Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven...
(Story Only) Black Magic Woman
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Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, Omake: Magic Systems, Chapter Eight, Chapter Nine, Chapter Ten Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Chapter Eleven, Chapter Twelve, Omake: /r/superheroes, Chapter Thirteen, Chapter Fourteen Part One, Part Two, Chapter Fifteen Part One, Part Two,
Chapter One
You know how, to hear some people tell it, it's possible to end up shunted into a new world just by going to sleep and waking up there?
Yeah, I drove into a goddamn hole.
It was not my idea, I promise you; the long and short of it is, I was stopped at a light waiting for the guy ahead of me to make his left turn, he made it, I made my turn, a rip in the fabric of reality opened before me to reveal a vast cosmic abyss, I slammed on the brakes, and the blind idiot behind me rammed me into its gaping maw before hitting his own brakes.
(In retrospect, I have to wonder what – if anything – he told his insurance company.)
So there I was, screaming inside my head, reverting to basic driving school instructions for lack of anything else to do, scanning my mirrors and the glittering road ahead for elderly sorcerers and joyriding kid-Planeswalkers. Luckily none were in evidence. Plenty of whirling nebulae and streaking lights, though. I suppose I'm fortunate that I'm not one of those people who threw up watching the Speed Racer movie, because the colour palette of interdimensional travel tends toward 'kindergarten classroom'; it was like if Kandinsky had busted out his Crayolas and glitter glue one day and graffiti'd the hyperspatial wormhole from Star Wars.
"My god... it's full of stars," I whispered. I figured I would never have a better reason to, considering I was likely to be dead within the next few minutes. If this wasn't a death hallucination already.
Finally, with a bump so gentle I actually laughed in shock when I felt it, the car landed.
While the landing was soft, I had to step on the brakes almost immediately; I nearly hit some poor woman carrying a basket of oranges, who dove out of the way. If I had been a halfsecond later I might've taken out the kiosk selling housewares behind her, but as it was I merely jostled the counter, along with my nerves.
For a moment I just sat there, and tried to catch my breath. Then a merchant-lady poked her head out over the rows of porcelain bowls that filled my windshield, and, satisfied that she was not about to go flying, got to her feet with a frown.
"I'm sorry," I mumbled under my breath, still too dazed to move.
After taking a moment to collect myself, I raised one hand defensively while I put the car in park and unbuckled my seatbelt with the other, and repeated, louder than before, "I'm sorry! Hold on, I'll see what I can do about this."
"You've done more than enough, in my opinion!" the woman said indignantly, holding up a shattered vase.
"Oh, crap," I said, quickly getting out of the car. "How much was it? I have some cash on me – well," I added hesitantly, looking around, "I don't know if it's worth anything, here..."
It didn't look like the kind of city that saw cash of any kind change hands often. Everything was clean, shiny, and new – or at least it looked that way; the buildings were an odd blend of breathtaking crystalline skyscrapers and low-rise structures that brought to mind an affluent Southern Californian shopping centre. The whole place screamed 'plastic and wire transfers only'.
The people had the well-fed and well-rested look of first-worlders (though a much larger proportion of them seemed to be in good shape than the people back home), and their clothes, although generally in a rather more traditional style than their surroundings would lead me to expect, were of fine wools, silks, and leather – high-quality and long-wearing materials. Many of the women wore gold brooches and amber necklaces, and a few wore jewellery of stones and metals I couldn't identify.
A trifle selfconsciously, I pulled my camel-hair coat closed, suddenly embarrassed by my thin t-shirt and acrylic cardigan.
I'll bet if Dubai tried to ask this place to the prom she'd ditch him to spend the weekend at her parents' lakehouse with Minas Tirith, I thought.
How have you ever talked anyone into having sex with you? another part of me wondered, incredulous.
"Cash?" the woman said in disbelief. "First I've heard of a witch carrying coin on her. There'll be no need for that, girl; remake what you broke and you can be on your way. You and your..." She eyed the car warily. "... carriage."
Witch?
I have to admit, for every part of me that was now worried my entrance had given people entirely the wrong idea about me, there was another part that was ridiculously flattered that someone had mistaken me for a magic-user.
"For Asgard!" a tiny voice yelled before I could reply, and a mop-haired little boy ran out of the crowd waving a wooden sword. Making a beeline for the sedan, he wasted no time setting about 'smiting' my vehicle.
"Whoa!" I cried, leaping over and pulling the sword out of his hands. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, easy, there, man-"
"Oi! Unhand my blade, witch!" he demanded immediately, kicking me futily in the shins. A few passersby chuckled, which I found more than a little reassuring; if they were laughing, I didn't suppose anyone was about to start shrieking about a foul sorceress bullying children.
"You're going to hit me just for falling through a portal?" I lifted the sword into the air to keep it out of grabbing range.
"Only witches can use portals!" he insisted, crossing his arms skeptically. "Honest folk use the Bifrost. Everyone knows that!"
My heart leapt into my throat.
Bifrost. And they're pronouncing it American-style. 'For Asgard'. Oh, shit, please let this be the movie universe, please oh please oh please, I cannot handle comics canon without internet access...
"Tell you what," I said with a sigh. "I'll give your sword back if you promise not to keep bashing up my car. Or me, or any of my other stuff," I added, knowing from fifteen years as an older sister the importance of not giving children loopholes. "Deal?"
He growled, and I was unable to keep from smiling at how cute he sounded. "The men of Asgard don't make deals with invaders, woman."
"Njali, you mind your manners!" the woman with the shattered vase scolded. "Or I'll tell your mother you've been playing soldiers when you should be at your lessons!" She gave me an apologetic look. "Begging your pardon, miss. Now, about my wares-"
"'m not playing, she's a witch!" he interrupted, with all the usual exhasperation of a small person surrounded by useless grownups. "We all saw!"
"What exactly was it about my wildly careening into someone's place of business with a stupid look on my face that made you think driving through a portal was my idea?" I asked, my voice starting to get a little shrill. It wasn't even eleven yet and I was in another universe; today was not looking like a great day, to say the least.
"All right, move aside," a voice came over the crowd, and the onlookers quickly parted to reveal three men in gleaming armour. The short one – well, short by the standards of the locals, he was still 5'10" at least – gestured at me with his spear. "You, girl, how did you come to be here?"
In person, those dorky-looking helmets are a lot less amusing.
Slowly, feeling like a complete nitwit, I lowered the toy sword.
"I fell through a rift in reality," I said nervously. "Forgive me, is there somewhere I can park my car? I don't want it to keep obstructing the thoroughfare."
My attempt at steering the conversation in the direction of the mundane seemed to defuse the tension a bit; the man retracted his spear and nodded, though he didn't look any friendlier.
"My mam runs a carriagehouse up on the Street of Hay," Njali piped up, apparently having forgotten his previous stance on witches.
"You may store your conveyance at the palace stable," the lead guardsman said, ignoring the boy.
I could feel the blood rushing to my face. "The palace? But-"
"You are expected," he cut me off.
"Oooooof course I am," I muttered miserably.
With a sigh, I handed the wooden sword back to the little boy. "Good work holding me off until the reinforcements showed up, young man. You did your family proud."
He jutted his chin out proudly and ran back into the crowd.
"Here!" The woman with the vase called, slightly more uncertainly than before. "What about my damaged property? Who's going to pay for this?"
"Shut up, Arnveig, you old skinflint," one of the other guards said dismissively, "that's the same vase those hoodlums smashed last month and we all know it. What are you called, girl?" he added in my direction.
"Magda Quickfinger," I said, whilst performing the mental equivalent of a roll of the eyes. Really? That's the best you can do on the spot, a name from a Pathfinder game four years ago? Why not just go whole hog and call yourself Alyosha Popovich, for fuck's sake.
"You must come with us, Magda Quickfinger," the short one said, with much more solemnity than a name that silly warrants.
I took a deep breath. Well. Okay. Time to dig in. You saw Thor 2, you know how this goes. If you behave like an ordinary modern mortal, they'll treat you like a dimwitted pet. Show some dignity, girl.
"Very good," I said archly, retaking my seat behind the wheel and closing the door. "Lead on."
"Make way!" called the last guard, turning back the way the group had come. The spectators began to disperse a bit, heading to one side of the street or the other.
As I took the parking brake off and slowly got the car properly oriented, I saw the boy, Njali, following my escort, making the call along with them, but adding his own flavour:
"Make way for Lady Magda, the Car-Tamer!"
You know how, to hear some people tell it, it's possible to end up shunted into a new world just by going to sleep and waking up there?
Yeah, I drove into a goddamn hole.
It was not my idea, I promise you; the long and short of it is, I was stopped at a light waiting for the guy ahead of me to make his left turn, he made it, I made my turn, a rip in the fabric of reality opened before me to reveal a vast cosmic abyss, I slammed on the brakes, and the blind idiot behind me rammed me into its gaping maw before hitting his own brakes.
(In retrospect, I have to wonder what – if anything – he told his insurance company.)
So there I was, screaming inside my head, reverting to basic driving school instructions for lack of anything else to do, scanning my mirrors and the glittering road ahead for elderly sorcerers and joyriding kid-Planeswalkers. Luckily none were in evidence. Plenty of whirling nebulae and streaking lights, though. I suppose I'm fortunate that I'm not one of those people who threw up watching the Speed Racer movie, because the colour palette of interdimensional travel tends toward 'kindergarten classroom'; it was like if Kandinsky had busted out his Crayolas and glitter glue one day and graffiti'd the hyperspatial wormhole from Star Wars.
"My god... it's full of stars," I whispered. I figured I would never have a better reason to, considering I was likely to be dead within the next few minutes. If this wasn't a death hallucination already.
Finally, with a bump so gentle I actually laughed in shock when I felt it, the car landed.
While the landing was soft, I had to step on the brakes almost immediately; I nearly hit some poor woman carrying a basket of oranges, who dove out of the way. If I had been a halfsecond later I might've taken out the kiosk selling housewares behind her, but as it was I merely jostled the counter, along with my nerves.
For a moment I just sat there, and tried to catch my breath. Then a merchant-lady poked her head out over the rows of porcelain bowls that filled my windshield, and, satisfied that she was not about to go flying, got to her feet with a frown.
"I'm sorry," I mumbled under my breath, still too dazed to move.
After taking a moment to collect myself, I raised one hand defensively while I put the car in park and unbuckled my seatbelt with the other, and repeated, louder than before, "I'm sorry! Hold on, I'll see what I can do about this."
"You've done more than enough, in my opinion!" the woman said indignantly, holding up a shattered vase.
"Oh, crap," I said, quickly getting out of the car. "How much was it? I have some cash on me – well," I added hesitantly, looking around, "I don't know if it's worth anything, here..."
It didn't look like the kind of city that saw cash of any kind change hands often. Everything was clean, shiny, and new – or at least it looked that way; the buildings were an odd blend of breathtaking crystalline skyscrapers and low-rise structures that brought to mind an affluent Southern Californian shopping centre. The whole place screamed 'plastic and wire transfers only'.
The people had the well-fed and well-rested look of first-worlders (though a much larger proportion of them seemed to be in good shape than the people back home), and their clothes, although generally in a rather more traditional style than their surroundings would lead me to expect, were of fine wools, silks, and leather – high-quality and long-wearing materials. Many of the women wore gold brooches and amber necklaces, and a few wore jewellery of stones and metals I couldn't identify.
A trifle selfconsciously, I pulled my camel-hair coat closed, suddenly embarrassed by my thin t-shirt and acrylic cardigan.
I'll bet if Dubai tried to ask this place to the prom she'd ditch him to spend the weekend at her parents' lakehouse with Minas Tirith, I thought.
How have you ever talked anyone into having sex with you? another part of me wondered, incredulous.
"Cash?" the woman said in disbelief. "First I've heard of a witch carrying coin on her. There'll be no need for that, girl; remake what you broke and you can be on your way. You and your..." She eyed the car warily. "... carriage."
Witch?
I have to admit, for every part of me that was now worried my entrance had given people entirely the wrong idea about me, there was another part that was ridiculously flattered that someone had mistaken me for a magic-user.
"For Asgard!" a tiny voice yelled before I could reply, and a mop-haired little boy ran out of the crowd waving a wooden sword. Making a beeline for the sedan, he wasted no time setting about 'smiting' my vehicle.
"Whoa!" I cried, leaping over and pulling the sword out of his hands. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, easy, there, man-"
"Oi! Unhand my blade, witch!" he demanded immediately, kicking me futily in the shins. A few passersby chuckled, which I found more than a little reassuring; if they were laughing, I didn't suppose anyone was about to start shrieking about a foul sorceress bullying children.
"You're going to hit me just for falling through a portal?" I lifted the sword into the air to keep it out of grabbing range.
"Only witches can use portals!" he insisted, crossing his arms skeptically. "Honest folk use the Bifrost. Everyone knows that!"
My heart leapt into my throat.
Bifrost. And they're pronouncing it American-style. 'For Asgard'. Oh, shit, please let this be the movie universe, please oh please oh please, I cannot handle comics canon without internet access...
"Tell you what," I said with a sigh. "I'll give your sword back if you promise not to keep bashing up my car. Or me, or any of my other stuff," I added, knowing from fifteen years as an older sister the importance of not giving children loopholes. "Deal?"
He growled, and I was unable to keep from smiling at how cute he sounded. "The men of Asgard don't make deals with invaders, woman."
"Njali, you mind your manners!" the woman with the shattered vase scolded. "Or I'll tell your mother you've been playing soldiers when you should be at your lessons!" She gave me an apologetic look. "Begging your pardon, miss. Now, about my wares-"
"'m not playing, she's a witch!" he interrupted, with all the usual exhasperation of a small person surrounded by useless grownups. "We all saw!"
"What exactly was it about my wildly careening into someone's place of business with a stupid look on my face that made you think driving through a portal was my idea?" I asked, my voice starting to get a little shrill. It wasn't even eleven yet and I was in another universe; today was not looking like a great day, to say the least.
"All right, move aside," a voice came over the crowd, and the onlookers quickly parted to reveal three men in gleaming armour. The short one – well, short by the standards of the locals, he was still 5'10" at least – gestured at me with his spear. "You, girl, how did you come to be here?"
In person, those dorky-looking helmets are a lot less amusing.
Slowly, feeling like a complete nitwit, I lowered the toy sword.
"I fell through a rift in reality," I said nervously. "Forgive me, is there somewhere I can park my car? I don't want it to keep obstructing the thoroughfare."
My attempt at steering the conversation in the direction of the mundane seemed to defuse the tension a bit; the man retracted his spear and nodded, though he didn't look any friendlier.
"My mam runs a carriagehouse up on the Street of Hay," Njali piped up, apparently having forgotten his previous stance on witches.
"You may store your conveyance at the palace stable," the lead guardsman said, ignoring the boy.
I could feel the blood rushing to my face. "The palace? But-"
"You are expected," he cut me off.
"Oooooof course I am," I muttered miserably.
With a sigh, I handed the wooden sword back to the little boy. "Good work holding me off until the reinforcements showed up, young man. You did your family proud."
He jutted his chin out proudly and ran back into the crowd.
"Here!" The woman with the vase called, slightly more uncertainly than before. "What about my damaged property? Who's going to pay for this?"
"Shut up, Arnveig, you old skinflint," one of the other guards said dismissively, "that's the same vase those hoodlums smashed last month and we all know it. What are you called, girl?" he added in my direction.
"Magda Quickfinger," I said, whilst performing the mental equivalent of a roll of the eyes. Really? That's the best you can do on the spot, a name from a Pathfinder game four years ago? Why not just go whole hog and call yourself Alyosha Popovich, for fuck's sake.
"You must come with us, Magda Quickfinger," the short one said, with much more solemnity than a name that silly warrants.
I took a deep breath. Well. Okay. Time to dig in. You saw Thor 2, you know how this goes. If you behave like an ordinary modern mortal, they'll treat you like a dimwitted pet. Show some dignity, girl.
"Very good," I said archly, retaking my seat behind the wheel and closing the door. "Lead on."
"Make way!" called the last guard, turning back the way the group had come. The spectators began to disperse a bit, heading to one side of the street or the other.
As I took the parking brake off and slowly got the car properly oriented, I saw the boy, Njali, following my escort, making the call along with them, but adding his own flavour:
"Make way for Lady Magda, the Car-Tamer!"
Chapter Two
As I drove, I thought. And planned. And quietly panicked.
Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry, you can cry later when you're alone, I promise, but right now we have to work. You are not going to die; not if you get a grip.
My lack of optimism on the survival front was simple; all I knew for sure was that I was in a place called Asgard, and someone in the palace wanted to see me. Obviously everything around me would seem to suggest that I was in a Marvel Universe of some description, but the fact that I came to that conclusion so easily meant that it was just as likely, if not moreso, that someone was fucking with me. If I was willing to accept that I might be in the Marvel universe, shouldn't it then follow that I ought to be willing to accept that one of the many, many reality-warping or illusion-casting assholes in that universe (pleasenotLokipleasenotLokipleasenotLokipleasenotLoki) might have me in their clutches? If that were the case there was more or less nothing that couldn't happen to me next; I was powerless, or as good as. What good was a pseudonym if they could just pluck my real name out of my head and play merry hell with my autonomy, my soul, whathaveyou? I wasn't a main character, or dating a main character, so there wasn't even the hope of rescue.
In the back of my mind, some optimistic bit of paranoia was attempting to cheer me up by suggesting that this whole experience was just me descending into full-blown schizophrenia.
But there was no point in worrying about that. If that were the case, it was already game over. It was more constructive for me to proceed as though I were actually here.
Nevertheless, even if everything I now saw, smelt, heard was real, my situation still wasn't looking too rosy. The list of notable palace-dwelling Asgardians (subject to timeline and universe variability, of course) who would be interested in a tempest-tossed mortal was not long, but all of the names on it were bad news as far as I was concerned.
When I finally pulled into the stable (the horses and oh my god giant kitty! were less than happy with the new addition to their ranks), I made a quick survey of the car, checking the back seat and the glove compartment for anything I could use in this situation, anything that could be helpful. I wasn't asking for miracles, I just wanted to know if maybe I could have a shot at surviving until lunch. And if not, that I could at least cause some kind of damage on my way out.
My inventory as it stood was mostly useless, either because the objects could only work in plans that would take time and a familiarity with my surroundings I didn't have, or because I couldn't possibly conceal them on my person without arousing suspicion.
However, never underestimate a writer of phantom thief stories. Certain discreet items went into my purse, and the most important one fit right in my coat pocket. Then, checking my hair and makeup a final time, I got out of the car.
The great big fluffy cat who was just a precious muffin now wasn't he jumped about a foot in the air when he heard the lock-confirmation beep. I would have laughed, but his expression was an exact mirror to my emotional state at the moment, so instead I apologized for startling him.
"I say! Decent people are still resting at this hour, you know," he sniffed, and settled his head back down on his paws.
The guard in charge coughed quietly, and I fell into step behind him, with the other fellows flanking me.
I tried to sneak a couple of looks at them as we walked. They didn't look bewitched, but then, this wasn't a children's cartoon; there was no reason to give them pupilless eyes or a sparkly-green aura around their heads to tip off the viewer. Quite the opposite, in fact; it'd be a pretty shitty mind-control spell that announced itself that blatantly.
The palace was... most definitely a palace. There were no concessions to upper-middle-class conceptions of 'taste' here; anything that could be slathered in gold or lacquer, was. I tried to keep pace with the others, but it was difficult when I kept passing jaw-dropping mosaics and tapestries. Eventually I had to force myself to keep my eyes dead ahead, or there was no chance of me ever looking like I had a right to be here.
"Are you at liberty to inform me whom I'm to visit?" I asked as we mounted a stairway.
"No," the leader said.
... well, I guess that settles that. Not only was this meeting a mystery to me, it was supposed to be somewhat private, too.
So I wasn't as startled as I might have been when I was shoved into a secret passage behind a statue by one guard while the other two kept walking.
Which definitely isn't to say I wasn't startled at all.
"Unhand me!" I snarled, leveraging myself out of his grasp and elbowing him in the stomach. To my surprise, he actually staggered backward with a muffled 'oof'. Pulling away and turning 'round in a martial stance that was doubtless amateurish and wide open, I eyed his midsection, and frowned.
He's wearing armour. How can I possibly have done anything to him?
"What is the meaning of this?" I demanded.
He straightened, and held a hand out placatingly.
"My apologies, Magda Quickfinger," he said, sounding like he was sure he'd fucked up bad, which I took as a good sign. "Fear not, you are not a prisoner, but discretion is called for in this matter."
"Discretion?" I said, a brief laugh falling out of my mouth alongside the word. "I drove a white Prius out of a wormhole in full view of the public. I think we've passed the point of subtlety." At least, I hoped we had; I hoped it wouldn't be so easy to make me disappear.
"Your travel habits are your own concern," the man replied, "but my Lady's affairs are mine."
And he gestured down the torchlit hall.
I contemplated making a break for it, but thought better of it. Where the hell would I even go? It was a straight passageway with no doors leading off it that I could see.
I exhaled hard. "If I'm not a prisoner, then surely you won't mind walking in front of me rather than behind."
He nodded once, said, "Of course," and strode past me.
I blinked. That was literally the first time in my life I'd made a request like that and the guy hadn't rolled his eyes or laughed or slouched into that would-be-good-guy posture that says "You're irrational and paranoid, but I'm gonna try and be cool about this lest you go crazy and call me a rapist at some later date." It was refreshing to have a stranger show that kind of respect for my concerns.
Of course he doesn't mind walking in front of you, I thought a moment later as I followed him. You're a human. It doesn't matter where you are, he can take you. And if he can't, the Enchantress sure as shit can.
Amora had been at the bottom of my shortlist of disastrous Possibly Interested Parties, but not for lack of power. I just thought she was least likely to be interested in letting a younger woman with innocent-looking grey-blue eyes within ten yards of the possibility of running into Thor, especially not with a sob story to spill about being alone in a strange new world.
(Yes, innocent-looking. I know this for a fact, I've seen them. I used to have a lot of fun in high school calling people motherfuckers and watching them bluescreen.)
But now, I had to answer the question of why. What was she looking for? Why did she need someone from another universe? Why did she need me?
Everything I could think of was self-aggrandizing. There was some prophecy, I had some physical property that humans from this universe lacked, my synaesthesia was a sign of some heretofore undiscussed divine heritage and she was either going to drop a Mystique bomb on me or kill me for being Thor's kid of whom she'd wiped the memory.
It's the Marvel universe, it's supposed to be wacky, I thought with manic self-pity.
As I walked, I slowly and carefully slid my right hand into my pocket and closed it around my only shot.
When my mother dropped me off at university, the last thing she did before she hugged me and got back in the car to drive home was take her kubotan off her keyring and hand it to me, to slip onto mine. U of T's Mississauga campus is full of leafy forest paths and secluded walkways, and the last thing she wanted was for me to be walking along them after dark unarmed.
It's a black steel rod about five inches long that tapers at one end, with grooves to fit your fingers in. Cops call it the 'instrument of attitude adjustment'. Properly trained, someone can use it to restrain a person's wrists, or hammer at small, vulnerable points on the human body, like the armpit of a six foot guardsman where the armour doesn't cover.
Or a woman's eye.
It was really the longest of shots, not least because I didn't actually have that training; all I knew was how to use the damn thing to beef up my punches. But by definition an only shot means you don't have any other viable options, so I was going to have to make it work. After that I'd pull those bungie cords Dad kept in the back seat for some mysterious automotive purpose out of my purse, hook or tie them together, climb out a window (I was pretty sure we were still only on the second floor), and haul ass back to the stables to try and get the fuck out of here somehow. It'd been over a decade since that single week of riding camp, but I still remembered vaguely how to tack a horse and ride English-style. I'd ride breakneck for the Bifrost and beg Heimdall on my knees if necessary to send me to Midgard. Getting home probably wasn't in the cards, but at least Marvel Earth has procedures in place to absorb otherworldly weirdos.
After far, far too short a time, we reached the door. Beefcake gave a knock, and a sweet voice called, "Enter!"
I steeled myself. By which I mean I tried desperately not to shove past the man in front of me and charge my kidnapper like a fear-and-rage-fuelled dumbass.
I'm sorry you'll never know what happened to me, Mom.
The room was in stark contrast to the passageway that led to it; everything in here was bright and airy, from the pale, foam-like curtains along the full wall of windows to the butter-coloured settees and their colourful cushions. Even the tables and the bookcases had long, delicately-carved legs, and the wood panelling on the walls was in a herringbone pattern that drew the eye upward from the tumbling-block marble tiles on the floor to the whimsical stamped-silver ceiling above. In a castle full of handsome masculine architecture, here at last was a woman's touch.
"My Queen," the guard said, bowing, "I've brought the girl as requested."
"Thank you, Hlin," said a woman seated at the rosewood desk at the far end of the room. Standing, she added, "That will be all."
The guard hesitated, but bowed again, and departed by the same door through which we'd entered.
I, meanwhile, struggled not to outright cry in relief as the woman approached.
Frigga. It was Frigga. And what's more, it was Rene Russo-Frigga, in all her goldielocks glory.
It was like getting shoved into a swimming pool on a hot summer day.
I was in the cinematic universe.
I knew things here. I didn't have to focus on just surviving for now, I could have an actual life that wouldn't be over in the next twenty minutes. I could plan.
I would have curtsied, but between my shaking knees and the jeans I was wearing, I decided a Japanese-style ladies' bow was a safer bet.
"Your majesty," I said, swallowing hard to steady my voice, "I am more pleased to make your acquaintance than I can possibly explain."
As I drove, I thought. And planned. And quietly panicked.
Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry, you can cry later when you're alone, I promise, but right now we have to work. You are not going to die; not if you get a grip.
My lack of optimism on the survival front was simple; all I knew for sure was that I was in a place called Asgard, and someone in the palace wanted to see me. Obviously everything around me would seem to suggest that I was in a Marvel Universe of some description, but the fact that I came to that conclusion so easily meant that it was just as likely, if not moreso, that someone was fucking with me. If I was willing to accept that I might be in the Marvel universe, shouldn't it then follow that I ought to be willing to accept that one of the many, many reality-warping or illusion-casting assholes in that universe (pleasenotLokipleasenotLokipleasenotLokipleasenotLoki) might have me in their clutches? If that were the case there was more or less nothing that couldn't happen to me next; I was powerless, or as good as. What good was a pseudonym if they could just pluck my real name out of my head and play merry hell with my autonomy, my soul, whathaveyou? I wasn't a main character, or dating a main character, so there wasn't even the hope of rescue.
In the back of my mind, some optimistic bit of paranoia was attempting to cheer me up by suggesting that this whole experience was just me descending into full-blown schizophrenia.
But there was no point in worrying about that. If that were the case, it was already game over. It was more constructive for me to proceed as though I were actually here.
Nevertheless, even if everything I now saw, smelt, heard was real, my situation still wasn't looking too rosy. The list of notable palace-dwelling Asgardians (subject to timeline and universe variability, of course) who would be interested in a tempest-tossed mortal was not long, but all of the names on it were bad news as far as I was concerned.
When I finally pulled into the stable (the horses and oh my god giant kitty! were less than happy with the new addition to their ranks), I made a quick survey of the car, checking the back seat and the glove compartment for anything I could use in this situation, anything that could be helpful. I wasn't asking for miracles, I just wanted to know if maybe I could have a shot at surviving until lunch. And if not, that I could at least cause some kind of damage on my way out.
My inventory as it stood was mostly useless, either because the objects could only work in plans that would take time and a familiarity with my surroundings I didn't have, or because I couldn't possibly conceal them on my person without arousing suspicion.
However, never underestimate a writer of phantom thief stories. Certain discreet items went into my purse, and the most important one fit right in my coat pocket. Then, checking my hair and makeup a final time, I got out of the car.
The great big fluffy cat who was just a precious muffin now wasn't he jumped about a foot in the air when he heard the lock-confirmation beep. I would have laughed, but his expression was an exact mirror to my emotional state at the moment, so instead I apologized for startling him.
"I say! Decent people are still resting at this hour, you know," he sniffed, and settled his head back down on his paws.
The guard in charge coughed quietly, and I fell into step behind him, with the other fellows flanking me.
I tried to sneak a couple of looks at them as we walked. They didn't look bewitched, but then, this wasn't a children's cartoon; there was no reason to give them pupilless eyes or a sparkly-green aura around their heads to tip off the viewer. Quite the opposite, in fact; it'd be a pretty shitty mind-control spell that announced itself that blatantly.
The palace was... most definitely a palace. There were no concessions to upper-middle-class conceptions of 'taste' here; anything that could be slathered in gold or lacquer, was. I tried to keep pace with the others, but it was difficult when I kept passing jaw-dropping mosaics and tapestries. Eventually I had to force myself to keep my eyes dead ahead, or there was no chance of me ever looking like I had a right to be here.
"Are you at liberty to inform me whom I'm to visit?" I asked as we mounted a stairway.
"No," the leader said.
... well, I guess that settles that. Not only was this meeting a mystery to me, it was supposed to be somewhat private, too.
So I wasn't as startled as I might have been when I was shoved into a secret passage behind a statue by one guard while the other two kept walking.
Which definitely isn't to say I wasn't startled at all.
"Unhand me!" I snarled, leveraging myself out of his grasp and elbowing him in the stomach. To my surprise, he actually staggered backward with a muffled 'oof'. Pulling away and turning 'round in a martial stance that was doubtless amateurish and wide open, I eyed his midsection, and frowned.
He's wearing armour. How can I possibly have done anything to him?
"What is the meaning of this?" I demanded.
He straightened, and held a hand out placatingly.
"My apologies, Magda Quickfinger," he said, sounding like he was sure he'd fucked up bad, which I took as a good sign. "Fear not, you are not a prisoner, but discretion is called for in this matter."
"Discretion?" I said, a brief laugh falling out of my mouth alongside the word. "I drove a white Prius out of a wormhole in full view of the public. I think we've passed the point of subtlety." At least, I hoped we had; I hoped it wouldn't be so easy to make me disappear.
"Your travel habits are your own concern," the man replied, "but my Lady's affairs are mine."
And he gestured down the torchlit hall.
I contemplated making a break for it, but thought better of it. Where the hell would I even go? It was a straight passageway with no doors leading off it that I could see.
I exhaled hard. "If I'm not a prisoner, then surely you won't mind walking in front of me rather than behind."
He nodded once, said, "Of course," and strode past me.
I blinked. That was literally the first time in my life I'd made a request like that and the guy hadn't rolled his eyes or laughed or slouched into that would-be-good-guy posture that says "You're irrational and paranoid, but I'm gonna try and be cool about this lest you go crazy and call me a rapist at some later date." It was refreshing to have a stranger show that kind of respect for my concerns.
Of course he doesn't mind walking in front of you, I thought a moment later as I followed him. You're a human. It doesn't matter where you are, he can take you. And if he can't, the Enchantress sure as shit can.
Amora had been at the bottom of my shortlist of disastrous Possibly Interested Parties, but not for lack of power. I just thought she was least likely to be interested in letting a younger woman with innocent-looking grey-blue eyes within ten yards of the possibility of running into Thor, especially not with a sob story to spill about being alone in a strange new world.
(Yes, innocent-looking. I know this for a fact, I've seen them. I used to have a lot of fun in high school calling people motherfuckers and watching them bluescreen.)
But now, I had to answer the question of why. What was she looking for? Why did she need someone from another universe? Why did she need me?
Everything I could think of was self-aggrandizing. There was some prophecy, I had some physical property that humans from this universe lacked, my synaesthesia was a sign of some heretofore undiscussed divine heritage and she was either going to drop a Mystique bomb on me or kill me for being Thor's kid of whom she'd wiped the memory.
It's the Marvel universe, it's supposed to be wacky, I thought with manic self-pity.
As I walked, I slowly and carefully slid my right hand into my pocket and closed it around my only shot.
When my mother dropped me off at university, the last thing she did before she hugged me and got back in the car to drive home was take her kubotan off her keyring and hand it to me, to slip onto mine. U of T's Mississauga campus is full of leafy forest paths and secluded walkways, and the last thing she wanted was for me to be walking along them after dark unarmed.
It's a black steel rod about five inches long that tapers at one end, with grooves to fit your fingers in. Cops call it the 'instrument of attitude adjustment'. Properly trained, someone can use it to restrain a person's wrists, or hammer at small, vulnerable points on the human body, like the armpit of a six foot guardsman where the armour doesn't cover.
Or a woman's eye.
It was really the longest of shots, not least because I didn't actually have that training; all I knew was how to use the damn thing to beef up my punches. But by definition an only shot means you don't have any other viable options, so I was going to have to make it work. After that I'd pull those bungie cords Dad kept in the back seat for some mysterious automotive purpose out of my purse, hook or tie them together, climb out a window (I was pretty sure we were still only on the second floor), and haul ass back to the stables to try and get the fuck out of here somehow. It'd been over a decade since that single week of riding camp, but I still remembered vaguely how to tack a horse and ride English-style. I'd ride breakneck for the Bifrost and beg Heimdall on my knees if necessary to send me to Midgard. Getting home probably wasn't in the cards, but at least Marvel Earth has procedures in place to absorb otherworldly weirdos.
After far, far too short a time, we reached the door. Beefcake gave a knock, and a sweet voice called, "Enter!"
I steeled myself. By which I mean I tried desperately not to shove past the man in front of me and charge my kidnapper like a fear-and-rage-fuelled dumbass.
I'm sorry you'll never know what happened to me, Mom.
The room was in stark contrast to the passageway that led to it; everything in here was bright and airy, from the pale, foam-like curtains along the full wall of windows to the butter-coloured settees and their colourful cushions. Even the tables and the bookcases had long, delicately-carved legs, and the wood panelling on the walls was in a herringbone pattern that drew the eye upward from the tumbling-block marble tiles on the floor to the whimsical stamped-silver ceiling above. In a castle full of handsome masculine architecture, here at last was a woman's touch.
"My Queen," the guard said, bowing, "I've brought the girl as requested."
"Thank you, Hlin," said a woman seated at the rosewood desk at the far end of the room. Standing, she added, "That will be all."
The guard hesitated, but bowed again, and departed by the same door through which we'd entered.
I, meanwhile, struggled not to outright cry in relief as the woman approached.
Frigga. It was Frigga. And what's more, it was Rene Russo-Frigga, in all her goldielocks glory.
It was like getting shoved into a swimming pool on a hot summer day.
I was in the cinematic universe.
I knew things here. I didn't have to focus on just surviving for now, I could have an actual life that wouldn't be over in the next twenty minutes. I could plan.
I would have curtsied, but between my shaking knees and the jeans I was wearing, I decided a Japanese-style ladies' bow was a safer bet.
"Your majesty," I said, swallowing hard to steady my voice, "I am more pleased to make your acquaintance than I can possibly explain."
Chapter Three
"Rise, Magda Quickfinger," Frigga said gently, and I did so. "I hope your journey was not too distressing. If it had been in my power I would have sent someone to fetch you by the Bifrost, but I am given to understand that your realm is somewhat beyond our reach." The implied question hung in the air, but with so little pressure that I felt it would be the height of rudeness not to answer it.
She was good, I could already tell.
"I believe it is, ma'am," I said. "Before I explain, may I first ask if I was brought here for some purpose by a third party, or if it was pure chance as far as you can tell?"
She sighed. "It appears to be the latter. But it was ever thus with powerful sorceries. Please, sit."
She led me to the sitting area and told me to feel free to lay my coat over the backs of one of the chairs. I did so, and took a seat at a right angle to hers. The space between the arms of our chesterfields was filled by a small table bearing a plate of cream-filled pastries dusted with sugar, of a kind I'd never seen before. They smelled absolutely delicious, and I thought for a moment about asking if I could have one before I remembered my theory about this being a massive illusion and decided against it. If I was snatched by fair folk, there was every reason not to stuff every delicious thing I saw into my mouth.
"You hide your fear quite well."
I looked up in surprise, to see Frigga smiling indulgently at me. She reached into some artfully hidden pocket in that diaphanous gown of hers and pulled out a small something of iron. "If it will set your mind at ease, please take this." She held it out in her open palm. Looking it over, I saw that it was cast in the shape of a leaping cat.
I took it, and gasped. In that moment, I felt the weight of reality around me, and knew that I could not possibly be anything other than fully awake and present. I could feel all the veins in my body and the blood flowing through them, and that chill that runs down your spine when you come to a realization rolled out from the back of my neck to cover my whole body in a momentary flash, like a diagnostic test for my skin.
If you had asked me at the time how I knew this wasn't just another illusion layered overtop of the old one, I'd have looked at you like you'd just suggested using pancake batter to wash my car. This was no spell; this was the exact opposite of a spell.
"Thank you," I said very quietly, feeling about eight inches tall. I tried to hand the charm back to her, but she just pushed back my hand and shook her head.
"Keep it. You will have much greater need of it than I, I am sure."
Well, that's nice and ominous.
"Now, then," she went on, "how is it that a mortal woman of a realm not directly connected to the Nine knows not to eat food offered by elves?"
Clearing my throat, I did the only thing I could think of to do under the circumstances. I told her the truth.
"In my universe, there is an epic relating to events in a universe very much like this one, if not exactly like – I haven't seen enough of this place to tell. It's pure coincidence as far as I know," I added, in defense against the usual cry of 'seers!' that this kind of revelation prompts in stories, "but as you yourself said, with powerful magic involved it can be difficult to tell the difference."
I certainly wouldn't discount the possibility of Stan Lee being a prophet. He knows how to make one, at least.
"I see," Frigga said, sounding somewhat troubled. A moment later she let out a small laugh, trying to lighten her own mood. "No wonder you were so nervous; you must have thought you were going mad when you arrived."
"Honestly, I was more frightened when I heard that I was expected," I admitted with a smile. "Forgive me, but I'm quite aware there are people within Asgard whose intentions towards a stranded traveller from another world would be... less than pleasant."
Her smile became slightly sad. "It pains me to know my home is not regarded as a safe haven from such concerns."
"My apologies, ma'am," I said, wincing at my own tactlessness. Stupid morbid sense of humour. "At the very least, please know that I regard your company as just such a haven."
This wasn't pure flattery on my part. If you watch the movies, it becomes readily apparent that anyone Frigga takes under her protection stays protected, even if not necessarily by her. Hell, she even managed to keep Loki alive after the Jotunheim and Midgard fiascos.
She brightened a little bit at that, enough to tease me with her next question. "Oh? What reputation have I in your world, that I inspire such confidence?"
"Much the same as the All-Mother of our own legends," I said, before kicking myself for just dumping that on her.
As expected, that remark got a bit of a reaction. "Have I a double in your world, then?"
I flinched. How was I going to explain this?
"... the tales in the epic regarding Asgard are very, very loosely based upon a body of mythology and a faith originating in the North of my world," I admitted finally, trying to make that little voice in my head stop repeating 'we've entered an infinite recursion of mythorealism (Kyon-kun, denwa!)'. "Some things are similar and some are completely different – there are no Warriors Three in our legends, for example. Lady Sif is primarily concerned with agriculture, not war, and Loki..."
I really wasn't prepared to have a conversation about Loki.
"... is older," was the best I could do. As far as tl;drs go, it wasn't terrible. I just hoped she could get what I meant.
She got something, anyway; she gave me an appraising look.
She nodded at my necklace. "I had wondered why one born so far from Yggdrasil's reach would wear its likeness as a charm. You are a member of this faith, then, I take it?"
"In my own way," I replied, biting my lip. I was not telling the Foremost Lady that I worshipped an alternate-universe version of her foster son; it was entirely too fucked up a topic of conversation, even for this situation. Nor was I keen to get into the whole range of Odinism/Asatru/Northern Tradition/Norse Reconstructionism/eclectic paganism/my own bit of strangeness and the distinctions and conflicts between each. And fucking forget explaining Rokkatru to a woman whose husband lost an eye fighting the local equivalents of the jötnar.
"Sorry," I added lamely. I sort of felt like I should, you know?
Frigga laughed, and patted my knee. "You are the first mortal I've ever met who's apologized for that, I have to say." She picked up the tray of pastries (semlas, I later learned they were called) and offered me one.
"Thank you." It tasted a little like a paczki, only with marzipan stuffed in with the cream. I wasn't sure if I liked it, but I find sugar is always comforting in new situations, and so it proved now.
"Your majesty?" I asked, when I'd swallowed my first bite. "May I ask why I've been brought here? Was it just to satisfy your curiosity about my point of origin, or have you some need of a mortal hack writer?"
Frigga swiped a thumb across her lips to get the cream off them, then licked her thumb. I couldn't help but smile, having seen my grandmother and aunts do the same thing dozens of times.
"What do you know of magic?" she asked.
"... what kind of magic?" I said, frowning slightly. Being a geek, I actually knew quite a lot on the basic theory side of things in several different systems, at least in the same sense that a child who watches Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson knows some things about science. But this wasn't an online discussion of how to make a fusion universe from the components of DC, the Venture Brothers and Discworld; Frigga was a professional. And I was starting to think she was a professional who preferred the Socratic method.
"Any magic," she said, and while her tone was no less friendly, I got the impression the actual interview had begun. "How does it work?"
Well, unpublished or not, I was still a fantasy writer. We all have opinions on crap like that.
"I really think it depends on the type," I said honestly. "In my mind, magic is any process that subverts the guidelines of reality to achieve a different outcome than would occur without the aforementioned meddling. So one person might have been born with a strong tie to some elemental force that jumps to their aid whenever their emotions get the better of them, and another might study that force until they find out the proper way to coax it into doing what it does for the first person with no effort at all. Or someone might gain the favour of an elemental being through various means, and be able to employ spells of the element that way. And so on with non-elemental spells of the various kinds." I paused, and shook my head. "Or did you mean 'how does it work' in the sense of 'what allows people to use magic'?"
That smile was almost a smirk. "Whichever."
I nodded to myself. "Okay. A combination of willpower, their knowledge base, a set of skills I wouldn't be able to properly understand without studying the stuff myself, probably, and the payment, whatever that may be."
"Payment?" the goddess inquired, something glittering in her eyes.
"Magic costs something," I said, with what must have been a ridiculous level of confidence from someone who had never cast a real spell. "That's the one thing all magic has in common; you have to pay for it. It might be just the time you take and the attention you pay to learn the spell properly, or it might be a favour done later in exchange for the favour you want now, or it might be your life, but it always costs something. 'Teachings that do not speak of pain have no meaning.'"
I blinked. Oops. I... kinda got on a roll there, didn't I?
I looked back at Frigga. She wasn't smiling anymore, but she didn't... seem angry.
"... ma'am?" I asked hesitantly.
"Forgive me for asking such an... abstract question," she said, and she sounded like she was miles away.
Oh, crap.
"Your majesty?" I asked, in the voice I generally reserved for people who had asked me to wake them up from naps. "Are you having a vision?"
The focus came back into her eyes immediately, and she did not look pleased.
"No," she said coldly, "and you are not to reveal to anyone that that may be a possibility, do you understand me?"
"Yes," I said swiftly, frozen, unwilling to make any sudden movements while that glare was on me.
"Good." She exhaled. "I apologize for frightening you again. What you must think of me."
I shook my head. "No, it's a state secret, I understand. Our Frigga can't even tell people what she sees."
"That much we have in common," the Queen said, sounding very tired. "As I was saying, I apologize for springing a philosophical quandary on you, but I had to know I was making the right decision. I want to offer you an apprenticeship."
I nearly dropped my semla.
"With you?" I blurted out. "In magic?"
"Yes to the second, no to the first," she replied. "My son is in need of a pupil, to prove he has truly attained the mastery he claims."
Holy motherfucking shit I get to learn magic from Loki Loki Loki I should have driven through the torn fabric of reality years ago!!!
"What are you punishing him for?" was the first thing I could think of to say that wasn't inane fangirl gibberish.
That doesn't mean it was the first thing I said, though. Depends if you consider a brief, high-pitched squeak to fall under the heading of 'saying something' or not.
"Whatever gave you the impression I was punishing him?" Frigga asked, amused. "Do you believe your company so trying?"
"... um... would you like an honest answer to that question?"
"Nonsense," she said, taking my hand in both of hers, "I'm quite sure the two of you will get along famously." She gave me a conspiratorial wink. "Just don't let him bully you."
I suddenly got the strong impression that my acceptance of this offer was purely a formality.
Why would you say no? part of me thought. Are you insane? Magic! From a certified genius of the art! Who is smoking hot! And kind-of-sort-of Loki!
He's a Loki, I thought back stubbornly. He's not our Loki.
Of all the times to be picky about-! You realize we have literally nowhere else to go if we refuse, right? Can we please just trust the kind-hearted enormously-rich lady who can see the future?
"... I know you can't give me specifics," I said, watching her expression carefully, "but I've already worked out that you must have had a vision at some point to know I was going to come through that portal."
She didn't nod, but she didn't contradict me either. She was just waiting.
I swallowed. "What I want to know is..." C'mon, how do you get around this? "... knowing what you do, if you were in my position, would you say yes?"
This time it wasn't a smile. It was very nearly a smirk.
"Absolutely."
Fuck it. Gotta die of something.
"Rise, Magda Quickfinger," Frigga said gently, and I did so. "I hope your journey was not too distressing. If it had been in my power I would have sent someone to fetch you by the Bifrost, but I am given to understand that your realm is somewhat beyond our reach." The implied question hung in the air, but with so little pressure that I felt it would be the height of rudeness not to answer it.
She was good, I could already tell.
