Red In The Snow : 7

7.

Shattered

Loki knows what it’s like to be broken.

He remembers.

Once, a fearsome giant challenged all of Asgard with his might, promising to build an impenetrable wall around the home of the Aesir gods in exchange for the hand of fair Freyja.

Loki had never liked Freyja. She was one of the preferred – one of the tall blond children who had mocked him during play for being strange and withdrawn, for preferring books to battle and quiet stables to quaffing parties.

Later she outgrew her ways and even courted his presence at her grand spring banquets. Freyja was mostly good-natured, if careless with her blunt words. But Loki has never been good at releasing grudges. Perhaps it was his greatest weakness.  He urged the gods to take the giant up on his bet – if  only to teach the brute some humility. His silver tongue did its trick; the Aesir agreed.

It turned out the brute was cleverer than he looked. His secret: the mighty, indefatigable stallion Svadilfari, four-legged builder of cities.

Within a fortnight the wall was half complete.

By the second moon, there was no chance of the giant losing. Or a fair goddess escaping marriage.

Loki and Freyja’s childhood rivalry leapt back to life with a fury. Everyone loved Freyja; and so she won. And Loki was threatened with a painful demise if he did not stop the wall from successfully encircling Asgard.

As always, he did the expected.

He made himself a beautiful mare.

The great Svadilfari stood no chance of resisting the exquisite female, with her pale silvery coat, lush man and musk-laced signals dripping from every pore. Her graceful canter and melodic whinnying lured the stallion through the depths of Mirkwood and across the plains of Alfheim, far from its mission in Asgard. Finally, when they had wandered far enough, Loki stopped to change back and weave a spell-trap for the stallion.

But not fast enough.

Before he could morph, the unstoppable Svadilfari leapt on top of him, crushing almost half the bones in his mare-frame and impaling him with its impressive phallus. It rode Loki with a terrible passion, further shattering his ribs, his chest, his hipbones. Loki screamed. All that emerged was a shrill neighing.

Again, and again, he was subject to Svadilfari’s burgeoning male instinct. He should have known this was no ordinary horse. Why had he not at least conjured a suit of armour for his mare-form? Damn it all to Nilfheim.

Red-hot. Pain. Punishment. Rape. A clever ploy turned disastrous. A voice that was not his own.

In the end he stopped fighting. It was better that way.

Long after his screams had turned to whimpers, the stallion’s seed was finally spent. Svadilfari wandered off to goodness knows where as Loki the mare lay panting, broken – and impregnated.

For eleven months (the gestation period for a horse) Loki would wander the plains and villages in animal form. Strangely enough, he found a strange, simple, almost bovine peace. He did not like it at first. But it was little use fighting; a horse’s mind is stubborn, strong, and it constantly overwhelmed his being until it seemed he could have spent the next ten years as a mare and lived content.

Then his child arrived.

Loki knew the build of a horse. He did not know (aside from basic bodily functions) how it actually worked. And he lacked a female instinct that might otherwise have aided him. So he fought the contractions, the swelling pain, until finally he could bear it no longer and wandered half-blind with panic into a breeder’s farm and into the owner’s skilled, merciful hands.

Labour was long and painful. The emerging of the foal – as strong and large as its sire – broke again the hipbones that had healed months ago. There was blood; surely more blood than was possible. Loki tried to calm himself. I am not really a beast, he reminded himself. I am not a beast. I am me – Loki Liesmith, Loki Silvertongue, mischief-maker – ahh – why was this so hard?

The pain flowed over the silver-maned mare. Her child burst out and nearly kicked her insides into ruin. There was warmth. There was wetness. There was something resembling…pride.

And love. Fierce, irrational love.

Then exhaustion swallowed everything.

Blackness.

Waking up in a stable on fresh hay – No.

NO. No waking up.

Limbs still; eyes closed; no. No NO NO. Wake up, trickster, wake up.

Where did memories end and present begin?

Memories of shape-shifting. Of pain. Of a simple animal’s mind.

