Trials

Chapter Fifteen: Brothers in Law

Thor hit the ground hard, head slamming into something behind him, crashing bangs and booms sounding all around him, echoing long past when they really should have stopped. Eventually the banging died off, and over it he heard his name being called in muted shouts.

Thor opened his eyes. He was buried in books, and a giant stack of shelves loomed directly over him, not quite all the way overturned, its weight not fully resting on him.

"Thor!" Loki shouted again as he and Jolgeir scrambled over fallen books seeking purchase to push the stacks upright. Jolgeir found a spot – or made one – before he did, but soon Loki too was pushing against the awkward weight on unstable footing, and in another minute that lasted far too long, the shelves were upright again, if still a bit unsteady because of the books that had wound up underneath them.

"I'll hold them. You get Thor," Jolgeir said, easily managing the weight of the shelves that Loki immediately let go of.

The giant pile of books was shifting, and even before Loki could scramble over them to the area of greatest movement, a hand emerged, quickly followed by the top of a blond head.

Thor felt a hand wrap around his and tug; the extra pull helped him get his feet planted, and once that was done, standing up and pushing off all the books above him required little effort. It was Loki's hand around his, he saw without surprise. Loki kept tugging while Thor kept wading through books, and before long he was free of them, the combined momentum of Loki's pulling and Thor's pushing sending him stumbling several steps out into the aisle, dragging Loki along with him until he let go of his younger brother's hand.

"Are you all right?" Loki asked, looking for injury and not finding any visible ones.

Thor nodded, ducking his head and wrapping a hand around the back of it. And the strange thing was…he was. The back of his head smarted a little, and his right shoulder felt sore, but for banging his head and having a giant bookcase empty all of its holdings onto him, he felt fine.

"I was getting the ladder, you idiot," Loki said, glaring at Thor with moist eyes.

Thor's face fell. Loki looked really upset. And no wonder. Thor had just dumped the books they were going to go through all over the floor in a massive jumble. He turned around to survey the damage…and stared in disbelief. He hadn't dumped just one section of books over. The shelves he'd been climbing had crashed into the ones in front of them, knocking those shelves into the ones in front of them, and continuing all the way to the front wall, thirty or forty rows of shelves. All turned over. All emptied. "Loki," he breathed. He turned back around. "I'm so sorry. I…I don't… This is all my fault. I'll go to Finnulfur. I'll tell him we need more time. I'll tell him-"

Loki rushed at Thor and enveloped him in a crushing embrace, locking his hands behind Thor's back and squeezing for all he was worth. "I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to you. I don't know what I'd do without you."

Caught off guard initially, Thor smiled and squeezed his brother back. Loki was upset, but not for the reason he'd assumed. "Me, either. Have I told you how much I've missed you, Brother? Since we stopped having all our training and lessons together?"

"No," Loki answered quietly.

"Well, I have. It's not the same without you. I couldn't wait until you turned twenty, so we could go off on whatever adventures we want, just the two of us, the Odinsons overcoming every challenge that comes our way, side by side, back to back."

Loki let go of Thor and pulled away from him, then gave him a light shove to the chest. "We can't be both side by side and back to back. That doesn't make any sense."

Thor rolled his eyes. "Adventures do not need to make sense."

Loki just grinned at his brother for a moment. "Let's help Jolgeir with this bookcase."

The brothers worked the books out from underneath the stacks, and Jolgeir released it to stand steadily on its own.

"You're well, my prince?"

"Not a scratch," Thor answered. "I think I like being grown up."

"Yes, that's what you like about being grown up. Being able to withstand a mountain of books falling on you, walking away from it without a scratch. It has nothing to do with going to taverns and not going to lessons, does it?" Loki said.

"Oh, that's definitely part of it, too. But I wonder what would happen if an actual mountain were to fall on me. What do you think, Jolgeir?"

"I'm afraid I don't know. But as your former protector, I must urge you not to do anything to try to find out."

"You're no fun, Jolgeir, never have been," Thor said, returning Jolgeir's smile. "So…what do we do now?" he asked Loki.