"I believe it is, ma'am," I said. "Before I explain, may I first ask if I was brought here for some purpose by a third party, or if it was pure chance as far as you can tell?"
She sighed. "It appears to be the latter. But it was ever thus with powerful sorceries. Please, sit."
She led me to the sitting area and told me to feel free to lay my coat over the backs of one of the chairs. I did so, and took a seat at a right angle to hers. The space between the arms of our chesterfields was filled by a small table bearing a plate of cream-filled pastries dusted with sugar, of a kind I'd never seen before. They smelled absolutely delicious, and I thought for a moment about asking if I could have one before I remembered my theory about this being a massive illusion and decided against it. If I was snatched by fair folk, there was every reason not to stuff every delicious thing I saw into my mouth.
"You hide your fear quite well."
I looked up in surprise, to see Frigga smiling indulgently at me. She reached into some artfully hidden pocket in that diaphanous gown of hers and pulled out a small something of iron. "If it will set your mind at ease, please take this." She held it out in her open palm. Looking it over, I saw that it was cast in the shape of a leaping cat.
I took it, and gasped. In that moment, I felt the weight of reality around me, and knew that I could not possibly be anything other than fully awake and present. I could feel all the veins in my body and the blood flowing through them, and that chill that runs down your spine when you come to a realization rolled out from the back of my neck to cover my whole body in a momentary flash, like a diagnostic test for my skin.
If you had asked me at the time how I knew this wasn't just another illusion layered overtop of the old one, I'd have looked at you like you'd just suggested using pancake batter to wash my car. This was no spell; this was the exact opposite of a spell.
"Thank you," I said very quietly, feeling about eight inches tall. I tried to hand the charm back to her, but she just pushed back my hand and shook her head.
"Keep it. You will have much greater need of it than I, I am sure."
Well, that's nice and ominous.
"Now, then," she went on, "how is it that a mortal woman of a realm not directly connected to the Nine knows not to eat food offered by elves?"
Clearing my throat, I did the only thing I could think of to do under the circumstances. I told her the truth.
"In my universe, there is an epic relating to events in a universe very much like this one, if not exactly like – I haven't seen enough of this place to tell. It's pure coincidence as far as I know," I added, in defense against the usual cry of 'seers!' that this kind of revelation prompts in stories, "but as you yourself said, with powerful magic involved it can be difficult to tell the difference."
I certainly wouldn't discount the possibility of Stan Lee being a prophet. He knows how to make one, at least.
"I see," Frigga said, sounding somewhat troubled. A moment later she let out a small laugh, trying to lighten her own mood. "No wonder you were so nervous; you must have thought you were going mad when you arrived."
"Honestly, I was more frightened when I heard that I was expected," I admitted with a smile. "Forgive me, but I'm quite aware there are people within Asgard whose intentions towards a stranded traveller from another world would be... less than pleasant."
Her smile became slightly sad. "It pains me to know my home is not regarded as a safe haven from such concerns."
"My apologies, ma'am," I said, wincing at my own tactlessness. Stupid morbid sense of humour. "At the very least, please know that I regard your company as just such a haven."
This wasn't pure flattery on my part. If you watch the movies, it becomes readily apparent that anyone Frigga takes under her protection stays protected, even if not necessarily by her. Hell, she even managed to keep Loki alive after the Jotunheim and Midgard fiascos.
She brightened a little bit at that, enough to tease me with her next question. "Oh? What reputation have I in your world, that I inspire such confidence?"
"Much the same as the All-Mother of our own legends," I said, before kicking myself for just dumping that on her.
As expected, that remark got a bit of a reaction. "Have I a double in your world, then?"
I flinched. How was I going to explain this?
"... the tales in the epic regarding Asgard are very, very loosely based upon a body of mythology and a faith originating in the North of my world," I admitted finally, trying to make that little voice in my head stop repeating 'we've entered an infinite recursion of mythorealism (Kyon-kun, denwa!)'. "Some things are similar and some are completely different – there are no Warriors Three in our legends, for example. Lady Sif is primarily concerned with agriculture, not war, and Loki..."
I really wasn't prepared to have a conversation about Loki.
"... is older," was the best I could do. As far as tl;drs go, it wasn't terrible. I just hoped she could get what I meant.
She got something, anyway; she gave me an appraising look.
She nodded at my necklace. "I had wondered why one born so far from Yggdrasil's reach would wear its likeness as a charm. You are a member of this faith, then, I take it?"
"In my own way," I replied, biting my lip. I was not telling the Foremost Lady that I worshipped an alternate-universe version of her foster son; it was entirely too fucked up a topic of conversation, even for this situation. Nor was I keen to get into the whole range of Odinism/Asatru/Northern Tradition/Norse Reconstructionism/eclectic paganism/my own bit of strangeness and the distinctions and conflicts between each. And fucking forget explaining Rokkatru to a woman whose husband lost an eye fighting the local equivalents of the jötnar.
"Sorry," I added lamely. I sort of felt like I should, you know?
Frigga laughed, and patted my knee. "You are the first mortal I've ever met who's apologized for that, I have to say." She picked up the tray of pastries (semlas, I later learned they were called) and offered me one.
"Thank you." It tasted a little like a paczki, only with marzipan stuffed in with the cream. I wasn't sure if I liked it, but I find sugar is always comforting in new situations, and so it proved now.
"Your majesty?" I asked, when I'd swallowed my first bite. "May I ask why I've been brought here? Was it just to satisfy your curiosity about my point of origin, or have you some need of a mortal hack writer?"
Frigga swiped a thumb across her lips to get the cream off them, then licked her thumb. I couldn't help but smile, having seen my grandmother and aunts do the same thing dozens of times.
"What do you know of magic?" she asked.
"... what kind of magic?" I said, frowning slightly. Being a geek, I actually knew quite a lot on the basic theory side of things in several different systems, at least in the same sense that a child who watches Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson knows some things about science. But this wasn't an online discussion of how to make a fusion universe from the components of DC, the Venture Brothers and Discworld; Frigga was a professional. And I was starting to think she was a professional who preferred the Socratic method.
"Any magic," she said, and while her tone was no less friendly, I got the impression the actual interview had begun. "How does it work?"
Well, unpublished or not, I was still a fantasy writer. We all have opinions on crap like that.
"I really think it depends on the type," I said honestly. "In my mind, magic is any process that subverts the guidelines of reality to achieve a different outcome than would occur without the aforementioned meddling. So one person might have been born with a strong tie to some elemental force that jumps to their aid whenever their emotions get the better of them, and another might study that force until they find out the proper way to coax it into doing what it does for the first person with no effort at all. Or someone might gain the favour of an elemental being through various means, and be able to employ spells of the element that way. And so on with non-elemental spells of the various kinds." I paused, and shook my head. "Or did you mean 'how does it work' in the sense of 'what allows people to use magic'?"
That smile was almost a smirk. "Whichever."
I nodded to myself. "Okay. A combination of willpower, their knowledge base, a set of skills I wouldn't be able to properly understand without studying the stuff myself, probably, and the payment, whatever that may be."
"Payment?" the goddess inquired, something glittering in her eyes.
"Magic costs something," I said, with what must have been a ridiculous level of confidence from someone who had never cast a real spell. "That's the one thing all magic has in common; you have to pay for it. It might be just the time you take and the attention you pay to learn the spell properly, or it might be a favour done later in exchange for the favour you want now, or it might be your life, but it always costs something. 'Teachings that do not speak of pain have no meaning.'"
I blinked. Oops. I... kinda got on a roll there, didn't I?
I looked back at Frigga. She wasn't smiling anymore, but she didn't... seem angry.
"... ma'am?" I asked hesitantly.
"Forgive me for asking such an... abstract question," she said, and she sounded like she was miles away.
Oh, crap.
"Your majesty?" I asked, in the voice I generally reserved for people who had asked me to wake them up from naps. "Are you having a vision?"
The focus came back into her eyes immediately, and she did not look pleased.
"No," she said coldly, "and you are not to reveal to anyone that that may be a possibility, do you understand me?"
"Yes," I said swiftly, frozen, unwilling to make any sudden movements while that glare was on me.
"Good." She exhaled. "I apologize for frightening you again. What you must think of me."
I shook my head. "No, it's a state secret, I understand. Our Frigga can't even tell people what she sees."
"That much we have in common," the Queen said, sounding very tired. "As I was saying, I apologize for springing a philosophical quandary on you, but I had to know I was making the right decision. I want to offer you an apprenticeship."
I nearly dropped my semla.
"With you?" I blurted out. "In magic?"
"Yes to the second, no to the first," she replied. "My son is in need of a pupil, to prove he has truly attained the mastery he claims."
Holy motherfucking shit I get to learn magic from Loki Loki Loki I should have driven through the torn fabric of reality years ago!!!
"What are you punishing him for?" was the first thing I could think of to say that wasn't inane fangirl gibberish.
That doesn't mean it was the first thing I said, though. Depends if you consider a brief, high-pitched squeak to fall under the heading of 'saying something' or not.
"Whatever gave you the impression I was punishing him?" Frigga asked, amused. "Do you believe your company so trying?"
"... um... would you like an honest answer to that question?"
"Nonsense," she said, taking my hand in both of hers, "I'm quite sure the two of you will get along famously." She gave me a conspiratorial wink. "Just don't let him bully you."
I suddenly got the strong impression that my acceptance of this offer was purely a formality.
Why would you say no? part of me thought. Are you insane? Magic! From a certified genius of the art! Who is smoking hot! And kind-of-sort-of Loki!
He's a Loki, I thought back stubbornly. He's not our Loki.
Of all the times to be picky about-! You realize we have literally nowhere else to go if we refuse, right? Can we please just trust the kind-hearted enormously-rich lady who can see the future?
"... I know you can't give me specifics," I said, watching her expression carefully, "but I've already worked out that you must have had a vision at some point to know I was going to come through that portal."
She didn't nod, but she didn't contradict me either. She was just waiting.
I swallowed. "What I want to know is..." C'mon, how do you get around this? "... knowing what you do, if you were in my position, would you say yes?"
This time it wasn't a smile. It was very nearly a smirk.
"Absolutely."
Fuck it. Gotta die of something.
Chapter Four
"You don't have to carry that," I said without thinking, then hastily added, "Wait, right, her majesty told you to, never mind. I'm sorry, I'm not used to having servants around."
"Quite all right, Lady Magda," the girl – girl, what girl, she was probably older than my dead-and-buried great-grandmother – said in reply, sounding faintly amused.
That, on the other hand, I could definitely get used to. 'Lady Magda'. Sounds nice and respectable, with just a hint of mischief.
My room was small, but somehow – I don't know how – the Queen had known I would want one right near the library (or, as I would discover to my glee later in the evening, one of the libraries), so I was perfectly comfortable by my own standards. The view wasn't bad, either; I could see rooftop gardens on the condo towers across the square from the palace, and a little playground with a fountain and some climbing structures that were too far away to make out. I couldn't wait to see the city lights at night. Maybe I could get a good picture with my phone to prove I'd been here, if I ever got home again.
Ooh, speaking of!
"Do you know who I should speak to about adapting my phone to a less primitive power source?" I asked the maidservant. I sure as hell wasn't sticking with regular science in a universe where magic and SCIENCE! co-existed.
"Oh," she said, in that slightly crestfallen tone people who aren't good with tech always get when asked questions like that. "I suppose you could speak to Hugmodur, if he's at the feast this evening." She craned her neck across the bed. "What is a 'phone'?"
"It lets someone who can't use magic talk to people far away," I said, checking its current battery life (75%; not bad, but not great, either). "Or listen to music, or capture still images and... well, here, let me show you." I hit record, and, holding up the phone, said, "Say something."
"... what should I say?" she asked hesitantly, still looking at me, not the camera.
"Anything you like," I said with a smile. "What's your name?"
"Birna, milady," she said.
"Nice to meet you, Birna." I hit stop, and came over to her side of the bed to show her.
When I hit play, she blinked in surprise. "Goodness! I haven't seen the like of this in some time. So the mortals have acquired the knack of light-scribing?"
"Is light-scribing the way your people refer to recording motion pictures?" I asked. From the way it was phrased I couldn't be sure if it wasn't an elegant term for microelectronics or something.
Birna nodded, her braids bobbing. "Yes, it was quite a popular when I was a child. My brothers used to 'scribe each other performing death-defying feats to impress the local girls. There was a board in the square that the braver boys used to post on."
I snickered. Why am I not surprised that a bunch of alien Vikings loved Youtube?
I was told that my formal introductions would be made at the evening meal; until then, I had free run of the palace.
I still couldn't quite believe that. Or anything in this situation, really. So in the end, I just did what I always do when I can do anything I want. I went to the library.
=
My initial goals were simple; find a magical-theory-for-children-and-morons book, a genealogy so I could figure out just how many divergences there were from both the myths and what little I remembered of the comics, an atlas of the Nine Realms, a couple of books on Asgardian history, and some novels for bedtime reading - because contrary to one of the most depressing bits of fangirl-fanon, a human-ish civilization that doesn't have a poetic, dramatic or literary tradition after thousands (let alone hundreds of thousands) of years at the top of the socio-economic food chain is a statistical nonentity.
There wasn't a librarian's desk, so I had to tap someone reading on the shoulder and ask them where history section was. Thankfully everything was organized by section, and I found the history books against the back wall on the second floor without too much trouble. I made a mental note to look into whatever the Asgardian answer to the Dewey decimal system was and try to commit it to memory.
I wondered giddily if I might have the chance to look at some of the books Loki undoubtedly kept in his personal library. Master sorcerers always have one or two books they only pass on to those they consider their successors, after all.
But that could wait. For now, I was just happy to be back in an environment that was at least somewhat-
I stopped dead in my tracks, and stared at the neatly-shelved spines before me.
... no.
For whatever stupid reason, whatever faint, flickering hope, I pulled one of the books off the shelf and flipped through it.
nononononononononononononononononono...!
Sliding down the wall to sit on the floor, I finally gave in to the emotional rollercoaster I'd been on for the last three hours and burst into tears.
I should have remembered, really, but I suppose in the rush of discovering I was mostly safe for now, I somehow expected good things to keep happening.
Instead, I rediscovered that Asgardians don't write in English. Their runes aren't even the Futhark – not when their written records predate that alphabet by more than twenty millenia.
It's called Allspeak, not Allread, you fucking idiot.
My throat felt hot, and far too large for my neck, full as it was with moans that I would not let out. I was not going to be found huddling on the floor with tears rolling down my face like a child; I would not be humiliated further.
I was in the most beautiful library I had ever set foot in, surrounded by thousands of books that no human had ever read, and I was illiterate.
I was a writer, and I was illiterate.
I was myself, and I was illiterate.
I wanted to scream. To keep myself from doing so, I dug my nails into my arms.
What on earth made you think you were good enough to learn magic from a god?
I slapped myself in the face, trying to silence the loathing before it made me sob and draw attention.
Oh, I'm sure he's just dying to teach a weepy little bitch like you. What, do you think if he comes around that corner right this second and sees you like this he'll cradle you in his arms and fix everything? Fucking pathetic.
"Worthless," I whispered, and hid my face in my arms.
When I had calmed down enough that I trusted myself not to start crying again, I raised my head and took a deep breath.
It was as I exhaled that I saw, along the spine of a book shelved directly across from me, exactly one word I could read.
The book was a slim volume bound in dark yellow leather, with plain black lettering on the spine, in contrast to its gold-engraved brethren to either side.
The weird part was, it wasn't in English.
Or French, or Japanese, or any of the other languages I had picked up words from here and there over the years.
It was like being really tired, and reading something written in French, taking in the meaning before fully processing that I'd been reading my second language, not my first.
On the one hand, the title read "Galastria," clear as day. On the other, the title meant 'Grammar'.
If I had had to rationalize how the hell I came to this conclusion, I'd have probably pointed out that galdr, the Old Norse for incantation, comes from the word gala, whose precise meaning I didn't remember, and from there it was an intuitive jump to 'grammar' based on the (admittedly limited) context.
I certainly didn't give a toss about any of this at the time. I was just fucking relieved to have something, anything to go on.
Eagerly, with a slightly hysterical laugh, I pulled out the thin book and flipped open to the middle. The contents were just as mysteriously clear as the cover had been; it was a section on conjugating the verb 'to run'. I run, you run, he runs, she runs, it runs, we run, you run, they (m) run, they (f) run, one runs...
I started crying again, and hugged the book to my chest.
Abruptly, I got to my feet, and paid the price when a wave of wooziness came over me and forced me to lean on the windowsill until the headache went away. I gave the sweeping view of the palace grounds a determined smile.
I had work to do.
=
"Are you in need of assistance, little lady?"
'Little lady'; now that's something you don't hear very often in 21st-century Canada without it being a lead in to a girl-power joke.
Granted, in my case it was descriptively accurate. I was below average in height even by the standards of other girls my age back home; in Asgard I was lucky to come up to most women's noses.
Besides, I had one hand holding onto the ladder and the other weighed down with four hardcovers while my right foot tried desperately to keep a fifth book that I'd dropped from falling, all while I was wearing a long, deep red dress that had definitely not been designed for indoor mountaineering. Even if I'd had the inclination, playing the don't-condescend-to-me-you-big-ape card would have been very counterproductive.
"Could you please?" I asked, wobbling. Then I got a good look at who it was and I outright fell off the ladder.
Two green-clad arms like iron bars wrapped in meat caught me, and I was suddenly looking up into the smiling face of a fair-haired man with a moustache Errol Flynn would kill for.
"Light as a feather!" he declared, setting me back on my feet. He bowed in exactly the manner you would expect from a guy who is basically Westley from The Princess Bride with better dress-sense. "Forgive me for taking the liberty, sweet one – I am Fandral, known as the Dashing. And you are?"
"Magda the Vaguely Runny, I suppose," I said, smacking some of the book-dust off my clothes. "Thank you for the save- no!" I cried suddenly, catching sight of a true tragedy in the making. I dropped to the floor and hastily scooped up the volume that had caused my outburst. Just in time, too – it had fallen in such a way that the back cover was grinding up against the spine; if it'd stayed like that too long the bindings would have ripped. Straightening out that potential disaster, I looked back up at my rescuer. "Sorry, give me a second."
"Not at all," he said brightly, crouching to gather the other books I'd dropped. "I must say, it's rare to find a lady so devoted to scholarship. But, ah, perhaps..." He handed me a two-volume set with a fond smile. "... you should pace yourself?"
I smiled back, and shrugged. "I thought I was. After all, I only took five; that leaves, what..." I took a look at the shelves around us and let out a deeply-contented sigh. "... thousands to go."
His eyes bugged, and he coughed, almost certainly to stifle a laugh. "I see. Do you intend to read all of them, then?"
I shrugged, grinning. "If I don't die first? Yes."
Oof, I thought, taking in Fandral's slightly off-put expression, I really have to lay off on the flippancy. This is not the audience for it.
"Sorry," I said, falling back into a habit I acquired in middle school from watching too much anime and rubbing the back of my neck. "I suppose I should have mentioned I'm mortal."
"Mortal? As in, a human?" he said, his expression upgrading from kind-of-weirded-out to kind-of-perplexed. "Forgive me, Lady Magda, but this is nearly unprecedented. How did you come to be in Asgard?"
"Did you by any chance hear something about a witch coming through a portal in the markets this morning?" I asked.
He nodded, still a little shocked. "Yes, but if you walk through Asgard's markets you'll hear ten such rumours in ten minutes. That was you?"
"In the flesh," I said proudly.
"Well, they did say you hatched out of an enormous white egg," he said, giving me a once over. "As you are so swan-like in other respects, I see no reason to disagree with them."
XD Damn, Guiche de Gramont is all grown up!
He was laying it on a little thick, but I kind of liked it; it was a balm to my nerves after an uncertain kind of day.
I wish I could say I said something witty in response, but even when they're bad at it – especially when they're bad at it – I've never been very good at dealing with men flirting with me. So instead I have to report that I mumbled something about him being far too kind and blushed furiously.
After that I couldn't get rid of him. He insisted on finding me a good chair under a window, with plenty of natural light, and a nearby table to hold the stack of books.
"May I inquire, my lady," he said, glancing at the cover of the topmost tome, "why these five?"
"It's a long story," I said with a sigh.
"Fandral!" A booming voice filled the room, easily drowning out the handful of people it left shushing in its wake.
"Ah," my companion said, glancing in the direction from which the voice had come, then turning back to me, "I'm afraid I must take my leave of you here, fair Magda. Will I see you at the feast?"
I nodded.
"Until this evening, then." He kissed my hand, and winked at me. "I'd suggest keeping to the books on the bottom shelves for now."
"I'll take it under advisement," I said with a laugh, and called to his retreating back, "Nice meeting you!"
"Shhh!" someone hissed again.
... I just got hit on by a man older than the Magna Carta.
I took a moment to absorb this information, before shaking my head and opening The Golden Heritage: A Genealogy of the Nine Worlds alongside the grammar book. I only had a few hours before dinner to make some headway.
"You don't have to carry that," I said without thinking, then hastily added, "Wait, right, her majesty told you to, never mind. I'm sorry, I'm not used to having servants around."
"Quite all right, Lady Magda," the girl – girl, what girl, she was probably older than my dead-and-buried great-grandmother – said in reply, sounding faintly amused.
That, on the other hand, I could definitely get used to. 'Lady Magda'. Sounds nice and respectable, with just a hint of mischief.
My room was small, but somehow – I don't know how – the Queen had known I would want one right near the library (or, as I would discover to my glee later in the evening, one of the libraries), so I was perfectly comfortable by my own standards. The view wasn't bad, either; I could see rooftop gardens on the condo towers across the square from the palace, and a little playground with a fountain and some climbing structures that were too far away to make out. I couldn't wait to see the city lights at night. Maybe I could get a good picture with my phone to prove I'd been here, if I ever got home again.
Ooh, speaking of!
"Do you know who I should speak to about adapting my phone to a less primitive power source?" I asked the maidservant. I sure as hell wasn't sticking with regular science in a universe where magic and SCIENCE! co-existed.
"Oh," she said, in that slightly crestfallen tone people who aren't good with tech always get when asked questions like that. "I suppose you could speak to Hugmodur, if he's at the feast this evening." She craned her neck across the bed. "What is a 'phone'?"
"It lets someone who can't use magic talk to people far away," I said, checking its current battery life (75%; not bad, but not great, either). "Or listen to music, or capture still images and... well, here, let me show you." I hit record, and, holding up the phone, said, "Say something."
"... what should I say?" she asked hesitantly, still looking at me, not the camera.
"Anything you like," I said with a smile. "What's your name?"
"Birna, milady," she said.
"Nice to meet you, Birna." I hit stop, and came over to her side of the bed to show her.
When I hit play, she blinked in surprise. "Goodness! I haven't seen the like of this in some time. So the mortals have acquired the knack of light-scribing?"
"Is light-scribing the way your people refer to recording motion pictures?" I asked. From the way it was phrased I couldn't be sure if it wasn't an elegant term for microelectronics or something.
Birna nodded, her braids bobbing. "Yes, it was quite a popular when I was a child. My brothers used to 'scribe each other performing death-defying feats to impress the local girls. There was a board in the square that the braver boys used to post on."
I snickered. Why am I not surprised that a bunch of alien Vikings loved Youtube?
I was told that my formal introductions would be made at the evening meal; until then, I had free run of the palace.
I still couldn't quite believe that. Or anything in this situation, really. So in the end, I just did what I always do when I can do anything I want. I went to the library.
=
My initial goals were simple; find a magical-theory-for-children-and-morons book, a genealogy so I could figure out just how many divergences there were from both the myths and what little I remembered of the comics, an atlas of the Nine Realms, a couple of books on Asgardian history, and some novels for bedtime reading - because contrary to one of the most depressing bits of fangirl-fanon, a human-ish civilization that doesn't have a poetic, dramatic or literary tradition after thousands (let alone hundreds of thousands) of years at the top of the socio-economic food chain is a statistical nonentity.
There wasn't a librarian's desk, so I had to tap someone reading on the shoulder and ask them where history section was. Thankfully everything was organized by section, and I found the history books against the back wall on the second floor without too much trouble. I made a mental note to look into whatever the Asgardian answer to the Dewey decimal system was and try to commit it to memory.
I wondered giddily if I might have the chance to look at some of the books Loki undoubtedly kept in his personal library. Master sorcerers always have one or two books they only pass on to those they consider their successors, after all.
But that could wait. For now, I was just happy to be back in an environment that was at least somewhat-
I stopped dead in my tracks, and stared at the neatly-shelved spines before me.
... no.
For whatever stupid reason, whatever faint, flickering hope, I pulled one of the books off the shelf and flipped through it.
nononononononononononononononononono...!
Sliding down the wall to sit on the floor, I finally gave in to the emotional rollercoaster I'd been on for the last three hours and burst into tears.
I should have remembered, really, but I suppose in the rush of discovering I was mostly safe for now, I somehow expected good things to keep happening.
Instead, I rediscovered that Asgardians don't write in English. Their runes aren't even the Futhark – not when their written records predate that alphabet by more than twenty millenia.
It's called Allspeak, not Allread, you fucking idiot.
My throat felt hot, and far too large for my neck, full as it was with moans that I would not let out. I was not going to be found huddling on the floor with tears rolling down my face like a child; I would not be humiliated further.
I was in the most beautiful library I had ever set foot in, surrounded by thousands of books that no human had ever read, and I was illiterate.
I was a writer, and I was illiterate.
I was myself, and I was illiterate.
I wanted to scream. To keep myself from doing so, I dug my nails into my arms.
What on earth made you think you were good enough to learn magic from a god?
I slapped myself in the face, trying to silence the loathing before it made me sob and draw attention.
Oh, I'm sure he's just dying to teach a weepy little bitch like you. What, do you think if he comes around that corner right this second and sees you like this he'll cradle you in his arms and fix everything? Fucking pathetic.
"Worthless," I whispered, and hid my face in my arms.
When I had calmed down enough that I trusted myself not to start crying again, I raised my head and took a deep breath.
It was as I exhaled that I saw, along the spine of a book shelved directly across from me, exactly one word I could read.
The book was a slim volume bound in dark yellow leather, with plain black lettering on the spine, in contrast to its gold-engraved brethren to either side.
The weird part was, it wasn't in English.
Or French, or Japanese, or any of the other languages I had picked up words from here and there over the years.
It was like being really tired, and reading something written in French, taking in the meaning before fully processing that I'd been reading my second language, not my first.
On the one hand, the title read "Galastria," clear as day. On the other, the title meant 'Grammar'.
If I had had to rationalize how the hell I came to this conclusion, I'd have probably pointed out that galdr, the Old Norse for incantation, comes from the word gala, whose precise meaning I didn't remember, and from there it was an intuitive jump to 'grammar' based on the (admittedly limited) context.
I certainly didn't give a toss about any of this at the time. I was just fucking relieved to have something, anything to go on.
Eagerly, with a slightly hysterical laugh, I pulled out the thin book and flipped open to the middle. The contents were just as mysteriously clear as the cover had been; it was a section on conjugating the verb 'to run'. I run, you run, he runs, she runs, it runs, we run, you run, they (m) run, they (f) run, one runs...
I started crying again, and hugged the book to my chest.
Abruptly, I got to my feet, and paid the price when a wave of wooziness came over me and forced me to lean on the windowsill until the headache went away. I gave the sweeping view of the palace grounds a determined smile.
I had work to do.
=
"Are you in need of assistance, little lady?"
'Little lady'; now that's something you don't hear very often in 21st-century Canada without it being a lead in to a girl-power joke.
Granted, in my case it was descriptively accurate. I was below average in height even by the standards of other girls my age back home; in Asgard I was lucky to come up to most women's noses.
Besides, I had one hand holding onto the ladder and the other weighed down with four hardcovers while my right foot tried desperately to keep a fifth book that I'd dropped from falling, all while I was wearing a long, deep red dress that had definitely not been designed for indoor mountaineering. Even if I'd had the inclination, playing the don't-condescend-to-me-you-big-ape card would have been very counterproductive.
"Could you please?" I asked, wobbling. Then I got a good look at who it was and I outright fell off the ladder.
Two green-clad arms like iron bars wrapped in meat caught me, and I was suddenly looking up into the smiling face of a fair-haired man with a moustache Errol Flynn would kill for.
"Light as a feather!" he declared, setting me back on my feet. He bowed in exactly the manner you would expect from a guy who is basically Westley from The Princess Bride with better dress-sense. "Forgive me for taking the liberty, sweet one – I am Fandral, known as the Dashing. And you are?"
"Magda the Vaguely Runny, I suppose," I said, smacking some of the book-dust off my clothes. "Thank you for the save- no!" I cried suddenly, catching sight of a true tragedy in the making. I dropped to the floor and hastily scooped up the volume that had caused my outburst. Just in time, too – it had fallen in such a way that the back cover was grinding up against the spine; if it'd stayed like that too long the bindings would have ripped. Straightening out that potential disaster, I looked back up at my rescuer. "Sorry, give me a second."
"Not at all," he said brightly, crouching to gather the other books I'd dropped. "I must say, it's rare to find a lady so devoted to scholarship. But, ah, perhaps..." He handed me a two-volume set with a fond smile. "... you should pace yourself?"
I smiled back, and shrugged. "I thought I was. After all, I only took five; that leaves, what..." I took a look at the shelves around us and let out a deeply-contented sigh. "... thousands to go."
His eyes bugged, and he coughed, almost certainly to stifle a laugh. "I see. Do you intend to read all of them, then?"
I shrugged, grinning. "If I don't die first? Yes."
Oof, I thought, taking in Fandral's slightly off-put expression, I really have to lay off on the flippancy. This is not the audience for it.
"Sorry," I said, falling back into a habit I acquired in middle school from watching too much anime and rubbing the back of my neck. "I suppose I should have mentioned I'm mortal."
"Mortal? As in, a human?" he said, his expression upgrading from kind-of-weirded-out to kind-of-perplexed. "Forgive me, Lady Magda, but this is nearly unprecedented. How did you come to be in Asgard?"
"Did you by any chance hear something about a witch coming through a portal in the markets this morning?" I asked.
He nodded, still a little shocked. "Yes, but if you walk through Asgard's markets you'll hear ten such rumours in ten minutes. That was you?"
"In the flesh," I said proudly.
"Well, they did say you hatched out of an enormous white egg," he said, giving me a once over. "As you are so swan-like in other respects, I see no reason to disagree with them."
XD Damn, Guiche de Gramont is all grown up!
He was laying it on a little thick, but I kind of liked it; it was a balm to my nerves after an uncertain kind of day.
I wish I could say I said something witty in response, but even when they're bad at it – especially when they're bad at it – I've never been very good at dealing with men flirting with me. So instead I have to report that I mumbled something about him being far too kind and blushed furiously.
After that I couldn't get rid of him. He insisted on finding me a good chair under a window, with plenty of natural light, and a nearby table to hold the stack of books.
"May I inquire, my lady," he said, glancing at the cover of the topmost tome, "why these five?"
"It's a long story," I said with a sigh.
"Fandral!" A booming voice filled the room, easily drowning out the handful of people it left shushing in its wake.
"Ah," my companion said, glancing in the direction from which the voice had come, then turning back to me, "I'm afraid I must take my leave of you here, fair Magda. Will I see you at the feast?"
I nodded.
"Until this evening, then." He kissed my hand, and winked at me. "I'd suggest keeping to the books on the bottom shelves for now."
"I'll take it under advisement," I said with a laugh, and called to his retreating back, "Nice meeting you!"
"Shhh!" someone hissed again.
... I just got hit on by a man older than the Magna Carta.
I took a moment to absorb this information, before shaking my head and opening The Golden Heritage: A Genealogy of the Nine Worlds alongside the grammar book. I only had a few hours before dinner to make some headway.
Chapter Five
Large crowds of people suck, no matter whether they're in miniskirts and jeans or Sword Art Online cosplay.
The feast wasn't like some hoity-toity Disney affair with a page announcing everyone as they entered; it was way more chilled out. People came or went as they pleased, and the party easily spilled out of the hall where it began into a gambling room next door, and thence (presumably) to the little curtained-off alcoves down the corridor.
It was kind of like a high school party in a movie, honestly. They even had a pool outside – it was more Art Deco than Suburban Casual, but people still traipsed between the starlit water and the dining tables without a care for their (still somehow effortlessly elegant) bathrobes, or their drippings. And why shouldn't they? There were a couple of wolfhounds onsite who were more than happy to go after any food or water that hit the floor.
One of them came over to check me out, and growled at my proffered hand before moving on. I straightened up, surprised and stung; I'd had dogs dislike me before, but they'd never dismissed me. I felt like a comedic minion in a children's film.
Well, if Prince Fusspot's Mom can talk him into it, you kind of are, I thought. At least those kinds of characters usually survive.
Thor was already in the middle of it all when I arrived, though at first I almost didn't notice. All I knew was that a bunch of people were crowded around someone telling a story toward the far corner of the hall. Then the storyteller raised his voice to properly imitate an ogre and I said to myself, Oh, that's Thor's voice. And when I looked over again, sure enough, generically handsome beardguy was name-brand handsome beardguy.
It was weird; I wasn't excited or really all that surprised, even. I just felt kind of... it was like walking into a relative's house for a family holiday and hearing your uncle telling a bad joke in the next room. It isn't anything particularly novel, it's just kind of nostalgic.
I half-looked for Fandral, but spotting him at the edge of the storytime circle with an Ursula Andress lookalike on his knee, I decided it was best that I find somewhere else to sit.
The afternoon I'd spent painstakingly translating the genealogy book didn't do me as much good as I'd hoped it would; I could spot the major players all right (I was pretty sure that man in the tight pants talking to Hogun was Frey, for example), but the people on the next rung down – my social level, I supposed – were a mystery. And it wasn't like I could just go up to someone and start a conversation; I was awful at small talk even when it came to other humans. What common ground did I have with any of these people?
At least I look good, I thought, taking comfort in my own shallowness. I don't know what Birna had done to my skin with that cream, but my acne scars were invisible – if they were even still there. My hair was long enough for a respectable braided-chignon thing, too, so I didn't look like a tourist playing dressup in the gown I'd been given.
I wasn't really hungry enough to have a whole meal (mostly I wanted to get back to my research), so I took an unused plate off the table and got some brisket-looking thing that I was pretty sure was venison from the taste, and some of the juiciest fruit I'd ever seen. Then I found a comfortable place to sit and listen to the story.
I have to be honest, I don't actually remember what it was about. I tried to pay attention, I really did, but Thor is just not very good at telling stories. Not long ones, anyway; he can get across important information very quickly and effectively when he wants to. But a full narrative, with a three-act structure? Really not his strong suit. The only real impression I have of that first night hearing him talk about rescuing some girl from something or other was coming to the conclusion that he should never, ever be permitted to see a Michael Bay movie.
Apparently, though, the rest of the court disagreed. They took his confused ordering of events and the excision of any explanation of why people were doing what they were doing in their stride. I guess Thor had been telling them about his adventures so long in his rambling style that they were used to it. Rank hath its privileges, after all.
"... until, in the end, he was forced to concede to the better man," the thunderer said, beaming at his audience, who laughed and clapped with wide smiles of their own.
Sonofabitch. XD He just paused for applause in a story about himself.
"The better showboater, definitely," I said under my breath.
"So good to see you enjoying tonight's entertainment."
I turned so fast it's a wonder I didn't give myself whiplash.
I don't have to tell you who it was.
"Let's just say," I said slowly, forcing myself not to stumble over my words, grinning like the big stupid idiot I am and praying he would mistake it for a smirk, "I would be very interested to hear you tell this story."
Goddamnit, how is he handsomer in person? This is exceptionally unfair.
Loki's eyes (so blue, holy crap, how did anyone who saw the movies come to the conclusion they were green?) flicked over to his brother. "There are fewer decapitations in my version, I must admit."
"Well, that's lucky," I said. "For a minute there I was wondering if Alfheim had any ogres left to behead."
He laughed, and my brain did a little victory dance for a moment or two before I realized he was saying something else.
"... tells me you are not of Midgard, despite your human look."
... hey, I didn't even think of that. I'm an extradimensional alien! That's so cool.
I shrugged. "Not as you know it. I mean, I'm from a Midgard, it's just... mine's a few universes over, I think. If I knew any more details than that I'd tell you, but I didn't so much travel here of my own accord as I did... flail wildly through the Blind Eternities and try not to drive off the road." I realized I was babbling, and shut up.
"You give yourself too little credit," he said, and there was something else in his voice now, a strange sort of curiosity. "The path you took to get here has never before been opened; that you arrived in one piece on your first such journey speaks well of your instincts."
"... thank you," I murmured, as whatever hope I had of making it through this conversation with my dignity intact decided to step out for a smoke; I knew he was probably full of shit and trying to get some information out of me that I didn't have, but I was so far beyond caring you have no idea. I didn't know if I was blushing or not, but I was pretty sure I was about to go monosyllabic.
Then, with a start, I realized something.
"Oh, shit, I'm sorry," I said, wincing. At his perplexed look, I continued in a lower voice: "That door's unusable now, isn't it? Now everyone knows it's there. Shit!" I frowned. "That would have been a really convenient location, too. I'm sorry."
"Yes... you mentioned that," he said, staring at me like I'd started shoving grapes up my nose.
"Arrgh!" I rested my hand over my eyes for a second, and tried to wipe the idiocy out of them as I got to my feet. "Sorry, that was a stupid thing to bring up – terrible timing – can we start over?" I finished, slightly desperately.
"Are you always this nervous meeting new people?" he asked, faintly amused. It didn't quite reach his eyes, though; I could tell he was still stuck on my knowledge of his little inter-planetary constitutionals. I wondered for a moment what exactly his mother had told him about me.
"Yes," I replied with a sigh. "But I don't usually babble when I am. I guess you're just special."
"Well, one certainly doesn't encounter a Prince of Asgard every day," he said teasingly, and I was greatly heartened by how little preening there was to his delivery. Obviously there was going to be a fair bit, Loki being Loki, but there was less than I expected.
"You've got that right," I replied, grinning.
This is nice, I thought, hope peeking out from behind cover. Maybe we can actually be friends.
He cocked his head to the side. "Then again, I suppose it's not every day one meets a woman named 'Magda Quickfinger'. Should I offer condolences, or a list of alternatives?"
I groaned, and outright facepalmed. "The state my nerves were in, I'm lucky I didn't try to tell them I was you."
I could hear him smiling at me. "They'd have known you were a fraud the moment you started apologizing."
I lifted my head back out of my hand, curious. "Do you really have a list of alternatives?"
"Alas, no," he said – and for the first time in my entire life, a twenty-something guy saying that sounded completely natural.
Real-Loki would have had a list of alternatives, a part of me thought sulkily. Some of them would have been way bawdier.
"What I do have are some questions for you," he continued in the same warm tone. "primarily concerning your-"
"This is certainly cause for celebration," Thor said, making me twitch slightly. It was like Jurassic Park with that damn t-rex; he was just there, no blur in my peripheral vision or anything. "I rarely see you so animated in conversation, brother!" And he clapped Loki on the shoulder. The Liesmith either sighed or had the wind partly knocked out of him, one or the other.
Oh god. He's trying to pull wingman duty. You poor sweet dork.
I wasn't sure which of them I meant by that last.
"And who is this?" the man-mountain inquired, smiling at me. And despite all my good sense telling me it was the wrong move to make in front of Loki, I was unable to keep myself from smiling back.
Seriously, you know how sometimes you hear people talk about how Bill Clinton has this knack of making the other person in the conversation feel like they're the most important person in the room? Thor has it, too. When he looks at you, it's like the sun coming out. It's no longer much of a surprise to me that Odin thought he was ready to be crowned; that's the kind of skill that covers up a multitude of faults – especially in your kid, I'll bet.
So, yeah, I smiled. What I didn't do was introduce myself. There's charisma, and then there's the ability to magically make me forget my social anxiety, and Thor, bless him, does not possess that particular talent. Instead, I looked back at Loki.
He blinked at me, and for a second I thought I'd screwed up somehow. That's correct etiquette, right? A higher-ranked person introduces a lower-ranked person to another high-ranker?
Then the moment was over.
"This is Magda Quickfinger, brother," he said finally. "Magda, my brother, Prince Thor."
"Delighted to meet you," I said, with a kind of nod-bow thing I'd seen hotel staff give important visitors.
Huh, plain Magda. Does that mean he's made up his mind to accept me as a student? Or just that he's not playing ball with the whole let's-give-the-little-half-monkeys-courtesy-titles thing?
Thor returned my nod. "How do you do, Lady Magda?"
"She's to be my student in the mystic arts," Loki added, and I almost laughed out loud. He sounded like my younger sister calling dibs on leftover pizza.
Well, pizza is a good start. Everyone likes pizza.
"Truly?" Thor asked, and when he looked at me again he was obviously sizing me up. Then he let out a laugh and slapped me on the back – though thankfully he took it easier on me than he did on Loki. "Congratulations, my lady – there is no finer sorceror in all Asgard than my brother." He leaned over and gave me a conspiratorial wink. "Don't let him keep you cooped up indoors studying all the time – Loki is not merely a scholar, but a fine warrior as well. Ask him about his part in our recent adventure." And he gave his brother a prompting look that he probably thought was subtle.
... d'awww. And also ouch. Way to indavertently give the impression you don't think your bro's capable of getting laid without assistance, dude.
Loki was saved from having to think of an answer that didn't include the phrase 'we survived, despite my brother's best efforts' by the arrival of Frigga, who looked absolutely flawless. If she weren't already married I bet every woman in the room would have hated her.
"Mother!" Thor called delightedly, and abandoned the pair of us like last year's Christmas presents.
"Well, that happened," I said.
Loki cast a sidelong glance my way. "You have never had a moment's magical training in your life."
"Nope," I said with a sigh. I didn't see any reason to lie to the guy; enough people were doing that already, in my estimation. "Inasmuch as I have training in anything, I'm a failed bard."
He let out a sigh of his own, an impatient one, and I could tell we were wondering the same thing: What exactly is Frigga planning?
"Do you know any magic at all?" he asked finally.
I gave my new teacher a slightly pinched smile. "... I can make people like me enough that they forgive me when they probably shouldn't. Does that count?"
He stared at me for a moment. Then, letting out a small puff of air that could have been a laugh or a scoff, he shook his head.
"No. But it's a useful skill to have nonetheless." He smiled, and if I hadn't been looking for it I wouldn't have noticed the calculating gleam that immediately set my heart racing.
We're in business~!
We're a minion, my self-respect said flatly.
We're a von Zinzer, I concluded diplomatically.
"Your first lesson will begin tomorrow at noon, in the southwest library," was the last thing he said before striding off to have a word with his mother.
"See you then, sensei!" I called after him, causing a few heads to turn in my direction, and a few mouths to titter discreetly.
Wow. Laughing at a wizard, right in front of him. Lotta people eager to find anthills in their beds tonight, I see.
Humming the Harry Potter theme quietly to myself, I was about to dig into the strawberries on my plate when I realized something that brought me to a halt, the first piece of fruit halfway to my lips.
... wait... southwest...?
A manic smile crept across my face, and I had to force myself not to cackle.
How many libraries are there?
Large crowds of people suck, no matter whether they're in miniskirts and jeans or Sword Art Online cosplay.
The feast wasn't like some hoity-toity Disney affair with a page announcing everyone as they entered; it was way more chilled out. People came or went as they pleased, and the party easily spilled out of the hall where it began into a gambling room next door, and thence (presumably) to the little curtained-off alcoves down the corridor.
It was kind of like a high school party in a movie, honestly. They even had a pool outside – it was more Art Deco than Suburban Casual, but people still traipsed between the starlit water and the dining tables without a care for their (still somehow effortlessly elegant) bathrobes, or their drippings. And why shouldn't they? There were a couple of wolfhounds onsite who were more than happy to go after any food or water that hit the floor.
One of them came over to check me out, and growled at my proffered hand before moving on. I straightened up, surprised and stung; I'd had dogs dislike me before, but they'd never dismissed me. I felt like a comedic minion in a children's film.
Well, if Prince Fusspot's Mom can talk him into it, you kind of are, I thought. At least those kinds of characters usually survive.
Thor was already in the middle of it all when I arrived, though at first I almost didn't notice. All I knew was that a bunch of people were crowded around someone telling a story toward the far corner of the hall. Then the storyteller raised his voice to properly imitate an ogre and I said to myself, Oh, that's Thor's voice. And when I looked over again, sure enough, generically handsome beardguy was name-brand handsome beardguy.
It was weird; I wasn't excited or really all that surprised, even. I just felt kind of... it was like walking into a relative's house for a family holiday and hearing your uncle telling a bad joke in the next room. It isn't anything particularly novel, it's just kind of nostalgic.
I half-looked for Fandral, but spotting him at the edge of the storytime circle with an Ursula Andress lookalike on his knee, I decided it was best that I find somewhere else to sit.
The afternoon I'd spent painstakingly translating the genealogy book didn't do me as much good as I'd hoped it would; I could spot the major players all right (I was pretty sure that man in the tight pants talking to Hogun was Frey, for example), but the people on the next rung down – my social level, I supposed – were a mystery. And it wasn't like I could just go up to someone and start a conversation; I was awful at small talk even when it came to other humans. What common ground did I have with any of these people?
At least I look good, I thought, taking comfort in my own shallowness. I don't know what Birna had done to my skin with that cream, but my acne scars were invisible – if they were even still there. My hair was long enough for a respectable braided-chignon thing, too, so I didn't look like a tourist playing dressup in the gown I'd been given.