Where was his mind now?

Airless. Can’t breathe. Wait; no need to breathe. He wasn’t really alive, anyway. Merely suspended.

Better to have died, no?

Glass; ice; thick; unbreakable.

Magic.

Behind lids frozen close, carmine-red eyes briefly struggled like panicked butterflies to open. To see.

What did I do? What have I done?

Then there was a shrill white noise that drowned out all thought, all hope, and he slipped blissfully back into silence.

~

Red In The Snow : 6

6.

The Raiders of Svartalfheim

Hreidmar, leader of the black elves, held out an arm to halt his army. He approached the glimmering, half-buried object with the sureness of one who has been scarred by countless battles and come out of each one stronger. The sinews in his arms gleamed ebony.

“Regin. What make you of this?” asked Hreidmar.

The treasure-keeper approached the casket with his king’s consent and studied it carefully before running a light finger down the frosted surface.

“Enchanted glass, masterfully worked. Made by nothing more than pure magic and near impenetrable. A rare find.”

“Good. Fjalar, Galar, help him dig.”

The swarthy siblings stood forth – but Regin stopped them.

“There may be an obstacle in the way.”

“What be it, pray tell?” asked Galar.

Regin raised a thin eyebrow. “An Aesir godling, looks like. Trapped within the glass.”

Hreidmar strode to Regin’s side. “Let me see.”

As he bent over the glass surface, an arm like a tree trunk shot out to grip his wrist.

In a blink the black elves were in battle mode. Master archer Sindri aimed her bow at the figure that just a second before had been stone-still.

“Let it be, Sindri. I anticipated that it was still alive.” Hreidmar smiled.

The rock-like figure moved its moss-coated lips. “Break this casket, and I will break you, dwarf. You and your sapling army.”

A threatening murmur ran through the Svartalfar. Small they may be, but any insulting reference to their size was often drowned out by brief shrieks of pain.

“I do hope your muscles have not grown weak from stooping. For you tempt us into battle, mouldering one.”

With a great shudder, the mighty huntsman rose for the first time in nearly a year. Vines tumbled off him; roots that had begun to dig into the ground were uprooted. His once-golden hair was infused with grey-green moss.

“Try me, elf. What brings you and your scavengers?”

Hreimdar chuckled. “Aesir brutes. As diplomatic as ever, I see.”

“The gift of the silver tongue belonged to my brother, not to me.” Thor gestured to the glass shell. “He lies now encased in his own spell. And I would try to break the spell, if not for the fact that it may well be the only thing holding him together.” He looked into the Svartalf’s obsidian eyes. “And I ask you again: what brings you here?”

“My home has been over-mined,” the elf king replied. “The Dark Fields grow barren.”

“Whatever happened to your depthless caves of treasures?”

“Our industrious nature became our ruin; I will admit that much. We are greedy creatures, black elves. Not as content to rest on our earnings as you are. Dvalin here can tell you stories of our ancestors’ ancient boundless hunger. A hunger we inherited. The same that has brought us here.”

Thor moved slowly to shield the glass with his hulking shoulders. “You may take what you want, if you do not harm my brother by even a hair.”

As Hreimdar considered this dilemma, Dvalin spoke up. “If I may, my lord. Brokk could possibly find a way.”

“To prise enchanted glass from flesh and bone? That has never been attempted in the history of our kind, Dvalin. Not even by the great Brokk.”

“I would not underestimate him. He did craft the mighty hammer that our friend here wields,” Dvalin said, pointing to Mjolnir.

The weapon was half-enveloped by roots. Thor grasped it by its handle and, with a smooth tug, pulled it from its resting place and dislodging chunks of earth. The silver head gleamed once more. He held it upward.

“I swear by Mjolnir, gift of Brokk, that you may have every inch of this enchanted glass if you swear to return my sibling Loki to me unscratched.”

The Svartalfar collectively murmured.

“Loki, eh?"

"The trickster."

"Loki Liesmith."

"Troublemaker."