Loki's gaze fell back on the disarray before him and tried not let it crush him figuratively as it seemed to crush Thor physically. "I don't know," he said. "But I do know that you are telling the keeper that this was your fault."

Thor made a face, then went around Loki and Jolgeir to the row of shelves behind the first fallen one, scanning the books there and pulling one out, mercifully at knee-level. "Hard to find the first one now. Here's the last one," he said, handing it to Loki, who'd followed, with Jolgeir remaining where he was.

Loki looked at the cover. "Chief Trainer's Impress of the Trials of Young Aesir: Final Decade of Duty," he read. He opened it up and skimmed through its pages.

"Well?"

He shrugged, and closed the book. "Nothing. It's the same as the two we already looked at. No special thoughts. Just the facts of the Trials. Adiarfur Skrautison received permission to fight with war scythes and Bodolfur Bodison was denied permission to fight with pitchforks."

"What's a war scythe? Wait…pitchforks?"

"I don't know. A scythe you can wield as a weapon, I assume. But the point is, no mention of magic."

Thor sighed and turned around to face the toppled shelves and piles of books behind him. "We could search for the first one."

"We've only got a few hours left. There's no time. We could spend every minute we have left just looking for that one book, and it's not like we know there's anything useful in it." Loki idly reached for one of the few books that had managed to stubbornly remain in place, each of them at the end of a row, caught on the narrow lip of the side pieces that stuck out over the shelves. "Look at this," he said, holding it open to Thor. "It's the map of the endurance trial."

"It's different." He pressed against a small central icon and a simple black-and-white image of a large building hovered over the page. "That's not our palace. It's not even the one before ours. Remember looking at those pictures with Father?"

Loki nodded, in no particular hurry now, resigned to his fate, about which he was not optimistic. It seemed slightly less horrific than before. He was here, Thor was here, he was fine, Thor was fine. Everyone who'd seen his Trials knew he was more than capable of passing them. The fact that Sorkvir and Tyr said he hadn't…if Finnulfur agreed, then he would just have to find a way to live with that.

Thor had gone back to looking at the bedlam he'd caused and Loki wasn't paying attention to the book anymore either, as interesting as it might have been to go through it some other time. With a bit of a dry laugh at himself he placed the book right back where he'd found it, all by itself. He scanned the edges of the shelves higher up, and stuck in the lip of one near the top was something different – not a book, but rather folded paper, thicker than a single sheet.

"I wonder what that is," Loki said, mostly to himself, but Thor came back to his side and angled his neck up to look, too.

"I don't know. Let's find out," Thor said and immediately grabbed onto one of the shelves and got his foot onto one.

"What are you doing?! Get down from there," Loki said, wrapping his arms around Thor's chest and pulling.

"It's not at the very top, and besides, it's not like there are any more books to knock over."

Loki cleared his throat and tossed a pointed glance over his shoulder, to the rows of bookcases in the other direction, the direction Thor would now topple the one he was on if it fell over.

Thor followed his gaze and quickly hopped down. "Fine. Get the ladder."

"I could, but…who needs a ladder when I have a big brother? Come on, we know how to do this."

Loki crouched down and Thor clambered onto his shoulders, laughing, and soon was being lifted higher, putting the paper within easy reach. "Got it!" he said once he'd removed the paper jammed into the side of the shelf.

"This is a lot easier when you're holding a piece of paper instead of a log," Loki said as he crouched back down to the floor to let Thor get off. "What is it? Let me see."

"Hold on. It's all folded and crushed."

Loki waited anxiously while Thor fumbled with the paper, undoing the irregular folds which were not meant to be there but had probably happened from being smashed against the side of the bookcase for who-knew-how-long.

"It feels…waxy or something. And look at how brown it is on the edges."

Loki moved closer to Thor, to better see the unfolding and lengthening paper. "It's a scroll," he said in surprise. "Remember when we studied preservation of cultural heritage? That wax epoxy was one of the early ways they preserved documents. This must be really old."

"Everything in here is really old. Look at this writing. It's that old formal style they made us learn."