I wasn't really hungry enough to have a whole meal (mostly I wanted to get back to my research), so I took an unused plate off the table and got some brisket-looking thing that I was pretty sure was venison from the taste, and some of the juiciest fruit I'd ever seen. Then I found a comfortable place to sit and listen to the story.
I have to be honest, I don't actually remember what it was about. I tried to pay attention, I really did, but Thor is just not very good at telling stories. Not long ones, anyway; he can get across important information very quickly and effectively when he wants to. But a full narrative, with a three-act structure? Really not his strong suit. The only real impression I have of that first night hearing him talk about rescuing some girl from something or other was coming to the conclusion that he should never, ever be permitted to see a Michael Bay movie.
Apparently, though, the rest of the court disagreed. They took his confused ordering of events and the excision of any explanation of why people were doing what they were doing in their stride. I guess Thor had been telling them about his adventures so long in his rambling style that they were used to it. Rank hath its privileges, after all.
"... until, in the end, he was forced to concede to the better man," the thunderer said, beaming at his audience, who laughed and clapped with wide smiles of their own.
Sonofabitch. XD He just paused for applause in a story about himself.
"The better showboater, definitely," I said under my breath.
"So good to see you enjoying tonight's entertainment."
I turned so fast it's a wonder I didn't give myself whiplash.
I don't have to tell you who it was.
"Let's just say," I said slowly, forcing myself not to stumble over my words, grinning like the big stupid idiot I am and praying he would mistake it for a smirk, "I would be very interested to hear you tell this story."
Goddamnit, how is he handsomer in person? This is exceptionally unfair.
Loki's eyes (so blue, holy crap, how did anyone who saw the movies come to the conclusion they were green?) flicked over to his brother. "There are fewer decapitations in my version, I must admit."
"Well, that's lucky," I said. "For a minute there I was wondering if Alfheim had any ogres left to behead."
He laughed, and my brain did a little victory dance for a moment or two before I realized he was saying something else.
"... tells me you are not of Midgard, despite your human look."
... hey, I didn't even think of that. I'm an extradimensional alien! That's so cool.
I shrugged. "Not as you know it. I mean, I'm from a Midgard, it's just... mine's a few universes over, I think. If I knew any more details than that I'd tell you, but I didn't so much travel here of my own accord as I did... flail wildly through the Blind Eternities and try not to drive off the road." I realized I was babbling, and shut up.
"You give yourself too little credit," he said, and there was something else in his voice now, a strange sort of curiosity. "The path you took to get here has never before been opened; that you arrived in one piece on your first such journey speaks well of your instincts."
"... thank you," I murmured, as whatever hope I had of making it through this conversation with my dignity intact decided to step out for a smoke; I knew he was probably full of shit and trying to get some information out of me that I didn't have, but I was so far beyond caring you have no idea. I didn't know if I was blushing or not, but I was pretty sure I was about to go monosyllabic.
Then, with a start, I realized something.
"Oh, shit, I'm sorry," I said, wincing. At his perplexed look, I continued in a lower voice: "That door's unusable now, isn't it? Now everyone knows it's there. Shit!" I frowned. "That would have been a really convenient location, too. I'm sorry."
"Yes... you mentioned that," he said, staring at me like I'd started shoving grapes up my nose.
"Arrgh!" I rested my hand over my eyes for a second, and tried to wipe the idiocy out of them as I got to my feet. "Sorry, that was a stupid thing to bring up – terrible timing – can we start over?" I finished, slightly desperately.
"Are you always this nervous meeting new people?" he asked, faintly amused. It didn't quite reach his eyes, though; I could tell he was still stuck on my knowledge of his little inter-planetary constitutionals. I wondered for a moment what exactly his mother had told him about me.
"Yes," I replied with a sigh. "But I don't usually babble when I am. I guess you're just special."
"Well, one certainly doesn't encounter a Prince of Asgard every day," he said teasingly, and I was greatly heartened by how little preening there was to his delivery. Obviously there was going to be a fair bit, Loki being Loki, but there was less than I expected.
"You've got that right," I replied, grinning.
This is nice, I thought, hope peeking out from behind cover. Maybe we can actually be friends.
He cocked his head to the side. "Then again, I suppose it's not every day one meets a woman named 'Magda Quickfinger'. Should I offer condolences, or a list of alternatives?"
I groaned, and outright facepalmed. "The state my nerves were in, I'm lucky I didn't try to tell them I was you."
I could hear him smiling at me. "They'd have known you were a fraud the moment you started apologizing."
I lifted my head back out of my hand, curious. "Do you really have a list of alternatives?"
"Alas, no," he said – and for the first time in my entire life, a twenty-something guy saying that sounded completely natural.
Real-Loki would have had a list of alternatives, a part of me thought sulkily. Some of them would have been way bawdier.
"What I do have are some questions for you," he continued in the same warm tone. "primarily concerning your-"
"This is certainly cause for celebration," Thor said, making me twitch slightly. It was like Jurassic Park with that damn t-rex; he was just there, no blur in my peripheral vision or anything. "I rarely see you so animated in conversation, brother!" And he clapped Loki on the shoulder. The Liesmith either sighed or had the wind partly knocked out of him, one or the other.
Oh god. He's trying to pull wingman duty. You poor sweet dork.
I wasn't sure which of them I meant by that last.
"And who is this?" the man-mountain inquired, smiling at me. And despite all my good sense telling me it was the wrong move to make in front of Loki, I was unable to keep myself from smiling back.
Seriously, you know how sometimes you hear people talk about how Bill Clinton has this knack of making the other person in the conversation feel like they're the most important person in the room? Thor has it, too. When he looks at you, it's like the sun coming out. It's no longer much of a surprise to me that Odin thought he was ready to be crowned; that's the kind of skill that covers up a multitude of faults – especially in your kid, I'll bet.
So, yeah, I smiled. What I didn't do was introduce myself. There's charisma, and then there's the ability to magically make me forget my social anxiety, and Thor, bless him, does not possess that particular talent. Instead, I looked back at Loki.
He blinked at me, and for a second I thought I'd screwed up somehow. That's correct etiquette, right? A higher-ranked person introduces a lower-ranked person to another high-ranker?
Then the moment was over.
"This is Magda Quickfinger, brother," he said finally. "Magda, my brother, Prince Thor."
"Delighted to meet you," I said, with a kind of nod-bow thing I'd seen hotel staff give important visitors.
Huh, plain Magda. Does that mean he's made up his mind to accept me as a student? Or just that he's not playing ball with the whole let's-give-the-little-half-monkeys-courtesy-titles thing?
Thor returned my nod. "How do you do, Lady Magda?"
"She's to be my student in the mystic arts," Loki added, and I almost laughed out loud. He sounded like my younger sister calling dibs on leftover pizza.
Well, pizza is a good start. Everyone likes pizza.
"Truly?" Thor asked, and when he looked at me again he was obviously sizing me up. Then he let out a laugh and slapped me on the back – though thankfully he took it easier on me than he did on Loki. "Congratulations, my lady – there is no finer sorceror in all Asgard than my brother." He leaned over and gave me a conspiratorial wink. "Don't let him keep you cooped up indoors studying all the time – Loki is not merely a scholar, but a fine warrior as well. Ask him about his part in our recent adventure." And he gave his brother a prompting look that he probably thought was subtle.
... d'awww. And also ouch. Way to indavertently give the impression you don't think your bro's capable of getting laid without assistance, dude.
Loki was saved from having to think of an answer that didn't include the phrase 'we survived, despite my brother's best efforts' by the arrival of Frigga, who looked absolutely flawless. If she weren't already married I bet every woman in the room would have hated her.
"Mother!" Thor called delightedly, and abandoned the pair of us like last year's Christmas presents.
"Well, that happened," I said.
Loki cast a sidelong glance my way. "You have never had a moment's magical training in your life."
"Nope," I said with a sigh. I didn't see any reason to lie to the guy; enough people were doing that already, in my estimation. "Inasmuch as I have training in anything, I'm a failed bard."
He let out a sigh of his own, an impatient one, and I could tell we were wondering the same thing: What exactly is Frigga planning?
"Do you know any magic at all?" he asked finally.
I gave my new teacher a slightly pinched smile. "... I can make people like me enough that they forgive me when they probably shouldn't. Does that count?"
He stared at me for a moment. Then, letting out a small puff of air that could have been a laugh or a scoff, he shook his head.
"No. But it's a useful skill to have nonetheless." He smiled, and if I hadn't been looking for it I wouldn't have noticed the calculating gleam that immediately set my heart racing.
We're in business~!
We're a minion, my self-respect said flatly.
We're a von Zinzer, I concluded diplomatically.
"Your first lesson will begin tomorrow at noon, in the southwest library," was the last thing he said before striding off to have a word with his mother.
"See you then, sensei!" I called after him, causing a few heads to turn in my direction, and a few mouths to titter discreetly.
Wow. Laughing at a wizard, right in front of him. Lotta people eager to find anthills in their beds tonight, I see.
Humming the Harry Potter theme quietly to myself, I was about to dig into the strawberries on my plate when I realized something that brought me to a halt, the first piece of fruit halfway to my lips.
... wait... southwest...?
A manic smile crept across my face, and I had to force myself not to cackle.
How many libraries are there?
Chapter Six
"You're early."
I jumped in surprise, and looked up from the books I had in front of me to blink at Loki. "Is it morning already?" I asked incredulously, turning to look out the window.
"It's nearly lunchtime," he replied, eyes narrowing. "Did you get any sleep at all?"
"No..." I stretched my shoulders. "I feel fine, though. Like I just woke up."
Looking around and finding the library empty except for us, Loki let out a small breath through his nose and planted both hands on the table before me, leaning over to look me in the eye.
"Tell me, mortal," he said, sounding like he was holding onto his temper by a thread, "when you have plans to move house in a day's time, or compete at sport, do you not seek rest in preparation for such activities?"
Holy uchi and soto personalities, Batman.
"I'm not saying I'm fine just to say it," I said, frowning. "Honestly, I feel like I could run some laps right this minute."
I did, too. It was really weird; I almost felt better than I had last night. I'd definitely never felt that way after an all-nighter before.
I then had the dubious pleasure of having my face searched for falsehood by the Lord of Lies himself. Keeping my surface thoughts rated G just-in-case for the duration of that little ordeal was no fucking picnic, let me tell you.
After a moment, while he didn't exactly look satisfied, he nonetheless straightened back up.
"It will have to do." He glared. "In future, bear in mind that the arts you'll be learning were never intended for human use; some of them will require levels of awareness and endurance of which you are more than likely physically incapable." Pursing his lips into the grimace of surrounded-by-idiots, he finished with, "So... just... try to have some idea of your position. Can you manage that, at least?"
"Yes, sir," I said. What else was there to say? Pomposity or not, he wasn't wrong.
Except for the part where it turned out he was.
In that first lesson, though, neither of us had any way of knowing that.
"I want to die," I groaned.
I was surrounded on all sides by paper, covered in diagrams and the formulae to determine how to lay out said diagrams. My task was to commit the standard formatting for these diagrams to memory, along with at least one of the formulae, and to prove that I had by solving a series of equations using that formula and constructing diagrams from them. And to ensure 'purity of the turf' (his exact words, I shit you not), he refused to tell me what any of this shit did when completed successfully.
Every single person who has ever said that making seals is an easy way to earn money can kiss the whitest part of my ass.
"Stop your whimpering," Loki said, turning another page of his book as he lounged on a massive windowsill. "I told you it would be strenuous."
"You didn't tell me there would be math!" I protested.
He didn't even look up, the bastard. "In your case, it would appear the two words are synonymous."
"Is there another way to learn this using words?" I asked hopefully. Or actual instruction beyond 'write this shit down until it's engraved into your pitiful brainmeat, worm-baby'?
He shut the book with a snap. "If all you intend to do is complain-"
"Just checking!" I said, holding my hands up defensively. "This might go more quickly if there is. Or if I could use a graphing calculator or something."
"The speed at which you learn is your own concern, and one for which I care little," he said coldly. "You are my student, and as such your methodologies will be judged by other sorcerors as an extension of my own. You will learn properly or not at all."
I was just about to angrily demand to know where he got off talking about learning properly when he wasn't teaching properly, when I stopped.
"All right," I said, and went back to work.
Properly. He wants me to learn properly.
I took another look at the Asgardian numerals.
Maybe I can only learn this properly by myself.
I chewed thoughtfully on my tongue for a minute.
Then I scratched out the Arabic numerals written above them, and wrote down C C# D Eb E F F# G Ab A Bb B.
That lasted about as long as it took for me to realize the sheer inescapable might of zero and just how complicated 'subtracting' or 'dividing' a musical note is when you don't actually read music.
Next I tried colours, and that worked a lot better. It wasn't a perfect match – I had to work purely off my aesthetic instincts for some of the more suddenly-esoteric problems, like deciding what the square root of pale yellow was – but using 'free canvas' for zero worked beautifully.
I felt incredibly silly. Why hadn't I ever tried anything like this before? High school would have been so much more pleasant without remedial math tutoring to worry about. This was actually kind of fun; it was like everything was falling into place.
And that made me worry, because literally every other time I'd ever felt that way about higher math, like it was easy or fun, it turned out that was the case because I'd been doing it wrong.
So I went back to using numbers and checked over my work (as best I could, being a numerical moron). It took a long time, and I have to admit, once I realized Loki was no longer in the room I took a bit of a break to read aloud from the grammar primer again (yes, I find grammar drills relaxing, shut up), but eventually, finally, after hours, much swearing, gratuitous Japanese growling, tears, and gnashing of teeth, I managed to re-solve the problem, and was gratified to find it worked out the same.
After that I just gave up for the day. I headed back to my room to bathe, managed to talk Birna into leaving me by myself for that, and asked her to send for some dinner.
I would've liked to have had some tunes to celebrate doing somthing right in math for once, but I'd found Hugmodur serving drinks at the feast the night before, as Birna had suggested, and he'd jumped at the chance to mess around with Midgardian tech. Nice guy, Moddie. I was to get to know him better later, but at the moment, I was just a chick without a phone, and he was a guy with a nerd-on for old school (by Asgardian standards) engineering who was willing to give me a hand.
So I sang to myself instead, like I tend to do when I'm alone for long periods of time. In deference to the earworm I'd had nearly since I arrived, I belted out Warp Riders in the bath, but when I heard Birna quietly giggling outside the door, I switched to songs closer to what I'd heard at the feast last night.
"Oh, that was a sad one," she said when I'd emerged, towelling off my hair. "What was it called?"
"Blue Eyes," I replied, "by a lady composer named Kanno Yoko. She wrote the one I sang before that, too, the one about the butterfly-man."
"Is it normal for most mortals to speak two languages now?" Birna asked, taking the towel from me without so much as a by-your-leave and giving my scalp one hell of a going over.
"Awk! You don't have to-"
"Yes, I do, my lady," she said flatly, "because clearly you cannot be trusted to handle your hair yourself. You have to dry it properly, you can't just squeeze it like that. You'll end up getting your nice fresh clothes wet."
I pouted. "Fine. But if you want to handle the towelling, you're in charge of combing the mess, too."
She pulled back a section of towel to give me a reproachful look. "That is the general idea, yes, my lady."
"Yes, it's fairly normal for an educated person to be a little bit bilingual, to answer your question," I said, tilting my neck down to make the job a little easier. "Usually it's your native language, and then English, because it's a business language. Why do you ask?"
"Oh, well, between the singing and that grammar book you've been reading-"
"Wait," I said, "how did you know Japanese and English are different? I thought Allspeak made it so you just hear Asgardian when people are talking."
"Well, yes and no. We hear the meaning more than what you're actually saying, but your words... are still there." She frowned, then scoffed. "Oh, it all makes more sense when you feel it! Anyway, I could hear the difference between those two songs, and-"
There was a knock at the door, and when Birna opened it, I once again had an annoyed god on my hands.
"Have you finished any of those diagrams?" Loki asked.
Perhaps wisely, the lady's maid chose this moment to depart by the other door.
"My afternoon was fine, thanks, sensei," I replied cheerily, reaching over to the night-table to get my one accomplishment and the makeshift 'proofs' that led to it. Handing it over, I added, "How pure's my turf, then?"
"... unbelievable," he said, and he really sounded like he meant it. For a moment I was giddy, waiting to hear what I'd done.
From out of the air, he took the book he'd been looking through earlier, flipped to a specific page and held it up for me.
I stared.
The two diagrams were inversions of one another. As in, I had done everything, every single step, in the wrong order, and for an encore drawn the thing upside down and backwards.
I laughed in embarrassed surprise. Holy crap, I'm a da Vinci 9-ball.
I've repressed the exact wording of the hailstorm of bile that that prompted, but rest assured it was pointed, surprisingly accurate in its summary of my character given the limited amount of evidence, and cruel enough to make me stop laughing and start battening down on my temper. The last thing that situation needed was for me to make some choice comments about his parentage, with him saying that shit about mine.
I didn't plan on saying anything, actually. I just stood there and took it, and tried not to think about whether it'd be worth the broken hand to punch him in the stomach. Mom always said not to hit people just because they said things about her, and she would be especially unimpressed to find out I'd socked a teacher.
But then he said something I couldn't let pass.
"- and if you try a stunt like this again-!"
"How does sucking at math constitute a stunt?" I interrupted indignantly. I didn't care what it looked like, I knew I'd worked my ass off even to get as far as I did, and I'd be damned if I was going to be accused of fucking around like some sort of snotty Will Hunting-esque STEM brat.
He took a step forward, looming, and when I took a step backward it was into the proper stance to make what I was sure would be a suicidally pitiful defence.
"Do you think me as slow-witted as my brother?" he snarled. "I will not-"
I let out a choked laugh. "You think I don't respect you?! I did math for you, you asshole! Do you have any idea how humiliating it is," I hissed, "to have to do something you're terrible at just because someone thinks that's the only way you'll ever be w-?"
I stopped.
... well that got personal awfully quick.
It's probably not saying great things about my mental health that I still want to kiss him, is it?
Loki didn't look any less pissed – to tell the truth, he looked more than ever like he wanted to shank me.
"You know nothing of humiliation," he spat.
"Oh, don't I?" I said. "You want to have a suffering-dick-measuring contest, Mr Prince of the Realm gold-plated dinnerware eternal youth and beauty?"
"Oh, yes, whatever was I thinking?" he replied with biting sarcasm. "Clearly your petty personal problems far outweigh the concerns of an entire kingdom."
"Yes," I said without hesitation. "Because without thousands of people with petty problems, there isn't a kingdom."
He was definitely thinking about hitting me. I knew that look. The prideful, wrathful, stupid part of me that loved a scrap was having a field day, high on the prospect of throwing down with a god. It almost managed to make me smile, despite my reason and my self-preservation begging for us not to make the first move.
Then, somehow, the moment was past. Loki stepped back out into the hall and looked away.
"Tomorrow afternoon, the west-facing mezzanine on the hundredth floor," he said, stomping off.
"Only if you promise not to throw me off," I shot at his retreating back, still glaring.
"Get some sleep tonight, you're no good to me half-dead," he ordered without turning around.
"Has he gone?" Birna asked, scaring me out of my skin as she poked her head around the servant's door.
"Yes," I said when I'd caught my breath.
She came out with an anxious look on her face. "You shouldn't have said all that, my lady – Prince Loki doesn't forget things like that. He stores them up."
"Good," I said spitefully.
=
My anger didn't last much longer than that, aside from the odd flare up now and then when I thought about the way he'd accused me of goofing off, or some of the things he'd assumed about my parents. In its place was left a dread of what exactly was waiting for me on that balcony.
Which turned out to be nothing. Or, well, next to nothing; when I got there a note in English fell from somewhere above my head and landed right in my hand.
Meditate.
"Well, that's nice and straightforward," I said aloud, tucking the note into my pocket.
The mezzanine was mostly empty at this time of day, but the floor below it was full of people; a crowd of young (looking, anyway) women were sewing a quilt in the warm afternoon light that poured in from the high windows.
As you might expect, the conditions were not ideal for meditation; stray bits of laughter and conversation bubbled up from beneath me, and every now and then someone walking by would be chatting about something of their own.
Luckily, I wasn't nearly as in the soup as I was with those diagrams earlier. I'd actually meditated before, because back home it was something everyone agreed was one of the prerequisites for learning seidr. It was nice to see some things about magic here were going to be familiar.
(What, you thought a Lokean pagan wouldn't have tried to use magic before? Please.)
Mindful of the fact that Crankasaurus Rex hadn't actually promised not to throw me off, I sat with my back to the railing, so if he tried I could at least grab onto something nearby. Crossing my legs (no lotus position for me; you can't forget the body if you can feel your hips protesting and your foot falling asleep) and leaning back, I let myself drift.
"Jans, stop that! The fountain is for drinking, don't put your dirty hands into it!"
Every thought is yourself, therefore embrace them. Swallow them to create the whole from the multitude. Only then will you be free.
"... but it wasn't her brother's fault..."
"Always been a pushy girl, that one..."
We're meditating on Asgard holy mother of fuck we are so going to level up we totally have to-!
"... don't know, what do you feel like? I was thinking..."
I wonder when he'll get here, came a breathless thought. I hope he's impressed that I can do it already. I hope when I open my eyes he'll be like a foot away and that before I can say anything he'll kiss me and pin down my wrists so I can't get away.
"Mother, please, can't I have just one?"
"No. You had one at lunch already."
"Bjorn doesn't even want it anymore, he's saying it's just taking up space."
Gods above and below, we are so pathetic, came the next thought, trampling the first two in spike-heel boots. Don't you dare make us some manipulative asshole's dog! And stop hoping for shinies, greedyguts!
"... aren't coming to the wedding? But you've known each other since..."
No, something more central to who I was commanded. I deny none of you. I deny only your disharmony. Now join the rest of us.
The emotions and thoughtforms swirled for a few minutes more, but in the end, we were all together, and I felt the familiar, comforting sensation of being both heavy and feather-light at the same time, my limbs nearly empty of my Self, mere muscle and bone. The voices underneath me were still there, but they were for my ears to hear, and I was no longer hearing with my ears.
The fingers of both my hands twitched and spasmed, but this was nothing new; it had happened before – in my left hand alone – during a few bouts of meditation back home, including the first. In a light, detached way, I was pleased to see it could happen in both hands. Eventually, as they always did, the fits died down, and left me completely still save for my shallow breathing.
I stayed like that for I don't know how long, but it felt like at least forty-five minutes. Accounting for the way your perception of time slows down a bit when you're meditating, I'd assume that means I spent twenty minutes at it. Nonetheless, since it felt like forty-five, I was starting to get antsy, and finally I managed to talk myself into getting up and finding a drink of water.
The stairs from the mezzanine down to the lower level were broad and on only a gentle incline, and yet I still felt woozy and apprehensive as I descended.
I think I might really need that water after all, I thought, gripping the handrail.
When I got to the bottom, things were more stable. Looking around, I spotted the ornate drinking fountain I'd heard used earlier, over by a set of double doors, and made my way across the floor to it.
A small child of indeterminate gender stared at me from over a woman's shoulder, and I waved. That prompted a small giggle before the kid hid their face in their mom's neck.
When I got to the fountain and stuck my face in, I was miffed to find the water was a damn hologram. Or something, anyway, I couldn't even feel the chill from it, let alone the wetness. With a huff, I started examining the sides of the thing for a button or a handle; maybe to save energy they kept an illusory fountain going and had patrons turn the actual water on only when they wanted a drink.
And that was when Loki walked in. And stared at me.
And without really knowing why, I panicked, and bolted.
And then I was gasping awake, and I was back on the mezzanine with Loki crouched beside me.
"Oh, shit," I said, frowning so hard my eyes shut. "I fell asleep, didn't I?"
"Why did you lie?" he demanded.
"About what?" I asked, taken aback.
"You said you'd never had magical training before. Why did you lie?"
"I didn't," I said. "I mean, I know things, but I learned them from books, or the internet. I didn't think that counted."
"How long have you been meditating?" he asked.
"About half an-"
"No," he said, rolling his eyes impatiently, "how long have you been practising meditation?"
"About a year," I said. Then, a few Scrabble tiles falling into place: "... wait, did I just send out a fetch?"
"You didn't do it intentionally?" he asked, and it was like the prince had been sent to go sit in the corner and the scholar had come out to play.
I shook my head. "I was thirsty – am thirsty," I corrected, swallowing drily. "I thought I got up to get a drink."
He frowned. "What happened to the anchor the Queen gave you?"
I pulled the little cat out of my pocket and held it up wordlessly.
"From now on, you meditate holding onto that," he ordered. Getting to his feet, he shook his head. "This... changes things."
"Sorry," I said, wincing.
Loki laughed, and stared at me incredulously. "Why do you constantly apologize for things you shouldn't and never for the things you should?"
I smiled in sympathy, and shrugged. "I'm Canadian."
"You're early."
I jumped in surprise, and looked up from the books I had in front of me to blink at Loki. "Is it morning already?" I asked incredulously, turning to look out the window.
"It's nearly lunchtime," he replied, eyes narrowing. "Did you get any sleep at all?"
"No..." I stretched my shoulders. "I feel fine, though. Like I just woke up."
Looking around and finding the library empty except for us, Loki let out a small breath through his nose and planted both hands on the table before me, leaning over to look me in the eye.
"Tell me, mortal," he said, sounding like he was holding onto his temper by a thread, "when you have plans to move house in a day's time, or compete at sport, do you not seek rest in preparation for such activities?"
Holy uchi and soto personalities, Batman.
"I'm not saying I'm fine just to say it," I said, frowning. "Honestly, I feel like I could run some laps right this minute."
I did, too. It was really weird; I almost felt better than I had last night. I'd definitely never felt that way after an all-nighter before.
I then had the dubious pleasure of having my face searched for falsehood by the Lord of Lies himself. Keeping my surface thoughts rated G just-in-case for the duration of that little ordeal was no fucking picnic, let me tell you.
After a moment, while he didn't exactly look satisfied, he nonetheless straightened back up.
"It will have to do." He glared. "In future, bear in mind that the arts you'll be learning were never intended for human use; some of them will require levels of awareness and endurance of which you are more than likely physically incapable." Pursing his lips into the grimace of surrounded-by-idiots, he finished with, "So... just... try to have some idea of your position. Can you manage that, at least?"
"Yes, sir," I said. What else was there to say? Pomposity or not, he wasn't wrong.
Except for the part where it turned out he was.
In that first lesson, though, neither of us had any way of knowing that.
"I want to die," I groaned.
I was surrounded on all sides by paper, covered in diagrams and the formulae to determine how to lay out said diagrams. My task was to commit the standard formatting for these diagrams to memory, along with at least one of the formulae, and to prove that I had by solving a series of equations using that formula and constructing diagrams from them. And to ensure 'purity of the turf' (his exact words, I shit you not), he refused to tell me what any of this shit did when completed successfully.
Every single person who has ever said that making seals is an easy way to earn money can kiss the whitest part of my ass.
"Stop your whimpering," Loki said, turning another page of his book as he lounged on a massive windowsill. "I told you it would be strenuous."
"You didn't tell me there would be math!" I protested.
He didn't even look up, the bastard. "In your case, it would appear the two words are synonymous."
"Is there another way to learn this using words?" I asked hopefully. Or actual instruction beyond 'write this shit down until it's engraved into your pitiful brainmeat, worm-baby'?
He shut the book with a snap. "If all you intend to do is complain-"
"Just checking!" I said, holding my hands up defensively. "This might go more quickly if there is. Or if I could use a graphing calculator or something."
"The speed at which you learn is your own concern, and one for which I care little," he said coldly. "You are my student, and as such your methodologies will be judged by other sorcerors as an extension of my own. You will learn properly or not at all."
I was just about to angrily demand to know where he got off talking about learning properly when he wasn't teaching properly, when I stopped.
"All right," I said, and went back to work.
Properly. He wants me to learn properly.
I took another look at the Asgardian numerals.
Maybe I can only learn this properly by myself.
I chewed thoughtfully on my tongue for a minute.
Then I scratched out the Arabic numerals written above them, and wrote down C C# D Eb E F F# G Ab A Bb B.
That lasted about as long as it took for me to realize the sheer inescapable might of zero and just how complicated 'subtracting' or 'dividing' a musical note is when you don't actually read music.
Next I tried colours, and that worked a lot better. It wasn't a perfect match – I had to work purely off my aesthetic instincts for some of the more suddenly-esoteric problems, like deciding what the square root of pale yellow was – but using 'free canvas' for zero worked beautifully.
I felt incredibly silly. Why hadn't I ever tried anything like this before? High school would have been so much more pleasant without remedial math tutoring to worry about. This was actually kind of fun; it was like everything was falling into place.
And that made me worry, because literally every other time I'd ever felt that way about higher math, like it was easy or fun, it turned out that was the case because I'd been doing it wrong.
So I went back to using numbers and checked over my work (as best I could, being a numerical moron). It took a long time, and I have to admit, once I realized Loki was no longer in the room I took a bit of a break to read aloud from the grammar primer again (yes, I find grammar drills relaxing, shut up), but eventually, finally, after hours, much swearing, gratuitous Japanese growling, tears, and gnashing of teeth, I managed to re-solve the problem, and was gratified to find it worked out the same.
After that I just gave up for the day. I headed back to my room to bathe, managed to talk Birna into leaving me by myself for that, and asked her to send for some dinner.
I would've liked to have had some tunes to celebrate doing somthing right in math for once, but I'd found Hugmodur serving drinks at the feast the night before, as Birna had suggested, and he'd jumped at the chance to mess around with Midgardian tech. Nice guy, Moddie. I was to get to know him better later, but at the moment, I was just a chick without a phone, and he was a guy with a nerd-on for old school (by Asgardian standards) engineering who was willing to give me a hand.
So I sang to myself instead, like I tend to do when I'm alone for long periods of time. In deference to the earworm I'd had nearly since I arrived, I belted out Warp Riders in the bath, but when I heard Birna quietly giggling outside the door, I switched to songs closer to what I'd heard at the feast last night.
"Oh, that was a sad one," she said when I'd emerged, towelling off my hair. "What was it called?"
"Blue Eyes," I replied, "by a lady composer named Kanno Yoko. She wrote the one I sang before that, too, the one about the butterfly-man."
"Is it normal for most mortals to speak two languages now?" Birna asked, taking the towel from me without so much as a by-your-leave and giving my scalp one hell of a going over.
"Awk! You don't have to-"
"Yes, I do, my lady," she said flatly, "because clearly you cannot be trusted to handle your hair yourself. You have to dry it properly, you can't just squeeze it like that. You'll end up getting your nice fresh clothes wet."
I pouted. "Fine. But if you want to handle the towelling, you're in charge of combing the mess, too."
She pulled back a section of towel to give me a reproachful look. "That is the general idea, yes, my lady."
"Yes, it's fairly normal for an educated person to be a little bit bilingual, to answer your question," I said, tilting my neck down to make the job a little easier. "Usually it's your native language, and then English, because it's a business language. Why do you ask?"
"Oh, well, between the singing and that grammar book you've been reading-"
"Wait," I said, "how did you know Japanese and English are different? I thought Allspeak made it so you just hear Asgardian when people are talking."
"Well, yes and no. We hear the meaning more than what you're actually saying, but your words... are still there." She frowned, then scoffed. "Oh, it all makes more sense when you feel it! Anyway, I could hear the difference between those two songs, and-"
There was a knock at the door, and when Birna opened it, I once again had an annoyed god on my hands.
"Have you finished any of those diagrams?" Loki asked.
Perhaps wisely, the lady's maid chose this moment to depart by the other door.
"My afternoon was fine, thanks, sensei," I replied cheerily, reaching over to the night-table to get my one accomplishment and the makeshift 'proofs' that led to it. Handing it over, I added, "How pure's my turf, then?"
"... unbelievable," he said, and he really sounded like he meant it. For a moment I was giddy, waiting to hear what I'd done.
From out of the air, he took the book he'd been looking through earlier, flipped to a specific page and held it up for me.
I stared.
The two diagrams were inversions of one another. As in, I had done everything, every single step, in the wrong order, and for an encore drawn the thing upside down and backwards.
I laughed in embarrassed surprise. Holy crap, I'm a da Vinci 9-ball.
I've repressed the exact wording of the hailstorm of bile that that prompted, but rest assured it was pointed, surprisingly accurate in its summary of my character given the limited amount of evidence, and cruel enough to make me stop laughing and start battening down on my temper. The last thing that situation needed was for me to make some choice comments about his parentage, with him saying that shit about mine.
I didn't plan on saying anything, actually. I just stood there and took it, and tried not to think about whether it'd be worth the broken hand to punch him in the stomach. Mom always said not to hit people just because they said things about her, and she would be especially unimpressed to find out I'd socked a teacher.
But then he said something I couldn't let pass.
"- and if you try a stunt like this again-!"
"How does sucking at math constitute a stunt?" I interrupted indignantly. I didn't care what it looked like, I knew I'd worked my ass off even to get as far as I did, and I'd be damned if I was going to be accused of fucking around like some sort of snotty Will Hunting-esque STEM brat.
He took a step forward, looming, and when I took a step backward it was into the proper stance to make what I was sure would be a suicidally pitiful defence.
"Do you think me as slow-witted as my brother?" he snarled. "I will not-"
I let out a choked laugh. "You think I don't respect you?! I did math for you, you asshole! Do you have any idea how humiliating it is," I hissed, "to have to do something you're terrible at just because someone thinks that's the only way you'll ever be w-?"
I stopped.
... well that got personal awfully quick.
It's probably not saying great things about my mental health that I still want to kiss him, is it?
Loki didn't look any less pissed – to tell the truth, he looked more than ever like he wanted to shank me.
"You know nothing of humiliation," he spat.
"Oh, don't I?" I said. "You want to have a suffering-dick-measuring contest, Mr Prince of the Realm gold-plated dinnerware eternal youth and beauty?"
"Oh, yes, whatever was I thinking?" he replied with biting sarcasm. "Clearly your petty personal problems far outweigh the concerns of an entire kingdom."
"Yes," I said without hesitation. "Because without thousands of people with petty problems, there isn't a kingdom."
He was definitely thinking about hitting me. I knew that look. The prideful, wrathful, stupid part of me that loved a scrap was having a field day, high on the prospect of throwing down with a god. It almost managed to make me smile, despite my reason and my self-preservation begging for us not to make the first move.
Then, somehow, the moment was past. Loki stepped back out into the hall and looked away.
"Tomorrow afternoon, the west-facing mezzanine on the hundredth floor," he said, stomping off.
"Only if you promise not to throw me off," I shot at his retreating back, still glaring.
"Get some sleep tonight, you're no good to me half-dead," he ordered without turning around.
"Has he gone?" Birna asked, scaring me out of my skin as she poked her head around the servant's door.
"Yes," I said when I'd caught my breath.
She came out with an anxious look on her face. "You shouldn't have said all that, my lady – Prince Loki doesn't forget things like that. He stores them up."
"Good," I said spitefully.
=
My anger didn't last much longer than that, aside from the odd flare up now and then when I thought about the way he'd accused me of goofing off, or some of the things he'd assumed about my parents. In its place was left a dread of what exactly was waiting for me on that balcony.
Which turned out to be nothing. Or, well, next to nothing; when I got there a note in English fell from somewhere above my head and landed right in my hand.
Meditate.
"Well, that's nice and straightforward," I said aloud, tucking the note into my pocket.
The mezzanine was mostly empty at this time of day, but the floor below it was full of people; a crowd of young (looking, anyway) women were sewing a quilt in the warm afternoon light that poured in from the high windows.
As you might expect, the conditions were not ideal for meditation; stray bits of laughter and conversation bubbled up from beneath me, and every now and then someone walking by would be chatting about something of their own.
Luckily, I wasn't nearly as in the soup as I was with those diagrams earlier. I'd actually meditated before, because back home it was something everyone agreed was one of the prerequisites for learning seidr. It was nice to see some things about magic here were going to be familiar.
(What, you thought a Lokean pagan wouldn't have tried to use magic before? Please.)
Mindful of the fact that Crankasaurus Rex hadn't actually promised not to throw me off, I sat with my back to the railing, so if he tried I could at least grab onto something nearby. Crossing my legs (no lotus position for me; you can't forget the body if you can feel your hips protesting and your foot falling asleep) and leaning back, I let myself drift.
"Jans, stop that! The fountain is for drinking, don't put your dirty hands into it!"
Every thought is yourself, therefore embrace them. Swallow them to create the whole from the multitude. Only then will you be free.
"... but it wasn't her brother's fault..."
"Always been a pushy girl, that one..."
We're meditating on Asgard holy mother of fuck we are so going to level up we totally have to-!
"... don't know, what do you feel like? I was thinking..."
I wonder when he'll get here, came a breathless thought. I hope he's impressed that I can do it already. I hope when I open my eyes he'll be like a foot away and that before I can say anything he'll kiss me and pin down my wrists so I can't get away.
"Mother, please, can't I have just one?"
"No. You had one at lunch already."
"Bjorn doesn't even want it anymore, he's saying it's just taking up space."
Gods above and below, we are so pathetic, came the next thought, trampling the first two in spike-heel boots. Don't you dare make us some manipulative asshole's dog! And stop hoping for shinies, greedyguts!
"... aren't coming to the wedding? But you've known each other since..."
No, something more central to who I was commanded. I deny none of you. I deny only your disharmony. Now join the rest of us.
The emotions and thoughtforms swirled for a few minutes more, but in the end, we were all together, and I felt the familiar, comforting sensation of being both heavy and feather-light at the same time, my limbs nearly empty of my Self, mere muscle and bone. The voices underneath me were still there, but they were for my ears to hear, and I was no longer hearing with my ears.
The fingers of both my hands twitched and spasmed, but this was nothing new; it had happened before – in my left hand alone – during a few bouts of meditation back home, including the first. In a light, detached way, I was pleased to see it could happen in both hands. Eventually, as they always did, the fits died down, and left me completely still save for my shallow breathing.
I stayed like that for I don't know how long, but it felt like at least forty-five minutes. Accounting for the way your perception of time slows down a bit when you're meditating, I'd assume that means I spent twenty minutes at it. Nonetheless, since it felt like forty-five, I was starting to get antsy, and finally I managed to talk myself into getting up and finding a drink of water.
The stairs from the mezzanine down to the lower level were broad and on only a gentle incline, and yet I still felt woozy and apprehensive as I descended.
I think I might really need that water after all, I thought, gripping the handrail.
When I got to the bottom, things were more stable. Looking around, I spotted the ornate drinking fountain I'd heard used earlier, over by a set of double doors, and made my way across the floor to it.
A small child of indeterminate gender stared at me from over a woman's shoulder, and I waved. That prompted a small giggle before the kid hid their face in their mom's neck.
When I got to the fountain and stuck my face in, I was miffed to find the water was a damn hologram. Or something, anyway, I couldn't even feel the chill from it, let alone the wetness. With a huff, I started examining the sides of the thing for a button or a handle; maybe to save energy they kept an illusory fountain going and had patrons turn the actual water on only when they wanted a drink.
And that was when Loki walked in. And stared at me.
And without really knowing why, I panicked, and bolted.
And then I was gasping awake, and I was back on the mezzanine with Loki crouched beside me.
"Oh, shit," I said, frowning so hard my eyes shut. "I fell asleep, didn't I?"
"Why did you lie?" he demanded.
"About what?" I asked, taken aback.
"You said you'd never had magical training before. Why did you lie?"
"I didn't," I said. "I mean, I know things, but I learned them from books, or the internet. I didn't think that counted."
"How long have you been meditating?" he asked.
"About half an-"
"No," he said, rolling his eyes impatiently, "how long have you been practising meditation?"
"About a year," I said. Then, a few Scrabble tiles falling into place: "... wait, did I just send out a fetch?"
"You didn't do it intentionally?" he asked, and it was like the prince had been sent to go sit in the corner and the scholar had come out to play.
I shook my head. "I was thirsty – am thirsty," I corrected, swallowing drily. "I thought I got up to get a drink."
He frowned. "What happened to the anchor the Queen gave you?"
I pulled the little cat out of my pocket and held it up wordlessly.
"From now on, you meditate holding onto that," he ordered. Getting to his feet, he shook his head. "This... changes things."
"Sorry," I said, wincing.
Loki laughed, and stared at me incredulously. "Why do you constantly apologize for things you shouldn't and never for the things you should?"
I smiled in sympathy, and shrugged. "I'm Canadian."
Chapter Seven
Is that a stuffed archaeopteryx?!
"Now," Loki said, making a leisurely note in a small book as he took a seat, "I want you to tell me everything you think you know about magic." He looked up. "And this time, there is to be no equivocating."
I broke off from gawking at the study to reply. "I'm assuming that includes fiction?"
He tilted his head to the side. "Until two days ago, I was fiction to your mind, was I not?"
I bit my lip. So she had told him. "Technically. I mean, in the sense that a story was the only way I was aware of your existence."
"Well, then it would appear you are not exactly an authority on what constitutes nonfiction."
"Would you prefer that I assume you're exactly the same as movie-Loki in every way?" I inquired. So far you've been spot-on, right down to the moodiness. How long are you going to stay civil this time? "I haven't been here long enough to know if this is really the same universe as the one depicted in the films." I frowned. "Come to think of it, I don't even know what year it is."
"2010, I believe," he offered, "by the current calendar."
My eyes widened. "Are you kidding?" A year, maybe two before Thor... months before Iron Man, if that...
He raised an eyebrow. "Is there something humourous about the date?"
"What, you mean aside from the fact that you pay attention to Earth?"
Huh. Thousands of shitty fanfics, suddenly validated.
"You spoke before of convenient points of exit from Asgard," he said, shrugging. "Where did you think I ran my errands?"
"I can think of a few places," I said neutrally. Someone ought to drink from Mimir's well if Odin won't. "What do you do there? I didn't get the impression you thought much of us."
"I don't," he said, with a smile that I would probably have found infuriating if I were a straight male. "The planet itself is another matter. You spoke of the projection you made as a fetch?"
"It was the first word that came to mind," I said, storing that topic under 'ask later'. "It's properly called a projection, then?"
"Projection is the general term for all illusory manifestations," he explained. "By what means did you generate it?"
I launched into an awkward, halting explanation that eased slightly when he didn't roll his eyes at the whole give-your-thoughts-a-hug thing.
"I see," he said when I'd finished. "It's an outdated method, as I would expect from a self-taught practitioner. But you appear to have unwittingly produced a fylgja."
"A fylgja?" I asked, frowning. "In my world that's... I think it's the word for a protective spirit; gives advance warning of a possible death in the family."
"It's a projection of your consciousness into an intangible form that mimics your own," Loki corrected. "They're useful for communicating over long distances, or for reconnaissance."
I tried not to think about a certain conversation on a dark asteroid with a creature that hid its eyes.
Slowly, I nodded. "So... it's a bunshin, more or less."
He looked thoughtful for a moment. "That isn't a bad word for it, actually. Where did you get that term?"
"Just a children's story," I said.
"Begin there, then," he ordered, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. "Tell me what details you have on the nature of magic within the tale. Be as thorough as you can."
"Just so we're clear," I said, struggling not to laugh, "you want me to tell you everything I know about the magic system of Naruto?"
"... you're a grown woman who has only just now begun her first apprenticeship," Loki said with a disbelieving look, spreading his hands, "and this is what embarrasses you?"
"You are my favourite teacher," I declared, giggling like a twit.
=
"If it can easily be taught to children," he said exhasperatedly, pouring us some water, "and it truly is a physical transformation, and not even this vaunted Sharingan is capable of perceiving the effect under normal circumstances, what possible reason could there be for it to see as little use as you claim?"
Initially the discussion had been purely about mechanics, but then I brought up the Sharingan, and you can't fully explain the Sharingan without talking about Rikudo Sennin's sons and Madara and the Curse of Hatred and crap, and once you get into that you might as well lay out the entire backstory. I was pleasantly surprised to see the prince got rather into it as we went along – though the point that seemed to frustrate him the most wasn't surprising at all; the Art of Transformation is to a master shapeshifter what Kishi's handling of female characters is to a feminist.
"It just isn't the kind of story Kishimoto wanted to tell," I said, accepting the cup he handed to me with a 'thank you'. "He was trying to do a sort of middle-brow kabuki kind of thing. In-universe, though, I think it's just that the story focuses so much on the adventures of battle-nin that situations where the henge would be vital to a plan's success don't really come up that often."
"It's absurd. Why introduce the ability at all, then?"
I offered a mock toast. "Welcome to shounen. As long as there's fighting and the occasional set of tits, the target demographic is satisfied. Internally consistent logic is an extra."
He muttered something into his cup.
I have got to get him to read Hunter X Hunter.
We had got as far as the distribution of the Tailed Beasts when I finally couldn't take it any more.
"Sensei?" I asked. "Why do you want to know all this stuff?"
"I'll tell you when you've finished," he replied.
I raised an eyebrow. "When I've finished with Naruto or when I've finished with every magic system I know?"
"Ah, well, that depends," he said, his mouth quirking up at the corners.
"On what?"
He sat back in his chair, hands spread wide as he smirked. "The breadth of your ambition."
I could not keep the smile off my face.
"Even in a galaxy far far away," I said to no one in particular, laughing and shaking my head, "it's comforting to see Loki is still a cryptic jerk."
I very nearly said 'troll', but I didn't expect that word would go down well with a Norse alien.