"The deceiving Silvertongue?” Hreimdar chuckled drily. “This will be interesting.”

Thor pierced them with his gaze. “Swear on it.”

“We swear, Thor son of Odin, on the deep graves of our ancestors and our dying fields, that we will not break apart the glass if it threaten the life of your so-called sibling." He gestured to the rest. "And so do my men."

There was a chorus of assent.

Moments later, Galar and Fjalar had freed the casket of its burial ground and hefted it onto their broad, graceful shoulders. The Svartalfar marched toward home with the huntsman as their shadow.

~

Red In The Snow : 5

5.
Beneath The Glass

Eyes as red as blood. Hair as black as night. Bring me your heart, my dear.

~

The Mirror-keeper sees all. Past, present, future. Above all, he sees the Truth.

He sees the thunder-wielding huntsman bring down a buck with an effortless stroke and carve out its heart. Sees him come home and lay the glistening organ before the ones who had demanded it. Hears the claim of his half-brother's head being shattered by a last act of magic before he could take it.

Heimdall looks out across the Bifrost and wonders why the god of mischief had not escaped to Midgard, or to another realm that might have hid him.

Silvertongue; Liesmith; the dark prince. Always one for self-preservation. Always a survivor, hidden cleverly in shadow. He could have turned into a gnat, a bird, and flew with the wind. Why not, when it came as easily to him as breathing?

Why had the trickster's senses deserted him at the hour of his death?

The Mirror-keeper is wise. But he does not have all the answers.

 

* * *

The love of his brother is blinding as the hammer comes into contact with his hardening flesh.

- everything hurts - 

Beneath his enchantment of glass, Loki cannot tell if he is merely wounded, or broken inside and out. Something about his body feels fragile; numb; not quite there. The strength of his magic holds him together in a case woven from both skill and instinct, and - yes - the terror of destruction. Terror he had never felt in all his life.

Would he still be whole if the armor holding him were to come off?

In the shadowy depths of Loki's subconscious, that last scene played over and over. He had planned it; mulled over it before his brother had emerged from the shadows to take him down. The decision was hardly emotional (or so he liked to believe). It had seemed the only logical way to neither live nor die. Or perhaps both.

Logical, and a dance with destruction.

It was the ultimate bet with himself: to see if he could cloak himself from the blow of the invincible Mjolnir, gift of the finest dwarven smith in all the Nine Realms. It seemed he had won. Or had he?

He remembered the thunder of its blow. Its first initial contact with the side of his head as everything slowed to a sonorous heartbeat for the briefest moment...and then -

- the world turned to pain -

It felt as if every bone in his body was being crushed by gigantic hands determined to turn him into dust. Perhaps he screamed. Perhaps the screaming was in his head and his lips, along with his whole frame, was already being sealed in frosted glass.

For days and months the scream would continue to echo in the recesses of his mind, even as his mind slowly deadened beneath the unmoving glass. Finally, as the skies changed and the sun rose and fell, the echoes grew softer and faded into velvet black. Velvet like the cool damp earth that cradled his self-made casket.

Two more seasons came and went. Loki's mind grew still as what life he had receded deeper into the core of his being. Perhaps this was death. Fading away. Growing smaller.

* * *

Nightfall.

The golden-haired sentinel is suspended in vigilant half-slumber.

The woods and all its children are still.

The icy surface of the glass shell, half-embedded in earth, gleams faintly in the moonlight.

Then something breaks the silence.

Small sturdy feet march beneath the drooping boughs. A low rumbling song, as ancient as the oldest trees, carry over the lands. Coal-black eyes shine under helmets and hoods.

The Svartalfar are hunting tonight.

~ 

NOTE:
Some back-story on the Svartalfar, the dark elves - or dwarves as they are also known

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Red In The Snow : 4

4.
A Memory Of Red




Do you hear that? It’s the sound of battles fought and lives lost. It pained me to know that I am the cause of such despair.

A flashing memory of two boys running through these same woods. Childish quarrels. Echoes of laughter.