"High Revival," Loki said with a nod. Every letter had extra strokes and flourishes, and some letters were completely different. "Can you still read it? You were better at that than me."

"It gives me a headache. Especially when it's upside down," Thor said, pausing from his unfolding to make a face at Loki.

"I know it's upside down. We're at the bottom. I meant in general."

"I don't know. I haven't looked at it in years. Let's take it to a table and spread it out."

Loki nodded; the scroll was getting unwieldy, and creases that had been in place for thousands of years resisted being smoothed out. He tried not to dwell on the disaster of overturned stacks that accompanied them on the right as they headed to the front of the chamber and Thor laid the scroll down on a long table. Loki grabbed a few random books from the piles on the floor and they set about straightening and flattening it, holding it in place with the books. When they finally reached the top and weighted that down, too, the scroll was nearly as long as Thor and Loki were tall. And a word in the extra-large hand-written print of the title jumped out: Trials.

"Read it," Loki said. "Come on, Thor, read it."

"All right, all right, I'll try. The following are the…the proscriptions and…and admonitions of the Trials of Young Aesir."

"Proscriptions and admonitions?" Loki repeated eagerly. "That sounds like do's and don'ts. Or don'ts and do's. Thor…that sounds like rules." His eyes skimmed down the scroll, but this type of writing required too much active attention for effective skimming.

"Bearing in mind foremost the safety and…equa…equanimity of conditions for all young Aesir and their traitors…trainers, sorry. We do in clear mind and one accord put forth these…"

"These what?" Loki asked, eyes fixed on Thor instead of the scroll, whose words he was too anxious for to look at himself.

"Conventions and…" Thor looked up at Loki, wide-eyed.

"And what?"

"Rules. Conventions and rules. Rules! It's a list of rules, Brother!"

"It's a list of rules?"

"It's a list of rules!"

"It's a list of rules!"

"These rules did Bor set forth," Thor began singing, swapping "rules" for the original "laws" in a horrid poem he and Loki had had to memorize for their law lessons.

"For every youth to learn!" Loki finished, swapping "youth" for the original "Aesir." "We have to read them all."

Thor nodded vigorously. "It's a long scroll. I'll start from the top."

"I'll start from the bottom," Loki said, nodding too. This was it. Here was an actual list of rules. And magic, Loki was certain wouldn't be on it.

"Wait, what's this first one? The Aesir must not be in…in…"

Loki hurried back up to the top from the position he'd already taken up at the end of the table. Thor's finger marked the spot. "In…inebriated? Drunk? The Aesir must not be drunk? That's a stupid rule. Why would anyone show up for his Trials drunk?" Loki asked, then glanced guiltily at Thor, remembering how Thor had tried to get him to go out drinking the night before his Trials, and how he'd thought Thor might have shown up to his own drunk or hung over if their Mother hadn't years ago extracted an oath from him that he wouldn't drink alcohol until he was twenty. "Look for the word 'magic.' None of the other rules matter."

Thor nodded and started reading again; Loki moved back to the bottom and started making his way up.

"I found it!" Thor cried out only a few seconds later.

"You did?" Loki asked, a microsecond of excitement and elation followed by a swiftly sinking heart. Finding the word 'magic' on a list of rules wasn't what he wanted. But, he supposed, quickly considering it, it depended on exactly what the rule said about magic.

Thor looked up at Loki, mouth ajar. He didn't say anything for a moment, but then nodded. He pulled out one of the chairs at the table and collapsed into it. "I'm sorry, Brother."

"What?" Loki asked, clinging desperately to that bit of hope he'd told himself was there. "Where is it?"

"Here," Thor said, pointing to the place on the scroll. A number "3" was beside it, in an old form of numbering no longer used.

Loki went to the spot and bent over to laboriously read the text. "The young Aesir shall not…resort…to magic, for that has its own…uses, which are…un…unseemly in the Trials." Loki's jaw fell open, too, and he pulled out the chair next to Thor's and sank into it.