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," he said, smirk not even flickering.
"I'm sure you do," I replied. "Do you mean that if I decide to stop with just ninjutsu and genjutsu, I'll be learning only shinobi-esque stuff? Do you mean I'll be learning only those skills which you determine to be of equal value to the information provided?"
He didn't say anything, just waited. I was surprised at that. No one ever expects me to speculate further – expects or wants, really; a conversation generally involves two people, and when I really get underway the other person tends to get understandably miffed at me hogging the mic. I suppose the longer you live the more your conversational patience grows.
Emboldened by the silence, I went on, spouting off possibilities as they came to me.
"Do you mean that a more focused approach will lead to a more thorough mastery down the line, so any goals I have not directly related to learning magic will be easier to achieve? Or do you need to know all my various points of reference before you can determine what it would be easiest for me to grasp quickly, so that I'm satisfied and out of your hair, whereas if I manage to get you to teach me everything I'll be better served in the long run?"
The smirk became overtly condescending. "You'll forgive me if I am not optimistic about your chances of living long enough to learn everything I know."
I shrugged. "Neither am I, but I'd still like to try." I crossed my arms. "And way to prove my point by not answering any of those questions."
"Oh, did you want answers?" Loki asked innocently. "You seemed to be having such a fine time idly speculating I thought it would be a shame to interrupt."
"As I said: jerk." I sighed. "I'm a dancing bear to you, aren't I? It's not that my observations and guesses have any weight, it's just the novelty of me making them at all."
"Are you so surprised?" he asked. "You converse with a god, after all."
"In order to speak with an equal a Celt is forced to talk to gods," I cheerfully mangled. A part of me wanted to point out that my ancestors never worshipped the cast of Masterpiece Theatre, what with my being from another world, but it felt churlish. Besides, as haughty fictional Lokis go, I could have had a lot worse to deal with.
In the universe department if not the Loki department, I reflected, thinking of a certain charmingly-skeevy fast-talking archangel with the two numetal-est older brothers that ever lived.
"Is that so?" said the mischief-maker currently before me, amused. "Then by all means, speak on."
"All right, if you aren't going to answer that question," I said, "can you at least tell me what was up with the arithmancy you had me doing earlier?"
The smirk finally fell off his face, but he didn't seem annoyed. He gazed at me consideringly.
"You set great store by words," he said, as someone else would say 'you got a haircut'.
"... I like to think I do," I replied carefully.
And there was the smirk again. "False modesty suits you ill, Magda."
I am so very very glad I didn't tell anyone my real name; if he'd called me by it in that tone of voice there's no telling what kind of foolish thing I'd have done.
"It's the only kind I really have," I admitted. My thinking at the time was that if I was just as honest and self-aware as I could be, he wouldn't feel the need to drop another bomb on my pride like he did the night before. "I know I should be more willing to acknowledge my limitations, but-"
"Why would you ever want to do that?" he said.
Okay, real talk, that sentence from that man was a critical hit to the HMCS Self-Restraint. He sounded like he meant it. Like he thought it was completely ridiculous for someone as bright as I was to do something as tedious as believe I couldn't do everything I had ever wanted to do. Like he hadn't had this much fun talking to someone in years. Like I could grasp eternity if I tried.
Some people have The Doctor. I have The Liesmith.
I drew a shaky breath.
But, unlike The Doctor, the warnings about Loki are built right into the name.
"Sheer contrariness." I managed to force myself to speak evenly. "You clearly want me to kick reason to the curb, but you won't tell me why. Which means that the results would be good for you, but I have no indications that they'd be good for me."
"So cautious," Loki said in a mock-hurt tone. "Don't you trust your sensei?"
Yes. Far more than I should.
"I trust you to be a sensible person who looks out for his own interests above those of some random girl his mother dumped on him," I said in a rush.
... was that a genuine smile?
"The arithmancy, as you term it," he said finally, "was meant to gauge your potential in... call it 'applied physics'."
I perked up. "Like teleportation?"
"Among other things, yes." Abruptly, he stood in a single, fluid movement and stalked over to one of the many bookcases, coattails flapping behind him. Long, elegant fingers plucked a familiar volume from the shelf-
All right, stop narrating, another line of thought said irritably. Pay attention to what's actually happening, will you?
-and held it up for me to view. It was the same one he'd been reading yesterday. I could see the title more clearly now; I hadn't come across the word before in my half-assed grammatical study, of course, but it ended in an –ia sound, which I had worked out indicated that a word had to do with 'manipulating' or 'writing' whatever the first bit of the word was. So the title was probably something like 'Drawing Alchemical Arrays'.
"Physics is the one area of magic in which humans have been known to achieve some level of competence," Loki explained, flipping over to the page with the diagram I'd drawn catastrophically incorrectly. "This one describes the relationship between friction and the generation and emission of heat. When properly understood and internalized..."
He snapped his fingers, and a small flame sprang up between his index finger and thumb. I grinned.
"But-" He extinguished the flame with a flick of his wrist. "- as we've seen, you lack the necessary aptitude."
My smile became a grimace. "Yes."
"Now, now," he said reproachfully, "don't fret. This afternoon's performance has certainly shown you to be capable of some magic at least, even if the Queen's interest hadn't already."
I frowned. "Well, what's the distinction between this and that?"
He placed the book back on the shelf. "Where did you get the word arithmancy?" he asked.
... this is going to be a long night.
=
Yeah, I know it's arrogant of me to say my depiction's spot on, but think of it in-universe – of course my writing of the character is going to seem accurate to me.
Fylgja is pronounced FEEL-cha, or thereabouts, at least in Faroese.
I actually looked up the literal meaning of the word bunshin for this chapter. Turns out it can mean branch, partition, or the tactic of dividing and advancing, depending on context.
Is that a stuffed archaeopteryx?!
"Now," Loki said, making a leisurely note in a small book as he took a seat, "I want you to tell me everything you think you know about magic." He looked up. "And this time, there is to be no equivocating."
I broke off from gawking at the study to reply. "I'm assuming that includes fiction?"
He tilted his head to the side. "Until two days ago, I was fiction to your mind, was I not?"
I bit my lip. So she had told him. "Technically. I mean, in the sense that a story was the only way I was aware of your existence."
"Well, then it would appear you are not exactly an authority on what constitutes nonfiction."
"Would you prefer that I assume you're exactly the same as movie-Loki in every way?" I inquired. So far you've been spot-on, right down to the moodiness. How long are you going to stay civil this time? "I haven't been here long enough to know if this is really the same universe as the one depicted in the films." I frowned. "Come to think of it, I don't even know what year it is."
"2010, I believe," he offered, "by the current calendar."
My eyes widened. "Are you kidding?" A year, maybe two before Thor... months before Iron Man, if that...
He raised an eyebrow. "Is there something humourous about the date?"
"What, you mean aside from the fact that you pay attention to Earth?"
Huh. Thousands of shitty fanfics, suddenly validated.
"You spoke before of convenient points of exit from Asgard," he said, shrugging. "Where did you think I ran my errands?"
"I can think of a few places," I said neutrally. Someone ought to drink from Mimir's well if Odin won't. "What do you do there? I didn't get the impression you thought much of us."
"I don't," he said, with a smile that I would probably have found infuriating if I were a straight male. "The planet itself is another matter. You spoke of the projection you made as a fetch?"
"It was the first word that came to mind," I said, storing that topic under 'ask later'. "It's properly called a projection, then?"
"Projection is the general term for all illusory manifestations," he explained. "By what means did you generate it?"
I launched into an awkward, halting explanation that eased slightly when he didn't roll his eyes at the whole give-your-thoughts-a-hug thing.
"I see," he said when I'd finished. "It's an outdated method, as I would expect from a self-taught practitioner. But you appear to have unwittingly produced a fylgja."
"A fylgja?" I asked, frowning. "In my world that's... I think it's the word for a protective spirit; gives advance warning of a possible death in the family."
"It's a projection of your consciousness into an intangible form that mimics your own," Loki corrected. "They're useful for communicating over long distances, or for reconnaissance."
I tried not to think about a certain conversation on a dark asteroid with a creature that hid its eyes.
Slowly, I nodded. "So... it's a bunshin, more or less."
He looked thoughtful for a moment. "That isn't a bad word for it, actually. Where did you get that term?"
"Just a children's story," I said.
"Begin there, then," he ordered, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. "Tell me what details you have on the nature of magic within the tale. Be as thorough as you can."
"Just so we're clear," I said, struggling not to laugh, "you want me to tell you everything I know about the magic system of Naruto?"
"... you're a grown woman who has only just now begun her first apprenticeship," Loki said with a disbelieving look, spreading his hands, "and this is what embarrasses you?"
"You are my favourite teacher," I declared, giggling like a twit.
=
"If it can easily be taught to children," he said exhasperatedly, pouring us some water, "and it truly is a physical transformation, and not even this vaunted Sharingan is capable of perceiving the effect under normal circumstances, what possible reason could there be for it to see as little use as you claim?"
Initially the discussion had been purely about mechanics, but then I brought up the Sharingan, and you can't fully explain the Sharingan without talking about Rikudo Sennin's sons and Madara and the Curse of Hatred and crap, and once you get into that you might as well lay out the entire backstory. I was pleasantly surprised to see the prince got rather into it as we went along – though the point that seemed to frustrate him the most wasn't surprising at all; the Art of Transformation is to a master shapeshifter what Kishi's handling of female characters is to a feminist.
"It just isn't the kind of story Kishimoto wanted to tell," I said, accepting the cup he handed to me with a 'thank you'. "He was trying to do a sort of middle-brow kabuki kind of thing. In-universe, though, I think it's just that the story focuses so much on the adventures of battle-nin that situations where the henge would be vital to a plan's success don't really come up that often."
"It's absurd. Why introduce the ability at all, then?"
I offered a mock toast. "Welcome to shounen. As long as there's fighting and the occasional set of tits, the target demographic is satisfied. Internally consistent logic is an extra."
He muttered something into his cup.
I have got to get him to read Hunter X Hunter.
We had got as far as the distribution of the Tailed Beasts when I finally couldn't take it any more.
"Sensei?" I asked. "Why do you want to know all this stuff?"
"I'll tell you when you've finished," he replied.
I raised an eyebrow. "When I've finished with Naruto or when I've finished with every magic system I know?"
"Ah, well, that depends," he said, his mouth quirking up at the corners.
"On what?"
He sat back in his chair, hands spread wide as he smirked. "The breadth of your ambition."
I could not keep the smile off my face.
"Even in a galaxy far far away," I said to no one in particular, laughing and shaking my head, "it's comforting to see Loki is still a cryptic jerk."
I very nearly said 'troll', but I didn't expect that word would go down well with a Norse alien.
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," he said, smirk not even flickering.
"I'm sure you do," I replied. "Do you mean that if I decide to stop with just ninjutsu and genjutsu, I'll be learning only shinobi-esque stuff? Do you mean I'll be learning only those skills which you determine to be of equal value to the information provided?"
He didn't say anything, just waited. I was surprised at that. No one ever expects me to speculate further – expects or wants, really; a conversation generally involves two people, and when I really get underway the other person tends to get understandably miffed at me hogging the mic. I suppose the longer you live the more your conversational patience grows.
Emboldened by the silence, I went on, spouting off possibilities as they came to me.
"Do you mean that a more focused approach will lead to a more thorough mastery down the line, so any goals I have not directly related to learning magic will be easier to achieve? Or do you need to know all my various points of reference before you can determine what it would be easiest for me to grasp quickly, so that I'm satisfied and out of your hair, whereas if I manage to get you to teach me everything I'll be better served in the long run?"
The smirk became overtly condescending. "You'll forgive me if I am not optimistic about your chances of living long enough to learn everything I know."
I shrugged. "Neither am I, but I'd still like to try." I crossed my arms. "And way to prove my point by not answering any of those questions."
"Oh, did you want answers?" Loki asked innocently. "You seemed to be having such a fine time idly speculating I thought it would be a shame to interrupt."
"As I said: jerk." I sighed. "I'm a dancing bear to you, aren't I? It's not that my observations and guesses have any weight, it's just the novelty of me making them at all."
"Are you so surprised?" he asked. "You converse with a god, after all."
"In order to speak with an equal a Celt is forced to talk to gods," I cheerfully mangled. A part of me wanted to point out that my ancestors never worshipped the cast of Masterpiece Theatre, what with my being from another world, but it felt churlish. Besides, as haughty fictional Lokis go, I could have had a lot worse to deal with.
In the universe department if not the Loki department, I reflected, thinking of a certain charmingly-skeevy fast-talking archangel with the two numetal-est older brothers that ever lived.
"Is that so?" said the mischief-maker currently before me, amused. "Then by all means, speak on."
"All right, if you aren't going to answer that question," I said, "can you at least tell me what was up with the arithmancy you had me doing earlier?"
The smirk finally fell off his face, but he didn't seem annoyed. He gazed at me consideringly.
"You set great store by words," he said, as someone else would say 'you got a haircut'.
"... I like to think I do," I replied carefully.
And there was the smirk again. "False modesty suits you ill, Magda."
I am so very very glad I didn't tell anyone my real name; if he'd called me by it in that tone of voice there's no telling what kind of foolish thing I'd have done.
"It's the only kind I really have," I admitted. My thinking at the time was that if I was just as honest and self-aware as I could be, he wouldn't feel the need to drop another bomb on my pride like he did the night before. "I know I should be more willing to acknowledge my limitations, but-"
"Why would you ever want to do that?" he said.
Okay, real talk, that sentence from that man was a critical hit to the HMCS Self-Restraint. He sounded like he meant it. Like he thought it was completely ridiculous for someone as bright as I was to do something as tedious as believe I couldn't do everything I had ever wanted to do. Like he hadn't had this much fun talking to someone in years. Like I could grasp eternity if I tried.
Some people have The Doctor. I have The Liesmith.
I drew a shaky breath.
But, unlike The Doctor, the warnings about Loki are built right into the name.
"Sheer contrariness." I managed to force myself to speak evenly. "You clearly want me to kick reason to the curb, but you won't tell me why. Which means that the results would be good for you, but I have no indications that they'd be good for me."
"So cautious," Loki said in a mock-hurt tone. "Don't you trust your sensei?"
Yes. Far more than I should.
"I trust you to be a sensible person who looks out for his own interests above those of some random girl his mother dumped on him," I said in a rush.
... was that a genuine smile?
"The arithmancy, as you term it," he said finally, "was meant to gauge your potential in... call it 'applied physics'."
I perked up. "Like teleportation?"
"Among other things, yes." Abruptly, he stood in a single, fluid movement and stalked over to one of the many bookcases, coattails flapping behind him. Long, elegant fingers plucked a familiar volume from the shelf-
All right, stop narrating, another line of thought said irritably. Pay attention to what's actually happening, will you?
-and held it up for me to view. It was the same one he'd been reading yesterday. I could see the title more clearly now; I hadn't come across the word before in my half-assed grammatical study, of course, but it ended in an –ia sound, which I had worked out indicated that a word had to do with 'manipulating' or 'writing' whatever the first bit of the word was. So the title was probably something like 'Drawing Alchemical Arrays'.
"Physics is the one area of magic in which humans have been known to achieve some level of competence," Loki explained, flipping over to the page with the diagram I'd drawn catastrophically incorrectly. "This one describes the relationship between friction and the generation and emission of heat. When properly understood and internalized..."
He snapped his fingers, and a small flame sprang up between his index finger and thumb. I grinned.
"But-" He extinguished the flame with a flick of his wrist. "- as we've seen, you lack the necessary aptitude."
My smile became a grimace. "Yes."
"Now, now," he said reproachfully, "don't fret. This afternoon's performance has certainly shown you to be capable of some magic at least, even if the Queen's interest hadn't already."
I frowned. "Well, what's the distinction between this and that?"
He placed the book back on the shelf. "Where did you get the word arithmancy?" he asked.
... this is going to be a long night.
=
Yeah, I know it's arrogant of me to say my depiction's spot on, but think of it in-universe – of course my writing of the character is going to seem accurate to me.
Fylgja is pronounced FEEL-cha, or thereabouts, at least in Faroese.
I actually looked up the literal meaning of the word bunshin for this chapter. Turns out it can mean branch, partition, or the tactic of dividing and advancing, depending on context.
Furiko's Omake Theatre~!
Apprenticeship, Day Two
"It's the only magical law mentioned by name in the text. Supposedly, you can't transfigure things into food; you can only use magic to multiply the amount of food you already have, or summon food from somewhere-"
"Of course you can transfigure food," Loki interrupted, as he seemed to be doing a lot during this exercise, "but no one does it. It's too much effort for too little gain. It's more efficient to just carry your food with you." He sounded almost offended, though at what, I couldn't tell.
I frowned. "Hm. So it's like being a Conjurer in Hunter X Hunter."
"No!" Loki held up a warning finger. "No, we're not getting sidetracked again; we've already lost half an hour to that Dragonball story of yours."
"Hey," I held up my hands defensively, "you were the one who interrupted, man."
Apprenticeship, Day Three
Under normal circumstances, explaining King Crimson to a person who has never seen a sportscast instant replay, nor owned a VCR or a turntable, is an endeavour only to be embarked upon when you have literally no other way to pass the time.
Fortunately, the person I was trying to explain it to was basically a theoretical physicist, so he got the gist of it pretty quickly.
And then he gave me his own explanation in magic-jargon and had to spend the next ten minutes breaking it down into words small enough that I could understand what the hell he was talking about, in order to confirm that he'd gotten it right.
=
"He destroyed his own home?" Loki sounded completely scandalized at the thought.
"It was the best option available to him at the time," I said, a bit defensively. "Dio made it clear he intended to run rampant if he wasn't stopped."
Sensei looked like he didn't even know where to begin. "But... the home of his ancestors... for a nobleman to set fire to his own heritage..."
"I'm sure it must have pained him to do it," I said, "especially with his father's corpse not even cold yet, but... realistically, if Dio were unleashed on the world..."
"... then that would have been the Joestar legacy, regardless of what else survived," Loki concluded. He sighed, and glanced back at me. "You have quite the taste for tragedy, Miss Quickfinger."
Yeah, I've always been kind of warped like that.
"Story's not over yet," I replied with a smirk. "Your girlfriend even shows up again for a bit."
He didn't blush, but then, he probably couldn't; frost giant physiology is a tricky thing. "She is not my 'girlfriend', don't be dramatic. I merely took pleasure in hearing of how she humiliated that cad when he sought to besmirch her."
"Do you wanna hear the rest or not?"
=
"You admire him."
I beamed. "Immensely."
"Why?" Loki's incredulity could have powered a small house; he almost laughed the word. "From what you've said of him so far, he's a coward whose survival up to this point has been based entirely on luck and his ability to bluff his opponents into miscalculating."
"I know!" I exclaimed joyfully. "Isn't he awesome?"
Hey, I know that look! I thought with pure mischievous glee. That's the look they give ya when you make a Silmarillion joke in mixed company.
"And besides, if your definition of cowardice is so all-encompassing that it includes 'being aware of one's limits' and 'favouring one's pre-existing skillset', the word becomes effectively meaningless," I pointed out.
"... your realm must be a very... interesting place, for the people to hail such men as heroes," Loki said finally.
I snorted. "We have a term back home for protagonists who are so strong and so perfect that there's almost no possible way they'll ever lose. We call them Boring Invincible Heroes."
Loki's lips twitched, but he looked away and managed not to smile.
I grinned. C'mon, handsome, let's see those pearly whites.
"It's not that Jojo doesn't have straight-up slugfests in it," I said, tryin' to bring it on home, "because of course it does, it wouldn't really be a shounen battle series if it didn't. But the heroes earn them. A cathartic flurry of punches aimed right at the villain's smug face is the hero's reward for his quick-thinking and his skillful analysis. That's what makes the series so good!"
"I take it back," Loki said, shaking his head and still trying not to smile, daft little tsundere that he was. "No plane could be so odd as to produce you as an average citizen. This is your own particular madness, there's no other explanation."
"Well, yeah, 'course," I said. "Failed bard, remember? It's my job to love fiction."
Apprenticeship, Day Four
The thing about hanging out with Loki is that if he spots an opportunity to watch you make an ass of yourself, he will almost always seize it.
In all honesty, I think he was just looking for something to take his mind off the nebulously-defined 'research' he'd been doing that for some reason didn't involve being in his study as usual when I came in around two. Whatever it was, he looked more than a little haggard when he arrived; he sank into his chair with a soft 'whump' and asked if a parallel of Shakespeare existed on my world, and if so, did his works still feature the same fantastical elements?
He looked a little embarrassed to be asking, actually, like he thought Odin would descend from on high and pop his monocle-eyepatch at the thought of a Prince of Asgard having once snickered at sex puns in a sixteenth-century playhouse.
And that's how I ended up performing the Hecate monologue from Macbeth to an audience of one.
When I had finished he looked a bit less grey around the edges. He even applauded, in that little-brother way that means 'ha, you are such a nerd'.
"I can't speak as to the Hecate of your own world," he commented, thoroughly amused, "but let me assure you, the one I knew would not have been able to get through that speech without throwing someone across a room."
"Really?" I asked, surprised. "That's how I played the role when I was younger, but... she's addressing her underlings. They already know she's mad at them and can end them with a word; why would she have to shriek about it and smash up the place?"
"Because she is madder than a sack full of cats," Loki said matter-of-factly.
I laughed, and tried to ignore the slight pain in my chest.
Of all the call-forwards he could have made...
"When I get through with this you have to tell me how you two met," I declared.
"Do I," he non-asked with a small smile.
"Of course! I didn't even know you knew each other." I winked. "And I'd hate for my portrayal to remain so thoroughly inaccurate – I have my pride, after all."
"I hadn't noticed," he murmured.
=
Whenever life gets me down, I like to remember that somewhere out there in the multiverse, there's a Norse god who knows the entire plot of the first season of Sailor Moon because I told it to him one warm spring afternoon.
"There are more stories from later in the cycle," I said, trying not to sniffle; that finale gets me every time, I swear. "But I don't know them well enough to tell them from memory."
Which sucks, because judging by how hard he had to try not to look interested when Usagi finally fought Endymion, he'd really like season three.
"I wouldn't ask it of you, after that; it was a worthy tale," he declared, "and well told."
I waved him off, mortified beyond belief and ridiculously giddy all at the same time. "You don't have to sugar coat it; I know I'm terrible live. Especially compared to what you must be used to."
He rolled his eyes. "As you witnessed three nights ago, that is demonstrably untrue."
I bit my lip. "Well, he did cover the principal players and events. I... can't remember what they were at the moment, but I'm sure that they were very... principled."
And then both of us were laughing, and I felt that glorious feeling you get when you're sharing a spot of nonsense with your immortal magic professor about his lightning-god dorkbutt older brother in his gold-glazed Batcave.
"Sorry," I said, still giggling a bit, "he's your brother, I know, you're the only one entitled to rag on him-"
It was like flipping a switch. I could almost see him remembering that Thor was a prince, and so was he, and that I was just the commoner mortal the Queen had dumped on him without warning.
"Yes, well," he said, his smile becoming slightly hollow as he withdrew back inside himself.
And then he asked me a few further questions about the full capabilities of the Empyrean Silver Crystal and set me to meditating for the rest of the day before heading out on some other matter.
Apprenticeship, Day Five
"Red by inclination, Blue by conditioning," I rattled off. I wasn't sure when our little chats had turned into a getting-to-know-you seminar, but Magic The Gathering wasn't a terrible system for that sort of self-classification stuff.
Loki raised an eyebrow. "And that means...?"
"My first thought when I'm hurt is always to react emotionally; to cry or punch or roar insults," I said, more than a bit sheepishly. "That's the Red. It's the colour of passion, and overwhelming force."
He looked genuinely surprised at that. "Is Blue restraint, then?"
I blinked. "Yeah, partially. What makes you say that?"
"You don't have nearly enough scars for it to be anything else," he said flatly.
I smiled.
"Blue is the colour of intellect, and..." I paused. "... ideas that change the world."
Even as I said it, I felt like an idiot. My delivery was so awkward, like I didn't believe myself, or like I thought it was a joke.
"That's the dream, anyway," I said, avoiding his eyes with a quirk of my eyebrows.
"And what," came the voice soft as velvet, "does changing the world entail?"
In a momentary burst of fear and adrenaline, the thought rushed through my mind: I said KNEEL!
"Shapeshifting, illusions, time-travel," I said.
After a moment I decided that fuck it, this was a conversation worth having, and added: "And mind-control."
A small frown. "Your earlier comments on the Sharingan led me to believe you didn't approve of such methods."
"I don't," I said bluntly. "Even setting aside questions of morality, mind control is just... sloppy. As a plot device it's lame and as a practice it lacks finesse." I crossed my arms, feeling a bit defensive, worrying every second that he'd somehow figure out I was trying to manipulate him, trying to plant memories of someone, anyone telling him that mindcontrol wasn't just 'wrong', in some Asgardian impossibly-pure code of conduct, it was stupid. The lazy way out. Unworthy.
Yeah, best of luck selling that to Prince Dimir, here.
"I quite agree."
"You do?" I blurted out. Jesus Christ, how big of a whammy did that fuckin' can-opener lay on him?
"Is that so surprising?" he asked, frown deepening.
"Well, no," I said, trying to recover myself, "I suppose not, but..."
Sometimes it's nice, having been born on the other side of the fourth wall. It gives you perspective.
"I don't think I've ever heard you say those words before. To anyone."
"... I rarely have occasion to do so," he grudgingly confessed.
I had no clue what to say to that.
Eventually I went with, "Thank you." Sometimes it's best to roll with the classics.
"I suppose black and white are self-explanatory?" he asked, turning swiftly back to the topic at hand.
"Not so much as you might think," I answered, trying to convince my still-racing heart that the moment was over.
Fuck canon, I thought vehemently. Fuck it with a rusty straight-razor, right in its eyesockets. I'm going to save you, you gloomy little bastard, and you're going to get some friends who like you without having met you through the damned silver screen.
Great. Sounds like a plan.
Glad you approve, me.
... of course you realize that sounding like a plan and being a plan are two different things.
Fuck off.
Chapter Eight
I haven't made much of my homesickness yet, but I hope you'll understand that's because I don't think it's very interesting, and not because I didn't feel it. Because I did, and at the time I was pretty sure it was directly responsible for the habit of early rising my body had spontaneously developed.
I didn't have nightmares or anything, mind you; the closest it came to that was when I had that dream about the long-ass hallway outside my dorm room when I was still at uni, and I awoke to the relief that comes of knowing that not only are you not trapped in an endless mid-'90s screensaver maze, you will never have to do a final project worth 15% of your grade ever again.
What happened mostly was just that I'd be in the middle of thinking about what I was hungry for for lunch, or trying to read a book with the primer open in my other hand, or lying in bed wondering about what kind of magic I might be suited to and what I'd do with it once Loki finally let me move on from meditation and explaining what little I remembered of the Death Note rules, when something of the place I was born would inevitably come up. I'd realize I was craving Passion Flakies and Pizza Nova; I'd dissolve into frustrated tears and long for some manga, or Robertson Davies, or Terry Pratchett; I'd start to imagine scamming stockbrokers with illusions and whispered secrets to afford an island with a sand beach and build a summer cottage on it for my family and my friends to visit... and then I'd remember that I wasn't likely to ever see any of them again.
There was no chance of using the wormhole in the market. I asked Frigga about it, when she stopped by to ask how I was getting along and assure me that the All-Father had been informed of my presence on-site and the necessity of me acquiring some familiarity with magic before/if they dumped me on Earth (though she still didn't share her reasoning with me). She informed me that naturally-occurring wormholes only work in one direction. If I wanted to return home, I'd have to somehow discover another wormhole and accurately determine that it led to the reality I'd left, as opposed to one where I never fell through the rift in the first place, or one where the Permian extinction never took place, or where the Earth never acquired an atmosphere. Hell, there wasn't even anything to guarantee I'd land in my home country, on my home planet and in the year I left all at the same time.
"'If it were easy,'" I quoted to the empty room after she left, "'everyone would do it'." I laughed bitterly under my breath. "Goddamn, sensei."
So yes, I did angst. And when I woke up at four am three days in a row, not tired in the least but each time expecting to be back in my bedroom with the floral-harvest wallpaper and the Van Gogh geisha print on the wall, I eventually decided that what I really wanted to do was hit something.
It turned out there were five libraries in the palace open to the public (well, open to the noble public, anyway), but the various training yards numbered in the low or mid twenties, depending on how you counted the ones that were adjacent to one another. Not surprising, given the average Asgardian's priorities – I was inclined to be biased on this point anyway, but as with the feast, it was really hard not to draw parallels with high school movie cliches. Having attended a school that was undisputedly ruled by the indie crowd and the nationally-ranked Improv and Drama Clubs, I was in decidedly unfamiliar social territory.
In any case, I made a point of looking for a more secluded spot – because while four am was an hour I was more used to approaching from the other end of my day, to Asgardian servants (much like surburban supermoms), the early morning was their only chance to get some training in before work, and the yards closest to the main palace structures were all at least half full.
The fact is, I was always kind of clumsy on my feet; it started when I went through my middle-school growth spurt and it never really went away. I'm no Bella Swan, it's not like I was walking around with a permanent inner ear infection or anything, but my legs felt like tree-trunks – they always moved about a half-second slower than I wanted them to. My footsteps sounded like I was wearing shoes even when I was barefoot, my footwork ranged from terrible to been-taking-karate-classes-for-six-weeks, and even though my form on the roundhouse kick Mom had taught me was decent, it felt like all of the strength exerted was going into lifting the leg without losing my balance. Which occasionally happened anyway.
None of this was worthy of note back home, but I was reasonably sure it would be considered hilarious for any woman in Asgard to have even a semi-serious interest in asskicking, given the exposition about Sif facing discrimination in the first Thor movie. And she was good at fighting; I could only imagine what they'd say about me. I really wasn't keen to play Krillin to anyone's Vegeta. Or worse, Chichi – I did not need anyone thinking I was going for the warrior equivalent of a B.MRS.
So I went for a little run.
It wasn't as tedious a search as it might have been; the night sky over Asgard was a source of fresh delight every time I took another look. If I stood in one place long enough, with my face turned heavenward, I began to feel as though I was looking into an infinite celestial city. Every star and planet was the lit window of an apartment or a glowing street lamp on a winding expressway; every puff of nebula was late-night steam or smoke glowing under the neon lights; a whirling distant galaxy was a postcard-adorning landmark on a hill.
It was all very Gurren Lagann, and I have to admit, after a while I felt my ill-humour dissipate. It's hard to stay feeling dejected when the sky seems so warm and inviting.
Nonetheless, homesickness was only half the reason I was in the mood for some exercise, and since the run hadn't so much as scratched the surface of my vigour, I kept moving.
Honestly, when I stopped to think about it it was a bit creepy. Prior to my arrival on Asgard, I could function on about five hours' sleep at a time, but thriving required something on the order of ten a day. Being as energetic and good-tempered as this on only four to six hours of sleep was a luxury I hadn't enjoyed since my elementary school days as a closet nightowl. I didn't seriously suspect that I was being drugged or something, but I wouldn't have discounted the possibility that the water and food quality in Asgard was so superior to that of Earth that I was operating at near-peak energy efficiency, or just that my recent jaunt between realities had royally messed me up. I didn't know anything about neurobiology, but I was sure there had to be a part of the brain a tumour could press on and impair the ability to feel fatigue, and I had a vague, irrational fear that I'd soon descend into sleep deprivation-induced psychosis and then death. I considered this unlikely, however; Marvel doesn't do quick-and-horrible mundane illnesses, they do either quick-and-horrible-fucking-weird illnesses or chronic conditions to draw out even more angst.
Eventually I decided if I was so intent on avoiding gossip, I should train in the forest rather
than at any official training yard. It wasn't as though I needed any special equipment, after all; whatever knowledge I had of swordplay amounted to the few points of theory I'd managed to pick up from Rurouni Kenshin. That morning, I just wanted to act like a kung fool for a little while, and the stand of trees at the edge of the grounds seemed like a decent place to do it.
Five minutes later I punched a crater into the bark of an oak tree.
Okay, maybe 'crater' is a little bit of an exaggeration – it was only about an inch deep at the centre, and barely a millimetre at the edges. But it looked like a crater, and my knuckles and shoulder informed me that it fuckin' ought to be a crater with how much effort they'd put into the operation, so crater it is.
I should stress that I didn't just blindly and enthusiastically swing with all my piteous might at a massive eight-hundred-year-old tree – I'm not a complete fucking idiot. Initially I was more or less shadowboxing, a tap here or there to help me gauge my reach. When I found the bark was surprisingly pliant and easy on my knuckles, though, I upped my game a bit, started throwing actual (if pulled) punches at it.
Thus encouraged, I hauled off and hit it as hard as I could – because while I am not a complete fucking idiot, I am still sometimes a goddamn hot-blooded moron. The difference between this anecdote and a dozen others I could tell you, predating any multiversial travel shenanigans, is that this time I didn't bruise my knuckles so badly I couldn't comfortably hold a pen for a week.
My first reaction was the obvious one.
Oh no no no no no I hurt it!
And I dropped my kubotan.
Well, okay, maybe that's only obvious to someone who grew up in BC, The Land That Capitalism Forgot.
When I took a moment to examine the damage, I quickly realized that the hole wasn't nearly as deep as I had thought it was, and that the tree likely found my babbling apologies absolutely precious. That was when I was struck by what most normal people would consider the obvious thought:
I am a bad motherfucker!
I spent the next minute and a half joyfully kicking the shit out of every other tree in the vicinity and shouting manga-related gibberish.
When I got to the Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms, I discovered to my dismay that I did not have superspeed. Or super-precision; several of my slaps managed to somehow miss a two-foot-wide target entirely at nearly-point-blank-range. Blame my crappy depth-perception for that.
I pouted just a bit when I found that out. If I was going to get any of the three Star Platinum powers, why did it have to be the one that's useless without the other two?
I know that sounds ridiculously spoiled, but come on – it doesn't matter how strong you are if you can't hit anything.
These observations were disappointing, but they put me in a scientific mood. So, as the sun came up like an enormous punchbowl on the pink tablecloth of the sky, I set about trying to determine the limits of my ability.
First, I paced off a straight line from the tree I'd punched to one further into the woods, to measure the distance between them. Then I removed my watch and fastened it around one of the higher branches of a nearby shrub. Taking one last glance at the position of the second-hand, I ran as fast as I could to the second tree and back again. Checking the watch, I figured that even if I didn't have super-speed in its most totally-broken sense, I was still quite a bit faster than I remembered; I wasn't a sporty person, so I didn't know how my time I would measure up to that of, say, a high school sprinter, but I felt like any improvement was worth celebrating.
Then I tried to lift a fallen log.
A nearly-wrenched shoulder, ten cramped digits and two aching knees later, I was confused and pissed right the fuck off.
The hell is this? Did I run out of juice already?
Kicking the log in question, things got more confusing when my shin struck the damn thing so hard that for a second it got stuck.
"Oh, pfft! Fuck!"
It didn't hurt, but wobbling around on one leg was really embarrassing, and for about the fiftieth time so far I was grateful for the seclusion the forest afforded me.
Odder still, once I managed to get loose, I saw that the small point I had felt pressing against me was a bigass splinter that had torn a sizeable rip in my jeans. Pulling it out and rolling up my pant leg, I found that not only was I not bleeding, my skin wasn't even red or developing a bruise. That was unprecedented; I could get bruises from anything. Once or twice I'd even gotten them from sleeping in the car, with my arm pressed against the door.
So... my superpower is not sucking as much as I used to? I... guess I can live with that. Plenty of X-Men would kill for a gift like that.
On a hunch, I tried to roll the log over. It took some doing, and when I let go the log immediately rolled back into the position it'd had before, but I managed to get the underside up long enough to see faint cracks in the bark, around the points where my fingers had been.
Stepping back and dusting off my hands, I nodded to myself.
"Okay," I said aloud, wiping the sweat from my forehead. "Super-durability. Neat. You don't always see that on its own."
I wondered if I might now be subject to fewer wrinkles as I aged, or if I'd need gravitational-hax for that. Certainly I might be able to get a job as a stunt-woman, if I ever ended up back on Earth; I could do all sorts of convincing jumps and – oh my, was I bulletproof now? How do you even test something like that? If Loki's grand entrance in The Avengers was anything to go by, Asgardians certainly were, but-
I frowned.
Hang on. Asgardians are super-strong and super-durable, but as a result of that they weigh more than humans do. That was a plot point in an Agents of SHIELD episode, wasn't it?
I wasn't sure. I didn't watch the show; someone had just brought the point up in a thread somewhere in relation to something else.
Fandral didn't know I was human until I told him, even though he caught me, so that would add up. What doesn't add up, I thought as another memory rose to the surface, is how I managed to nail Frigga's guardsman with my elbow. If all I have is durability, I should have just dented the outer plate and the impact would have been absorbed by the padding and clothes he was wearing underneath – not to mention the muscles.
... I think?
With a jolt, I realized that even setting aside my terrible track record with math, I didn't know nearly enough about the bare bones of physics to understand how my shiny new superpowers even worked.
And that simply would not stand.
Was I not an otaku? Was I not a proud lover of the technicality, the loophole, the Third Option? How could I call myself a writer of any respectable level of creativity if I didn't look into every possible way I could unexpectedly fuck people up with this new talent?
Fortunately, in addition to these things, I was now also a sorcerer's apprentice.
=
Gone to Nidavellir. Back in five days. Sleipnir's morning nutritional supplements in refrigerated cupboard above sink – green tomorrow, then blue, then yellow, then green again. Groom will be expecting to pick them up at 8 am, all arranged.
Do not go into the back rooms under any circumstances.
"He really does have lovely penmanship," I said with a disappointed sigh as the note dissolved in my hand.
Checking the aforementioned cupboard, I saw the nutritional supplements and rolled my eyes. The jars were clearly labelled with days of the week; I know that normally I wouldn't be able to read Asgardian, but still, he'd seen me with the primer. Did he really think I was incapable of figuring that out?
Maybe he was being considerate of my functional illiteracy, I thought hopefully. Maybe he was being nice.
Let's not go nuts, I cautioned myself almost immediately. He just met us a week ago; more likely he's being nice to Sleipnir, making sure we don't mess up his schedule.
... and now I'm babysitting my teacher's eight-legged adult horse-son. This is my life now.
I considered that thought for a moment, then grinned.
So much better than working in the kitchen at the Shabby Rabbit.
I poured myself a glass of water and flopped down into a chair. Sipping my drink (always water! Though with how the servants seemed to err on the side of wine with every meal until I specifically asked for fruit juice, I guess I couldn't blame him for wanting something a little cleaner-tasting for work), I surveyed the study, my private domain for the next few days.
It occurred to me that, all things considered, Loki was a much less hands-on teacher than I would have expected (and only about a quarter of that expectation was fangirl wishful-thinking of the let-me-teach-you-tennis school of thought). With him having so many control-freak tendencies, I would have sworn up and down before my arrival that any apprentice he had would be shut out of anything resembling self-directed learning in favour of a university-lecture-style setup, with maybe some Classical rote memorization and action-adventure near-death-experiences thrown in to either build character or get rid of the annoying tagalong. I had forgotten to take into account something that should have been obvious but wasn't until I actually spent some time in Asgard.
Namely, Loki was a Prince, in an absolute monarchy, who gave quite a few fucks about the administrative side of king-ing. This meant he had shit to do all day. In many respects he had less in common with his heroic foil Tony Stark than he did with the gentleman-scientists of the Enlightenment, who would hold down respectable professions or tend the family estates to support a wife and children, and restrict their experimentation and writing to their off-hours. Except in this case, the respectable profession was vizier-in-training/grey-hat hacker, and the family estate was an intergalactic superpower.
It kind of put a new spin on Frigga voluntelling him to take me on, one I wasn't entirely comfortable with. And I felt kind of guilty about that, because just going off the few occasions on which we'd met, I liked her.
The kind interpretation of all this was that she wanted her son to have someone to talk to on a regular basis who wasn't a rival, family, or Thor's friends. The less-kind interpretation was that whatever she had seen in that vision about me was so fucked up that she wanted Asgard's top sorceror keeping an eye on me.
I thought back to the look on her face when I answered her question, "How does magic work?"
Was that...?
I frowned, not wanting my wishful thinking to get away from me, but inevitably, the thought completed itself.
... she couldn't possibly have been afraid, could she?
A warm feeling spread out from my heart through my lungs and around my ribs. I can frighten a god.
Oi. That's enough of that. She's a nice lady.
I wonder what it takes to frighten Odin.
Dude, you need to cease this line of thought right now. We aren't into the canon timeline yet. That's still sensei's dad you're talking about, there. Terrible parent material or not, Loki worships the guy.
And how long will that last when he finds out the truth?
What, are we gonna tell him? Fuck off. You don't get to shatter someone's psyche just so you can act out your hurt-comfort fantasy!
But his whole life is a lie! Fangirl-Magda was vehement. He cares so fucking much about this place and no one gives a shit, they want Thor! It's better if he finds out now, rather than on an unsanctioned field trip when every possible thing that can be shitty for him suddenly is. That way he can at least have some time to fucking adjust and decide what he wants to do.
All right, Dear Abby, how the fuck do you want to phrase it? 'Hey, sensei, I dare you to touch the Casket of Ancient Winters'?
My glass was empty now. Probably a good thing, because I'd been squeezing it tightly in my hands for the past few minutes, turning it over and over. I wondered how much of its resistance to my new durability was sheer craftsmanship and how much was spellwork bound into the thing. Was there any difference, to an Asgardian glass-blower?
As I did this, I suddenly found the tiny maker's mark, hidden in the floral wreath that wound its way around the base of the cup. A Berkana rune – its much curvier local ancestor, actually, closer to an 8 than a B, more suited to pen and parchment than chisel and stone – with a tiny eight-pointed star inside each chamber.
I stared at it for a good long while, and let my curiosity about who could have made the glass dismiss my worries for a time.
In the end, I sighed, stood, and set it back on the sideboard from which I'd taken it. Whatever Frigga's concerns about me, she clearly thought they could be resolved more effectively by having me learn magic than by throwing me into the fluorescent hell downstairs, so there was no point in getting too worked up about it. In stories, people who make a big fuss trying to find out their fates tend to absolutely hate what they find out, and as such I wasn't inclined to kick that wall too hard. For all I knew there could be a moose on the other side.
And speaking of hating what you find out, I decided to table any frost-giant related drama for now. Loki Odinson, Prince of Asgard was a happier and better-balanced person than Loki the Nameless, and unless I could somehow peel back the façade of the former without condemning the poor guy to the fate of the latter, I didn't feel I could take any kind of action on that front. Especially not now; he was even starting to trust me, I thought, leaving Sleipnir partly in my care and letting me remember the back room.
Wait, what was that about a back room? Since when is there-
There was a large golden door set about with clockwork that I had never seen before in the far left corner of the study.
Except that I had seen it every single time I had ever been in here.
"... seidr is bullshit hax," I said aloud, thoroughly impressed.
I haven't made much of my homesickness yet, but I hope you'll understand that's because I don't think it's very interesting, and not because I didn't feel it. Because I did, and at the time I was pretty sure it was directly responsible for the habit of early rising my body had spontaneously developed.
I didn't have nightmares or anything, mind you; the closest it came to that was when I had that dream about the long-ass hallway outside my dorm room when I was still at uni, and I awoke to the relief that comes of knowing that not only are you not trapped in an endless mid-'90s screensaver maze, you will never have to do a final project worth 15% of your grade ever again.
What happened mostly was just that I'd be in the middle of thinking about what I was hungry for for lunch, or trying to read a book with the primer open in my other hand, or lying in bed wondering about what kind of magic I might be suited to and what I'd do with it once Loki finally let me move on from meditation and explaining what little I remembered of the Death Note rules, when something of the place I was born would inevitably come up. I'd realize I was craving Passion Flakies and Pizza Nova; I'd dissolve into frustrated tears and long for some manga, or Robertson Davies, or Terry Pratchett; I'd start to imagine scamming stockbrokers with illusions and whispered secrets to afford an island with a sand beach and build a summer cottage on it for my family and my friends to visit... and then I'd remember that I wasn't likely to ever see any of them again.
There was no chance of using the wormhole in the market. I asked Frigga about it, when she stopped by to ask how I was getting along and assure me that the All-Father had been informed of my presence on-site and the necessity of me acquiring some familiarity with magic before/if they dumped me on Earth (though she still didn't share her reasoning with me). She informed me that naturally-occurring wormholes only work in one direction. If I wanted to return home, I'd have to somehow discover another wormhole and accurately determine that it led to the reality I'd left, as opposed to one where I never fell through the rift in the first place, or one where the Permian extinction never took place, or where the Earth never acquired an atmosphere. Hell, there wasn't even anything to guarantee I'd land in my home country, on my home planet and in the year I left all at the same time.
"'If it were easy,'" I quoted to the empty room after she left, "'everyone would do it'." I laughed bitterly under my breath. "Goddamn, sensei."
So yes, I did angst. And when I woke up at four am three days in a row, not tired in the least but each time expecting to be back in my bedroom with the floral-harvest wallpaper and the Van Gogh geisha print on the wall, I eventually decided that what I really wanted to do was hit something.