Loki closed his eyes.

The Mjolnir slammed into the curve of his cheekbone, into his head. There was a sound like cracking glass. Then blinding light, reflected hundredfold in each icy shard. The shattering screamed through the silence and shook the forest to its very roots.

When Thor regained his senses, he was on his knees, arms limp at his side. And his half-brother was gone.

The sun came in full force to break the shadows of Loki’s magic wintry night. It shone on all that was left of the god of mischief: a smattering of gleaming bluish slivers in the snow. And a memory of deep red eyes, red as blood against the snow.

It was some time before Thor was able to pick himself up and lift the weapon that had annihilated his sibling. He stumbled to the spot where Loki had knelt, still as an ice sculpture, just minutes before.

“No words will ever express this moment, brother,” he whispered. “So I won’t try.”

He gathered the fine shards in his large hunter’s hands; then watched as they melted away, leaving nothing but a cold wetness in his palms. He trembled. Roaring, weeping, he pounded the ground before him.

That was when he felt the hard glass surface.

* * *

The great Mirror showed Heimdall the mighty warrior kneeling in the snow, still as a sentinel himself. His golden hair and crimson cloak were vivid against the white.

The Mirror-keeper bowed his head. He knew the truth. Let it lie with the hunter, and the hunted. Let the passing of time bring what time may.

He looked again into the swirling depths of the mirror to see an unchanging future.

* * *

Three seasons had passed. There were times when the hunter felt tiny insects burrowing into the folds of his clothes, trying to make a home on the vines that had begun to grow over him. He would not welcome them. Neither would he budge.

He was a rock; relentless, soundless. A guardian awaiting the world’s end, or the end of his life, whichever came first. Let the grass grow and the beasts forage. They did not disturb him, nor he them.

HIs abandoned weapon lay by his side. Roots and leafy tendrils had locked it into place as they had locked him. Together they would ensure no one violated that which he guarded.

Before him, encased in glass and magic, was the still figure of a broken god. The very enchantment that had saved him now also imprisoned him. Impenetrable magic. Truly, Loki’s last work had been his finest.

Thor closed his eyes and dreamt of shadow-realms where hope lurked still.

~

Red In The Snow : 3

3.
Why Do You Not Run?

 

“You have eyes, huntsman, but you cannot see. He is the one. I see an end to darkness.”

So said the great Odin Allfather. So said Balder of the prophetic fever-dreams. Thor had doubted the Allfather before, but never his gentle brother Balder. The promise was this: with the death of the trickster Loki, and the events that his hand would set in motion, the Nine Realms would be safe from the Great War.

From darkness would come an end to darkness. In a way, it all made sense. But why must his hand be the one to wield that power?

He trudged on through the thickening snow. It didn’t take long for his trained eyes to see the lean figure standing between two birch trees. Even now his heart ached at the familiar silhouette.

“Can you not see me, brother?” he called heavily.

Slowly, Loki turned around. The constant cold had brought out the Jotun in his eyes, which gleamed a bright carmine.

Thor walked up to him. “Why do you not run?”

“I cannot run from you.” Loki’s voice was a whisper. “I would much rather run to you.”

“You don’t mean that.”

Loki pulled his otter pelt closer around his slender shoulders. “Why? Because I am capable only of lies?”

“Because I have been tasked to kill you. And with the eyes of Heimdall upon me, who answers to our father and all the ruling Aesir, I cannot walk away.” Thor hefted the hammer.

“Then, my dear brother, we must part ways.” Loki moved away. Thor paused, allowing him the few seconds it might take to flee- to fly - to shapeshift and slip away like the wind, like he’d done so many times before.

Instead his step-sibling knelt in the snow and shed his pelt. The pale hands reached up to unfasten the hooks of the snug leather collar.

“Just making it easier to remove my head as proof,” he said.

“No.”

“If you must do this anyway, brother, why delay what is your duty?”

“Loki…I…”

“Thor.”

“I…I can’t.” Thor’s massive shoulders shook as tears ran down his face.