Thor scooted closer in his chair and swung an arm around Loki's shoulders. "I'm sorry," he repeated.

Loki sat there, breathing heavily. They'd tried so hard, Loki on his own and now he and Thor together…and still it was all for nothing. Not using magic was in the rules. Loki let his head sag onto Thor's shoulder. Father was going to be so ashamed of him, more than he already was. "Brother," he mumbled against Thor's leather vest, "will you be too ashamed to be seen with me?"

"You're one edge short of a sword, Little Brother. You haven't done anything to be ashamed of."

Loki sat up straight and looked at Thor incredulously. "You told me what I did was embarrassing."

Thor winced, but then gave a one-shouldered shrug. "That was a long time ago."

"Thor, it was…four days ago!"

"Right. A long time ago. A lot's happened since then."

Loki sighed and let his head drop dramatically back on Thor's shoulder.

"I think you were really brave to stand up in front of Finnulfur like that. And not just any magistrate but Finnulfur. I think he's been nice to you. I don't mean he's favored you, just that…if you forgot some procedure, he didn't hold it against you. And if you needed to say something, he let you."

Loki nodded. He wasn't so sure Finnulfur had been nice to him, but… "I think he's been fair."

"And your Trials themselves…you did everything that was asked of you. I still think you should have asked about the magic, but what you said about if it were a real fight and if you were really being attacked and you were about to be defeated…I don't know. I was thinking about that. Father uses magic in battle. Not directly, really, but with Gungnir. And if I can learn all those other things that Mjolnir's supposed to be able to do, well, that's magic, isn't it? Isn't it?" Thor asked, looking down at the black mop of hair on his shoulder and jostling it to get the nod he was waiting for. "So if you thought about it like that, and you happen to have your own magic, which unlike Gungnir and Mjolnir isn't actually a weapon…then I can see why you might think you could use it in the battle trial. It all comes back to the fact…"

"Mmm," Loki murmured in acknowledgement. He was barely listening, but he knew that Thor was voicing encouragement and support, and it was sweet of him. It made Loki smile, despite everything else that had happened. The rest of his life would, most likely, be a constant challenge, but this one moment of it, this was nice, and he didn't particularly need to think about the rest of his life right now.

"Loki…," Thor said a few seconds later, gently pushing his brother upright and off his shoulder. "This isn't as bad as it seems."

"Truly? Because it seems pretty bad to me. But thank you for supporting me, Brother."

"No, it's perfect. Don't you see? There is a written list of rules. And no one told them to you. Sorkvir's argument has been that there is no list of rules, and that's why they aren't provided. But we've just proven him wrong."

Loki peered down at the scroll and its third rule on the list – on the long list. He stood and went around the table to the bottom of it. He was fairly certain that the last number was "38." There were thirty-eight rules…and he had been given two of them.

"So they can't say you should have just known. They were written down so no one needed to just know. Or to guess."

Loki's grin split his face. "We need to take this and go. We don't have much time left and I want to bathe and change."

"All right," Thor agreed.

The boys worked out how to handle the scroll, deciding on loosely rolling it instead of trying to fold it or keep it flat, and were just walking away from the table they'd spread it out on when Vituri, the First Keeper for the Library of War, entered. He stopped short, staring slackjawed at toppled bookcase after toppled bookcase, and the tens of thousands of books they had disgorged.

"Ah, Vituri, I can explain," Loki said, prepared to accept the blame for this. Thor wouldn't have been here in the first place, after all, if not to help him.

"Actually, I can explain," Thor said, cutting in. "I was trying to get to a book on top, and I should have gotten the ladder but I wanted to read that book so much that I climbed up the shelves and…well, it fell, and knocked the other ones down, too. It was an accident. But it shows how much I love the books you keep here in the Library of War," he added with a big smile.

Loki fought an eyeroll at the awkwardly tacked-on ending. Thor was such a terrible liar he'd really be better off not even attempting it.

Vituri didn't say anything for a long moment, but his face was turning red; Thor's charm wasn't quite enough to overcome all those piles of books. "I will speak to your father about this. What is that in your hand, Loki? Did you get that from here? You were going to just…take it?"

