki didn't answer and let the friends draw the correct conclusion that the same thing would have happened. Fandral swallowed dryly when Loki gave a shy smile as the realization sank in that he would have killed anyone who happened to be close to him. Although Fandral had told himself before that Loki was now an enemy, but it was only in that moment that he believed his own words.
Loki gave them a sweeping bow and teleported away. His teleport rematerialized him at Heartland, Loki's personal safe haven on Asgard where he could not be found. Only then did he let his shoulders slump. He started trembling and took a step back against the wall, and then slid down to the floor in a heap.
His eyes stung, and he clenched his teeth in distress. It happened again.
When most humans thought of Vikings they thought of Berserkers in battle. Asgardian troops were sometimes armed with Berserker staffs to mimic this effect. What Loki had just done to the Marauders could be called Berserker, and he didn't even need a Berserker Staff to do it.
Chthon had taken care of that for Loki. When he started having trouble reconditioning Loki's personality to what he wanted, he had simply split it. Normally, it didn't show and Loki was himself, but sometimes the conditioning would take over like it just had with the Marauders. Although Loki fought without emotion instead of in a rage, he would leave as bloody a trail when his control lapsed.
After he had dealt with the Celestials, his energy had been low enough to cause one of those lapses. When Loki came out of a lapse, he often didn't even remember what he had done during that time. That was why he had looked at the Marauder's bodies with surprise – he hadn't remembered killing them.
Loki knew Hogun was right, and that simple truth terrified him. What if those Marauders had been Star Guard? Civilians? His own Raven Blades? The exact same thing would have happened to them because Loki just wasn't in control when he lapsed. He had gotten lucky this time, but what about the next?
Heartland, which only Loki knew the whereabouts of and always retreated to when he wanted absolutely no one around him, was essentially a giant tree house about the size of an Ambassadorial Suite at Gladsheimr. It grew in an ash tree deep within South Woods. South Woods was the forest people stayed away from because they believed it to be haunted. It wasn't haunted, but enchanted enough that bizarre things happened here, even to mages.
Loki took a deep breathe to steady himself, and stood. He walked from the dining room where he had materialized in to the sitting room and collapsed onto a chair, chest hurting. The dose he had taken from the Marauders was of the Marauders lifeforce and so naturally hadn't matched his own magic. His soul shield away from the knowledge that the dose had been taken at the cost of lives.
Lightjewels hung from the ceiling of branches like bunches of grapes, and their soft blue-white light illuminated the room. Smaller plants that bloomed like flowers sprung up from the floor of woven leaves around the edge of the room. Their light usually had a soothing effect, but it did little right now.
Loki's hand was trembling. He clenched the fingernails to his palm so hard that they left bloody crescents. That got the tremble to stop, but his chest still hurt. Stupid soul, Loki growled to it, stop fighting the dose.
Here in Heartland he was safe from Asgard, but nowhere was safe from Chthon. He needed the energy from others lifeforces to stay awake. If Loki slept, Chthon would drag him into a nightmare where the injuries were real as compensation for Loki betraying the Chitauri and losing New York on purpose.
Since Loki couldn't sleep, the only way to restore his energy was to dose himself. Because the dose was artificial and not his own magic, it wouldn't last long before he needed to do it again. Stealing lifeforce was the simplest way to get a dose.
Loki grumbled at his soul's stubbornness. It seemed he would have to synchronize the dose by hand. Like all mages, Loki's magic was his lifeforce and by giving up some of his lifeforce he was able to manipulate the world around him with spells. Often times, mages found it helpful to meditate and check in to make sure the magical lines within their soul were smooth and straight. Many mages meditated at least once a day, but Loki's magic was powerful enough that he usually meditated twice, once when he awoke and again just before he fell asleep.
Loki focused inward, and let his consciousness turn to his soul. His soul was the same emerald-black as his eyes, and the normally smooth glass like surface was scarred many times where someone had said a careless word. A broken wrist would heal and leave no trace, eventually you would forget you were ever injured. An injury to the soul was inflicted by harsh words, and they would never heal, only scar.