The brilliant red eyes glittered like pools of blood. “Do it.”

“No, Loki.”

“I love you.”

I love you. Such sweet words in times of joy. Such cutting words, ridged and flaying, in a time like this.

Sobbing, Thor lifted the Mjolnir to his face and let his tears run down the steel surface. Never had it felt so heavy in his hand. He looked up to the skies - to all who might be witness - and cried out.

“See what you would have me do! What I will do to save you, cowards who dare to call themselves gods and rulers; who send a brother to kill a brother. I bid you bear witness!”

A thin shaft of light broke the dark skies as Loki’s frost charm crumbled. It shone on the blue that crept up over the trickster god’s neck and cheekbones, revealing his frost giant nature. The abandoned Jotunheim runt, the lost prince who walked between two worlds and belonged in neither, now to die as he was born.

Thor swung the mighty hammer.

~

Red In The Snow : 2

2.
Death In The Woods




He will bring you down without mercy.

 
Death, from the one person you cannot kill.

The Norns had spoken. And the Norns never lied.

Loki looked up at the sky with a small smile. He liked the effect of the snow against the dark, towering silhouettes of the night-time forest. As far as a spontaneous trick went, it was pretty good.

He hadn’t spent much time crafting the frost-fall. Ice came naturally to him.

It was, after all, in his blood.

He closed his eyes and walked on, stretching a hand ahead of him to feel ahead. Recently he had begun to practise this useful trick of seeing with his senses, not his eyes. It was a trick Blind Hod had taught him. Now he was a greater master of it than Hod was.

He could run. He could rush through the woods like a whisper. But why prolong the hunt? They both knew how this would end. With the heart now beating within him in Thor’s hands and his head on a tray. How lucky that he would be attending this year’s grand feast, after all. Albeit not in the manner he’d have liked.

And how far could he go? And where? He, whose strength lay in magic and manipulation; not in battle-rage or endurance. Once, when he'd collapsed in battle, his brother (half-brother) had picked him up and continued fighting. Loki had spent the rest of the fight slung over Thor's shoulder, glad for the warm, well-muscled shoulders he clung to.

There was nothing to cling to now.

His outstretched hands, an extension of his keen senses, called to the wild. A fawn who had strayed from its mother gamboled up and brushed against his knees. A grey-winged bird - Loki had a fondness for birds - flitted through the boughs to hover above his shoulder.

Then something else came.

Heavy footsteps in the snow, the pace and gait all too familiar.

The huntsman had arrived.

Death, golden-haired and glorious, will come for you in the night.

A small knife-like smile broke the quiet of his face...

~

Red In The Snow : 1

1 .
Snow In Asgard

Hair as black as night. Skin as white as snow.

In his well-lit chamber, the hunter kneels.

The mighty Mjolnir feels heavy in his hand tonight. It was forged to be indestructible - one of the most-feared weapons of the Aesir. And soon it will crush his half-sibling into blood and shards of bone. This is his duty.

He has been ordered to slay the beautiful one who has wreaked much havoc in the heavens. To annihilate all but his head and heart, which are to be brought back on a platter. What cruel punishment that his death must come at the hands of the one person he truly loves.

Even now he imagines all too strongly the final scene. Those mischievous eyes widening as the head of the ruthless Mjolnir becomes the last thing they see. The same eyes, now lifeless and glassy. The twitching lips, so quick to slice with words, never to smile again. And the red, the neverending red, seeping into the grass, the hide of his boots.

At the end, all he will be left with is a warm heart and a river of black hair - black as night - spilling forth from a severed head.

Outside, it is snowing softly.

It never snows in Asgard.

So this is the god of mischief’s last act, Thor thinks. To rain frosty tears upon a land that has never known anything but the sun’s gentle glow.

The hammer-wielding huntsman, the golden son, heir to the throne, rises and goes to slay his beloved.

~ ~ ~

A Thor / Snow White crossover

Yes, I am writing fan fiction. BECAUSE I CAN. Deal with it.

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