"I…yes?" Loki answered with an attempt at his most innocent smile.

"No," Vituri responded sharply, closing the distance between them and holding out his hand.

"I need it for my…for my petition. I'll bring it back right after, I swear."

"You swear," Vituri repeated. "So you're actually being honest now, as opposed to when you assured me you would take good care of the books?" he asked angrily.

"I said that," Thor stated over Loki's stammering. "Not Loki. And I did mean it. I didn't know the bookshelves would fall over like that. But don't question my brother's word."

Loki watched Thor in awe. If he didn't know better he'd think Thor was two hundred instead of twenty. He wished he had that kind of confidence and commanded that kind of respect from adults, for sure enough, Vituri's expression quickly changed after Thor spoke.

"I apologize, my prince," he said to Thor, turning to Loki at the end. "I misspoke. I didn't mean to question your word. Why don't I enter this into retrieval? It should only take about three hours for it to be fully rendered, with all of the necessary descriptor fields, and then you can take an exact replica of it to the petition."

"We don't have three hours," Loki said with a glance toward the hand Vituri still held out. "My father has decided not to involve himself in this, to ensure the impartiality of the trial, but he did say that I should receive whatever assistance I require in my preparations for it."

"Oh!" Vituri exclaimed, eyebrows going up. "I could have…" He looked over with renewed dismay at the rows of fallen shelves and books. "I could have provided many assistants."

"All we really need right now is this scroll," Thor said, pointing at the ancient parchment in Loki's hand.

"And we'll return it to you as soon as we're done with it."

Vituri nodded, clearly reluctant. "Don't let it get wet. Don't mark on it. Don't eat or drink with it near. Keep it out of direct sunlight. Don't…don't sneeze on it. Don't-"

"It's been all folded up and crushed in the corner of a bookshelf for thousands and thousands of years," Thor interrupted to point out.

"In well-controlled humidity and- Very well. Just take it, with my regards to your father. Please do return it promptly."

Thor and Loki both agreed to do so, then hurried out. Loki was grateful for this small triumph.

"You didn't tell me Father granted you whatever assistance you needed. You should have gotten fifty law clerks to do all this for you," Thor said as they hurried back to the palace.

Loki flashed him a guilty smile, adjusting his long brown vest to try to shield the scroll underneath it as best he could; it was open at the chest, and not meant to close, so it didn't really have enough material to fully cover the scroll. "He didn't," he said, finally shrugging out of the vest and draping it over his arm and hand along with the scroll. "He never said that. Perhaps he would have allowed it if I'd asked."

Thor whistled. "You'll get in big trouble for that if he finds out. You remember that in our personal list of rules, not using Father's name like that is the first one."

"I'll worry about that later," Loki said, though truthfully he hadn't thought of that at the time and now that Thor had brought it up, he was a little worried about it. "We have the scroll, that's all that matters now. It's not really the argument I most wanted to make, but I can work with it. What happened at my Trials was their mistake, not mine."

Thor took a deep breath and nodded. It was right there in the scroll.

/

Most of this chapter has been written for a very long time, up to about when they first pull out the scroll. Then came Mauritius, the tropical island paradise that was for me very much *not*, and a renewed push on this story, because we really are nearing the end! I am still mostly stuck on my stomach, a few blisters left but definitely healing, which means aging laptop-only, and I just find it hard to get a lot done on Beneath in these conditions. Beneath's loss is Trials's gain. :-)

So, I made a stylistic oopsie here, that comes with the long gaps in writing this story. It's meant to be entirely Loki's POV, but somewhere along the way in this segment of the story I basically forgot that and Thor's POV came into it. By the time I realized Thor's wasn't supposed to be there, it had already been written in a way that really didn't work *without* his POV, at least not without losing a couple of things I didn't want to lose. And, I figure hey, nobody's paying me, this isn't being published for realsies, so it's something I'm willing to live with. Hopefully it's not too jarring.

In the next chapter...Loki heads back before Finnulfur with a new piece of evidence in hand.