Most of the scars Loki had were made back when he was a child, but there were more recent ones. Tilaria's disappearance 30 years ago, and her sudden return yesterday, had left deep wounds that had yet to entirely scar. The other injury on his soul of any comparable size was the one formed when he learned he was Laufey's son.
Even Loki was astounded by how big a mess his magic was when he looked at it. Magic flowed through the body along a person's bloodstream, and the magic lines within a soul should flow like those veins, straight and untangled. His was currently twisted, knotted, kinked, and wrapped around each other. Loki realized as he looked at his magic that the best comparison was that it was an out of control rose bush.
It was little wonder his chest was hurting, and it would also explain why his doses didn't last as long as they should. If he could untangle the magic in his soul then that should help him out.
Loki apprised the mess that was his magic and scolded himself for not paying closer attention to it this past year. As he finally settled down and reached forward to untangle his magic he received a nasty shock – literally. The moment his consciousness brushed up against his tangled magic his soul repulsed him as if he were an intruder.
The movement was done with such force that Loki's consciousness was snapped out of his soul and back into the waking world of reality. Once the daze faded, Loki reached up and touched the center of his chest just below the hallow of his throat. This was where his soul was. There was blood on his tunic where his soul was.
Loki lowered his hand from his chest, and looked at the red smeared on his pale skin. His own magic had burned him. Troubled, Loki lowered his now bloody hand to the floor and looked out across the room without really seeing anything. He had heard cases where a mage's soul began to attack them, and they all pointed to one thing.
Carefully, Loki tried again and this time looked closer at his magic. He recoiled in surprise when he saw what the problem was. Just like he had thought, it wasn't his magic anymore. Now, it was the flow of Seidr of all the people he had killed to stay awake and strong.
Loki gently left his meditation again, and hung his head. There was no doubt now what Loki had done to himself. He had been so driven by vengeance on Thor, and then later without maneuvering Chthon that he had ignored his own magic. All he had done for the past fourteen months was dose himself, and he hadn't even noticed the damage it was doing.
The effects of not being able to sleep might make a mundane irritable and sleepy, but it did far worse for a mage. When you rested your lifeforce recovered, and a mage needed their sleep to recover from the drain of that day's spellwork. By not sleeping and continuously dosing himself his magic had never gotten a chance to regenerate and had been slowly replaced by the lifeforce of those he killed.
This effect was starting to hurt his soul, which was why his real body was bleeding where his soul was. A mage's magic rejecting them as a foreign entity was the first sign that their souls were going to shatter. When a person's soul shattered they did more than die. Their soul was lost to nothingness, so there was no afterlife on Niflheim.
Loki couldn't sleep, so there was no way for him to restore balance to his soul. His only option was to continue dosing himself and let it crack to the shattering point. Although he couldn't be sure, Loki sensed that if he kept up his current pace of using spells and taking doses that he would be dead within a year.
The thought didn't sink in for Loki. He should live for at least four more millennia, and he was going to be dead within a year. Unless he could find some way around Chthon to be able to sleep and restore his natural lifeforce then a year was all he had left. Loki knew already that he didn't stand a chance of doing that, so he really did have only a year left.
He had told the Celestials that he would make them pay for twisting Tilaria's soul and he had one year to make good on that promise to defeat them. It was going to be a very busy – and bloody – year.
I was actually worried about this chapter being too short, but it turned out to be fine. I'm not sure how well a non-mage like you reader (unless you are a mage which i will say is awesome) to understand the predicament Loki's gotten himself into. This is a critical point for Loki, even more important then finding out what the Celestials did to Tilaria. All of the hate and bloodlust and plans are something of a moot point when his lifespan has been shortened from several millenia to a single year. Like most humans who find out they're going to die in a few months he's going to get a reality check.
Do you understand what's happening to Loki's soul? If not, tell me when you leave a review (As i hope you will do) and i'll go back and make it clearer.