It turned out there were five libraries in the palace open to the public (well, open to the noble public, anyway), but the various training yards numbered in the low or mid twenties, depending on how you counted the ones that were adjacent to one another. Not surprising, given the average Asgardian's priorities – I was inclined to be biased on this point anyway, but as with the feast, it was really hard not to draw parallels with high school movie cliches. Having attended a school that was undisputedly ruled by the indie crowd and the nationally-ranked Improv and Drama Clubs, I was in decidedly unfamiliar social territory.
In any case, I made a point of looking for a more secluded spot – because while four am was an hour I was more used to approaching from the other end of my day, to Asgardian servants (much like surburban supermoms), the early morning was their only chance to get some training in before work, and the yards closest to the main palace structures were all at least half full.
The fact is, I was always kind of clumsy on my feet; it started when I went through my middle-school growth spurt and it never really went away. I'm no Bella Swan, it's not like I was walking around with a permanent inner ear infection or anything, but my legs felt like tree-trunks – they always moved about a half-second slower than I wanted them to. My footsteps sounded like I was wearing shoes even when I was barefoot, my footwork ranged from terrible to been-taking-karate-classes-for-six-weeks, and even though my form on the roundhouse kick Mom had taught me was decent, it felt like all of the strength exerted was going into lifting the leg without losing my balance. Which occasionally happened anyway.
None of this was worthy of note back home, but I was reasonably sure it would be considered hilarious for any woman in Asgard to have even a semi-serious interest in asskicking, given the exposition about Sif facing discrimination in the first Thor movie. And she was good at fighting; I could only imagine what they'd say about me. I really wasn't keen to play Krillin to anyone's Vegeta. Or worse, Chichi – I did not need anyone thinking I was going for the warrior equivalent of a B.MRS.
So I went for a little run.
It wasn't as tedious a search as it might have been; the night sky over Asgard was a source of fresh delight every time I took another look. If I stood in one place long enough, with my face turned heavenward, I began to feel as though I was looking into an infinite celestial city. Every star and planet was the lit window of an apartment or a glowing street lamp on a winding expressway; every puff of nebula was late-night steam or smoke glowing under the neon lights; a whirling distant galaxy was a postcard-adorning landmark on a hill.
It was all very Gurren Lagann, and I have to admit, after a while I felt my ill-humour dissipate. It's hard to stay feeling dejected when the sky seems so warm and inviting.
Nonetheless, homesickness was only half the reason I was in the mood for some exercise, and since the run hadn't so much as scratched the surface of my vigour, I kept moving.
Honestly, when I stopped to think about it it was a bit creepy. Prior to my arrival on Asgard, I could function on about five hours' sleep at a time, but thriving required something on the order of ten a day. Being as energetic and good-tempered as this on only four to six hours of sleep was a luxury I hadn't enjoyed since my elementary school days as a closet nightowl. I didn't seriously suspect that I was being drugged or something, but I wouldn't have discounted the possibility that the water and food quality in Asgard was so superior to that of Earth that I was operating at near-peak energy efficiency, or just that my recent jaunt between realities had royally messed me up. I didn't know anything about neurobiology, but I was sure there had to be a part of the brain a tumour could press on and impair the ability to feel fatigue, and I had a vague, irrational fear that I'd soon descend into sleep deprivation-induced psychosis and then death. I considered this unlikely, however; Marvel doesn't do quick-and-horrible mundane illnesses, they do either quick-and-horrible-fucking-weird illnesses or chronic conditions to draw out even more angst.
Eventually I decided if I was so intent on avoiding gossip, I should train in the forest rather
than at any official training yard. It wasn't as though I needed any special equipment, after all; whatever knowledge I had of swordplay amounted to the few points of theory I'd managed to pick up from Rurouni Kenshin. That morning, I just wanted to act like a kung fool for a little while, and the stand of trees at the edge of the grounds seemed like a decent place to do it.
Five minutes later I punched a crater into the bark of an oak tree.
Okay, maybe 'crater' is a little bit of an exaggeration – it was only about an inch deep at the centre, and barely a millimetre at the edges. But it looked like a crater, and my knuckles and shoulder informed me that it fuckin' ought to be a crater with how much effort they'd put into the operation, so crater it is.
I should stress that I didn't just blindly and enthusiastically swing with all my piteous might at a massive eight-hundred-year-old tree – I'm not a complete fucking idiot. Initially I was more or less shadowboxing, a tap here or there to help me gauge my reach. When I found the bark was surprisingly pliant and easy on my knuckles, though, I upped my game a bit, started throwing actual (if pulled) punches at it.
Thus encouraged, I hauled off and hit it as hard as I could – because while I am not a complete fucking idiot, I am still sometimes a goddamn hot-blooded moron. The difference between this anecdote and a dozen others I could tell you, predating any multiversial travel shenanigans, is that this time I didn't bruise my knuckles so badly I couldn't comfortably hold a pen for a week.
My first reaction was the obvious one.
Oh no no no no no I hurt it!
And I dropped my kubotan.
Well, okay, maybe that's only obvious to someone who grew up in BC, The Land That Capitalism Forgot.
When I took a moment to examine the damage, I quickly realized that the hole wasn't nearly as deep as I had thought it was, and that the tree likely found my babbling apologies absolutely precious. That was when I was struck by what most normal people would consider the obvious thought:
I am a bad motherfucker!
I spent the next minute and a half joyfully kicking the shit out of every other tree in the vicinity and shouting manga-related gibberish.
When I got to the Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms, I discovered to my dismay that I did not have superspeed. Or super-precision; several of my slaps managed to somehow miss a two-foot-wide target entirely at nearly-point-blank-range. Blame my crappy depth-perception for that.
I pouted just a bit when I found that out. If I was going to get any of the three Star Platinum powers, why did it have to be the one that's useless without the other two?
I know that sounds ridiculously spoiled, but come on – it doesn't matter how strong you are if you can't hit anything.
These observations were disappointing, but they put me in a scientific mood. So, as the sun came up like an enormous punchbowl on the pink tablecloth of the sky, I set about trying to determine the limits of my ability.
First, I paced off a straight line from the tree I'd punched to one further into the woods, to measure the distance between them. Then I removed my watch and fastened it around one of the higher branches of a nearby shrub. Taking one last glance at the position of the second-hand, I ran as fast as I could to the second tree and back again. Checking the watch, I figured that even if I didn't have super-speed in its most totally-broken sense, I was still quite a bit faster than I remembered; I wasn't a sporty person, so I didn't know how my time I would measure up to that of, say, a high school sprinter, but I felt like any improvement was worth celebrating.
Then I tried to lift a fallen log.
A nearly-wrenched shoulder, ten cramped digits and two aching knees later, I was confused and pissed right the fuck off.
The hell is this? Did I run out of juice already?
Kicking the log in question, things got more confusing when my shin struck the damn thing so hard that for a second it got stuck.
"Oh, pfft! Fuck!"
It didn't hurt, but wobbling around on one leg was really embarrassing, and for about the fiftieth time so far I was grateful for the seclusion the forest afforded me.
Odder still, once I managed to get loose, I saw that the small point I had felt pressing against me was a bigass splinter that had torn a sizeable rip in my jeans. Pulling it out and rolling up my pant leg, I found that not only was I not bleeding, my skin wasn't even red or developing a bruise. That was unprecedented; I could get bruises from anything. Once or twice I'd even gotten them from sleeping in the car, with my arm pressed against the door.
So... my superpower is not sucking as much as I used to? I... guess I can live with that. Plenty of X-Men would kill for a gift like that.
On a hunch, I tried to roll the log over. It took some doing, and when I let go the log immediately rolled back into the position it'd had before, but I managed to get the underside up long enough to see faint cracks in the bark, around the points where my fingers had been.
Stepping back and dusting off my hands, I nodded to myself.
"Okay," I said aloud, wiping the sweat from my forehead. "Super-durability. Neat. You don't always see that on its own."
I wondered if I might now be subject to fewer wrinkles as I aged, or if I'd need gravitational-hax for that. Certainly I might be able to get a job as a stunt-woman, if I ever ended up back on Earth; I could do all sorts of convincing jumps and – oh my, was I bulletproof now? How do you even test something like that? If Loki's grand entrance in The Avengers was anything to go by, Asgardians certainly were, but-
I frowned.
Hang on. Asgardians are super-strong and super-durable, but as a result of that they weigh more than humans do. That was a plot point in an Agents of SHIELD episode, wasn't it?
I wasn't sure. I didn't watch the show; someone had just brought the point up in a thread somewhere in relation to something else.
Fandral didn't know I was human until I told him, even though he caught me, so that would add up. What doesn't add up, I thought as another memory rose to the surface, is how I managed to nail Frigga's guardsman with my elbow. If all I have is durability, I should have just dented the outer plate and the impact would have been absorbed by the padding and clothes he was wearing underneath – not to mention the muscles.
... I think?
With a jolt, I realized that even setting aside my terrible track record with math, I didn't know nearly enough about the bare bones of physics to understand how my shiny new superpowers even worked.
And that simply would not stand.
Was I not an otaku? Was I not a proud lover of the technicality, the loophole, the Third Option? How could I call myself a writer of any respectable level of creativity if I didn't look into every possible way I could unexpectedly fuck people up with this new talent?
Fortunately, in addition to these things, I was now also a sorcerer's apprentice.
=
Gone to Nidavellir. Back in five days. Sleipnir's morning nutritional supplements in refrigerated cupboard above sink – green tomorrow, then blue, then yellow, then green again. Groom will be expecting to pick them up at 8 am, all arranged.
Do not go into the back rooms under any circumstances.
"He really does have lovely penmanship," I said with a disappointed sigh as the note dissolved in my hand.
Checking the aforementioned cupboard, I saw the nutritional supplements and rolled my eyes. The jars were clearly labelled with days of the week; I know that normally I wouldn't be able to read Asgardian, but still, he'd seen me with the primer. Did he really think I was incapable of figuring that out?
Maybe he was being considerate of my functional illiteracy, I thought hopefully. Maybe he was being nice.
Let's not go nuts, I cautioned myself almost immediately. He just met us a week ago; more likely he's being nice to Sleipnir, making sure we don't mess up his schedule.
... and now I'm babysitting my teacher's eight-legged adult horse-son. This is my life now.
I considered that thought for a moment, then grinned.
So much better than working in the kitchen at the Shabby Rabbit.
I poured myself a glass of water and flopped down into a chair. Sipping my drink (always water! Though with how the servants seemed to err on the side of wine with every meal until I specifically asked for fruit juice, I guess I couldn't blame him for wanting something a little cleaner-tasting for work), I surveyed the study, my private domain for the next few days.
It occurred to me that, all things considered, Loki was a much less hands-on teacher than I would have expected (and only about a quarter of that expectation was fangirl wishful-thinking of the let-me-teach-you-tennis school of thought). With him having so many control-freak tendencies, I would have sworn up and down before my arrival that any apprentice he had would be shut out of anything resembling self-directed learning in favour of a university-lecture-style setup, with maybe some Classical rote memorization and action-adventure near-death-experiences thrown in to either build character or get rid of the annoying tagalong. I had forgotten to take into account something that should have been obvious but wasn't until I actually spent some time in Asgard.
Namely, Loki was a Prince, in an absolute monarchy, who gave quite a few fucks about the administrative side of king-ing. This meant he had shit to do all day. In many respects he had less in common with his heroic foil Tony Stark than he did with the gentleman-scientists of the Enlightenment, who would hold down respectable professions or tend the family estates to support a wife and children, and restrict their experimentation and writing to their off-hours. Except in this case, the respectable profession was vizier-in-training/grey-hat hacker, and the family estate was an intergalactic superpower.
It kind of put a new spin on Frigga voluntelling him to take me on, one I wasn't entirely comfortable with. And I felt kind of guilty about that, because just going off the few occasions on which we'd met, I liked her.
The kind interpretation of all this was that she wanted her son to have someone to talk to on a regular basis who wasn't a rival, family, or Thor's friends. The less-kind interpretation was that whatever she had seen in that vision about me was so fucked up that she wanted Asgard's top sorceror keeping an eye on me.
I thought back to the look on her face when I answered her question, "How does magic work?"
Was that...?
I frowned, not wanting my wishful thinking to get away from me, but inevitably, the thought completed itself.
... she couldn't possibly have been afraid, could she?
A warm feeling spread out from my heart through my lungs and around my ribs. I can frighten a god.
Oi. That's enough of that. She's a nice lady.
I wonder what it takes to frighten Odin.
Dude, you need to cease this line of thought right now. We aren't into the canon timeline yet. That's still sensei's dad you're talking about, there. Terrible parent material or not, Loki worships the guy.
And how long will that last when he finds out the truth?
What, are we gonna tell him? Fuck off. You don't get to shatter someone's psyche just so you can act out your hurt-comfort fantasy!
But his whole life is a lie! Fangirl-Magda was vehement. He cares so fucking much about this place and no one gives a shit, they want Thor! It's better if he finds out now, rather than on an unsanctioned field trip when every possible thing that can be shitty for him suddenly is. That way he can at least have some time to fucking adjust and decide what he wants to do.
All right, Dear Abby, how the fuck do you want to phrase it? 'Hey, sensei, I dare you to touch the Casket of Ancient Winters'?
My glass was empty now. Probably a good thing, because I'd been squeezing it tightly in my hands for the past few minutes, turning it over and over. I wondered how much of its resistance to my new durability was sheer craftsmanship and how much was spellwork bound into the thing. Was there any difference, to an Asgardian glass-blower?
As I did this, I suddenly found the tiny maker's mark, hidden in the floral wreath that wound its way around the base of the cup. A Berkana rune – its much curvier local ancestor, actually, closer to an 8 than a B, more suited to pen and parchment than chisel and stone – with a tiny eight-pointed star inside each chamber.
I stared at it for a good long while, and let my curiosity about who could have made the glass dismiss my worries for a time.
In the end, I sighed, stood, and set it back on the sideboard from which I'd taken it. Whatever Frigga's concerns about me, she clearly thought they could be resolved more effectively by having me learn magic than by throwing me into the fluorescent hell downstairs, so there was no point in getting too worked up about it. In stories, people who make a big fuss trying to find out their fates tend to absolutely hate what they find out, and as such I wasn't inclined to kick that wall too hard. For all I knew there could be a moose on the other side.
And speaking of hating what you find out, I decided to table any frost-giant related drama for now. Loki Odinson, Prince of Asgard was a happier and better-balanced person than Loki the Nameless, and unless I could somehow peel back the façade of the former without condemning the poor guy to the fate of the latter, I didn't feel I could take any kind of action on that front. Especially not now; he was even starting to trust me, I thought, leaving Sleipnir partly in my care and letting me remember the back room.
Wait, what was that about a back room? Since when is there-
There was a large golden door set about with clockwork that I had never seen before in the far left corner of the study.
Except that I had seen it every single time I had ever been in here.
"... seidr is bullshit hax," I said aloud, thoroughly impressed.
Chapter Nine
The healer looked me up and down with considerable amusement. "We were wondering when you'd first show up here."
"Please don't be funny," I whimpered, limping inside. "I'm in too much pain to be funny back."
Her smile turned into a frown, and after sticking her head out of the door to glance down the hall, she turned back to me, aghast. "You came here by yourself on a leg in that condition?"
I shrugged as best I was able. "I didn't know how to contact you guys, and I didn't wanna bother one of the servants, so..."
"Nine hells, girl, you're worse than an einherjar!"
The pain I associated with the aftermath of a strenuous workout was nothing new, but this was definitely something else. Unlike the former, it hadn't faded to a dull ache with time – if anything, my leg hurt more now than it had when I left the study; it certainly hurt more than on the walk back to the palace from the woods. I won't lie, for the first few minutes I spent shuffling on my good foot down the corridor with tears gathering at the corners of my eyes, I was legitimately worried that I had permanently fucked up my ability to walk; the only thing that kept me from panicking was the knowledge that there was no way a race of enthusiastic warriors who live for thousands of years wouldn't know how to fix up tendonitis or its nastier cousins in a jiffy.
The healer helped me into a bed and to put my feet up, which – ah! ah-ah-ah-ah-ah! ssssss – didn't feel as good as I'd hoped it would. I took a look around. The hall of healing was nearly empty at this hour of the day. It was warmly-lit, and lacked entirely an antiseptic hospital-smell, which I have to say did a hell of a lot for its atmosphere. I'd never felt so reassured by a doctor's office in my entire life – the bed I was on even had proper sheets and a bedspread.
"I have to say, we expected your first injuries to be magical in nature – it's a surprise to see you come in with torn muscles," she said, reaching into the pouch on her belt and pulling out what looked like a highly-polished igneous rock, about the size and shape of a robin's egg. "Take off your trousers," she added.
She can diagnose me at a glance?
She lives in a year-round Olympic village. She probably gets two or three dumb kids in here every day with this kind of injury.
I struggled out of my jeans one-handed for a few seconds (my right arm wasn't as bad off as my leg, but it really wasn't in any state to be pulling on anything) before she took pity on me and helped me get them off, grumbling about impractically-designed mortal garments.
Not every day I hear that about pants from a woman in a skirt.
When I had been divested of denim, she squeezed the healing stone twice over my knee, and it rapidly melted into... something. It was invisible, but I could feel it both on and inside my skin – it was warm, and though it began as a powder it quickly bound itself into long, wriggling strands...
Goddamn it, brain, the very last words I want to think at a time like this are 'happiness worms'!
But a childhood full of bribes from the dentist and paediatrician had done their work; I stayed calm and still like a good patient. Within moments the wriggling sensation disappeared, and my leg was as good as new.
... y'know, now that I actually say it, 'good as new' sounds really trite. In actual fact it was more like I went to bed with a splitting headache and woke up perfectly fine, only with my lower thigh instead of my head and compressed into the space of about three seconds. Or as if I'd somehow instantaneously switched out my old leg for one in perfect working order, like I'd had a spare in my inventory.
Nah, screw analogies. It was a bloody relief is what it was; I can't get much more accurate than that.
I stared at her hands as she dusted off the excess powder. "... how are those made?"
She blinked. "They're grown in the royal orchards. Out in the countryside."
A mental image of hundreds of fruit-trees with silver-slate bark and jewel-like fruit filled my mind (along with a tall dark castle on a cliff in the background, because when I think 'magic vinyard' I think of Dracula for some reason).
My mouth dropped open. "That is so cool. Where do they grow? How do they grow?"
She laughed. "It's not my field, I'm afraid – if you want those questions answered right you'd have to talk to Lady Idunna. She's the leading authority on crystal-farming and related earth magics."
Idunn. Holy- wow.
"... would she speak to me, do you think?" I asked, bowled over by the mere suggestion.
Idunn in Norse mythology isn't exactly a headliner – she's not even the leading lady of the story about her own damn kidnapping; that honour goes to Skadi. But that doesn't mean she isn't important. She's what theatre folk call fifth business – those people who are neither hero nor heroine, villain nor comic relief, but without whom the entire plot falls apart. Friar Lawrence from Romeo and Juliet is the most famous example; if he doesn't marry the title couple or give Juliet the poison, those two stupid kids live to make lust-fuelled decisions another day. As the keeper of the golden apples that preserve the immortal youth of the Aesir, and hence facilitate the entire godding-around process, Idunn definitely qualifies.
Well, healing stones, apples, it's not the stupidest concession to the sci fi aesthetic the writers have made.
"I can't imagine she wouldn't," the healer said, sounding quite surprised. "She and Prince Loki have always got on rather well – he rescued her from the giant Thyassi, you know, when they were younger." She looked around the room, and, satisfied that we were alone save for the snoring old lady in the bed next to mine, leaned in to add, "There was talk at the time of them getting married."
Fangirl-Magda sat up and took notice of that straight away. Would she be good for him? What's she like here, is she amenable to a relationship or did she let him down gently and he took it the wrong way and now everything's really awkward? Or was she super-clingy and he was never interested? Were they just friends and the hype machine went nuts with it? Where was she when he took the throne? Did either of them break the other's heart? I must know!
"Really~?" I asked with a wide grin, leaning forward. Also, is that the eager giddiness of a shipper I hear in the good doctor's voice? I pumped a mental elbow in satisfaction. YES! My people are truly everywhere!
"Rundis," a stern voice said from my left, "have you finished with Lady Magda's treatment?"
As the healer murmured that she still had my arm to do, I looked over to see a severe-looking woman in grey robes standing over the patient in the next bed.
Hey, is that...?
"So you're his highness' new pupil," Eir said, looking me over.
"Yes, ma'am," I said with as much dignity as I could muster. She couldn't come talk to me before I took my pants off?
"Well, hopefully we shan't encounter one another very often," she said with the smile every doctor wears when they make that joke.
I blinked. Was she usually this... gregarious?
"No, ma'am. I'll try to be less stupid in future," I said.
She raised an eyebrow. "I would expect at least that much from a student of our Prince."
And she swept away down the ward.
Our Prince, I reflected. That's interesting.
Hoshit, remember the exact circs of her scene in the second movie? Fangirl-Magda piped up. Maybe she isn't bitchy after all. Maybe she was just mad at Thor – and by extension his girlfriend.
Well, if she holds sensei in high regard,I reasoned, and the only witnesses to what actually happened on the bridge at the end of the first flick were Thor, Odin and technically Heimdall...
I winced.
The bridge. Jesus, I've gotta kick off butterflies as fast as I can. That can't happen.
"Oh, don't worry about Lady Eir," Rundis said, patting my newly-healed arm. "Believe you me, if she didn't like you, you'd know."
I eyed the pouches on the healer's belt. "Would it be possible for me to acquire some of those stones to carry on me? I..." I tried to think of what service I could possibly offer a bunch of people who've had forever to practise everything.
"... could bake you and the other healers something, in exchange?" I finished lamely.
Rundis' laugh was like the high-pitched bark a dog makes when it spots a squirrel. "Oh, bless your heart, child!" And she pulled out three healing stones just like that, and handed them to me. "No one would begrudge you a score of stones if you wanted them."
"Really?" I said, mildly stunned at her generosity. "But... I'm practically a stranger, here."
"Well if there's a sudden mad rash of people being restored to health," Rundis said dryly, "rest assured you will be brought to justice. Now, don't fuss," she added, handing me back my pants. "Just promise that you'll do your calisthenics a little closer to home in case there's another mishap." Before I could ask how she knew, she pulled an oak leaf out of my hair and tossed it into the most absurdly ornate wastebin I think I'd ever seen. "If you need more, for a journey or for some manner of training, just come back here and let me know. I'm here most days."
A journey. Suddenly everyone's willingness to be friendly made sense; as Loki's apprentice, I might eventually be expected to accompany him and Thor on one of their expeditions.
One of their fight-heavy expeditions.
With pre-character-development Thor who didn't watch his friends' backs.
Damn. If I were sane I'd pity me, too.
The healer looked me up and down with considerable amusement. "We were wondering when you'd first show up here."
"Please don't be funny," I whimpered, limping inside. "I'm in too much pain to be funny back."
Her smile turned into a frown, and after sticking her head out of the door to glance down the hall, she turned back to me, aghast. "You came here by yourself on a leg in that condition?"
I shrugged as best I was able. "I didn't know how to contact you guys, and I didn't wanna bother one of the servants, so..."
"Nine hells, girl, you're worse than an einherjar!"
The pain I associated with the aftermath of a strenuous workout was nothing new, but this was definitely something else. Unlike the former, it hadn't faded to a dull ache with time – if anything, my leg hurt more now than it had when I left the study; it certainly hurt more than on the walk back to the palace from the woods. I won't lie, for the first few minutes I spent shuffling on my good foot down the corridor with tears gathering at the corners of my eyes, I was legitimately worried that I had permanently fucked up my ability to walk; the only thing that kept me from panicking was the knowledge that there was no way a race of enthusiastic warriors who live for thousands of years wouldn't know how to fix up tendonitis or its nastier cousins in a jiffy.
The healer helped me into a bed and to put my feet up, which – ah! ah-ah-ah-ah-ah! ssssss – didn't feel as good as I'd hoped it would. I took a look around. The hall of healing was nearly empty at this hour of the day. It was warmly-lit, and lacked entirely an antiseptic hospital-smell, which I have to say did a hell of a lot for its atmosphere. I'd never felt so reassured by a doctor's office in my entire life – the bed I was on even had proper sheets and a bedspread.
"I have to say, we expected your first injuries to be magical in nature – it's a surprise to see you come in with torn muscles," she said, reaching into the pouch on her belt and pulling out what looked like a highly-polished igneous rock, about the size and shape of a robin's egg. "Take off your trousers," she added.
She can diagnose me at a glance?
She lives in a year-round Olympic village. She probably gets two or three dumb kids in here every day with this kind of injury.
I struggled out of my jeans one-handed for a few seconds (my right arm wasn't as bad off as my leg, but it really wasn't in any state to be pulling on anything) before she took pity on me and helped me get them off, grumbling about impractically-designed mortal garments.
Not every day I hear that about pants from a woman in a skirt.
When I had been divested of denim, she squeezed the healing stone twice over my knee, and it rapidly melted into... something. It was invisible, but I could feel it both on and inside my skin – it was warm, and though it began as a powder it quickly bound itself into long, wriggling strands...
Goddamn it, brain, the very last words I want to think at a time like this are 'happiness worms'!
But a childhood full of bribes from the dentist and paediatrician had done their work; I stayed calm and still like a good patient. Within moments the wriggling sensation disappeared, and my leg was as good as new.
... y'know, now that I actually say it, 'good as new' sounds really trite. In actual fact it was more like I went to bed with a splitting headache and woke up perfectly fine, only with my lower thigh instead of my head and compressed into the space of about three seconds. Or as if I'd somehow instantaneously switched out my old leg for one in perfect working order, like I'd had a spare in my inventory.
Nah, screw analogies. It was a bloody relief is what it was; I can't get much more accurate than that.
I stared at her hands as she dusted off the excess powder. "... how are those made?"
She blinked. "They're grown in the royal orchards. Out in the countryside."
A mental image of hundreds of fruit-trees with silver-slate bark and jewel-like fruit filled my mind (along with a tall dark castle on a cliff in the background, because when I think 'magic vinyard' I think of Dracula for some reason).
My mouth dropped open. "That is so cool. Where do they grow? How do they grow?"
She laughed. "It's not my field, I'm afraid – if you want those questions answered right you'd have to talk to Lady Idunna. She's the leading authority on crystal-farming and related earth magics."
Idunn. Holy- wow.
"... would she speak to me, do you think?" I asked, bowled over by the mere suggestion.
Idunn in Norse mythology isn't exactly a headliner – she's not even the leading lady of the story about her own damn kidnapping; that honour goes to Skadi. But that doesn't mean she isn't important. She's what theatre folk call fifth business – those people who are neither hero nor heroine, villain nor comic relief, but without whom the entire plot falls apart. Friar Lawrence from Romeo and Juliet is the most famous example; if he doesn't marry the title couple or give Juliet the poison, those two stupid kids live to make lust-fuelled decisions another day. As the keeper of the golden apples that preserve the immortal youth of the Aesir, and hence facilitate the entire godding-around process, Idunn definitely qualifies.
Well, healing stones, apples, it's not the stupidest concession to the sci fi aesthetic the writers have made.
"I can't imagine she wouldn't," the healer said, sounding quite surprised. "She and Prince Loki have always got on rather well – he rescued her from the giant Thyassi, you know, when they were younger." She looked around the room, and, satisfied that we were alone save for the snoring old lady in the bed next to mine, leaned in to add, "There was talk at the time of them getting married."
Fangirl-Magda sat up and took notice of that straight away. Would she be good for him? What's she like here, is she amenable to a relationship or did she let him down gently and he took it the wrong way and now everything's really awkward? Or was she super-clingy and he was never interested? Were they just friends and the hype machine went nuts with it? Where was she when he took the throne? Did either of them break the other's heart? I must know!
"Really~?" I asked with a wide grin, leaning forward. Also, is that the eager giddiness of a shipper I hear in the good doctor's voice? I pumped a mental elbow in satisfaction. YES! My people are truly everywhere!
"Rundis," a stern voice said from my left, "have you finished with Lady Magda's treatment?"
As the healer murmured that she still had my arm to do, I looked over to see a severe-looking woman in grey robes standing over the patient in the next bed.
Hey, is that...?
"So you're his highness' new pupil," Eir said, looking me over.
"Yes, ma'am," I said with as much dignity as I could muster. She couldn't come talk to me before I took my pants off?
"Well, hopefully we shan't encounter one another very often," she said with the smile every doctor wears when they make that joke.
I blinked. Was she usually this... gregarious?
"No, ma'am. I'll try to be less stupid in future," I said.
She raised an eyebrow. "I would expect at least that much from a student of our Prince."
And she swept away down the ward.
Our Prince, I reflected. That's interesting.
Hoshit, remember the exact circs of her scene in the second movie? Fangirl-Magda piped up. Maybe she isn't bitchy after all. Maybe she was just mad at Thor – and by extension his girlfriend.
Well, if she holds sensei in high regard,I reasoned, and the only witnesses to what actually happened on the bridge at the end of the first flick were Thor, Odin and technically Heimdall...
I winced.
The bridge. Jesus, I've gotta kick off butterflies as fast as I can. That can't happen.
"Oh, don't worry about Lady Eir," Rundis said, patting my newly-healed arm. "Believe you me, if she didn't like you, you'd know."
I eyed the pouches on the healer's belt. "Would it be possible for me to acquire some of those stones to carry on me? I..." I tried to think of what service I could possibly offer a bunch of people who've had forever to practise everything.
"... could bake you and the other healers something, in exchange?" I finished lamely.
Rundis' laugh was like the high-pitched bark a dog makes when it spots a squirrel. "Oh, bless your heart, child!" And she pulled out three healing stones just like that, and handed them to me. "No one would begrudge you a score of stones if you wanted them."
"Really?" I said, mildly stunned at her generosity. "But... I'm practically a stranger, here."
"Well if there's a sudden mad rash of people being restored to health," Rundis said dryly, "rest assured you will be brought to justice. Now, don't fuss," she added, handing me back my pants. "Just promise that you'll do your calisthenics a little closer to home in case there's another mishap." Before I could ask how she knew, she pulled an oak leaf out of my hair and tossed it into the most absurdly ornate wastebin I think I'd ever seen. "If you need more, for a journey or for some manner of training, just come back here and let me know. I'm here most days."
A journey. Suddenly everyone's willingness to be friendly made sense; as Loki's apprentice, I might eventually be expected to accompany him and Thor on one of their expeditions.
One of their fight-heavy expeditions.
With pre-character-development Thor who didn't watch his friends' backs.
Damn. If I were sane I'd pity me, too.
Chapter Ten, Part One
Like most North American girls, I went through a major horse phase between the ages of eight and ten. I adored The Last Unicorn and Into the Land of the Unicorns; I memorized the distinguishing characteristics of various breeds; I read historical fiction about other bright-eyed little girls with what seemed to me oceans of money, and Arab grooms who endured a level of poverty on behalf of their animals that most people would more readily associate with parent-and-child dynamics. My heart broke when Lisa Simpson tearfully begged the blueblood owner of Grateful Gelding Stables, "Please take care of my Princess." I even had a subscription to Horsepower Magazine for a while.
What killed the fever? Prolonged exposure to both horses and horsey people. A week of riding camp was all it took for me to realize that not only was I not that good at getting horses to do what I want, I didn't really want to get better.
Sleipnir made me seriously regret that.
He was massive – still within the range that draft horses and Clydesdales could get at their largest, I thought, but just... huge. You know how in rural North America small towns will build colossal models of stuff in a vain attempt to attract major tourism? If Asgard had been one of those places, Sleipnir could easily have served as their Big Whosits.
With the added bonus that he was
a) alive, and
b) fucking adorable
Admittedly, my tastes have rightly been called strange in the past (I thought the Adipose of Doctor Who fame were disturbing little baby-Gozer-looking things, but I'm unable to see a speccy young man squeeing over corgis without squeeing myself, in some kind of bizarre chain-reaction), but on this point I'm sure other humans would have to agree with me. His big dark eyes had long grey lashes and an alertness to them that I was more used to seeing in children who haven't learned to talk yet, but who are getting there – actually, he looked a lot younger than a horse his size normally would be in general. And the way he nuzzled the groom so affectionately with that lip quirk that was almost a smile and no, he wasn't looking for sugar cubes in his pockets, what on earth gave you that idea, like he thought he was so slick... it was just precious!
Lauren Faust would shit bricks, I thought.
"Easy, there, boyo," the groom said, patting Sleipnir's neck affectionately. "You can have a treat after you've had your breakfast." And he nodded at me. "This here is Lady Magda."
The dappled grey nose turned in my direction.
"Hail, Lord of Horses," I murmured.
Sleipnir turned back to the groom and gave him a curious look. The groom sighed, and patted him again.
"Your da'll be back in a few days. You know that."
... if you ever get the chance to see a horse roll his eyes, don't pass it up.
"Her ladyship's his apprentice in magic," the old fellow explained with a stern look. "His Highness wouldn't have sent her if he didn't think she was up to spoon-feedin' you, you great lump."
"Spoon-feed?" I blurted.
"Of course," the groom replied, turning to me with a raised eyebrow and pulling a wide spoon out of his pocket. "You can't expect him to grow hands every time he wants to eat somethin', can you?"
"Well, no," I said awkwardly, "but... he's intelligent, right?" I glanced at Sleipnir. "You are, aren't you? I mean, you understand what we're saying. Are you cool with this?"
He quirked his head to the side like he thought I was nuts.
"I mean," I continued, reassured by the fact that he seemed to understand my words if not my hesitation, "if someone were going to spoonfeed me, I'd feel like kind of a twit. Would you really rather I do it, or that I just hold out the jar and let you lick it out yourself?"
Horse and groom scoffed as one.
"Beggin' your pardon, milady," the groom immediately added, "but he's not some common nag ready to stuff his face in the slops – he's a Lord of Horses, like you said before."
Sleipnir nodded, and gave me the eye.
"I apologize. I just thought I'd ask," I said, feeling like an asshole. "I guess it's different when you've never had hands."
He snuffled at my wrist, as if to say, "Enough yackin'; make with the noms, woman!"
The action, performed as it was with gentle insistence that seemed dismissive of both my silliness and the very thought of him being offended, was enough to lighten my mood immediately. Sometimes I'm easy.
"You got it," I said with a grin, unscrewing the lid and taking the spoon from the groom.
Sleipnir opened wide, and that was when I saw the fangs. Because of how huge he was, they were right in front of my face.
"Mother of – you're an omnivore?!" I almost dropped the jar as I stepped involuntarily backward.
"... he's what?" the groom asked after a long pause.
"Omnivorous," I said, still staring at the set of sharp, curved teeth at the sides of Sleipnir's mouth. "It means he's capable of eating both plants and animals."
"Don't they still tell tales of him eatin' the flesh of the Allfather's enemies down on Midgard?" The groom sounded surprised.
"Not on my Midgard," I said, feeling a bit lightheaded. "I can't believe they didn't note a detail that cool."
Technically, a horse should not be able to smirk. Their faces aren't flat enough for it. But apparently when you're folk-metal Shadowfax you can basically do whatever the fuck you want.
I offered up a spoonful of the mysterious dark green mash, and watched, fascinated, as Sleipnir's tongue carried it past the fangs and incisors to the back of his mouth for chewing.
"Do details have different temperatures on Midgard, milady?" the groom asked curiously.
I shook my head absently. So, wait, does Allspeak translate idioms or not? "Figure of speech. It means pleasing or interesting." After a moment, I figured I might as well give him the full definition: "Or possessing a certain... social cachet."
"Oh." He sounded rather proud. "Well, that's very kind."
"How did he come to be an omnivore?" I asked.
The groom beamed. "His highness bred him to be the perfect warhorse. Lord Sleipnir here is the culmination of over three centuries of research."
'Research'.
Unbidden, my brain cued up a saxophone solo. I managed to prevent myself from snorting aloud, but it was a very near thing.
The Sleipnir Thing is one of the big issues that come up when you talk about Loki with anyone who so much as vaguely remembers the myths. Everyone gets in a good laugh, except for a few fangirls who write darkfics where he was totally raped by a horse because Odin SUCKS omigod you gaiz tiem for huggles, and that's generally the end of it.
Unless you worship the guy. Then it's less a joke or angst-fodder and more just this fucking cool thing your god can do. I mean, hell, it's not a competition (it's totally a competition), but you don't see the god of Abraham personally carrying his son to term, do you? And talk about lack of fucks given – the sheer style of it! "Yes. Not only did I make it impossible for you to uphold your end of the deal, for an encore I gave birth to a horse ten times more powerful and useful than yours. Fuck you in general."
But this wasn't myth-Sleipnir, and I wasn't apprenticed to myth-Loki. This was an Asgard that smelled predominantly like a new car, not wet leather and hearthfires and freshly turned soil – and especially not sex.
Basically, my personal attitude toward the story of Sleipnir's conception as I knew it was likely to go down about as well as gushing to Victor von Doom about how much I liked Clopin from the Disney Hunchback movie.
So... Loki's a physicist and a bio-engineer, I thought. And his apprentice is a former history major.
... Frigga, can I buy some pot from you?
The last person I could remember spoon-feeding was my baby cousin, and surprisingly for a horse, though perhaps not so much for an intelligent one, Sleipnir was a much tidier eater than she was.
"You're a handsome fella, aren'tcha," I said cheerily as he munched, being as vulnerable to cuteness-proximity as the next girl.
"Oh, for the love of all things holy, don't encourage him," the large cat down the row growled.
Sleipnir tossed his mane in a manner I can only honestly describe as gif-worthy.
"Well you're handsome too, Ser Kitty," I called. "I just didn't like to mention it without engaging in conversation first."
"Foolish girl," the cat sniffed, and licked his paw. "The only proper way to begin a conversation with a cat is to comment on his beauty."
"Quite right," I conceded, "I must have forgotten, having gone so many years without own- playing host to one," I self-corrected. "But yes, you are a very sexy kitty."
The groom made a choking sound, and I felt myself turn bright red. I guess the nuance of that specific usage doesn't translate.
Turning back to him, I stammered, "Wh-what? Did you want a compliment too?"
"... if milady sees fit," he said stiffly, suddenly very formal indeed.
I peered up at him, trying to think of something less generic than hymns to his handsomeness ('cause, seriously, he was an Asgardian, I don't think I've ever met one who was less than a 6).
"You're very neatly dressed for someone who works with animals all day," I said finally. "That must be a difficult standard to maintain."
"It is, thank you, milady, but I manage," he said, looking slightly relieved.
"And you have a fantastic ass," I commented, poker-faced.
It didn't last, though; between his spluttering, the cat's roars of laughter and Sleipnir making those hiccuppy sounds in his throat I inevitably started smirking and then snickering.
"I'm just givin' ya a hard time, man," I said mirthfully, waving off his stricken look, my embarrassment easily wiped out by his. I turned back to Sleipnir. "Now, where were we?"
Like most North American girls, I went through a major horse phase between the ages of eight and ten. I adored The Last Unicorn and Into the Land of the Unicorns; I memorized the distinguishing characteristics of various breeds; I read historical fiction about other bright-eyed little girls with what seemed to me oceans of money, and Arab grooms who endured a level of poverty on behalf of their animals that most people would more readily associate with parent-and-child dynamics. My heart broke when Lisa Simpson tearfully begged the blueblood owner of Grateful Gelding Stables, "Please take care of my Princess." I even had a subscription to Horsepower Magazine for a while.
What killed the fever? Prolonged exposure to both horses and horsey people. A week of riding camp was all it took for me to realize that not only was I not that good at getting horses to do what I want, I didn't really want to get better.
Sleipnir made me seriously regret that.
He was massive – still within the range that draft horses and Clydesdales could get at their largest, I thought, but just... huge. You know how in rural North America small towns will build colossal models of stuff in a vain attempt to attract major tourism? If Asgard had been one of those places, Sleipnir could easily have served as their Big Whosits.
With the added bonus that he was
a) alive, and
b) fucking adorable
Admittedly, my tastes have rightly been called strange in the past (I thought the Adipose of Doctor Who fame were disturbing little baby-Gozer-looking things, but I'm unable to see a speccy young man squeeing over corgis without squeeing myself, in some kind of bizarre chain-reaction), but on this point I'm sure other humans would have to agree with me. His big dark eyes had long grey lashes and an alertness to them that I was more used to seeing in children who haven't learned to talk yet, but who are getting there – actually, he looked a lot younger than a horse his size normally would be in general. And the way he nuzzled the groom so affectionately with that lip quirk that was almost a smile and no, he wasn't looking for sugar cubes in his pockets, what on earth gave you that idea, like he thought he was so slick... it was just precious!
Lauren Faust would shit bricks, I thought.
"Easy, there, boyo," the groom said, patting Sleipnir's neck affectionately. "You can have a treat after you've had your breakfast." And he nodded at me. "This here is Lady Magda."
The dappled grey nose turned in my direction.
"Hail, Lord of Horses," I murmured.
Sleipnir turned back to the groom and gave him a curious look. The groom sighed, and patted him again.
"Your da'll be back in a few days. You know that."
... if you ever get the chance to see a horse roll his eyes, don't pass it up.
"Her ladyship's his apprentice in magic," the old fellow explained with a stern look. "His Highness wouldn't have sent her if he didn't think she was up to spoon-feedin' you, you great lump."
"Spoon-feed?" I blurted.
"Of course," the groom replied, turning to me with a raised eyebrow and pulling a wide spoon out of his pocket. "You can't expect him to grow hands every time he wants to eat somethin', can you?"
"Well, no," I said awkwardly, "but... he's intelligent, right?" I glanced at Sleipnir. "You are, aren't you? I mean, you understand what we're saying. Are you cool with this?"
He quirked his head to the side like he thought I was nuts.
"I mean," I continued, reassured by the fact that he seemed to understand my words if not my hesitation, "if someone were going to spoonfeed me, I'd feel like kind of a twit. Would you really rather I do it, or that I just hold out the jar and let you lick it out yourself?"
Horse and groom scoffed as one.
"Beggin' your pardon, milady," the groom immediately added, "but he's not some common nag ready to stuff his face in the slops – he's a Lord of Horses, like you said before."
Sleipnir nodded, and gave me the eye.
"I apologize. I just thought I'd ask," I said, feeling like an asshole. "I guess it's different when you've never had hands."
He snuffled at my wrist, as if to say, "Enough yackin'; make with the noms, woman!"
The action, performed as it was with gentle insistence that seemed dismissive of both my silliness and the very thought of him being offended, was enough to lighten my mood immediately. Sometimes I'm easy.
"You got it," I said with a grin, unscrewing the lid and taking the spoon from the groom.
Sleipnir opened wide, and that was when I saw the fangs. Because of how huge he was, they were right in front of my face.
"Mother of – you're an omnivore?!" I almost dropped the jar as I stepped involuntarily backward.
"... he's what?" the groom asked after a long pause.
"Omnivorous," I said, still staring at the set of sharp, curved teeth at the sides of Sleipnir's mouth. "It means he's capable of eating both plants and animals."
"Don't they still tell tales of him eatin' the flesh of the Allfather's enemies down on Midgard?" The groom sounded surprised.
"Not on my Midgard," I said, feeling a bit lightheaded. "I can't believe they didn't note a detail that cool."
Technically, a horse should not be able to smirk. Their faces aren't flat enough for it. But apparently when you're folk-metal Shadowfax you can basically do whatever the fuck you want.
I offered up a spoonful of the mysterious dark green mash, and watched, fascinated, as Sleipnir's tongue carried it past the fangs and incisors to the back of his mouth for chewing.
"Do details have different temperatures on Midgard, milady?" the groom asked curiously.
I shook my head absently. So, wait, does Allspeak translate idioms or not? "Figure of speech. It means pleasing or interesting." After a moment, I figured I might as well give him the full definition: "Or possessing a certain... social cachet."
"Oh." He sounded rather proud. "Well, that's very kind."
"How did he come to be an omnivore?" I asked.
The groom beamed. "His highness bred him to be the perfect warhorse. Lord Sleipnir here is the culmination of over three centuries of research."
'Research'.
Unbidden, my brain cued up a saxophone solo. I managed to prevent myself from snorting aloud, but it was a very near thing.
The Sleipnir Thing is one of the big issues that come up when you talk about Loki with anyone who so much as vaguely remembers the myths. Everyone gets in a good laugh, except for a few fangirls who write darkfics where he was totally raped by a horse because Odin SUCKS omigod you gaiz tiem for huggles, and that's generally the end of it.
Unless you worship the guy. Then it's less a joke or angst-fodder and more just this fucking cool thing your god can do. I mean, hell, it's not a competition (it's totally a competition), but you don't see the god of Abraham personally carrying his son to term, do you? And talk about lack of fucks given – the sheer style of it! "Yes. Not only did I make it impossible for you to uphold your end of the deal, for an encore I gave birth to a horse ten times more powerful and useful than yours. Fuck you in general."
But this wasn't myth-Sleipnir, and I wasn't apprenticed to myth-Loki. This was an Asgard that smelled predominantly like a new car, not wet leather and hearthfires and freshly turned soil – and especially not sex.
Basically, my personal attitude toward the story of Sleipnir's conception as I knew it was likely to go down about as well as gushing to Victor von Doom about how much I liked Clopin from the Disney Hunchback movie.
So... Loki's a physicist and a bio-engineer, I thought. And his apprentice is a former history major.
... Frigga, can I buy some pot from you?
The last person I could remember spoon-feeding was my baby cousin, and surprisingly for a horse, though perhaps not so much for an intelligent one, Sleipnir was a much tidier eater than she was.
