So...I'm sorry for the meager lengths of the previous chapter and this one as well. I suppose I could've combined them, but it felt so much more...poignant to break them. I promise, the next one will be longer, as we will be undulating once more between LokiIounn and Jane/Thor/Fandrall.
In shadows of untraversed logic and beaten down, down to the dank floor slippery with sweat and water and tears and blood, a single drop can be heard. It drips its eternity in fierce mockery, collecting its own pale want in the puddle of a nebula impregnable by anyone but him and his captor. The glass of water steadily rises, and through its depths, a child is spied...
"Thor!" yells the young black-haired boy. "Wait! I want to go!"
"Now, Loki. You know you cannot...Father said..."
"Father never let's me do anything."
The larger boy, no more than twelve months the younger's senior, and bulk and Braun and mirth grace his features, laughs. "Go to mother, Loki. No doubt she has a spell for you to master."
He disappears, and the placid face remains stoic and untouched...and what a play is a life...? The words prance always...it is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing...poets say such things...and then it comes...the cold black searing insides...the writhing horror, and a gasp, and a glance at the mirror...no...the water of the dying star...a star's tears, shed for him, like a nuisance he clings to it, knowing full well the folly...
His magic is feared by most with a brain. He is full young, and eager and proud. He stalks the palace in his appetence to demonstrate. He is reaching the maturity of an Aesir, the instincts of flesh accompany it.
But it is Thor they run to. Most hover in fear around him, lest they suffer his magic. He is too prideful to object, too shattered to laugh.
So he becomes charming. He learns to bewitch and entice, and for that he is chastised. He has the same drives as his brother, and he even falls in love. But his frame is too slight to be intimidating, his features too sharp to be kind.
And throughout it all, he lives in shadow, quietly simmering, holding fast to the belief that if all else fails, he has his family.
Perpetual motion is the only way to describe his thoughts now...now, being siphoned from him as surely as his life...the black strikes hard, the hollow resin stings, and words words words rise and fall before him. Once, a pale demon offered him a query, and he answered with a rhyme...and often when he breathes now, his ribs crackle and bend, they are this far from breaking...his breath a hurricane of abstract thoughts and abject horror...cease this breathing...for it hurts his soul, many centuries old, to continue...
He is robbed of all that mattered. Everything he believed he was, gone. And fate chose to be unforgiving, and delivered him to the devil. What could he do? He was mad with vengeance. Mad with rage, trust that, above all else, and therein he would find his peace.
But peace is a slippery creature, and none too eager to allow capture. It evades him like everyone always, always did. Though he longed for her baptism, he found only dry earth. And he was brought home, broken but whole, and with a stamp across his mouth like a vice attempting to imprison his soul.
Time, a foul soldier, dawdling in the corners of eyes, hovering, stealing, sneaking and scant...his laughter is his pain...for time always does exactly what you don't want him to do...he runs when you're in the heat of love, begging for morning to hide in her cloak...he crawls when you're hanging on a wall with the misery of a miasma slanting your veins...when the nebula shines in her puddle of putrescence, and your words are torn from your mind...your words...words of beauty...he once enjoyed the frivolity of his language, so unlanguagable now...
He knew it. He felt her die. No one had ever been so close to him as she, and when her life was snuffed out like the glorious light she was, he felt it keenly. He felt her departure, as certain as he felt the blood on his feet, the ache in his head.
Thor was cruel, but he had seen to his cruelty, and when he asked him for help, he acquiesced, for truly, he loved his brother, despite everything. He would go with him to save his lady, against Odin's orders.
But the lady was fire. She brimmed hot metal, intelligence, and bravery. He felt drawn to her heat, his own skin so cold, but she was Thor's and he was...
...dead. He had died on that field after saving his brutish brother. He barely made his way back...and when he did, he found his adoptive father sick, falling into his regenerative sleep, likely his final sojourn into such a state.
He could use this. Use this, a whisper of his old self said. Use it, and know the place you were meant to be.
Someone had once yelled a barbaric yawp to undo his mind, but that poet died, and he stayed true. He loved his words, he loved his brother, he loved his magic...who was he now? He is that speck in the nebula below...he is that stardust of trails, tales...undo it, undo it!
He fears madness, yet he doesn't...mother, it's time now...and sick of this falling...and scared of the black and the poison he fears stings him, burns the blue hovering beneath...
His brother came to him again, even in his sick bed, asking for help. Always, his brother needs his help.
And help him, he does.
He woos the woman he believed Thor loved.
And then, he falls in love.
What bitter chance is love! What condescension! Yet, she is true...the tiny fairy with brown pools of eyes, which hold in their depths magic...he woos her with words and attention and he succumbs to the majesty of her heat.
And she saves him. And he saves her.
And lo, he is King.
So what of his plight now? What more is there left? He has his station...he lived a life of uncouth desperation. His sorrow ran lines across his face. His mirth sprang its torrent crease in the mind of others, for he knew bliss and he laughed at his jibes. His love...and his love...undid the hollow and blew a breeze so fresh into the chamber of his heart...
What had he left? Everything was an eyeless, scathing, brumal, desolate expanse burning its chill in his mind. The nebula was dimming, she was soft in her demise.
...why was he here? What had he left...?
"JANE!"
His voiced pierced the hollow chamber and the snake twisted its coils in response to his frenzied movement.
"Jane?" whispered an ugly voice. The thing was furtive in her advance. "Jane?"
His head fell forward.
She made her way to him. "Is this your mortal? Is this your undoing? Is she worth this much?" the goddess cooed her words blithely. "Your story grows more pathetic with every memory I unearth."
He murmured something.
"Louder, please."
"I'm not doing it for her..." he nearly spat, and would've done, had he the strength to do so.
"No?"
"You forget, Iounn, I am a selfish creature," and his words were labored, and his breath was quick, his chest heaving in the effort to utter the sentence.
"For you, then, my King? I fail to understand..." Her eyebrow cocked at this...and she folded her arms against her.
"You wouldn't."
"How wouldn't I?"
"Because. It involves something you know nothing of, and should this kill me, I'll not be sorry. For I shall have tasted eternity, held my salvation, and been given a promise..." he couldn't go on.
"A promise? Of what do you speak?"
"Promise."
She laughed. "So I gathered. A promise...of...?"
"Of light," and his voice echoed, though it was meek enough.
"You weak, pathetic creature! You! A King of Asgard! Ruined by a mere mortal?!" and the goddess cackled her hysteria in the chamber, it echoed its resonance.
And Loki lifted his finger from his imprisoned and chained hand.
Iounn fell backwards, the strength of the spell took her unawares. She was unconscious, lying on the floor.
And Loki, in his attempt to silence her and the ringing in his ears, used his last bit of magic to accomplish it...
But the serpent dangled, and his poison dripped, and Loki sighed his scream.