"You're a handsome fella, aren'tcha," I said cheerily as he munched, being as vulnerable to cuteness-proximity as the next girl.
"Oh, for the love of all things holy, don't encourage him," the large cat down the row growled.
Sleipnir tossed his mane in a manner I can only honestly describe as gif-worthy.
"Well you're handsome too, Ser Kitty," I called. "I just didn't like to mention it without engaging in conversation first."
"Foolish girl," the cat sniffed, and licked his paw. "The only proper way to begin a conversation with a cat is to comment on his beauty."
"Quite right," I conceded, "I must have forgotten, having gone so many years without own- playing host to one," I self-corrected. "But yes, you are a very sexy kitty."
The groom made a choking sound, and I felt myself turn bright red. I guess the nuance of that specific usage doesn't translate.
Turning back to him, I stammered, "Wh-what? Did you want a compliment too?"
"... if milady sees fit," he said stiffly, suddenly very formal indeed.
I peered up at him, trying to think of something less generic than hymns to his handsomeness ('cause, seriously, he was an Asgardian, I don't think I've ever met one who was less than a 6).
"You're very neatly dressed for someone who works with animals all day," I said finally. "That must be a difficult standard to maintain."
"It is, thank you, milady, but I manage," he said, looking slightly relieved.
"And you have a fantastic ass," I commented, poker-faced.
It didn't last, though; between his spluttering, the cat's roars of laughter and Sleipnir making those hiccuppy sounds in his throat I inevitably started smirking and then snickering.
"I'm just givin' ya a hard time, man," I said mirthfully, waving off his stricken look, my embarrassment easily wiped out by his. I turned back to Sleipnir. "Now, where were we?"
Chapter Ten, Part Two
I should have figured it out sooner, I know, but in fairness to me, I had a lot of stuff going on. Loki'd had me practising some results-directed forms of meditation before he left and I'd been having a lot of trouble with them; I was making the rounds in the palace practice yards to much general amusement; I was running daily grammar drills with Birna's help; and Hugmodur brought my phone back! Well, sort of.
"Holy crap! Is this even the same phone?" I pressed a recessed button in the sleek molten-gold body of the device and the screen sprang to life. It was weird, seeing that same old background on the screen of what looked like a steampunk custom mod.
"That's what I wanted to tell you, milady," Moddie said excitedly. "When I got a good look inside the thing I thought to myself, 'Rather than fix such a hopeless wreck that's practically designed to break down one way or another, why not have a go at making something new along the same lines?'"
And that was how I got my answer to the question, 'Why is a techie serving drinks?'
Oh, tact and business-savvy, we fail to meet yet again.
When I asked what he'd like in exchange for a solar-powered, water-proof, drop-it-from-a-third-storey-balcony-run-it-over-with-a-cart-and-not-a-scratch-on-it (as he cheerfully informed me he'd tested), nigh-limitless-memory phone, all he asked for was to be allowed to hold onto the copies he'd made of the audiobook tracks of The Three Musketeers from my original phone. That led to another distraction; my insistence on at the very least baking the guy some cookies. And that led to my first encounter with the palace kitchen staff and the multitude of tricks and recipes they had in store for someone willing to sit quietly in the corner and not get in the way or talk too much.
And then there was the truly choice shit it turned out I could do with healing stones.
My point is, it's a lot harder to be genre savvy when you're living in the story. Life doesn't have time-skips.
In the end, it was a comment from Ser Kitty that clued me in.
We'd been discussing his people in Vanaheim, and how he'd met Lady Frigga there when she was a child and entered her service. The little he told me of Catling culture (proud hunter gatherers whose religion has some pretty specific things to say about living too far from the open sky) was kind of a relief, since it silenced whatever alarm bells might have been ringing about a sapient being living in a stable. And spending more time around Sleipnir made it obvious he didn't have any complaints; food at least as good as I'd been eating, grooms who obviously doted on him, and when he wanted to step out for the day, he did. I mean, who's gonna stop a ten-foot-tall horse with fangs?
But! As I was saying, or rather, as Ser Kitty was saying...
"Oh, you'd be surprised what your teacher is capable of."
I can't remember what he said it about, now; all I remember is how very amused he sounded, and my immediate reaction.
... no, I really wouldn't.
It was like the point in a dream when you realize it's a dream, and you can either try to sink back down into it to forget, or you can wake up.
For the moment, I tried to sink back down. If I was wrong about what I was thinking, I didn't want any witnesses to my paranoia. It was hard, but I managed to fake interest in the rest of the conversation until I could leave.
That was on the third day of Loki's trip to Nidavellir.
On the morning of the fourth, rather than wish the groom a good morning when he came to walk me down to the stables, I asked him the question I'd been waiting to all night.
"Did his highness ask you to spy on me?"
"What?" he said, sounding shocked at the very idea. "No, milady, of course not!"
I nodded once. "Of course not. I couldn't agree more. Because he wouldn't trust anyone but himself to catch all the details of whatever it was he was looking for. Would he?"
I stared at him, hard.
And that was when I felt a tap on my shoulder and jerked around with a hammering elbow that was caught casually by a slightly annoyed Loki.
"Shit," I said intelligently, my face heating up in a snap. I didn't so much see the amber light behind me as hear it, and I knew that when I turned around again, the groom – who never had given his name, now that I thought of it – would have vanished.
He's not going to make a thing out of the fact that I leered at his ass, is he?
"How did you know?" my sensei asked curtly, letting me loose.
"A couple of things," I said, slightly dazed and a little smug. "Mostly it was just that this scenario makes more sense; I mean, would you really leave me in charge of the Allfather's steed after knowing me a week and a half?"
"... I had hoped you would take it for the honour it was and give the matter no more thought," he admitted, sounding a bit put out that I hadn't.
Ha! He thought being a ditz made me dumb! This place really is like high school!
"If I had been born a few hundred years ago, I might've," I said sympathetically. "But it wasn't just that; the second day, after I made that comment about your clothes being very clean, you were slightly more mussed up when I got down to the stables. It might have been a coincidence," I added, "but..."
"But," Loki cut in, with the cranky embarrassment of someone who is not in the mood to hear a Scooby Doo sum-up, "then that living throw-rug decided to have his say."
"That was very helpful of him," I said with a grin.
"Yes, very, to you," Loki emphasized, exhasperated.
"What were you waiting for, anyway?" I asked curiously. "Wait, were you just the groom, or have you been keeping an eye on me the whole time?"
There was no smile at that, but there was a sort of shine in his eyes that even a week of knowing him had taught me to view with trepidation.
"If you're going maintain your habit of rehearsing for conversations before they happen, you should learn how to ward a room against eavesdroppers," he said, almost innocently.
My shoulders hunched reflexively. "... please don't tell anyone I do that."
His smirk was almost too cheery to deserve the name. You'd hardly have believed he was sulking a minute ago. "You should be grateful you do; it cleared up whatever suspicions I might still have had about your true intentions here."
"Yeah?" I felt a small amount of the pressure that'd been hanging over me since I arrived lift. "Thanks."
He nodded once, as though mentally filing this matter under 'settled'. "Now then," he said, turning back down the corridor, "pack your things and let's be off."
I blinked, and hurriedly followed. "Off to where?"
"Earth, of course. Where else?"
He said it so casually I almost wanted to smack 'im on general principle.
I should have figured it out sooner, I know, but in fairness to me, I had a lot of stuff going on. Loki'd had me practising some results-directed forms of meditation before he left and I'd been having a lot of trouble with them; I was making the rounds in the palace practice yards to much general amusement; I was running daily grammar drills with Birna's help; and Hugmodur brought my phone back! Well, sort of.
"Holy crap! Is this even the same phone?" I pressed a recessed button in the sleek molten-gold body of the device and the screen sprang to life. It was weird, seeing that same old background on the screen of what looked like a steampunk custom mod.
"That's what I wanted to tell you, milady," Moddie said excitedly. "When I got a good look inside the thing I thought to myself, 'Rather than fix such a hopeless wreck that's practically designed to break down one way or another, why not have a go at making something new along the same lines?'"
And that was how I got my answer to the question, 'Why is a techie serving drinks?'
Oh, tact and business-savvy, we fail to meet yet again.
When I asked what he'd like in exchange for a solar-powered, water-proof, drop-it-from-a-third-storey-balcony-run-it-over-with-a-cart-and-not-a-scratch-on-it (as he cheerfully informed me he'd tested), nigh-limitless-memory phone, all he asked for was to be allowed to hold onto the copies he'd made of the audiobook tracks of The Three Musketeers from my original phone. That led to another distraction; my insistence on at the very least baking the guy some cookies. And that led to my first encounter with the palace kitchen staff and the multitude of tricks and recipes they had in store for someone willing to sit quietly in the corner and not get in the way or talk too much.
And then there was the truly choice shit it turned out I could do with healing stones.
My point is, it's a lot harder to be genre savvy when you're living in the story. Life doesn't have time-skips.
In the end, it was a comment from Ser Kitty that clued me in.
We'd been discussing his people in Vanaheim, and how he'd met Lady Frigga there when she was a child and entered her service. The little he told me of Catling culture (proud hunter gatherers whose religion has some pretty specific things to say about living too far from the open sky) was kind of a relief, since it silenced whatever alarm bells might have been ringing about a sapient being living in a stable. And spending more time around Sleipnir made it obvious he didn't have any complaints; food at least as good as I'd been eating, grooms who obviously doted on him, and when he wanted to step out for the day, he did. I mean, who's gonna stop a ten-foot-tall horse with fangs?
But! As I was saying, or rather, as Ser Kitty was saying...
"Oh, you'd be surprised what your teacher is capable of."
I can't remember what he said it about, now; all I remember is how very amused he sounded, and my immediate reaction.
... no, I really wouldn't.
It was like the point in a dream when you realize it's a dream, and you can either try to sink back down into it to forget, or you can wake up.
For the moment, I tried to sink back down. If I was wrong about what I was thinking, I didn't want any witnesses to my paranoia. It was hard, but I managed to fake interest in the rest of the conversation until I could leave.
That was on the third day of Loki's trip to Nidavellir.
On the morning of the fourth, rather than wish the groom a good morning when he came to walk me down to the stables, I asked him the question I'd been waiting to all night.
"Did his highness ask you to spy on me?"
"What?" he said, sounding shocked at the very idea. "No, milady, of course not!"
I nodded once. "Of course not. I couldn't agree more. Because he wouldn't trust anyone but himself to catch all the details of whatever it was he was looking for. Would he?"
I stared at him, hard.
And that was when I felt a tap on my shoulder and jerked around with a hammering elbow that was caught casually by a slightly annoyed Loki.
"Shit," I said intelligently, my face heating up in a snap. I didn't so much see the amber light behind me as hear it, and I knew that when I turned around again, the groom – who never had given his name, now that I thought of it – would have vanished.
He's not going to make a thing out of the fact that I leered at his ass, is he?
"How did you know?" my sensei asked curtly, letting me loose.
"A couple of things," I said, slightly dazed and a little smug. "Mostly it was just that this scenario makes more sense; I mean, would you really leave me in charge of the Allfather's steed after knowing me a week and a half?"
"... I had hoped you would take it for the honour it was and give the matter no more thought," he admitted, sounding a bit put out that I hadn't.
Ha! He thought being a ditz made me dumb! This place really is like high school!
"If I had been born a few hundred years ago, I might've," I said sympathetically. "But it wasn't just that; the second day, after I made that comment about your clothes being very clean, you were slightly more mussed up when I got down to the stables. It might have been a coincidence," I added, "but..."
"But," Loki cut in, with the cranky embarrassment of someone who is not in the mood to hear a Scooby Doo sum-up, "then that living throw-rug decided to have his say."
"That was very helpful of him," I said with a grin.
"Yes, very, to you," Loki emphasized, exhasperated.
"What were you waiting for, anyway?" I asked curiously. "Wait, were you just the groom, or have you been keeping an eye on me the whole time?"
There was no smile at that, but there was a sort of shine in his eyes that even a week of knowing him had taught me to view with trepidation.
"If you're going maintain your habit of rehearsing for conversations before they happen, you should learn how to ward a room against eavesdroppers," he said, almost innocently.
My shoulders hunched reflexively. "... please don't tell anyone I do that."
His smirk was almost too cheery to deserve the name. You'd hardly have believed he was sulking a minute ago. "You should be grateful you do; it cleared up whatever suspicions I might still have had about your true intentions here."
"Yeah?" I felt a small amount of the pressure that'd been hanging over me since I arrived lift. "Thanks."
He nodded once, as though mentally filing this matter under 'settled'. "Now then," he said, turning back down the corridor, "pack your things and let's be off."
I blinked, and hurriedly followed. "Off to where?"
"Earth, of course. Where else?"
He said it so casually I almost wanted to smack 'im on general principle.
Chapter Ten, Part Three
My second bout of interdimensional travel began on a servants' staircase somewhere in the bowels of the palace complex. All in all, the car accident was actually the less harrowing of the two lead-ins; I was alone for it, at least. Here there was a nigh-constant stream of shouted conversations conducted between people several floors apart, and someone was always rushing up or down carrying something heavy or delicate or both.
"If you don't stop flinching, I'm going to leave you behind," Loki chided, one arm pushing me back against the wall beside him as a flustered middle-aged-looking man carrying a stained dress tap-tap-tapped down past us, cursing under his breath. "I told you, they can't see or hear us."
"I know that!" I said, shoving the straps of my purse back up onto my shoulder from where they'd fallen down my arm. "But it's still weird. I keep thinking someone's going to demand to know what I'm doing here."
He scoffed. "In the unlikely event of that occurring, you could say, quite correctly, that you are running an errand for their Prince, and that if they impede you in your work I will make my displeasure known."
"I don't want to get anyone flogged over me!" I said, scandalized.
"Then don't get caught," he said carelessly.
... I'd like to state for the record that finding autocrats sexy is not the same thing as thinking they should actually be in charge of anything.
As a followup statement, I'd like to point out that there's also a difference between telling your poseur high school boyfriend that he needs to expand his goddamn monkeysphere, and saying it to someone whose father is the Eternal President of the Immortal Laser-Vikings.
By the time I had successfully suppressed my desire to righteously headbutt some empathy for the working class into my douchey one-fifth-of-a-percenter companion (who just had to be eloquent and funny and brain-melting-smile-having and teaching me magic, because that is the kind of luck I have), Loki stopped, right in the middle of climbing the sixteenth flight of stairs. Running a hand down the wall, he found the seam he was looking for, and nodded.
"Right," he said, turning to me, "we'll have to jump at the same time, so whatever you do, don't hesitate."
"How precise does it have to be?" I asked, stage fright creeping in. Of all the things for my shit sense of rhythm to screw up...
"If you don't think you can manage it, you're welcome to stay home," he replied.
"Can I have a count of three or something? I don't want to get ripped apart by the space-time continuum just because I jumped at the wrong time."
He shook his head, incredulous. "You could worry about anything, couldn't you?" he said.
And he shoved me through the crack.
"Cocksucking goatfuckeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-!"
It's one thing to travel through Wheeler foam in a car; you're shielded from the sensation a bit, so it's mostly like a light show. But when your skin can actually reach out from your body and touch the bright light of infinity... it's like nothing on Earth. The closest thing I can compare it to is my memory of being a little kid and seeing an Omnimax movie for the first time. The actual experience is nothing like an Omnimax film, of course, but there's a similarly overwhelming rush of sensory information, and the back-brain terror that insists the situation is no longer under control and it's time to run.
"-er!" I shouted.
A dog tied to a front-stoop railing perked up its ears and looked at me, but lost interest a moment later, settling its head back down on its paws. I couldn't blame it. This place was like a sauna, it was hard to feel like doing anything. I don't know how the hundreds of people passing me in both directions managed to have as much energy as they did – or how the cars were still running without the engines spontaneously combusting.
"Without even rudimentary instruction, on your first try, you successfully navigated a path from one universe to another and found your way to a world with a breathable atmosphere," Loki said, a mere step behind me. "It is almost impossible that a jaunt between the Realms would kill you if that didn't."
"Well thanks for telling me that before you shoved me into the screaming void!" I said indignantly, yanking off my sweater and stuffing it in my purse.
"It's nothing you couldn't have worked out for yourself if you had just taken a moment to think instead of blindly panicking," he lectured.
"No I couldn't have, there're too many variables I don't know about," I objected. The heat and the noise from the traffic weren't doing my already-tested temper any favours, and his studied nonchalance was really getting to me. "I don't even understand how I'm doing this! I don't know enough about astrophysics to know if I'm being exposed to radiation or whatever, I don't know if some routes are heavier on the harmful energies than others regardless of how long or short they are, I don't know if losing focus will mean I'll travel to two different places at once and splinch myself, I don't know if there are ways to extract someone while they're en route and divert them somewhere else or how common kidnappings like that are, I-"
"Do all mortals spend as much time fretting over vain suppositions as you do?" he wondered aloud. "It looks exhausting."
I hmphed, scanning the skyline for landmarks to give me a sense of where we might be. "Just because I'm gonna die someday doesn't mean I want to have a stupid death that I could have prevented."
That was when I saw the giant stone Jedi standing watch on the mountaintop.
"Why are we in Rio?" I asked, curiosity taking over from anger easily.
"There's someone I need to speak to." We stepped around the corner into a much quieter and narrower street than the one we'd blinked into and started on our way uphill. "Afterward I thought we might visit the draper's – you can't keep wearing your maid's clothes."
I blinked. "What? That can't be right, Birna's like five foot nine."
He waved a hand. "She hems the skirts before she hands them over to you, I expect. It doesn't matter; my apprentice can't be seen dressing like a servant."
I honestly hadn't noticed any difference in quality between the servants' clothes and those worn by the nobles; every woman in the palace always looks like she's going to the Oscars anyway. I hadn't even bothered to ask where my clothes were coming from – I just kind of assumed Asgard had married 3D printing to tailoring.
Yeah, Fangirl-Magda scoffed, that seems really likely in a culture whose queen is the freaking goddess of weaving and handicrafts.
Man, I am such a narcissistic ass. Poor Birna.
I frowned. "... so do I need to dress 'like a human', then? I notice we aren't hitting up any Asgardian retailers."
"You'll have no complaints, Magda." There was an implied or else there, I just knew it. "The Son of Afolabi does excellent work."
My ultrasnob side nodded in acknowledgement of the prince's doubtless acceptably-high standards. This was, after all, the man who'd worn a Savile Row suit to invisibly visit his brother in superspy jail. That takes an impressive level of fastidiousness.
He was now in a lightweight cream-coloured suit and was somehow managing to make a boater look good (yes, even with those ears). Taken as a whole, with the jade-handled walking stick in his hand and a green paisley hanky in his breast pocket, he was the picture of British colonialism's last hurrah, and did not appear to be sweating. At all.
Me? Even with the sweater off, I was baking in black jeans and Blundstones.
All of my hate. Stupid hemisphere.
Abruptly Loki ducked down an alleyway, and by the time I had stuttered to a halt and made the turn myself I was a good ten feet behind him, and a few seconds later he further complicated matters by taking another unexpected turn in the winding maze of backstreets.
"Where are we going?" I called after him, slipping past a gaggle of kids huddling around the stoop of a back door.
"I'll tell you when I find it," he called back.
Oh, great, one of those wandering-door things, I thought. Because that's what you want in a city built on a hellish incline; fucking Schrödinger's foyer.
Finding the place took less time than I expected. The exterior of the house was adobe and maybe a little cleaner than the ones around it, but if you're asking for distinguishing characteristics I'm not your girl; the house up the street had a sun-faded Mickey Mouse beach towel duck-taped over the hole where one of the second-floor windows should have been, and, understandably, that's the detail that sticks in my memory. The place was in the favelas, I guess – I don't know, I might be being super-white about this whole thing and there could be a dozen neighbourhoods in Rio where people'd be happy to have pane-less windows to tape old towels over.
I say 'house' and 'up the street', but really the entire complex was more of a... well, a complex. It was like someone had taken the dystopian subtext of all those 1960s apartment-cities-of-the-future designs and made it text. It was like the housing equivalent of a hardened mass of gum that's been building up under a school desk for ten years, each successive kid sticking their chewed cud onto what came before until it might as well be a part of the desk. Staircases and hallway-street-alley-passthroughs knotted their way up and away from the official road at so many points and so many angles that it was sometimes impossible to tell which were the diversions and which were the real streets – and naturally it didn't help that the 'real' streets were so narrow that whenever a tourist rickshaw went by you had to find a doorway to hop into to avoid getting hit.
"Don't speak unless you're spoken to," Loki advised, rapping his cane on the door.
If we're here to buy magic mushrooms, I can't promise I won't laugh.
"Yes, sensei," I said dutifully.
The man who answered the door was athletic, somewhere in his mid-thirties, and almost obscenely Mediterranean. Obnoxiously dark tan contrasted with obnoxiously bleached blond hair coiffed into cool-rich-douchebag curls, pinkie ring with a square black stone, gold chain necklace, the whole nine – he was like an SNL character. I say Mediterranean and not anything more specific because his accent was completely unplaceable; every time I was ready to guess he was Greek, he'd suddenly sound French or Italian or fucking Welsh or something.
And of course, he hugged Loki the second he saw him.
"You're looking well, my friend! Where's my money?"
Loki returned the embrace with both arms and a smile, something which I'm sure made me do a visible double-take, because he raised a quizical eyebrow at me over the man's shoulder. I shook my head to indicate that it was nothing.
That was my first lesson in the aural-illusions All-Speak sometimes generates accidentally. They may sound like upper-crust Brits, but they have about as much in common with them culturally as the French or Germans do.
"Your money was in the pocket you just picked. You're welcome," Loki said drily. He gestured at me. "This is Magda Quickfinger, my apprentice."
"Quickfinger?" the man said, grinning at me. "What, was Slytongue a little too obvious?"
"You think the name without the penis joke is more obvious than the one with it?" I asked without thinking, more than a little incredulous.
He laughed uproariously as an unmistakable 'oh god no there are two of them' expression flitted across Loki's face. He slapped my teacher on the back. "Nice to see you can make friends when I'm not around to help you." He smiled at me. "What's your real name? Will you tell me?"
Something about the smile – not that it was unpleasant, or malicious, or even all that manipulative, all things considered – made me reassess what I was seeing when I looked at his face. I suddenly knew that this fellow had been in his mid-thirties for a very, very long time.
"...I'm afraid not," I managed, and immediately squeezed my eyes shut to brace myself for the fallout. "Sorry, sir."
"If you're quite done harrassing young women, 'Maximus'," Loki said, scarequotes clicking into place like Scrabble tiles, "could we perhaps move on to actual business matters?"
I opened one eye when I was pretty sure I wasn't in danger of being crushed like a bug. The guy was still smiling at me.
"Why didn't you open the door?"
Oh, sweet, a vision-quest question! "Which door?" I asked.
"The one in the study," he said, ignoring Loki's spluttering.
The memory rose to the surface. "Because he asked me not to." I paused. "That sounded less naïve in my head."
"Naïve isn't so bad," the man said reasonably, chuckling a bit. "Would that more of my students had been a little less eager to show me how grown-up they were." He patted me on the shoulder. "You are a good girl. Hold onto that, it's a rare quality in this field."
Nothing in the world makes me feel more like a manipulative asshole than being told I'm a good person, and this occasion was no exception. Call it a Canadian thing, blame it on my depression, it's just how I'm wired. Especially when it's based on a misinterpretation of my motives – 'because he asked me not to' didn't mean 'I won't invade people's privacy' or 'I'm an obedient student'. It meant 'I'm not stupid enough to do what a scientist tells me not to do in his own lab' and 'I have heard the story of Pandora's box before' and 'I'm too much of a pussy to go looking for adventures or do anything interesting'.
But, as always with that kind of compliment, what the hell can you do besides say thank you?
In hindsight, I'm pretty sure he chose his phrasing intentionally. Hermes is both irritatingly perceptive and a little bit of a shit, even to his friends.
It was at this point that Loki ordered me outside to 'stand guard'. I was about to ask with what and against what, but he gave me one of those looks, so I just nodded, said of course, half-bowed and headed out the door.
I stood there for what felt like hours, wondering if this was just the lead-in to some major prank, smiling at tiny kids playing hide and seek and frowning coldly at the occasional passing teenager who thought he was smooth and fluent in English.
I was contemplating whether or not it'd be worth my while to go ask whoever was cooking that heavenly-smelling food if they'd be willing to share when a skinny white guy in a baseball cap crashed right into me.
Unfortunately for him, my shiny new super-durability apparently came with a touch of super-grounding as well; he tumbled to the ground and I barely rocked on my heels.
I winced, and stuck out a hand. "Ouch. You okay, m-?"
Unfortunately for me, I recognized him.
"... Doctor Banner?" I blurted without thinking.
Why does he already look like Mark Ruffalo? one of the particularly stupid bits of my brain wondered.
And then a dozen black-ops guys caught up with him, and I lost interest in geek trivia for a little while.
My second bout of interdimensional travel began on a servants' staircase somewhere in the bowels of the palace complex. All in all, the car accident was actually the less harrowing of the two lead-ins; I was alone for it, at least. Here there was a nigh-constant stream of shouted conversations conducted between people several floors apart, and someone was always rushing up or down carrying something heavy or delicate or both.
"If you don't stop flinching, I'm going to leave you behind," Loki chided, one arm pushing me back against the wall beside him as a flustered middle-aged-looking man carrying a stained dress tap-tap-tapped down past us, cursing under his breath. "I told you, they can't see or hear us."
"I know that!" I said, shoving the straps of my purse back up onto my shoulder from where they'd fallen down my arm. "But it's still weird. I keep thinking someone's going to demand to know what I'm doing here."
He scoffed. "In the unlikely event of that occurring, you could say, quite correctly, that you are running an errand for their Prince, and that if they impede you in your work I will make my displeasure known."
"I don't want to get anyone flogged over me!" I said, scandalized.
"Then don't get caught," he said carelessly.
... I'd like to state for the record that finding autocrats sexy is not the same thing as thinking they should actually be in charge of anything.
As a followup statement, I'd like to point out that there's also a difference between telling your poseur high school boyfriend that he needs to expand his goddamn monkeysphere, and saying it to someone whose father is the Eternal President of the Immortal Laser-Vikings.
By the time I had successfully suppressed my desire to righteously headbutt some empathy for the working class into my douchey one-fifth-of-a-percenter companion (who just had to be eloquent and funny and brain-melting-smile-having and teaching me magic, because that is the kind of luck I have), Loki stopped, right in the middle of climbing the sixteenth flight of stairs. Running a hand down the wall, he found the seam he was looking for, and nodded.
"Right," he said, turning to me, "we'll have to jump at the same time, so whatever you do, don't hesitate."
"How precise does it have to be?" I asked, stage fright creeping in. Of all the things for my shit sense of rhythm to screw up...
"If you don't think you can manage it, you're welcome to stay home," he replied.
"Can I have a count of three or something? I don't want to get ripped apart by the space-time continuum just because I jumped at the wrong time."
He shook his head, incredulous. "You could worry about anything, couldn't you?" he said.
And he shoved me through the crack.
"Cocksucking goatfuckeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-!"
It's one thing to travel through Wheeler foam in a car; you're shielded from the sensation a bit, so it's mostly like a light show. But when your skin can actually reach out from your body and touch the bright light of infinity... it's like nothing on Earth. The closest thing I can compare it to is my memory of being a little kid and seeing an Omnimax movie for the first time. The actual experience is nothing like an Omnimax film, of course, but there's a similarly overwhelming rush of sensory information, and the back-brain terror that insists the situation is no longer under control and it's time to run.
"-er!" I shouted.
A dog tied to a front-stoop railing perked up its ears and looked at me, but lost interest a moment later, settling its head back down on its paws. I couldn't blame it. This place was like a sauna, it was hard to feel like doing anything. I don't know how the hundreds of people passing me in both directions managed to have as much energy as they did – or how the cars were still running without the engines spontaneously combusting.
"Without even rudimentary instruction, on your first try, you successfully navigated a path from one universe to another and found your way to a world with a breathable atmosphere," Loki said, a mere step behind me. "It is almost impossible that a jaunt between the Realms would kill you if that didn't."
"Well thanks for telling me that before you shoved me into the screaming void!" I said indignantly, yanking off my sweater and stuffing it in my purse.
"It's nothing you couldn't have worked out for yourself if you had just taken a moment to think instead of blindly panicking," he lectured.
"No I couldn't have, there're too many variables I don't know about," I objected. The heat and the noise from the traffic weren't doing my already-tested temper any favours, and his studied nonchalance was really getting to me. "I don't even understand how I'm doing this! I don't know enough about astrophysics to know if I'm being exposed to radiation or whatever, I don't know if some routes are heavier on the harmful energies than others regardless of how long or short they are, I don't know if losing focus will mean I'll travel to two different places at once and splinch myself, I don't know if there are ways to extract someone while they're en route and divert them somewhere else or how common kidnappings like that are, I-"
"Do all mortals spend as much time fretting over vain suppositions as you do?" he wondered aloud. "It looks exhausting."
I hmphed, scanning the skyline for landmarks to give me a sense of where we might be. "Just because I'm gonna die someday doesn't mean I want to have a stupid death that I could have prevented."
That was when I saw the giant stone Jedi standing watch on the mountaintop.
"Why are we in Rio?" I asked, curiosity taking over from anger easily.
"There's someone I need to speak to." We stepped around the corner into a much quieter and narrower street than the one we'd blinked into and started on our way uphill. "Afterward I thought we might visit the draper's – you can't keep wearing your maid's clothes."
I blinked. "What? That can't be right, Birna's like five foot nine."
He waved a hand. "She hems the skirts before she hands them over to you, I expect. It doesn't matter; my apprentice can't be seen dressing like a servant."
I honestly hadn't noticed any difference in quality between the servants' clothes and those worn by the nobles; every woman in the palace always looks like she's going to the Oscars anyway. I hadn't even bothered to ask where my clothes were coming from – I just kind of assumed Asgard had married 3D printing to tailoring.
Yeah, Fangirl-Magda scoffed, that seems really likely in a culture whose queen is the freaking goddess of weaving and handicrafts.
Man, I am such a narcissistic ass. Poor Birna.
I frowned. "... so do I need to dress 'like a human', then? I notice we aren't hitting up any Asgardian retailers."
"You'll have no complaints, Magda." There was an implied or else there, I just knew it. "The Son of Afolabi does excellent work."
My ultrasnob side nodded in acknowledgement of the prince's doubtless acceptably-high standards. This was, after all, the man who'd worn a Savile Row suit to invisibly visit his brother in superspy jail. That takes an impressive level of fastidiousness.
He was now in a lightweight cream-coloured suit and was somehow managing to make a boater look good (yes, even with those ears). Taken as a whole, with the jade-handled walking stick in his hand and a green paisley hanky in his breast pocket, he was the picture of British colonialism's last hurrah, and did not appear to be sweating. At all.
Me? Even with the sweater off, I was baking in black jeans and Blundstones.
All of my hate. Stupid hemisphere.
Abruptly Loki ducked down an alleyway, and by the time I had stuttered to a halt and made the turn myself I was a good ten feet behind him, and a few seconds later he further complicated matters by taking another unexpected turn in the winding maze of backstreets.
"Where are we going?" I called after him, slipping past a gaggle of kids huddling around the stoop of a back door.
"I'll tell you when I find it," he called back.
Oh, great, one of those wandering-door things, I thought. Because that's what you want in a city built on a hellish incline; fucking Schrödinger's foyer.
Finding the place took less time than I expected. The exterior of the house was adobe and maybe a little cleaner than the ones around it, but if you're asking for distinguishing characteristics I'm not your girl; the house up the street had a sun-faded Mickey Mouse beach towel duck-taped over the hole where one of the second-floor windows should have been, and, understandably, that's the detail that sticks in my memory. The place was in the favelas, I guess – I don't know, I might be being super-white about this whole thing and there could be a dozen neighbourhoods in Rio where people'd be happy to have pane-less windows to tape old towels over.
I say 'house' and 'up the street', but really the entire complex was more of a... well, a complex. It was like someone had taken the dystopian subtext of all those 1960s apartment-cities-of-the-future designs and made it text. It was like the housing equivalent of a hardened mass of gum that's been building up under a school desk for ten years, each successive kid sticking their chewed cud onto what came before until it might as well be a part of the desk. Staircases and hallway-street-alley-passthroughs knotted their way up and away from the official road at so many points and so many angles that it was sometimes impossible to tell which were the diversions and which were the real streets – and naturally it didn't help that the 'real' streets were so narrow that whenever a tourist rickshaw went by you had to find a doorway to hop into to avoid getting hit.
"Don't speak unless you're spoken to," Loki advised, rapping his cane on the door.
If we're here to buy magic mushrooms, I can't promise I won't laugh.
"Yes, sensei," I said dutifully.
The man who answered the door was athletic, somewhere in his mid-thirties, and almost obscenely Mediterranean. Obnoxiously dark tan contrasted with obnoxiously bleached blond hair coiffed into cool-rich-douchebag curls, pinkie ring with a square black stone, gold chain necklace, the whole nine – he was like an SNL character. I say Mediterranean and not anything more specific because his accent was completely unplaceable; every time I was ready to guess he was Greek, he'd suddenly sound French or Italian or fucking Welsh or something.
And of course, he hugged Loki the second he saw him.
"You're looking well, my friend! Where's my money?"
Loki returned the embrace with both arms and a smile, something which I'm sure made me do a visible double-take, because he raised a quizical eyebrow at me over the man's shoulder. I shook my head to indicate that it was nothing.
That was my first lesson in the aural-illusions All-Speak sometimes generates accidentally. They may sound like upper-crust Brits, but they have about as much in common with them culturally as the French or Germans do.
"Your money was in the pocket you just picked. You're welcome," Loki said drily. He gestured at me. "This is Magda Quickfinger, my apprentice."
"Quickfinger?" the man said, grinning at me. "What, was Slytongue a little too obvious?"
"You think the name without the penis joke is more obvious than the one with it?" I asked without thinking, more than a little incredulous.
He laughed uproariously as an unmistakable 'oh god no there are two of them' expression flitted across Loki's face. He slapped my teacher on the back. "Nice to see you can make friends when I'm not around to help you." He smiled at me. "What's your real name? Will you tell me?"
Something about the smile – not that it was unpleasant, or malicious, or even all that manipulative, all things considered – made me reassess what I was seeing when I looked at his face. I suddenly knew that this fellow had been in his mid-thirties for a very, very long time.
"...I'm afraid not," I managed, and immediately squeezed my eyes shut to brace myself for the fallout. "Sorry, sir."
"If you're quite done harrassing young women, 'Maximus'," Loki said, scarequotes clicking into place like Scrabble tiles, "could we perhaps move on to actual business matters?"
I opened one eye when I was pretty sure I wasn't in danger of being crushed like a bug. The guy was still smiling at me.
"Why didn't you open the door?"
Oh, sweet, a vision-quest question! "Which door?" I asked.
"The one in the study," he said, ignoring Loki's spluttering.
The memory rose to the surface. "Because he asked me not to." I paused. "That sounded less naïve in my head."
"Naïve isn't so bad," the man said reasonably, chuckling a bit. "Would that more of my students had been a little less eager to show me how grown-up they were." He patted me on the shoulder. "You are a good girl. Hold onto that, it's a rare quality in this field."
Nothing in the world makes me feel more like a manipulative asshole than being told I'm a good person, and this occasion was no exception. Call it a Canadian thing, blame it on my depression, it's just how I'm wired. Especially when it's based on a misinterpretation of my motives – 'because he asked me not to' didn't mean 'I won't invade people's privacy' or 'I'm an obedient student'. It meant 'I'm not stupid enough to do what a scientist tells me not to do in his own lab' and 'I have heard the story of Pandora's box before' and 'I'm too much of a pussy to go looking for adventures or do anything interesting'.
But, as always with that kind of compliment, what the hell can you do besides say thank you?
In hindsight, I'm pretty sure he chose his phrasing intentionally. Hermes is both irritatingly perceptive and a little bit of a shit, even to his friends.
It was at this point that Loki ordered me outside to 'stand guard'. I was about to ask with what and against what, but he gave me one of those looks, so I just nodded, said of course, half-bowed and headed out the door.
I stood there for what felt like hours, wondering if this was just the lead-in to some major prank, smiling at tiny kids playing hide and seek and frowning coldly at the occasional passing teenager who thought he was smooth and fluent in English.
I was contemplating whether or not it'd be worth my while to go ask whoever was cooking that heavenly-smelling food if they'd be willing to share when a skinny white guy in a baseball cap crashed right into me.
Unfortunately for him, my shiny new super-durability apparently came with a touch of super-grounding as well; he tumbled to the ground and I barely rocked on my heels.
I winced, and stuck out a hand. "Ouch. You okay, m-?"
Unfortunately for me, I recognized him.
"... Doctor Banner?" I blurted without thinking.
Why does he already look like Mark Ruffalo? one of the particularly stupid bits of my brain wondered.
And then a dozen black-ops guys caught up with him, and I lost interest in geek trivia for a little while.
Chapter Eleven
I didn't run.
I will not try to say that not running was a good idea. I will not try to say that I had a plan. I will not even try to say that I stayed entirely out of compassion for Bruce and the look on his face.
The fact is, I didn't run because before I could decide whether or not to run, some trigger-happy little shit shot me right in the god damned tit.
So, the good news is that I was and am bulletproof.
The bad news is that bullets hurt.
A lot.
And when I get hurt – not hurt like when you stub your toe, or so hurt that it hurts to breathe and you think you're going to die, but the sweet spot in between... well...
"WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT FOR?" I screamed, tears rushing down my face unchecked, stomping forward."Who fucking fired that?!"
That seemed to shake them out of the hush that had fallen over them in the second or two after I got shot, and then everyone was yelling at once for me to get on the ground with my hands behind my head.
"Piss. On. That!" I snarled, sniffling ridiculously between each word and wiping my eyes. It suddenly occurred to me that I'd been shot in the left breast. Was that cocksucker aiming for my heart? That little fucker! "I'm-"
I was going to say I was a Canadian citizen and I didn't owe a bunch of American spooks jack shit (especially not on Brazilian soil, now that I look back on it), but then a hand clamped around my wrist and I was being dragged bodily away from the soldiers at a rapid pace.
I turned, expecting to see an irate Loki, but to my shock, it was Dr Banner.
"Keep moving," he told me as the pair of us raced along.
It was a little funny, actually; he shouted the words, and he was angry, but you could tell he'd never been a parent or held any real leadership position – he couldn't make it sound like an order. He was older than me, but he had a young man's yell. And he sounded scared.
Maybe that's why I felt like it was my responsibility to take the lead.
"C'mon," I said, getting a good grip on him myself and pulling him off in the direction of the wormhole to Asgard as fast as I could.
Why is it so hoooooooot and why do bullets have to hurt so much I can barely breathe!
Holy crap holy crap holy crap this is a terrible idea Odin's gonna be pissed!
He isn't going to be safe and free anywhere on Earth! Where the hell else are we supposed to take him?
"Magda, what on earth do you think you're doing?" Loki asked, emerging from a side-street in front of us so quickly I let out a short, nervous shriek. He gave Bruce the once-over. "And why are you picking up strays?"
This time when the black ops guys caught up they started firing the minute we were in view.
"What on earth have you done?" my sensei demanded, shoving me into the alley from whence he came. Bruce hurried after me, making sounds of concern.
"Keep quiet," Loki hissed, ducking back in after us.
"Who-?" Bruce asked, and got pressed against the wall with a thin white hand clamped over his mouth for his trouble.
That did more to startle me out of the moment and calm me down than anything else I might have tried. I stared, not sure that what I was seeing was real.
... tumblr would eviscerate baby seals to have a gif of this shit.
No sooner had I thought this then sensei was thrown into the wall across the alley so hard he went right through it and crashed into the opposite wall of the sitting room inside. An old lady with a toddler on her hip screamed briefly, then started yelling at the shocked and addled Asgardian in surprisingly fluent and inventive English.
"Loki!" I cried, stepping in through the hole in the wall and hopping around the rubble to get to him.
"I'm fine," he declared, sitting up slowly and dusting himself off. "What the Hel was that?"
There was a mighty roar of indignation, and I sighed.
"That was the Hulk."
The rest of the wall was pulled down, and with it came half the ceiling and the mattress that'd presumably been sitting on the floor above. It smacked right into the Hulk's face, which would have been funnier if he hadn't then thrown it at the old lady, who in a surprising turn of speed for someone her age tore off into the next room and out the door, screaming her head off.
The next thing I knew I was in a fireman's carry, bonking my head on Loki's back as he sprinted off at top speed.
Lifting my head, I asked, "Where are you going?"
"Back to the portal!"
"What about all the people here?" I shouted over the commotion. "We can't just leave! You were the one who triggered him!"
"Which is why I am staying here, and you-" here he set me down on my feet again and pointed down the street that led back to our arrival gate, "- are going back to Asgard until I sort this out."
"What?!"
"No arguments," he said. "Go." And he turned and ran off back in the direction we'd come.
My first thought was that returning to Asgard sounded really nice. My legs were stewing in their own juices by this point, and I could feel the beginnings of a dehydration headache coming on. If I left now I could be back in time for lunch. And it wasn't like I was going to be any help here – I couldn't even do any real magic yet!
I looked around me at the World Heritage city I was standing in, that was pretty clearly already having an absolutely shit time of things without a Hulk attack to exacerbate the situation. I dredged up what little I knew about the Brazilian government's position on the favelas and the people who lived there, and concluded that they would very likely privately view a huge death toll and mass property damage in the poorest neighbourhoods of the city as a blessing in disguise, and as such were unlikely to do much more than try to contain the Hulk and keep him away from the historical sites and the nicer parts of town... which would inevitably lead to a high casualty rate among any of the poor bastards they sent to enact such a containment, and probably at least one such historic site getting totalled. Did the rampage in the movie destroy anything of historic significance? Shit, how would I know, I saw that movie once like four years ago.
All through this, two words pounded through my head, all the more terrifying for their indifference.
Puny god.
I sighed.
"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck."
And ran off after Loki.
=
I passed several of Ross' men on the way up, most of whom were either badly hurt or carrying guys who were badly hurt. One of them wasn't, though, and I asked him what was happening up ahead.
"Miss, you've gotta get out of here," he said, adopting that no-seriously-are-you-retarded-run tone that soldiers always seem to think will appeal to someone's sense of reason in a crisis despite how punchable it makes their faces look. "There's, uh, a gas leak-"
"Uh-huh," I said impatiently, "a giant green gas leak KO'ing the buildings, I know. What's up with the British guy?"
"He's-" He stopped, and gave me a once over. "You some kinda journo?"
I hesitated. "More like an aide, I guess? Look, he's my responsibility; if he doesn't come out of this in one piece, his mom is going to lose her shit, and you do not want to see what happens when the Queen loses her shit."
He clicked on his radio. "Hollow 4, this is Hollow 7, I have a pickup for you re: the limey tangling with Moby Dick up there. Says she's his aide."
Oh fuck that, I ain't playin' hostage for Ross. Sorry, kid.
I slapped him on both ears at once. He stumbled to his knees with a cry that was more surprised than it was pained, and I took off up the street.
As I got closer to the centre of the actual fight, the overall mood I was getting off the retreating soldiers began to change. Where before everyone had been scared, pissed off, or both, they were suddenly focused, intent, resolute... and heading in exactly the wrong direction. One of them even told me to get as far uphill as I could and stay there. It was like...
... like they're chasing an illusion, I thought, a slow smile spreading across my face. Loki, you magnificent bastard, don't ever change.
Sure enough, by the time I arrived at the site of the duel, the place was empty of soldiers or civilians. Or buildings, for that matter; the Hulk had flattened everything.
Including me, almost, because before I could so much as catch a glimpse of sensei to see if he was all right I got half a car thrown at my head.
(Actually, I found out later that it was thrown at Loki's head; he told me he'd been tossing up projections of himself around the place in an attempt to wear down the monster's endurance. Good strategy for handling a wild boar in the forests of Vanaheim, not gonna work on the Hulk.)
So, the good news is that I can tank an Alfa Romeo to the forehead without much more than a sore neck and a drop to the ground.
The bad news is...
"YOU JOLLY GREEN JERK-OFF! WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?"
... yeah.
Much to my amazement, the Hulk actually looked rather taken aback at this, something which cooled my anger considerably. He was like a kid who genuinely did not know you'd be mad that he melted his army men on the radiator or put the family cat in a grocery cart and pushed it down a hill.
That look of surprise lasted about as long as it took for some kind of white steam to wreathe itself around his head and knock him the fuck out.
A fainting Hulk is not a sight to be missed, let me tell ya. He keeled over like he'd been hit by a Petrificus Totalis and made a Hulk-shaped crater where he fell, like a drunken fratboy snow angel. People use the phrase 'snoring like a buzzsaw' a little too liberally in my opinion, but in this case the description would actually have some merit – though I doubt a buzzsaw drools that much.
It was then that I saw Loki. He was in his armour, though it had definitely seen better days – one of the horns had been snapped right off his helm. Clutching a bleeding shoulder, he limped out from behind an overturned schoolbus- schoolbus!
I rushed over, half worried about him and half terrified that there were still kids trapped inside that thing.
"Magda?" Loki said in surprise, sounding far too tired to be properly angry as I fussed over his wounds (none of which looked severe, but fuck, I wasn't a doctor – healing stones, all of the healing stones!). "What did I tell you- never mind. Come, we have to bind the beast before the spell on those fools wears off."
"I don't think the 'beast's' going to be a problem in a second," I said, watching in fascination as the Hulk shrank right before my eyes. In seconds Dr Banner was himself again, ass bared to the sky, still out like a light.
"... when this is over, you are going to explain that," Loki said dazedly.
"Ask him yourself," I replied. "He's the one who invented the formula." I reached up and knocked on the roof of the bus. "Anyone in there?"
"Hello?" came a quiet, heartbreakingly young voice. "Is the giant dead?"
"He's gone now," I answered, not wanting to have to come right out and admit that no, the scary green dude could come back any time his roommate flipped out. "You can come out if you want. Are you okay?"
"I am, but Andréia's stuck under the seat," the boy said, voice suddenly much less calm. "Please, please, are you a doctor? Can you help her, she won't wake up!"
Without a word, Loki pulled out a knife and easily sliced a door out of the metal of the roof, then peeled it back. Inside were two children in matching blue polo shirts with a school crest of some kind, one about seven, the other a middle schooler – who was mercifully still breathing, despite the heavy suitcases sitting on her chest and the gash on her forehead, presumably from one of the ones lying a few feet away.
"Look after them," Loki ordered, then headed back out to go tie up Banner.
The little boy stared after him as I started pulling the backpacks and valises off the passed-out preteen. "Is that Harry Potter?" he asked solemnly.
I really shouldn't've laughed, but fuck it, I'd had a hard day and that shit was adorably hilarious.
"No," I said, cracking a healing stone over the nasty bruises I found on the girl's chest. "That, my friend, is Loki, Prince of Asgard."
He accepted this with a nonchalance born of the mixture of childhood innocence and internet zen that typified his generation.
His next question was, "Are you his girlfriend?"
"Nah, I just work with him." A sudden thought struck me. "You speak pretty good English for an elementary school kid."
The boy frowned. "But... you're speaking Portuguese."
... so apparently if you try to learn to speak Allspeak to supplement your grammar drills, you end up using it every time you try to speak or interpret a language other than your mother tongue. That is a thing that happens, and this is how I found out that it happens.
On the plus side, I can watch foreign films without subtitles and understand what non-English-speaking rappers are saying; on the downside, I am officially no better than those stupid tourists who can't be arsed to learn the language of the people whose country they're tramping all over.
But anyway.
The girl awoke with a start not long after I cracked my last healing stone on her forehead. Her confusion over what the hell had happened wasn't helped by her youthful companion's enthusiastic blow-by-blow account of a fight between 'the prince' and 'a cave troll' (apparently someone's parents hadn't realized that The Fellowship of the Ring isn't age appropriate material for a second-grader). He was kind enough to grant me a supporting role as 'the Blue Fairy' (I don't look anything like any Disney character, for the record) who healed her.
By the time I sent the pair of them on their way (with a couple of hugs, which was nice of them), I had a bigger problem on my hands
Namely, the press had shown up. And Loki was talking to them.
I didn't run.
I will not try to say that not running was a good idea. I will not try to say that I had a plan. I will not even try to say that I stayed entirely out of compassion for Bruce and the look on his face.
The fact is, I didn't run because before I could decide whether or not to run, some trigger-happy little shit shot me right in the god damned tit.
So, the good news is that I was and am bulletproof.
The bad news is that bullets hurt.
A lot.
And when I get hurt – not hurt like when you stub your toe, or so hurt that it hurts to breathe and you think you're going to die, but the sweet spot in between... well...
"WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT FOR?" I screamed, tears rushing down my face unchecked, stomping forward."Who fucking fired that?!"
That seemed to shake them out of the hush that had fallen over them in the second or two after I got shot, and then everyone was yelling at once for me to get on the ground with my hands behind my head.
"Piss. On. That!" I snarled, sniffling ridiculously between each word and wiping my eyes. It suddenly occurred to me that I'd been shot in the left breast. Was that cocksucker aiming for my heart? That little fucker! "I'm-"
I was going to say I was a Canadian citizen and I didn't owe a bunch of American spooks jack shit (especially not on Brazilian soil, now that I look back on it), but then a hand clamped around my wrist and I was being dragged bodily away from the soldiers at a rapid pace.
I turned, expecting to see an irate Loki, but to my shock, it was Dr Banner.
"Keep moving," he told me as the pair of us raced along.
It was a little funny, actually; he shouted the words, and he was angry, but you could tell he'd never been a parent or held any real leadership position – he couldn't make it sound like an order. He was older than me, but he had a young man's yell. And he sounded scared.
Maybe that's why I felt like it was my responsibility to take the lead.
"C'mon," I said, getting a good grip on him myself and pulling him off in the direction of the wormhole to Asgard as fast as I could.
Why is it so hoooooooot and why do bullets have to hurt so much I can barely breathe!
Holy crap holy crap holy crap this is a terrible idea Odin's gonna be pissed!
He isn't going to be safe and free anywhere on Earth! Where the hell else are we supposed to take him?
"Magda, what on earth do you think you're doing?" Loki asked, emerging from a side-street in front of us so quickly I let out a short, nervous shriek. He gave Bruce the once-over. "And why are you picking up strays?"
This time when the black ops guys caught up they started firing the minute we were in view.
"What on earth have you done?" my sensei demanded, shoving me into the alley from whence he came. Bruce hurried after me, making sounds of concern.
"Keep quiet," Loki hissed, ducking back in after us.
"Who-?" Bruce asked, and got pressed against the wall with a thin white hand clamped over his mouth for his trouble.
That did more to startle me out of the moment and calm me down than anything else I might have tried. I stared, not sure that what I was seeing was real.
... tumblr would eviscerate baby seals to have a gif of this shit.
No sooner had I thought this then sensei was thrown into the wall across the alley so hard he went right through it and crashed into the opposite wall of the sitting room inside. An old lady with a toddler on her hip screamed briefly, then started yelling at the shocked and addled Asgardian in surprisingly fluent and inventive English.
"Loki!" I cried, stepping in through the hole in the wall and hopping around the rubble to get to him.
"I'm fine," he declared, sitting up slowly and dusting himself off. "What the Hel was that?"
There was a mighty roar of indignation, and I sighed.
"That was the Hulk."
The rest of the wall was pulled down, and with it came half the ceiling and the mattress that'd presumably been sitting on the floor above. It smacked right into the Hulk's face, which would have been funnier if he hadn't then thrown it at the old lady, who in a surprising turn of speed for someone her age tore off into the next room and out the door, screaming her head off.
The next thing I knew I was in a fireman's carry, bonking my head on Loki's back as he sprinted off at top speed.
Lifting my head, I asked, "Where are you going?"
"Back to the portal!"
"What about all the people here?" I shouted over the commotion. "We can't just leave! You were the one who triggered him!"
"Which is why I am staying here, and you-" here he set me down on my feet again and pointed down the street that led back to our arrival gate, "- are going back to Asgard until I sort this out."
"What?!"
"No arguments," he said. "Go." And he turned and ran off back in the direction we'd come.
My first thought was that returning to Asgard sounded really nice. My legs were stewing in their own juices by this point, and I could feel the beginnings of a dehydration headache coming on. If I left now I could be back in time for lunch. And it wasn't like I was going to be any help here – I couldn't even do any real magic yet!
I looked around me at the World Heritage city I was standing in, that was pretty clearly already having an absolutely shit time of things without a Hulk attack to exacerbate the situation. I dredged up what little I knew about the Brazilian government's position on the favelas and the people who lived there, and concluded that they would very likely privately view a huge death toll and mass property damage in the poorest neighbourhoods of the city as a blessing in disguise, and as such were unlikely to do much more than try to contain the Hulk and keep him away from the historical sites and the nicer parts of town... which would inevitably lead to a high casualty rate among any of the poor bastards they sent to enact such a containment, and probably at least one such historic site getting totalled. Did the rampage in the movie destroy anything of historic significance? Shit, how would I know, I saw that movie once like four years ago.
All through this, two words pounded through my head, all the more terrifying for their indifference.
Puny god.
I sighed.
"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck."
And ran off after Loki.
=
I passed several of Ross' men on the way up, most of whom were either badly hurt or carrying guys who were badly hurt. One of them wasn't, though, and I asked him what was happening up ahead.
"Miss, you've gotta get out of here," he said, adopting that no-seriously-are-you-retarded-run tone that soldiers always seem to think will appeal to someone's sense of reason in a crisis despite how punchable it makes their faces look. "There's, uh, a gas leak-"
"Uh-huh," I said impatiently, "a giant green gas leak KO'ing the buildings, I know. What's up with the British guy?"
"He's-" He stopped, and gave me a once over. "You some kinda journo?"
I hesitated. "More like an aide, I guess? Look, he's my responsibility; if he doesn't come out of this in one piece, his mom is going to lose her shit, and you do not want to see what happens when the Queen loses her shit."
He clicked on his radio. "Hollow 4, this is Hollow 7, I have a pickup for you re: the limey tangling with Moby Dick up there. Says she's his aide."
Oh fuck that, I ain't playin' hostage for Ross. Sorry, kid.
I slapped him on both ears at once. He stumbled to his knees with a cry that was more surprised than it was pained, and I took off up the street.
As I got closer to the centre of the actual fight, the overall mood I was getting off the retreating soldiers began to change. Where before everyone had been scared, pissed off, or both, they were suddenly focused, intent, resolute... and heading in exactly the wrong direction. One of them even told me to get as far uphill as I could and stay there. It was like...
... like they're chasing an illusion, I thought, a slow smile spreading across my face. Loki, you magnificent bastard, don't ever change.
Sure enough, by the time I arrived at the site of the duel, the place was empty of soldiers or civilians. Or buildings, for that matter; the Hulk had flattened everything.
Including me, almost, because before I could so much as catch a glimpse of sensei to see if he was all right I got half a car thrown at my head.
(Actually, I found out later that it was thrown at Loki's head; he told me he'd been tossing up projections of himself around the place in an attempt to wear down the monster's endurance. Good strategy for handling a wild boar in the forests of Vanaheim, not gonna work on the Hulk.)
So, the good news is that I can tank an Alfa Romeo to the forehead without much more than a sore neck and a drop to the ground.
The bad news is...
"YOU JOLLY GREEN JERK-OFF! WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?"
... yeah.
Much to my amazement, the Hulk actually looked rather taken aback at this, something which cooled my anger considerably. He was like a kid who genuinely did not know you'd be mad that he melted his army men on the radiator or put the family cat in a grocery cart and pushed it down a hill.
That look of surprise lasted about as long as it took for some kind of white steam to wreathe itself around his head and knock him the fuck out.
A fainting Hulk is not a sight to be missed, let me tell ya. He keeled over like he'd been hit by a Petrificus Totalis and made a Hulk-shaped crater where he fell, like a drunken fratboy snow angel. People use the phrase 'snoring like a buzzsaw' a little too liberally in my opinion, but in this case the description would actually have some merit – though I doubt a buzzsaw drools that much.
It was then that I saw Loki. He was in his armour, though it had definitely seen better days – one of the horns had been snapped right off his helm. Clutching a bleeding shoulder, he limped out from behind an overturned schoolbus- schoolbus!
I rushed over, half worried about him and half terrified that there were still kids trapped inside that thing.
"Magda?" Loki said in surprise, sounding far too tired to be properly angry as I fussed over his wounds (none of which looked severe, but fuck, I wasn't a doctor – healing stones, all of the healing stones!). "What did I tell you- never mind. Come, we have to bind the beast before the spell on those fools wears off."
"I don't think the 'beast's' going to be a problem in a second," I said, watching in fascination as the Hulk shrank right before my eyes. In seconds Dr Banner was himself again, ass bared to the sky, still out like a light.
"... when this is over, you are going to explain that," Loki said dazedly.
"Ask him yourself," I replied. "He's the one who invented the formula." I reached up and knocked on the roof of the bus. "Anyone in there?"
"Hello?" came a quiet, heartbreakingly young voice. "Is the giant dead?"
"He's gone now," I answered, not wanting to have to come right out and admit that no, the scary green dude could come back any time his roommate flipped out. "You can come out if you want. Are you okay?"
"I am, but Andréia's stuck under the seat," the boy said, voice suddenly much less calm. "Please, please, are you a doctor? Can you help her, she won't wake up!"
Without a word, Loki pulled out a knife and easily sliced a door out of the metal of the roof, then peeled it back. Inside were two children in matching blue polo shirts with a school crest of some kind, one about seven, the other a middle schooler – who was mercifully still breathing, despite the heavy suitcases sitting on her chest and the gash on her forehead, presumably from one of the ones lying a few feet away.
"Look after them," Loki ordered, then headed back out to go tie up Banner.
The little boy stared after him as I started pulling the backpacks and valises off the passed-out preteen. "Is that Harry Potter?" he asked solemnly.
I really shouldn't've laughed, but fuck it, I'd had a hard day and that shit was adorably hilarious.
"No," I said, cracking a healing stone over the nasty bruises I found on the girl's chest. "That, my friend, is Loki, Prince of Asgard."
He accepted this with a nonchalance born of the mixture of childhood innocence and internet zen that typified his generation.
His next question was, "Are you his girlfriend?"
"Nah, I just work with him." A sudden thought struck me. "You speak pretty good English for an elementary school kid."
The boy frowned. "But... you're speaking Portuguese."
... so apparently if you try to learn to speak Allspeak to supplement your grammar drills, you end up using it every time you try to speak or interpret a language other than your mother tongue. That is a thing that happens, and this is how I found out that it happens.
On the plus side, I can watch foreign films without subtitles and understand what non-English-speaking rappers are saying; on the downside, I am officially no better than those stupid tourists who can't be arsed to learn the language of the people whose country they're tramping all over.
But anyway.
The girl awoke with a start not long after I cracked my last healing stone on her forehead. Her confusion over what the hell had happened wasn't helped by her youthful companion's enthusiastic blow-by-blow account of a fight between 'the prince' and 'a cave troll' (apparently someone's parents hadn't realized that The Fellowship of the Ring isn't age appropriate material for a second-grader). He was kind enough to grant me a supporting role as 'the Blue Fairy' (I don't look anything like any Disney character, for the record) who healed her.
By the time I sent the pair of them on their way (with a couple of hugs, which was nice of them), I had a bigger problem on my hands
Namely, the press had shown up. And Loki was talking to them.
Chapter Twelve
The 'press corps' in this case consisted of one very nervous college-aged girl holding up her phone and constantly looking over her shoulder, two teenage boys who were hilariously chill by comparison, swapping this-is-awesome chuckles as one asked the questions and one did the filming, and two actual adults, a cameraman and a woman in a lime green skirt-suit who had 'breakfast television' written all over her.
I wondered how on earth they had known to come to us when Ross' boys were still apparently wandering around downtown, looking for their vanished Questing Beast.
Maybe real investigative journalism isn't as dead as people keep saying.
"... in my capacity as a private citizen," Loki was saying as I arrived on the edge of the huddle. "I can assure you that Asgard has no territorial designs upon Brazil – I merely find it a pleasant place to visit."
I relaxed a bit. Well, he isn't pulling out the how-dare-you-admonish-me-vermin attitude (yet). Let's see where he's going with this.
"Can you tell us about the rumoured involvement of the United States military in this incident?" the uni student asked.
"Forgive me," he said, all innocent smiles and wide blue eyes, "I must confess to a lack of familiarity with the various uniforms and insignia of Earth's martial forces, but are American soldiers not considered to be among the better-equipped and -trained? The men who accosted Dr Banner in his home were unable to subdue him or his faithful companion here without a lengthy chase through the city, endangering hundreds of unarmed and uninvolved civilians. And the beast that they unleashed in their desperation to corner him... well. Setting aside for the moment the immorality of their actions, that is not the level of professionalism I would expect of the military personnel of a superpower."
I stood on tip-toe and leaned to the side a bit to get a better view over the teenage interviewer's shoulder... and had to bite down on my tongue to keep from cackling maniacally. Standing there beside Loki was Dr Bruce Banner, not tied up, looking mopey and vulnerable, wrapped in a blanket and a pair of pants Loki'd scrounged up from somewhere, holding his injured dog.
My evil overlord is the best evil overlord.
"Now what is going on with this outfit?" Lime-Green Suit Lady asked, laying a very friendly hand on Loki's arm. "Is this the traditional attire of a Prince of... Asgard, did you say it was?"
"It is my battle armour, yes," he said sweetly, "though I'm afraid it's rather the worse for wear – I suspect my opponent disapproved of wearing black leather in the summer." She laughed prettily, and Banner twitched.
My heartrate jumped. In the summer? Shit! Where are we in the timeline, then? It has to be December or January, but what year? He said he thought it was 2010, but which end of 2010 are we in? Damn it, before we leave I'm buying a calendar. And possibly a digital watch.
"Doctor Banner," the college girl asked in halting but clear English, "what is this research you do that they are looking for?"
"... gene therapy," he said, blinking owlishly. "I'm... the monster that tore up this block, that thing is my fault. I was trying to..." He took a deep breath. "It started out as a way to improve the human immune system, a new form of gene therapy involving the use of Gamma radiation in the regulation of the healing process, but..."
He looked more than a little flustered. I wondered when he'd last spoken with someone who genuinely wanted to hear about his life's work for its own sake.
Fortunately, Loki seemed to catch on to what was happening, and stepped in to fill the dead air: "I'm sure Dr Banner would be happy to grant you a more in-depth interview at a later date. If you'd be so good as to leave your contact information with him..."
"What about the neighbourhood around here?" the teenager holding the cameraphone piped up for once. "Do you have any plans to help with the rebuilding?"
Loki frowned. "I-"
I waved my arms in the air, trying to get his attention, and when I managed to catch his eye I nodded vigourously.
"Of course," he said, barely even hesitating – the frown that had originally been an offended one served just as well as one that clearly said 'fucking duh'. "Though naturally I did what I could to contain the creature, the damage done is my fault at least in part – any residents seeking recompense are welcome to leave a message for me with the concierge of the Copacabana Palace Hotel." Companionably wrapping an arm around Bruce's shoulder, he steered the now-silent scientist around the crowd just as sirens started wailing in the distance. "Thank you, that will be all; I'm afraid we have to be going."
The uni student had already taken off by that point, but the kids bolted when they heard the cops coming, and the cameraman was anxiously eyeing the van he'd arrived in, so the only person who looked disappointed at the end of the questioning was Skirt Suit, who handed Loki her card with a playful smile, and whispered something to him I didn't catch.
Oh, no you fucking don't, Lois Lane, Fangirl-Magda growled. The position of sassy combat-useless female sidekick is filled, thank you very much!
While the pair of them traded witticisms, Bruce and his doggy came over to see me. The latter quickly became fascinated by the smell of my pants – which I couldn't really blame him for; clean Asgardian laundry smells absolutely nothing like any detergent on Earth.
"Hi," Bruce said.
"Hey," I said, nodding. "You gonna apologize for throwing a car at my face?"
He flinched, and he lowered his eyes from mine. "Um... yeah. Sorry."
I smiled. "Nah, 'scool."
We stood silently side by side for a moment.
"How's your gunshot wound?"
"Kinda stings," I replied, poking at the hole the bullet had torn in my shirt. I made a note to see if I could try to pick up some non-Ladyhawke clothes before we left Earth; I certainly didn't want to have to wear this again. I stooped, and gave the dog some nice ear-flopping pets.
"How do you know who I am?" Bruce finally asked.
"Well," Loki said from behind us, making both of us jump, "not that this isn't riveting, but might I suggest we find a more comfortable setting in which to continue this conversation?"
"I am entirely amenable to that suggestion," I groaned in relief, trying not to smile at Banner's head swiveling back and forth between the two Lokis, the one by us and the one chatting with the reporter. It was nice to not be the only one getting jumpscared anymore. "Please tell me you know a place around here that has wifi."
And suddenly that camera-ready innocent smile was back. "I might."
=
"... in custody who is believed to be Brenton Matthew Barr, a US national wanted in the EU on three counts of kidnapping and one count of accessory to murder. Barr served in the United States Army before receiving a dishonourable discharge in 2007 and is perhaps best known for his involvement in the 2009 kidnapping of Princess Silva of Symkaria. The other attackers have yet to be identified, though allegations have been made by Amnesty International that the men seen here fleeing the confrontation are carrying Stark Enterprises CH-HRT 'Valentine' semiautomatic assault rifles refitted with what they're calling an 'M-16-style' M5 RAS hand guard, a customization they claim is the hallmark of private military contractor Sextus Solutions. Just ten minutes ago Sextus Solutions' PR representative relayed a written statement from co-founder Marcus Mills denying the firm's involvement ..."
Sipping my ice water, I tried to remember if there was a Sextus Solutions in the comics. It didn't ring any bells, besides maybe the Six Pack. Or the Sinister Six, if someone wanted to do a really stupid Nolanesque reboot of Spider-Man to integrate him into the MCU.
Whatever; I guess not everything has to tie back into the superhero crap.
I turned my gaze back to my laptop (finally seeing some use again after two weeks sitting on my bookshelf in Asgard), and hit refresh on my 'General Ross scandal' Google search. Still nothing. Sighing dejectedly, I stared longingly out the French doors at the cool blue water.
Of all the trips to not have a bathing suit, why did it have to be the one where the hotel room has a private pool?!
We were in a penthouse suite of the Copacabana Palace Hotel. I was sprawled across one of the two queen beds that had somehow – magically, one might say – found their way into the room, finishing up my garlic mashed potatoes with one hand and scoping out the lay of the land net-wise with the other.
Every dish on the room service menu was laid out on every available flat surface, some half-eaten, others dismissed entirely after one bite. Bruce had protested the expense initially, but Loki just shoved one of the plates into his hands and practically ordered him to stuff himself, then headed back out into the city to do who knew what – alone, this time. I wasn't sure whether he'd always intended that or if he'd decided that I was a jinx, but either way, my net addiction was getting its first fix in weeks, so I wasn't too quick to complain.
Banner was now seated on the couch, nibbling on his coxinhas and fretting over the tv coverage of that morning's Hulktastrophe with his dog, whose name turned out to be Curie. He had a seriously weird look on his face, and I wondered if maybe I should change the channel, get his mind off of things.
(As it turned out, the tv had nothing to do with it; he told me later that at this point, he was still trying to decide if we had rescued him or kidnapped him.)
The odd thing about the networks that afternoon was that not only did no one seem to have any footage of the Hulk in action, no one was even talking about sightings of the Hulk. It was really fuckin' weird; literally every news-related blog was at least discussing the rumours floating around about Big Green, but the footage breakfast-television-lady presumably got of the fight – or even just the q&a afterward – was nowhere to be seen. Hell, CNN wasn't even quoting the tweets and retweets of the amateur footage I kept finding. Sure, it was blurry, but there was grounds for speculation at least – to someone who grew up in the late nineties and early Oughts, speculation was television news' bread and butter.
It took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to remember that, no, I was not being paranoid, there were multiple conspiracies at work here, and the real question I should be asking was "Why haven't they managed to keep it off the internet?"
"Dr Banner?" I asked. "Can I have a look at the contact information that girl gave you?"
He eyed me warily. "Sure. What are you going to do with it?"
"Her footage is already making the rounds on reddit; she might be getting a visit from SHIELD. I thought I ought to give her a heads-up," I explained.
He frowned. "SHIELD?"
I waggled a hand. "It's kind of a spy agency that handles weird shit for the United States and... maybe the wider Anglosphere, I guess?"
He looked about as happy about that as could be expected.
"If it makes you feel any better," I added, trying to be charitable, "the guy who leads it is a lot more psychologically stable than Ross; they aren't the enemy, exactly, they're just really really annoying."
"You aren't worried at all about someone paying us a visit?" he asked, eyes sweeping over our opulent surroundings as he leaned over to hand me the card. "I mean, your boss wasn't exactly shy about announcing where you're staying."
"I hardly think we have anything to fear from the force that a single human agency can bring to bear," Loki said, closing the door behind him with his foot as he ate a slice of lemon cake from a small gold-rimmed plate. "If they wish to discuss the terms of my cooperation in a civilized manner, I'd be more than happy to do so." He said 'terms' like a general expecting an orderly surrender from his opposite number.
I blinked. "There's cake and you didn't tell me?"
"The rest of it's on its way up. The head chef made it in tribute to my victory," he said, looking very pleased with himself. "His grandmother lives just up the street from the battle – he wished to express his gratitude for her safety."
I beamed, and my fangirl-side did a little victory dance in my head. "He's not the only one – you should see some of the stuff I found online while you were out. Someone in r/thenewsinfanart drew you as Gandalf." I clicked back over to one of the imgur tabs I had open and turned the screen to face him.
I'd narrowed the drawings down to the good ones – which was pretty easy, seeing as they'd only started showing up online about half an hour after the video was uploaded and most of them reflected that level of care in drafting. This one in particular I liked, not just for the crossover squee, but for the composition – an action-pose drawing of a mage isn't always as complex as that of a martial artist or something, but this guy had really gone above and beyond for what was basically a rough sketch. He'd even used green pencils on the robe, adding a little something extra to the otherwise black-and-white drawing.
Loki stared at the image, his expression unreadable.
"Sensei...?" I asked, slightly concerned.
Looking back up at me, he blinked, and shook his head, a small frown creasing his brow. "It's nothing. It's quite a good likeness, that's all. You say there are more of these?"
I smiled. "Not many, but it's only been a few hours; give it a few days and the net'll be flooded with 'em. There's already a petition asking Daniel Craig to hand the role of James Bond over to you."
He frowned. "I've heard the name before. Who is he?"
"The main character of a highly popular but kind of mediocre action series," I said with an embarrassed shrug.
"What?" Bruce cut in, incredulous. "You think James Bond is mediocre?"
"Lupin III is superior in every way," I declared, adding, "Except when it comes to sealing the deal, but that was always the most boring part of the series anyway."
"You're insane," Banner said, shaking his head. "From Russia With Love is untouchable."
I burst into giggles. "I love that this is what makes me nuts. Not saying magic is real, not saying that I'm from another universe where you're a fictional character, not saying there's a government agency that covers up metahuman activity – no, 007 is the Maginot Line."
Whatever he was going to say to that was cut short by a knock on the door.
"We're fine, thank you," Loki said absently.
"I'm sure you are, Mr Odinson," came a voice that made me freeze. "But there's a cake out here with your name on it that I'm sure you'd like to finish. And you did say you were willing to have a civilized discussion."
It was Loki's turn to go still. His eyes flicked in my direction, and I sighed, and shook my head.
"Now, I can't think of any discussion more civilized than one that takes place over a nice, rich, slice of cake," the voice concluded.
Loki raised an eyebrow, and gestured at the door.
My eyes widened.
He tilted his head.
Slowly, I got to my feet. Taking a deep breath, I crossed the room, straightened up my clothes as best I could, and opened the door.
"'sup, Fury?" I asked holy mother of shit it's actually him with a smile. "You pull Cap out of the ice yet?"
I made sure I was standing at the proper angle to make the look on his face visible to the other two occupants of the room. Good manners cost nothing, after all.
The 'press corps' in this case consisted of one very nervous college-aged girl holding up her phone and constantly looking over her shoulder, two teenage boys who were hilariously chill by comparison, swapping this-is-awesome chuckles as one asked the questions and one did the filming, and two actual adults, a cameraman and a woman in a lime green skirt-suit who had 'breakfast television' written all over her.
I wondered how on earth they had known to come to us when Ross' boys were still apparently wandering around downtown, looking for their vanished Questing Beast.
Maybe real investigative journalism isn't as dead as people keep saying.
"... in my capacity as a private citizen," Loki was saying as I arrived on the edge of the huddle. "I can assure you that Asgard has no territorial designs upon Brazil – I merely find it a pleasant place to visit."
I relaxed a bit. Well, he isn't pulling out the how-dare-you-admonish-me-vermin attitude (yet). Let's see where he's going with this.
"Can you tell us about the rumoured involvement of the United States military in this incident?" the uni student asked.
"Forgive me," he said, all innocent smiles and wide blue eyes, "I must confess to a lack of familiarity with the various uniforms and insignia of Earth's martial forces, but are American soldiers not considered to be among the better-equipped and -trained? The men who accosted Dr Banner in his home were unable to subdue him or his faithful companion here without a lengthy chase through the city, endangering hundreds of unarmed and uninvolved civilians. And the beast that they unleashed in their desperation to corner him... well. Setting aside for the moment the immorality of their actions, that is not the level of professionalism I would expect of the military personnel of a superpower."
I stood on tip-toe and leaned to the side a bit to get a better view over the teenage interviewer's shoulder... and had to bite down on my tongue to keep from cackling maniacally. Standing there beside Loki was Dr Bruce Banner, not tied up, looking mopey and vulnerable, wrapped in a blanket and a pair of pants Loki'd scrounged up from somewhere, holding his injured dog.
My evil overlord is the best evil overlord.
"Now what is going on with this outfit?" Lime-Green Suit Lady asked, laying a very friendly hand on Loki's arm. "Is this the traditional attire of a Prince of... Asgard, did you say it was?"
"It is my battle armour, yes," he said sweetly, "though I'm afraid it's rather the worse for wear – I suspect my opponent disapproved of wearing black leather in the summer." She laughed prettily, and Banner twitched.
My heartrate jumped. In the summer? Shit! Where are we in the timeline, then? It has to be December or January, but what year? He said he thought it was 2010, but which end of 2010 are we in? Damn it, before we leave I'm buying a calendar. And possibly a digital watch.
"Doctor Banner," the college girl asked in halting but clear English, "what is this research you do that they are looking for?"
"... gene therapy," he said, blinking owlishly. "I'm... the monster that tore up this block, that thing is my fault. I was trying to..." He took a deep breath. "It started out as a way to improve the human immune system, a new form of gene therapy involving the use of Gamma radiation in the regulation of the healing process, but..."
He looked more than a little flustered. I wondered when he'd last spoken with someone who genuinely wanted to hear about his life's work for its own sake.
Fortunately, Loki seemed to catch on to what was happening, and stepped in to fill the dead air: "I'm sure Dr Banner would be happy to grant you a more in-depth interview at a later date. If you'd be so good as to leave your contact information with him..."
"What about the neighbourhood around here?" the teenager holding the cameraphone piped up for once. "Do you have any plans to help with the rebuilding?"
Loki frowned. "I-"
I waved my arms in the air, trying to get his attention, and when I managed to catch his eye I nodded vigourously.
"Of course," he said, barely even hesitating – the frown that had originally been an offended one served just as well as one that clearly said 'fucking duh'. "Though naturally I did what I could to contain the creature, the damage done is my fault at least in part – any residents seeking recompense are welcome to leave a message for me with the concierge of the Copacabana Palace Hotel." Companionably wrapping an arm around Bruce's shoulder, he steered the now-silent scientist around the crowd just as sirens started wailing in the distance. "Thank you, that will be all; I'm afraid we have to be going."
The uni student had already taken off by that point, but the kids bolted when they heard the cops coming, and the cameraman was anxiously eyeing the van he'd arrived in, so the only person who looked disappointed at the end of the questioning was Skirt Suit, who handed Loki her card with a playful smile, and whispered something to him I didn't catch.
Oh, no you fucking don't, Lois Lane, Fangirl-Magda growled. The position of sassy combat-useless female sidekick is filled, thank you very much!
While the pair of them traded witticisms, Bruce and his doggy came over to see me. The latter quickly became fascinated by the smell of my pants – which I couldn't really blame him for; clean Asgardian laundry smells absolutely nothing like any detergent on Earth.
"Hi," Bruce said.
"Hey," I said, nodding. "You gonna apologize for throwing a car at my face?"
He flinched, and he lowered his eyes from mine. "Um... yeah. Sorry."
I smiled. "Nah, 'scool."
We stood silently side by side for a moment.
"How's your gunshot wound?"
"Kinda stings," I replied, poking at the hole the bullet had torn in my shirt. I made a note to see if I could try to pick up some non-Ladyhawke clothes before we left Earth; I certainly didn't want to have to wear this again. I stooped, and gave the dog some nice ear-flopping pets.
"How do you know who I am?" Bruce finally asked.
"Well," Loki said from behind us, making both of us jump, "not that this isn't riveting, but might I suggest we find a more comfortable setting in which to continue this conversation?"
"I am entirely amenable to that suggestion," I groaned in relief, trying not to smile at Banner's head swiveling back and forth between the two Lokis, the one by us and the one chatting with the reporter. It was nice to not be the only one getting jumpscared anymore. "Please tell me you know a place around here that has wifi."
And suddenly that camera-ready innocent smile was back. "I might."
=
"... in custody who is believed to be Brenton Matthew Barr, a US national wanted in the EU on three counts of kidnapping and one count of accessory to murder. Barr served in the United States Army before receiving a dishonourable discharge in 2007 and is perhaps best known for his involvement in the 2009 kidnapping of Princess Silva of Symkaria. The other attackers have yet to be identified, though allegations have been made by Amnesty International that the men seen here fleeing the confrontation are carrying Stark Enterprises CH-HRT 'Valentine' semiautomatic assault rifles refitted with what they're calling an 'M-16-style' M5 RAS hand guard, a customization they claim is the hallmark of private military contractor Sextus Solutions. Just ten minutes ago Sextus Solutions' PR representative relayed a written statement from co-founder Marcus Mills denying the firm's involvement ..."
Sipping my ice water, I tried to remember if there was a Sextus Solutions in the comics. It didn't ring any bells, besides maybe the Six Pack. Or the Sinister Six, if someone wanted to do a really stupid Nolanesque reboot of Spider-Man to integrate him into the MCU.
Whatever; I guess not everything has to tie back into the superhero crap.
I turned my gaze back to my laptop (finally seeing some use again after two weeks sitting on my bookshelf in Asgard), and hit refresh on my 'General Ross scandal' Google search. Still nothing. Sighing dejectedly, I stared longingly out the French doors at the cool blue water.
Of all the trips to not have a bathing suit, why did it have to be the one where the hotel room has a private pool?!
We were in a penthouse suite of the Copacabana Palace Hotel. I was sprawled across one of the two queen beds that had somehow – magically, one might say – found their way into the room, finishing up my garlic mashed potatoes with one hand and scoping out the lay of the land net-wise with the other.
Every dish on the room service menu was laid out on every available flat surface, some half-eaten, others dismissed entirely after one bite. Bruce had protested the expense initially, but Loki just shoved one of the plates into his hands and practically ordered him to stuff himself, then headed back out into the city to do who knew what – alone, this time. I wasn't sure whether he'd always intended that or if he'd decided that I was a jinx, but either way, my net addiction was getting its first fix in weeks, so I wasn't too quick to complain.
Banner was now seated on the couch, nibbling on his coxinhas and fretting over the tv coverage of that morning's Hulktastrophe with his dog, whose name turned out to be Curie. He had a seriously weird look on his face, and I wondered if maybe I should change the channel, get his mind off of things.
(As it turned out, the tv had nothing to do with it; he told me later that at this point, he was still trying to decide if we had rescued him or kidnapped him.)
The odd thing about the networks that afternoon was that not only did no one seem to have any footage of the Hulk in action, no one was even talking about sightings of the Hulk. It was really fuckin' weird; literally every news-related blog was at least discussing the rumours floating around about Big Green, but the footage breakfast-television-lady presumably got of the fight – or even just the q&a afterward – was nowhere to be seen. Hell, CNN wasn't even quoting the tweets and retweets of the amateur footage I kept finding. Sure, it was blurry, but there was grounds for speculation at least – to someone who grew up in the late nineties and early Oughts, speculation was television news' bread and butter.
It took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to remember that, no, I was not being paranoid, there were multiple conspiracies at work here, and the real question I should be asking was "Why haven't they managed to keep it off the internet?"
"Dr Banner?" I asked. "Can I have a look at the contact information that girl gave you?"
He eyed me warily. "Sure. What are you going to do with it?"
"Her footage is already making the rounds on reddit; she might be getting a visit from SHIELD. I thought I ought to give her a heads-up," I explained.
He frowned. "SHIELD?"
I waggled a hand. "It's kind of a spy agency that handles weird shit for the United States and... maybe the wider Anglosphere, I guess?"
He looked about as happy about that as could be expected.
"If it makes you feel any better," I added, trying to be charitable, "the guy who leads it is a lot more psychologically stable than Ross; they aren't the enemy, exactly, they're just really really annoying."
"You aren't worried at all about someone paying us a visit?" he asked, eyes sweeping over our opulent surroundings as he leaned over to hand me the card. "I mean, your boss wasn't exactly shy about announcing where you're staying."
"I hardly think we have anything to fear from the force that a single human agency can bring to bear," Loki said, closing the door behind him with his foot as he ate a slice of lemon cake from a small gold-rimmed plate. "If they wish to discuss the terms of my cooperation in a civilized manner, I'd be more than happy to do so." He said 'terms' like a general expecting an orderly surrender from his opposite number.
I blinked. "There's cake and you didn't tell me?"
"The rest of it's on its way up. The head chef made it in tribute to my victory," he said, looking very pleased with himself. "His grandmother lives just up the street from the battle – he wished to express his gratitude for her safety."
I beamed, and my fangirl-side did a little victory dance in my head. "He's not the only one – you should see some of the stuff I found online while you were out. Someone in r/thenewsinfanart drew you as Gandalf." I clicked back over to one of the imgur tabs I had open and turned the screen to face him.
I'd narrowed the drawings down to the good ones – which was pretty easy, seeing as they'd only started showing up online about half an hour after the video was uploaded and most of them reflected that level of care in drafting. This one in particular I liked, not just for the crossover squee, but for the composition – an action-pose drawing of a mage isn't always as complex as that of a martial artist or something, but this guy had really gone above and beyond for what was basically a rough sketch. He'd even used green pencils on the robe, adding a little something extra to the otherwise black-and-white drawing.
Loki stared at the image, his expression unreadable.
"Sensei...?" I asked, slightly concerned.
Looking back up at me, he blinked, and shook his head, a small frown creasing his brow. "It's nothing. It's quite a good likeness, that's all. You say there are more of these?"
I smiled. "Not many, but it's only been a few hours; give it a few days and the net'll be flooded with 'em. There's already a petition asking Daniel Craig to hand the role of James Bond over to you."
He frowned. "I've heard the name before. Who is he?"
"The main character of a highly popular but kind of mediocre action series," I said with an embarrassed shrug.
"What?" Bruce cut in, incredulous. "You think James Bond is mediocre?"
"Lupin III is superior in every way," I declared, adding, "Except when it comes to sealing the deal, but that was always the most boring part of the series anyway."
"You're insane," Banner said, shaking his head. "From Russia With Love is untouchable."
I burst into giggles. "I love that this is what makes me nuts. Not saying magic is real, not saying that I'm from another universe where you're a fictional character, not saying there's a government agency that covers up metahuman activity – no, 007 is the Maginot Line."
Whatever he was going to say to that was cut short by a knock on the door.
"We're fine, thank you," Loki said absently.
"I'm sure you are, Mr Odinson," came a voice that made me freeze. "But there's a cake out here with your name on it that I'm sure you'd like to finish. And you did say you were willing to have a civilized discussion."
It was Loki's turn to go still. His eyes flicked in my direction, and I sighed, and shook my head.
"Now, I can't think of any discussion more civilized than one that takes place over a nice, rich, slice of cake," the voice concluded.
Loki raised an eyebrow, and gestured at the door.
My eyes widened.
He tilted his head.
Slowly, I got to my feet. Taking a deep breath, I crossed the room, straightened up my clothes as best I could, and opened the door.
"'sup, Fury?" I asked holy mother of shit it's actually him with a smile. "You pull Cap out of the ice yet?"
I made sure I was standing at the proper angle to make the look on his face visible to the other two occupants of the room. Good manners cost nothing, after all.
Furiko's Omake Theatre~!
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New Mask in Rio – 'Hulk's Existence Confirmed!! (youtube.com)
submitted 24 hours ago by atom's apple
passover_in_forest_hill
Finally, a cosplayer does something to justify their existence.
notfunnyenough
How sad is it that Green Bigfoot's been around like a year and a half and we already have footage of two full-on rampages through major metropolitan centers, but regular-Bigfoot has been around for six decades and we have one grainy clip of him walking through the woods? Dude needs a better publicist, seriously.
doublereadingrainbowconnection
Holy fuck.
Uh... I don't wanna sound nuts or anything, but is it possible the 'I'm a Norse god' thing isn't a shtick? Like, the SSS would account for the reflexes and the strength, but this guy is getting thrown through buildings and getting right back up again. That's less Captain America and more Terminator.
Mrs Assbutt
Awesome! A fantasy-themed hero, we don't see enough of those. Someone needs to tell him to lose the horns, though.
I wonder who does his tech. He's got a sort of Batman thing going with those ninja-moves and the knockout gas. Like, what is that stuff? Hulk-repellent?
flyingbuttress
|Someone needs to tell him to lose the horns, though.
I think the Hulk just did.
whataboutwaterwings
Fuck Medieval Times over there, I wanna know who the normal chick yelling at the Hulk is. Girl's got balls.
introducingwhitman
Not if she's the Hulk's girlfriend.
dsvid
|Not if she's the Hulk's girlfriend.
|Hulk's girlfriend
What did my brain ever do to you?!
[x] skyeblueskye comment score below threshold (3 children)
/r/MartialArts
'Loki' vs 'Hulk' Fight – Capoeira? (self.MartialArts)
submitted 1 hour ago by monkeyman
mastermeltdown
Short answer, no.
Long answer, no, but I can see how you made the mistake... (snip excellent in-depth analysis of the footage)
tl;dr – if he knows capoeira, it's definitely not the only style he's using.
oldgirlintown
So what you're saying is, he's Batman.
yellowhellow
The Hulk, on the other hand, is obviously a student of traditional Scottish Fuk Yu.
r/Asatru
'Hulk' monster terrorizes Rio, defeated by alleged Norse deity... (drudgereport.com)
submitted 20 hours ago by scrabblecat
EasyOnTheAlchemy
(thoughtful, considered, well-researched, properly-formatted post that cites its sources and easily garners more up-votes than the next six comments combined.)
stouthappy
(Thought-provoking commentary, cautiously optimistic)
r/Norse crosspost
Basically everyone
*motherfucking dance party*
-Select Reddit posts from December 19th-20th, 2010
Chapter Thirteen
"Swing and a miss," Fury said, though for a second there he really did look surprised – or at least seriously interested. "You gonna read my palm next?"
"Hell, no," I said, opening the door wider. "I'm just some chick who watched a movie."
The sight of an eyepatch-wearing superspy identical to an Academy Award nominee pushing a tiered cake into my hotel room on a dessert cart is one of my most treasured memories.The only thing that would have made it better would be if he'd come wearing a frilly apron as a 'disguise'.
"Your highness," I said with something approaching a bow, "Dr. Banner, may I present Nicholas Fury, Director of SHIELD. Mr Fury, allow me to introduce Prince Loki of Asgard and Dr Bruce Banner, Master of Gamma Radiation." I added that last bit because I didn't want to make him sound like a two-bit lackey; he was an omnidisciplinary scientist, he didn't deserve that – especially not from an actual lackey.
"Doctor Banner," Fury said in greeting, "you're a difficult man to find."
Bruce's shoulders sank a bit, and he avoided Fury's eyes. "Apparently not difficult enough." Curie growled low in his throat, but Bruce shushed him.
Fury nodded, taking in our surroundings with a glance. "Yeah... I admit, it got a bit easier when you started hangin' out with the new kids on the block."
"May I offer you a drink, Mr... Fury, was it?" Loki asked, glossing over his irritation at not being addressed first with practised ease.
"Long as I can get in on that cake, I'm fine," Fury replied, cracking a small smile that immediately and uncomfortably reminded me that we were having this meeting in a hotel room.
... I really hope this day doesn't end with me getting shot in the face by John Travolta.
Somewhat disturbed by that thought, the minute I'd handed Fury his cake I went back over to the cart and cut myself a massive piece of my own.
"What can I do for you?" Loki asked, with a gentle insincerity that reminded me of nothing so much as Mr Burns faced with an employee seeking a raise.
Taking a seat on one of the couches and casually draping an arm over the back of it, Fury forked off the point of his slice and slipped it into his mouth, savouring it for a moment or two before answering. "Well, for starters, you can tell me what your business is on my planet."
I caught Banner's eye, and indicated the cake. He smiled tightly and shook his head. Shrugging, I went back over to my bed and resumed my seat.
And frowned when I saw that SHIELD had remotely disabled my laptop.
I recognized this as a reasonable precaution when dealing with weirdos who claimed to be from another dimension, but it was still annoying.
With a short sigh, I dug into my purse and pulled out my phone, wondering if maybe Hugmodur would be interested in building an improvement on my laptop as well. I sure as hell didn't intend to miss the next few hours; the work day was ending on the Eastern Seaboard, and according to the comments I'd seen from one of the Indian posters, discussion threads about possible metahuman activity didn't really get going until the superhero fans from the States got home from school (the fanbase seemed to skew young, which for some reason surprised me). Sure enough, as soon as I got back to the sites I'd been looking at earlier, forty new posts had been made just in the time I'd had the conversation with Bruce and Loki, let Fury in, and cut the cake.
"I wasn't aware that it was anyone's planet, particularly," Loki was saying. "You have always been a disunited people."
"We have a tendency to get over that, given sufficient cause," Fury said.
"I'm sure you do," Loki said, and I had to hand it to him; if I hadn't known it was sarcasm, I wouldn't have guessed. He gestured in my direction, and I looked up from what I was doing. "My original intentions when I came to Earth this morning were recreational; my apprentice hasn't visited her homeworld in weeks, and I felt her diligence deserved some manner of recompense. By the way, Magda," he added, pulling a bolt of cloth out of a subspace pocket and making Fury's shoulders tense up for a second, "surprise." He tossed it at me.
Catching it, I gasped. It was two-tone silk, this way blue, that way red, soft and smooth as a baby kitten. Without a thought for the kind of company I was in, I rubbed it against my cheek.
Loki grinned at my reaction; it made him look like a great big kid. "It took me a while to find a weave that had both."
After a moment of confusion, I remembered a conversation we'd had where I brought up the psychological underpinnings of Magic – the card game, not the thing – and he'd asked what my colours were. Red by inclination, Blue by training.
I beamed at him. Screw anniversaries, this is the kind of crap I want a guy to remember!
"So I take it you're human then?" Fury asked, turning to look at me as Curie came running over to sniff at whatever this amazing teleporting blanket was.
"As human as can be expected," I said reasonably, contentedly stroking my prezzie like a villain cat.
"What exactly are you here for, Mr Fury?" Bruce asked. "Are you going to try to get the monster back into the cage?"
"No," Fury replied, "seems to me like you had that part down just fine, until today."
"So are you here about the Avenger Initiative?" I asked point-blank.
That expression almost made up for not getting him to make it at the door. Don't get me wrong, it was scary as hell, but the lingering part of me that couldn't help thinking of the world as fictional was grinning like a madwoman.
"No," he said, "and I would appreciate an explanation of how you know about that that doesn't involve you seeing it in a movie."
I shrugged. "It was in the comics, too, if you'd prefer that."
He sighed. "... y'know... it says something about the kind of day I'm havin' that I almost would."
"I'm sorry," Bruce said, sounding lost and more than a little incredulous, "what exactly is the 'Avenger' Initiative?"
"It's classified," Fury said.
"I'll fill you in after he leaves," I offered.
"I want to offer you a job," Fury said, ignoring me.
"What a coincidence," Loki said pleasantly, "so do I."
My spine straightened of its own accord. Wait, what? When did this happen?
Fury's eyes flicked back and forth between the two men.
"I'm popular today, I guess," Bruce said with a small smile that made me grin like a loon.
Fury frowned. "And what does a god need with a human scientist? If you don't mind my asking."
"I do, as it happens," Loki said, a hint of steel rising to the surface as his smile became that much more forced.
The pair of them stared each other down, neither willing to budge an inch.
I sighed. Well, they're gonna be at this a while. I returned my attention to my phone.
"For someone who claims to be here on vacation, you seem awfully skittish about what your plans are," Fury said.
"I see no reason to share them with a spy," Loki answered coldly. "Let alone a spymaster."
"That's exactly what I am," was Fury's reply. "The spymaster of planet Earth. Now, I don't have any reason to bring you in at the moment, so by all means, take your vacation. Have your 'apprentice' show you the sights. Try the pizza." He stood. "But if you make a habit of visiting, say, buy yourself a nice little summer house... we'll be in touch."
He then handed Bruce a card and told him to call if he wanted to explore his other options, and then left.
He was gone not three seconds when Loki did something with his hands that made the lights flicker and turned to me, his smile dead and buried.
"Magda, call the front desk and ask them if your Uncle Nicholas has checked in yet," he ordered. "Try to find out the exact time he made his reservation."
"Will he be under his own name, do you think?" I asked, hopping off the bed and going over to the phone on the nightstand.
"If he weren't, he wouldn't have been able to enter," Loki said, but he was definitely rattled about something.
As it turned out, he was correct; there was a Nick Fury registered to room 117, and had been since 10:17 that morning.
Loki sighed in relief at that. "Well. It was unthinkable that it would be otherwise, but I'm glad all the same that I checked."
"What's the significance of the time?" Bruce asked.
"We arrived here at half past ten," Loki explained, "whereupon I made the hotel undetectable to anyone besides the staff and the guests. Our tête-à-tête couldn't have finished before a quarter after, therefore Fury must have reserved his room in that fifteen-minute gap." He frowned. "I had forgotten how fast news spreads on Earth. Though I suppose if the peasantry learnt of the Hulk's defeat within the hour it occurred..."
"... you made the hotel undetectable," Bruce said slowly.
"Could the room be bugged?" I asked. "He did know what we were talking about right before he showed up."
Loki shook his head. "This is my suite. The precautions I've taken against remote reconaissance are quite literally out of this world; he must have been listening at the door."
I blinked.
"Huh," I said, straight-faced. "Maybe you should learn how to ward against eavesdroppers."
Loki scowled. "I had to temporarily drop the internal wards to let the servants find the room!"
I thought about it, and nodded with a smile. "... seeing as the alternative would mean no cake, I bow to your superior wisdom. Forgive me for doubting you, sensei."
"So... what do we do now?" Bruce asked, looking back and forth between the two of us. "Look, Loki, I don't want to cause you any extra trouble after what you tried to do for me-"
"Oh, don't be ridiculous," Loki said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Fury managed to find you by chance this time; it won't happen again, you have my word."
I looked back and forth between them. "... is it all right if I ask what the nature of the arrangement you two worked out is?"
"He is under my patronage," my teacher declared, clapping a hand on Bruce's shoulder in a gesture I would bet dimes to donuts was copied from Thor. He certainly didn't execute it as though he did it often.
Bruce, for his part, had a look on his face like the typical muggle fantasy protagonist early in the second act, where every new thing is simultaneously novel and potentially scary as hell. "He's agreed to support my research, provided I do what I can to help him locate an artifact he thinks may have been lost on Earth," he explained, in a tone of voice that made it clear he could not believe the shit that was coming out of his mouth.
"What artefact might that be?" I asked, blood pounding with excitement in anticipation of the answer. Goodbye, canon, and fair fuck's to ya.
"A staff," Loki said grimly. "Capable of enhancing the strength and ferocity of the one who holds it to their limits and beyond. A trained army bearing the Berzerker Staff would make the devastation wreaked by Banner's other self look like the few scattered blocks of a child's tower. And I would have it back in Asgard before some enterprising young fellow decides that perhaps the myths aren't just tales for children, and goes looking for it."
"... wow," I said in surprise. "Cool. But on the way, can we swing by Project PEGASUS and pick up the Tesseract?"
"Swing and a miss," Fury said, though for a second there he really did look surprised – or at least seriously interested. "You gonna read my palm next?"
"Hell, no," I said, opening the door wider. "I'm just some chick who watched a movie."
The sight of an eyepatch-wearing superspy identical to an Academy Award nominee pushing a tiered cake into my hotel room on a dessert cart is one of my most treasured memories.The only thing that would have made it better would be if he'd come wearing a frilly apron as a 'disguise'.
"Your highness," I said with something approaching a bow, "Dr. Banner, may I present Nicholas Fury, Director of SHIELD. Mr Fury, allow me to introduce Prince Loki of Asgard and Dr Bruce Banner, Master of Gamma Radiation." I added that last bit because I didn't want to make him sound like a two-bit lackey; he was an omnidisciplinary scientist, he didn't deserve that – especially not from an actual lackey.
"Doctor Banner," Fury said in greeting, "you're a difficult man to find."
Bruce's shoulders sank a bit, and he avoided Fury's eyes. "Apparently not difficult enough." Curie growled low in his throat, but Bruce shushed him.
Fury nodded, taking in our surroundings with a glance. "Yeah... I admit, it got a bit easier when you started hangin' out with the new kids on the block."
"May I offer you a drink, Mr... Fury, was it?" Loki asked, glossing over his irritation at not being addressed first with practised ease.
"Long as I can get in on that cake, I'm fine," Fury replied, cracking a small smile that immediately and uncomfortably reminded me that we were having this meeting in a hotel room.
... I really hope this day doesn't end with me getting shot in the face by John Travolta.
Somewhat disturbed by that thought, the minute I'd handed Fury his cake I went back over to the cart and cut myself a massive piece of my own.
"What can I do for you?" Loki asked, with a gentle insincerity that reminded me of nothing so much as Mr Burns faced with an employee seeking a raise.
Taking a seat on one of the couches and casually draping an arm over the back of it, Fury forked off the point of his slice and slipped it into his mouth, savouring it for a moment or two before answering. "Well, for starters, you can tell me what your business is on my planet."
I caught Banner's eye, and indicated the cake. He smiled tightly and shook his head. Shrugging, I went back over to my bed and resumed my seat.
And frowned when I saw that SHIELD had remotely disabled my laptop.
I recognized this as a reasonable precaution when dealing with weirdos who claimed to be from another dimension, but it was still annoying.
With a short sigh, I dug into my purse and pulled out my phone, wondering if maybe Hugmodur would be interested in building an improvement on my laptop as well. I sure as hell didn't intend to miss the next few hours; the work day was ending on the Eastern Seaboard, and according to the comments I'd seen from one of the Indian posters, discussion threads about possible metahuman activity didn't really get going until the superhero fans from the States got home from school (the fanbase seemed to skew young, which for some reason surprised me). Sure enough, as soon as I got back to the sites I'd been looking at earlier, forty new posts had been made just in the time I'd had the conversation with Bruce and Loki, let Fury in, and cut the cake.
"I wasn't aware that it was anyone's planet, particularly," Loki was saying. "You have always been a disunited people."
"We have a tendency to get over that, given sufficient cause," Fury said.
"I'm sure you do," Loki said, and I had to hand it to him; if I hadn't known it was sarcasm, I wouldn't have guessed. He gestured in my direction, and I looked up from what I was doing. "My original intentions when I came to Earth this morning were recreational; my apprentice hasn't visited her homeworld in weeks, and I felt her diligence deserved some manner of recompense. By the way, Magda," he added, pulling a bolt of cloth out of a subspace pocket and making Fury's shoulders tense up for a second, "surprise." He tossed it at me.
Catching it, I gasped. It was two-tone silk, this way blue, that way red, soft and smooth as a baby kitten. Without a thought for the kind of company I was in, I rubbed it against my cheek.
Loki grinned at my reaction; it made him look like a great big kid. "It took me a while to find a weave that had both."
After a moment of confusion, I remembered a conversation we'd had where I brought up the psychological underpinnings of Magic – the card game, not the thing – and he'd asked what my colours were. Red by inclination, Blue by training.
I beamed at him. Screw anniversaries, this is the kind of crap I want a guy to remember!
"So I take it you're human then?" Fury asked, turning to look at me as Curie came running over to sniff at whatever this amazing teleporting blanket was.
"As human as can be expected," I said reasonably, contentedly stroking my prezzie like a villain cat.
"What exactly are you here for, Mr Fury?" Bruce asked. "Are you going to try to get the monster back into the cage?"
"No," Fury replied, "seems to me like you had that part down just fine, until today."
"So are you here about the Avenger Initiative?" I asked point-blank.
That expression almost made up for not getting him to make it at the door. Don't get me wrong, it was scary as hell, but the lingering part of me that couldn't help thinking of the world as fictional was grinning like a madwoman.
"No," he said, "and I would appreciate an explanation of how you know about that that doesn't involve you seeing it in a movie."
I shrugged. "It was in the comics, too, if you'd prefer that."
He sighed. "... y'know... it says something about the kind of day I'm havin' that I almost would."
"I'm sorry," Bruce said, sounding lost and more than a little incredulous, "what exactly is the 'Avenger' Initiative?"
"It's classified," Fury said.
"I'll fill you in after he leaves," I offered.
"I want to offer you a job," Fury said, ignoring me.
"What a coincidence," Loki said pleasantly, "so do I."
My spine straightened of its own accord. Wait, what? When did this happen?
Fury's eyes flicked back and forth between the two men.
"I'm popular today, I guess," Bruce said with a small smile that made me grin like a loon.
Fury frowned. "And what does a god need with a human scientist? If you don't mind my asking."
"I do, as it happens," Loki said, a hint of steel rising to the surface as his smile became that much more forced.
The pair of them stared each other down, neither willing to budge an inch.
I sighed. Well, they're gonna be at this a while. I returned my attention to my phone.
"For someone who claims to be here on vacation, you seem awfully skittish about what your plans are," Fury said.
"I see no reason to share them with a spy," Loki answered coldly. "Let alone a spymaster."
"That's exactly what I am," was Fury's reply. "The spymaster of planet Earth. Now, I don't have any reason to bring you in at the moment, so by all means, take your vacation. Have your 'apprentice' show you the sights. Try the pizza." He stood. "But if you make a habit of visiting, say, buy yourself a nice little summer house... we'll be in touch."
He then handed Bruce a card and told him to call if he wanted to explore his other options, and then left.
He was gone not three seconds when Loki did something with his hands that made the lights flicker and turned to me, his smile dead and buried.
"Magda, call the front desk and ask them if your Uncle Nicholas has checked in yet," he ordered. "Try to find out the exact time he made his reservation."
"Will he be under his own name, do you think?" I asked, hopping off the bed and going over to the phone on the nightstand.
"If he weren't, he wouldn't have been able to enter," Loki said, but he was definitely rattled about something.
As it turned out, he was correct; there was a Nick Fury registered to room 117, and had been since 10:17 that morning.
Loki sighed in relief at that. "Well. It was unthinkable that it would be otherwise, but I'm glad all the same that I checked."
"What's the significance of the time?" Bruce asked.
"We arrived here at half past ten," Loki explained, "whereupon I made the hotel undetectable to anyone besides the staff and the guests. Our tête-à-tête couldn't have finished before a quarter after, therefore Fury must have reserved his room in that fifteen-minute gap." He frowned. "I had forgotten how fast news spreads on Earth. Though I suppose if the peasantry learnt of the Hulk's defeat within the hour it occurred..."
"... you made the hotel undetectable," Bruce said slowly.
"Could the room be bugged?" I asked. "He did know what we were talking about right before he showed up."
Loki shook his head. "This is my suite. The precautions I've taken against remote reconaissance are quite literally out of this world; he must have been listening at the door."
I blinked.
"Huh," I said, straight-faced. "Maybe you should learn how to ward against eavesdroppers."
Loki scowled. "I had to temporarily drop the internal wards to let the servants find the room!"
I thought about it, and nodded with a smile. "... seeing as the alternative would mean no cake, I bow to your superior wisdom. Forgive me for doubting you, sensei."
"So... what do we do now?" Bruce asked, looking back and forth between the two of us. "Look, Loki, I don't want to cause you any extra trouble after what you tried to do for me-"
"Oh, don't be ridiculous," Loki said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Fury managed to find you by chance this time; it won't happen again, you have my word."
I looked back and forth between them. "... is it all right if I ask what the nature of the arrangement you two worked out is?"
"He is under my patronage," my teacher declared, clapping a hand on Bruce's shoulder in a gesture I would bet dimes to donuts was copied from Thor. He certainly didn't execute it as though he did it often.
Bruce, for his part, had a look on his face like the typical muggle fantasy protagonist early in the second act, where every new thing is simultaneously novel and potentially scary as hell. "He's agreed to support my research, provided I do what I can to help him locate an artifact he thinks may have been lost on Earth," he explained, in a tone of voice that made it clear he could not believe the shit that was coming out of his mouth.
"What artefact might that be?" I asked, blood pounding with excitement in anticipation of the answer. Goodbye, canon, and fair fuck's to ya.
"A staff," Loki said grimly. "Capable of enhancing the strength and ferocity of the one who holds it to their limits and beyond. A trained army bearing the Berzerker Staff would make the devastation wreaked by Banner's other self look like the few scattered blocks of a child's tower. And I would have it back in Asgard before some enterprising young fellow decides that perhaps the myths aren't just tales for children, and goes looking for it."
"... wow," I said in surprise. "Cool. But on the way, can we swing by Project PEGASUS and pick up the Tesseract?"
Chapter Fourteen Part One
"The Tesseract is on Earth?" Loki blurted out, looking like a dog that's just tried to fetch a snowball.
"Yep," I said.
He went quiet, and looked away as though trying to remember something.
"'Tesseract'," Bruce repeated. "Is it some kind of... time machine? Or teleportation device?"
"Oh, Dr Banner," Loki breathed, "it is so much more."
"It's one of the Infinity Stones," I explained. "If you get 'em all together you have admin privileges for the multiverse. Having one by itself just makes you kind of terrifying."
"It was the crowning glory of our treasury, once," Loki said wistfully. "Other relics may have been thought more beautiful, but the Tesseract had no equal for raw power." He glanced back at me with naked hope in his eyes. "You are certain it's here?"
My eyes widened as I considered the sheer luck on Howard Stark's part to 'happen across' a four inch by four inch block in the entire goddamn north Atlantic, and I shook my head. "No, I'm not. It probably is, but I can't say for certain, because I still don't know if this is really-"
Loki cut me off with a sigh like he'd just hung up a phone. "Ask Dr Banner, then! He should know at least enough to confirm it one way or the other."
"Fine. Dr Banner, did Tony Stark get kidnapped last year, get rescued, have a televised nervous breakdown, and then become a superhero out of guilt at the death toll his inventions wreaked on innocent people?"
"... uh..." Bruce said, a little taken aback, "I don't know about that last part, but the rest sounds right. You're talking about Iron Man?"
I nodded. "And was Captain America forced to kamikaze a plane into the Atlantic ocean on the eve of the Allied victory?"
"Yes," Bruce said, nodding back.
"And..." Hm. I couldn't very well ask about Betty or his dad. That just wouldn't be fair. "... there aren't any mutants around, are there? People with spontaneous superpowers or extra abilities who're hunted down and killed by regular humans?"
"What?" Loki and Bruce said as one, eyes momentarily meeting in surprise before they looked back at me. Loki just sounded amused at the idea of baseline humans taking on someone with superpowers, but Bruce was obviously troubled by the thought.
"Of course not," he said. "Does that... happen, in your world?"
"Oh, lord, no," I replied, relieved. "But it happens in comics all the time. See, mutants are born into ordinary human families, but their powers and changes in appearance don't usually manifest until adolescence. So when they start to show their differences from the people around them..."
"Ah," Loki said. "'Enemy Within' stories."
I blinked. ...wow.
"Actually, they're... the main characters," I said awkwardly. "The story is told from their point of view."
He gave me a look I hadn't seen since I was sixteen and some adult stranger realized I had an informed opinion on something that didn't involve rap music.
"Oh. Was it written by a darkly-complected human, then?" he asked. "Or perhaps one of that peculiar mercantile underclass?"
I sighed. "... I really wish we had gotten to the point as a species where I didn't understand that question. The answer is sort-of yes to the second - but Jews aren't shunted into ghettoes anymore."
"How nice for them," Loki said, "now, may I assume that you do, in fact, recognize this world in rough and we may proceed as though your information is useful?"
I frowned, and tried to think of a question simultaneously bigger and smaller than the ones I'd asked before – it didn't sit right with me, asking a few generic big-picture questions and then calling it good. That was the plot of at least three Twilight Zone episodes.
After a moment, I realized I had the perfect query to make.
Grabbing my phone off the bed, I went into my Backgrounds folder and flicked through until I found what I was looking for.
"Have you seen this man before?" I asked, holding the screen up to face Bruce.
He squinted at the image.
"... why do you have a photograph of the old guy who sells Iron Man t-shirts on the corner at the end of my block?"
I don't mean to boast, but when the occasion calls for it, I can do a pretty decent evil laugh.
"The Tesseract is on Earth?" Loki blurted out, looking like a dog that's just tried to fetch a snowball.
"Yep," I said.
He went quiet, and looked away as though trying to remember something.
"'Tesseract'," Bruce repeated. "Is it some kind of... time machine? Or teleportation device?"
"Oh, Dr Banner," Loki breathed, "it is so much more."
"It's one of the Infinity Stones," I explained. "If you get 'em all together you have admin privileges for the multiverse. Having one by itself just makes you kind of terrifying."
"It was the crowning glory of our treasury, once," Loki said wistfully. "Other relics may have been thought more beautiful, but the Tesseract had no equal for raw power." He glanced back at me with naked hope in his eyes. "You are certain it's here?"
My eyes widened as I considered the sheer luck on Howard Stark's part to 'happen across' a four inch by four inch block in the entire goddamn north Atlantic, and I shook my head. "No, I'm not. It probably is, but I can't say for certain, because I still don't know if this is really-"
Loki cut me off with a sigh like he'd just hung up a phone. "Ask Dr Banner, then! He should know at least enough to confirm it one way or the other."
"Fine. Dr Banner, did Tony Stark get kidnapped last year, get rescued, have a televised nervous breakdown, and then become a superhero out of guilt at the death toll his inventions wreaked on innocent people?"
"... uh..." Bruce said, a little taken aback, "I don't know about that last part, but the rest sounds right. You're talking about Iron Man?"
I nodded. "And was Captain America forced to kamikaze a plane into the Atlantic ocean on the eve of the Allied victory?"
"Yes," Bruce said, nodding back.
"And..." Hm. I couldn't very well ask about Betty or his dad. That just wouldn't be fair. "... there aren't any mutants around, are there? People with spontaneous superpowers or extra abilities who're hunted down and killed by regular humans?"
"What?" Loki and Bruce said as one, eyes momentarily meeting in surprise before they looked back at me. Loki just sounded amused at the idea of baseline humans taking on someone with superpowers, but Bruce was obviously troubled by the thought.
"Of course not," he said. "Does that... happen, in your world?"
"Oh, lord, no," I replied, relieved. "But it happens in comics all the time. See, mutants are born into ordinary human families, but their powers and changes in appearance don't usually manifest until adolescence. So when they start to show their differences from the people around them..."
"Ah," Loki said. "'Enemy Within' stories."
I blinked. ...wow.
"Actually, they're... the main characters," I said awkwardly. "The story is told from their point of view."
He gave me a look I hadn't seen since I was sixteen and some adult stranger realized I had an informed opinion on something that didn't involve rap music.
"Oh. Was it written by a darkly-complected human, then?" he asked. "Or perhaps one of that peculiar mercantile underclass?"
I sighed. "... I really wish we had gotten to the point as a species where I didn't understand that question. The answer is sort-of yes to the second - but Jews aren't shunted into ghettoes anymore."
"How nice for them," Loki said, "now, may I assume that you do, in fact, recognize this world in rough and we may proceed as though your information is useful?"
I frowned, and tried to think of a question simultaneously bigger and smaller than the ones I'd asked before – it didn't sit right with me, asking a few generic big-picture questions and then calling it good. That was the plot of at least three Twilight Zone episodes.
After a moment, I realized I had the perfect query to make.
Grabbing my phone off the bed, I went into my Backgrounds folder and flicked through until I found what I was looking for.
"Have you seen this man before?" I asked, holding the screen up to face Bruce.
He squinted at the image.
"... why do you have a photograph of the old guy who sells Iron Man t-shirts on the corner at the end of my block?"
I don't mean to boast, but when the occasion calls for it, I can do a pretty decent evil laugh.
Chapter Fourteen Part Two
The Berzerker Staff research portion of the evening took four goddamn hours, and thanks be to my favourite god, I was not required to participate. That happy task was Bruce's assignment; instead, I got to keep practising my fylgja-ing.
In the end, Loki decided that the Tesseract was too significant and too powerful an artefact for him to haphazardly retrieve with the help of an undertrained apprentice and a mayhem-machine/superscientist; this called for a return to Asgard to inform his father of what we'd discovered and ask how to proceed.
So now the only occupants of the suite were me, and a Wolf Prize-winner who Loki had by all appearances hired to look up New Age angelfire sites.
"So, I have to ask..." Bruce said, ctrl-clicking away, "is he aware of what I actually do?"
I thought about it. "Honestly, I'm not sure he really gets the concept of separate disciplines; it's all lumped together under 'scholarship' in Asgard." I gestured at the projection I'd made. "When he found out I could do this after he'd determined I couldn't do physics, he was legitimately shocked. I don't know for sure if that's a purely cultural thing, or just him being a big ol' smartypants, but... yeah, don't expect him to understand if you try to tell him you're a scientist, not a historian."
Bruce pursed his lips, and nodded. "Right." After a moment, he asked, "Found out that you could do what, exactly?"
I sighed, and blinked away yet another bout of double-vision as my divided attention started slipping into over-favouring my body's point of view. "Yeah, this... probably looks really stupid. Um, I'm projecting a fragment of my conscious mind out of my body. But I only started learning how to do it like two weeks ago, so I can't make it visible yet."
His nod was surprisingly non-judgemental.
"Do you wanna touch it?" I asked. "It feels really neat."
His cheeks went slightly pink. "Um... no, I'm good."
I grinned. It felt good to have someone to fluster again. Asgardians can be so unflappable it starts to grate on you after a while.
No sooner had I had this thought than sensei returned.
"How did it go?" I asked, pulling the thought-stuff back into my arm and grinning at the by now familiar tingling feeling.
"Fine," he said with a pleasant smile that was so very fake.
I mean, I wasn't certain at the time, but yeah, that was his fake smile.
I didn't think much of it when I saw it then, because I saw it often enough in those early days of my apprenticeship, between our rocky start and the point where we actually started trusting one another. I didn't know him well enough yet to guess his moods perfectly from the set of his mouth and the look in his eye; where now I look back with absolute confidence, then I could only wonder to myself, ... am I reading too much into this, or did something happen? Or is he just steeling himself for having to put up with Bruce and I again?
"We depart to find the staff tomorrow," he continued, flopping unceremoniously onto the king-sized bed and reaching for the drink he'd set down hours ago. "But the Allfather has decreed that the Tesseract shall remain where it is, for now."
"... is that wise?" Bruce asked. "I mean, from the way you were talking about it, it sounds like a pretty big deal."
"The Allfather is always wise," Loki replied glibly, and I bit my lip to keep from grinning. I may not have known him long, but I knew families pretty well – well enough to know that while adult children may rag on their parents, no one wants to see their friends join in on the shit-talking.
"What've you got in the way of leads on the staff?" I asked Bruce before he could ask his follow-up.
He blinked once, but took the hint and dropped it.
"About a million tarot-reading sites, some scholarly papers on French folklore, and the forums of something called the Northern Tradition Paganist Society," he said.
"Really? What path do they follow?" I asked expectantly.
He scrolled down the page. "... white supremacy, apparently."
I made a face. "Lovely."
"Well," Bruce went on, "the guy I'm seeing cited most often in footnotes is this Prof. Elliott Randolph; he works out of Seville. He should be able to tell us what we need to know."
Loki frowned. "And why should I engage this professor when I have already hired you?"
I sighed. Here we go...
=
"So. What did your dad say?" I prompted the next morning as we sat waiting in the airport. Bruce was off at a payphone confirming with his neighbour that she'd take in Curie for the time being.
"What?" Loki asked, confused.
"Last night when you came in," I elaborated, stifling a yawn. "What did you not want to talk about in front of Dr Banner?"
The fearful light of comprehension flickered to life in his eyes, and he assumed a carefree expression. "I don't know what you mean. I was wearied from the day's exertions when I returned, I admit, but-"
"Okay," I said simply, worried at least as much by how freaked out he seemed to be as for my own sake. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to." I went back to the fashion magazine I'd picked up in the convenience store and tried not to let my anxiety show.
"... that's it?" Loki asked, flummoxed.
I looked up, surprised that he hadn't just gone with it. "Yeah. You're allowed to have secrets, you're an adult. I know you don't always like being around me, but I don't think you'd intentionally lead me into harm's way. Well, not permanent harm's way, anyway," I added reasonably – Loki is still Loki even when he's on the side of good, after all.
His expressions shifted to and fro between confusion and wariness, and several times he opened and closed his mouth, as though trying to decide how to ask the question. Finally, he settled on, "Do you mean to say that you don't care if you are lied to?"
"Of course I care," I said. "It's been driving me nuts since last night. But I can't demand that you tell me about a private conversation with your father – even setting aside the fact that it would be wrong, whatever it is that's bothering you probably isn't even any of my business."
That was something I was coming to understand after living in Asgard a while – being in an important place and interacting with important people doesn't automatically make you important. I may have been History's Cutest Disciple Magda, but I was clearly experiencing a prequel comic starring Lokisame-shishou and Bruceachai-shishou.
"And what if it were?" Loki asked levelly.
I stared at him incredulously. "... I'm sorry, are... are you asking me to nag you into telling?"
"I'm asking if you have any sense of self preservation at all," he scolded.
Of course I want to know, I thought, and if you were anyone else I would press the issue. But you're a member of a royal family; you and your parents and the kingdom have lots of secrets that I don't have a right to know. Both of us know this. Why are you so stuck on this point?
And that's when it occurred to me that it had probably been a very, very long time since the God of Mischief and Magic had been in a situation where someone fully aware that he was keeping something from them didn't immediately try to shake it out of him one way or another.
"Well, is the secret about me?" I asked.
"... no," he admitted reluctantly.
"Will this information get me killed, maimed, emotionally-scarred, or psychologically-tortured if I don't know it right this minute?" I asked.
"Of course not," he said dismissively, "but that's not the point!"
"Actually, forgive me, sensei, but that is the point," I said, the palms of my hands upturned in an expression of total disbelief. "If it doesn't have anything to do with me, then why should I expect you to tell me?"
His eyes sought out the ceiling. "How can someone so cautious about so many perfectly harmless things be so thoroughly...?" He let out a short sigh, and shook his head, looking back down again. "Enough. You are impossible."
"You're welcome," I said cheerfully.
"Dr Banner," Loki said, casting a sidelong glance at a rack of novelty hats that jostled in surprise, "if you intend to keep eavesdropping on people, you might consider investing in quieter footwear."
The look on Bruce's face as he slowly stepped out from behind the rack sent me into a fit of giggles.
=
Two first-class hours (it would have been ten, but sensei had no patience for air travel and cheated outrageously) and a twenty-minute car ride later, we were in a handsome wood-panelled office in the Edificio Central of the Universidad de Sevilla, and I was trying to decide if Professor Randolph was just a naturally nervous person or a cokehead. He had a stutter that I was sure couldn't be part of his normal way of speaking, what with being a professor bilingual enough to teach at a Spanish-language university, and a general haste to his speech that made it clear he didn't want us around any longer than we had to be. Everything he said was perfectly polite and inoffensive, and he nodded at each of us whenever we asked a question, but I couldn't escape the feeling he was trying to hurry us out the door.
Poor guy, I thought. Sensei's little interview must have finally started making the rounds on 'real' news shows. He's tryin' so hard to be cool about it, but I bet he's worried we're some kind of freaky cultists.
... but we are a freaky cultist, I pointed out.
Not surrender-bank-account-number-and-sexual-agency-and-call-an-unemployed-smooth-talker-Dad-freaky! Just... share-a-drink-with-an-invisible-friend-on-special-occasions-freaky.
Wow. When you put it like that we sound like a Christmas-and-Easter Catholic.
Shut up, listen to what he's saying.
I didn't listen to what he was saying. Or, if I did, I don't remember it now.
Yeah, there are gaps in my memory around this time. Usually I'm only bad at remembering names, faces, addresses, phone numbers, timezone differences, measurements, dates and times; but on this particular day, it's like someone went through my recollection of events and clipped a whole bunch of things out. Sensei told me it's one of the side effects.
Perhaps you've seen the later films of the MCU and you know all about the Berzerker Staff. I still haven't; I feel conflicted about whether I should even try. Anyway, I drove into the wormhole on April 1st, 2014, so I didn't get the chance to see Captain America 2, let alone Thor 3 or wherever the thing inevitably showed up.
(Yes, I got kicked out of my home universe on April Fools' Day. Believe me, it gets less funny when you have to live with it for a while.)
Even if you haven't seen all of Phases 2 and 3, or whatever, presumably you can still understand, going off of what you've already read here, why I had to be the one to carry the angry power-up stick. Bruce was right out of the question, and if Loki had been unable to bring it under his control it would have taken the Hulk to stop him. By contrast, the worst we had to worry about if I lost it was some incoherent screaming and wildly-undertrained fighting that a Prince of Asgard with several hundred years and pounds on me could fairly easily put a stop to.
What do I remember of that day?
Well, I remember the catacombs really fucking stank. And I was wearing gloves – just a cheap pair of black acrylic ones, because like hell was I going to carry an Asgardian Red Lantern Ring barehanded – not even a fragment of one. I remember trying not to get the hem of my jeans wet, looking for footholds here and there and willing myself not to scratch my itchy nose for fear of getting whatever the hell was lingering on the walls onto my face. I don't remember finding the staff, but I do remember when I picked it up.
Mostly because that was when the headaches started.
It was really mild, I don't want to give you the wrong impression; if it had happened over a couple of hours instead of every twenty minutes or so I probably wouldn't have noticed any difference from normal. But the first moment I got the Staff in my grip, it was like it was holding me right back – like it was shaking my hand to take my measure, the way my dad's army friends used to. Even without fully activating it, there was no mistaking what I was carrying.
I remember leaving the resting place of that first piece a lot less clearly than I do entering it, because the first swell that hit me was exactly like sleep deprivation, such that I'm amazed I didn't end up passing out and faceplanting right into the sewage. That stands out in my memory more than anything external I experienced, because it was the first time since I arrived on Asgard that I felt truly and genuinely exhausted.
So, given all of that, I'm inclined to believe what Bruce told me later, that out of the blue I launched into the most manic and stubborn rendition of Put One Foot In Front Of The Other he'd ever heard.
"Is she all right?" I remember him asking.
"As long as she doesn't touch it with her bare hands, she'll be perfectly fine once she puts it down," Loki replied.
"Hey," I said, presumably breaking off mid-verse, "don't talk about me like I'm not in the room."
"None of us are in a room, Magda," Loki told me in a soothing tone, "we're in the car, now, you see?"
I realized I was now sitting down. I turned my head to the left, and watched the buildings and pedestrians pass by. Oh. Yay, I made it!
"Well, like I'm not in the car, then," I corrected myself in a dreamy tone, arching my back like a happy cat. "Mmm... are either of you hungry? I'm really in the mood for something spicy."
"Wonderful idea. We're late for breakfast as it is. But first," Loki said, still in that pleasant murmur, "you need to lay down the staff. You can't very well eat with it in your hand, now can you?"
"Your point is well-seen," I conceded, and I put the staff down.
And frowned, blinking away the fatigue like it was nothing more than a stray eyelash. "... okay, that was weird. Why did it make me tired? I thought it was a Berzerker Staff."
... and is it me or did I just quote Jar Jar Binks? .__. Dear god.
"It is," Loki affirmed. "Fear not, the next time you carry it you'll hardly notice the weariness. It's the staff's diagnostics at work – it has to determine your endurance and so forth in order to best know where and how to enhance your capabilities." He knocked on the glass separating us from our driver. "Take us to a respectable restaurant. One with a lax dress code." The man grunted, and we made a right turn at the light.
My eyes widened. "You want me to learn how to use it?"
He smirked. "You didn't think I wanted to retrieve it just to tuck it away in the armoury with the others, did you?"
"... am I even allowed to use it?" I asked with a shit-eating grin.
"Of course," he said. "You're exactly the kind of person the staves were designed for; inexperienced but enthusiastic."
The excitement I felt at that time is among the few positive emotions I can remember having over the course of this little Indiana Jones hunt, and I'm reasonably sure that the reason I do remember it is that it was at least half eager anticipation of acquiring the ability and the opportunity to bust some fucking heads. I'm sure I must have been happy at other points on the trip, but I couldn't tell you when. Those memories are just gone.
Case in point: I don't remember the taste of the steak I had for lunch that day, or what the three of us chatted about, but I do remember the woman on the plane to Ireland who sat behind us, because she slept the whole time with a nose-whistle and refused to answer her child no matter how many times he whispered 'Mom' and poked her arm. All I can say is thank Loki for time-dilation spells, or long bfore we arrived my pounding skull would have demanded I pinch her nose shut until I reduced the cartilage and the snot to a single revolting mush between my finger and thumb.
=
The second piece of the staff was tucked away in a monastery, and wasn't that a lovely smell to subject my aching head to; I've never liked being inside churches and religious buildings, and it isn't a pagan thing – it's the smell. In Protestant churches it's some kind of soap or I don't know what, and in Catholic or High Anglican ones it's the goddamn incense – it always makes me want to throw up. One of the nice parts of being pagan is that tradition encourages worshipping outside, weather permitting; whatever weird stuff you might end up burning, at least there's a breeze to cut that shit.
Anyway.
The second piece was a little more intense than the first, probably because it was the head of the staff. It didn't cure the headache the first piece had inflicted on me, but it made me not mind it so much, because apparently the head of the staff governed the part of diagnostics directly related to regulating the nerve endings and how much pain they register. Kinda hard to care about a headache when your skin keeps surging from the inside.
But like I said before, this stuff was mild. I wasn't going all Crucio up in here and floppin' on the floor; I was just... uncomfortable.
=
"You're sure you're-?" Bruce asked for what felt like the three hundredth goddamn time that hour, and I snapped: "No I am not okay because you keep fucking asking me whether I'm okay!"
He shrank backward a bit, his hands held up in the universal gesture of peaceful intentions. "Magda, you don't have to do this if you don't want to. There has to be-"
"Oh for fuck's sake," I nearly shouted, "I know you think you're trying to help, but seriously, you shouldn't be concerned about me. You should be concerned about what'll happen if some little douchebag Left-Hand-Pathier-Than-Thou uni brat hears that Loki is a real guy and decides, 'Hey, maybe all those Nordic death weapons are real too! I'll bet I can get tons of hot granola bitches all up on my goffic junk if I can just get my hands on one!'" I shook the stunted Staff for emphasis, and he flinched again. "This isn't even a legendary-class weapon! They mass-produced them! If some little fucker got his hands on Durandal or Excalibur or the Kusanagi or a cosmic cube, we can kiss a small city goodbye. Or," I added with a hysterical laugh, warming to my subject, "better yet, how about what happens if a major government finds one? Or a minor government with a crazy person in charge? The era of the one man army is coming, thanks in part to you, and if I have to go a little Sith-y for a while in a totally containable way to prevent this particular fire from starting, so fucking be it!"
I don't even remember where I was when I said all this. We might have been in a rental car driving out of Oslo, or already hiking out to find the tree where the last piece was hidden, or in the middle of Times Square at rush hour for all I knew or cared.
"... you're probably right," Bruce said after a long while. "Whatever comes of... all this, I'm a part of it. I have been from the start. And if people – governments – start investing in supersoldiers because of a... a 'Hulk gap', that's on me at least in part." He looked me dead in the eye. "But I didn't deserve what you just said to me. You think I don't care about some kid getting in over their head with this insanity, well, you're wrong. You and he are thinking about hypothetical kids, but it's this kid," here he poked me in the arm, "who's actually, currently suffering, right in front of me, that I care about at the moment."
I bit down on the impulse to declare that I was not a kid.
"What the hell for?" I asked instead. "You just met me yesterday."
When he spoke again, his voice was soft, and hesitant. "... I think it's safe to say you aren't likely to find someone who understands what it's like to have something... ugly, inside, trying to get out... better than me. And how frightening that is."
Despite myself, despite the fact that I didn't think of my anger that way, despite the fact that I felt like finally getting to let myself out of the cage would be a blessed relief... I sighed.
I just couldn't stay mad at him. I mean, Jesus, have you seen him? He's like a rescue dog in human form.
"Okay," I said. "Free information time. Word of God on this, and it's the basic damn premise of the series, so it seems kind of stupid to me that you should have to go through life not knowing. The Other Guy? Isn't ugly or evil. He's just pissed the fuck off – every now and then for a good reason, even. Give him a strong opponent, preferrably an asshole of some description, and a place you aren't too attached to in which to fight, and he's golden. When people treat him like a person, sometimes he can even be reasoned with. So, deal with that, Frawnkensteen."
Bruce stared at me like I'd said it in Esperanto.
I shrugged. "What, you thought the hero of a comic series for kids would have no redeeming qualities? C'mon."
This was turning out to be Bruce's day for long pauses.
"... the... the Hulk is the hero?"
Fun fact; the Staff can, in the short term, neutralize my ability to shed tears.
"'Course you're the hero," I said firmly. "Don't be a retard."
=
Now, the final piece... look, I 'remember' this part, but you have to understand, the Staff is meant to run diagnostics over maybe two minutes, tops, and then you're supposed to grab hold of it with your bare hands, get juiced up, and run into battle. If you prolong the wait time between diagnostics and showtime... well, like I've been saying, you get headaches, and sometimes your skin hurts.
And sometimes you hallucinate your teacher calling forth Kirby krackle from the firmament to strike at the bark of a centuries-old tree, and proceed to gently peel back the layers of bark and rings one by one, as though pushing aside the set dressings of a stage play, only to finally invite you forward to claim your prize at the heart of the mighty oak.
"Fucking finally," I grumbled, stomping forward and, prising the bloody stick out of its hideyhole, I stuck it onto its brother-sections. "Can I please go mini-Hulk now? There's no one else around, and you said a good conk on the head and some bedrest would snap me out of it if I go too nuts."
"Of course you can," Loki said, sounding remarkably cheerful. Actually, now that I look back on it, he took all my grouchy moods and snappishness on that trip in stride. "You've exceeded my expectations entirely; aside from one or two entirely verbal outbursts you've shown admirable restraint."
I growled something approximating a thank you.
He spread his hands, and conjured a scarf lying across them. With this, he took the Staff from me. "You may remove your gloves."
Well, this is it. No more broken memories from this point on.
From now on, everything is absolutely clear.
I'm told that sometimes the Staff gives people visions. Like the ZERO System, I guess, only with hatred instead of protection/destruction sorting algorithms.
Me? All it did was blast out anything my new, aggression-focused paradigm considered distracting in the recent past, and leave nothing behind but lust and rage, and a thirst to hurt and be hurt.
I sighed contentedly, if not a little longingly. My headache was gone, and so was the pulsing under my skin; it was like I was back to normal, except I was better.
Loki smiled. "It seems you're a natural. How do you feel?"
I bared my teeth in a feral grin.
So of course that's when Thor showed up.
The Berzerker Staff research portion of the evening took four goddamn hours, and thanks be to my favourite god, I was not required to participate. That happy task was Bruce's assignment; instead, I got to keep practising my fylgja-ing.
In the end, Loki decided that the Tesseract was too significant and too powerful an artefact for him to haphazardly retrieve with the help of an undertrained apprentice and a mayhem-machine/superscientist; this called for a return to Asgard to inform his father of what we'd discovered and ask how to proceed.
So now the only occupants of the suite were me, and a Wolf Prize-winner who Loki had by all appearances hired to look up New Age angelfire sites.
"So, I have to ask..." Bruce said, ctrl-clicking away, "is he aware of what I actually do?"
I thought about it. "Honestly, I'm not sure he really gets the concept of separate disciplines; it's all lumped together under 'scholarship' in Asgard." I gestured at the projection I'd made. "When he found out I could do this after he'd determined I couldn't do physics, he was legitimately shocked. I don't know for sure if that's a purely cultural thing, or just him being a big ol' smartypants, but... yeah, don't expect him to understand if you try to tell him you're a scientist, not a historian."
Bruce pursed his lips, and nodded. "Right." After a moment, he asked, "Found out that you could do what, exactly?"
I sighed, and blinked away yet another bout of double-vision as my divided attention started slipping into over-favouring my body's point of view. "Yeah, this... probably looks really stupid. Um, I'm projecting a fragment of my conscious mind out of my body. But I only started learning how to do it like two weeks ago, so I can't make it visible yet."
His nod was surprisingly non-judgemental.
"Do you wanna touch it?" I asked. "It feels really neat."
His cheeks went slightly pink. "Um... no, I'm good."
I grinned. It felt good to have someone to fluster again. Asgardians can be so unflappable it starts to grate on you after a while.
No sooner had I had this thought than sensei returned.
"How did it go?" I asked, pulling the thought-stuff back into my arm and grinning at the by now familiar tingling feeling.
"Fine," he said with a pleasant smile that was so very fake.
I mean, I wasn't certain at the time, but yeah, that was his fake smile.
I didn't think much of it when I saw it then, because I saw it often enough in those early days of my apprenticeship, between our rocky start and the point where we actually started trusting one another. I didn't know him well enough yet to guess his moods perfectly from the set of his mouth and the look in his eye; where now I look back with absolute confidence, then I could only wonder to myself, ... am I reading too much into this, or did something happen? Or is he just steeling himself for having to put up with Bruce and I again?
"We depart to find the staff tomorrow," he continued, flopping unceremoniously onto the king-sized bed and reaching for the drink he'd set down hours ago. "But the Allfather has decreed that the Tesseract shall remain where it is, for now."
"... is that wise?" Bruce asked. "I mean, from the way you were talking about it, it sounds like a pretty big deal."
"The Allfather is always wise," Loki replied glibly, and I bit my lip to keep from grinning. I may not have known him long, but I knew families pretty well – well enough to know that while adult children may rag on their parents, no one wants to see their friends join in on the shit-talking.
"What've you got in the way of leads on the staff?" I asked Bruce before he could ask his follow-up.
He blinked once, but took the hint and dropped it.
"About a million tarot-reading sites, some scholarly papers on French folklore, and the forums of something called the Northern Tradition Paganist Society," he said.
"Really? What path do they follow?" I asked expectantly.
He scrolled down the page. "... white supremacy, apparently."
I made a face. "Lovely."
"Well," Bruce went on, "the guy I'm seeing cited most often in footnotes is this Prof. Elliott Randolph; he works out of Seville. He should be able to tell us what we need to know."
Loki frowned. "And why should I engage this professor when I have already hired you?"
I sighed. Here we go...
=
"So. What did your dad say?" I prompted the next morning as we sat waiting in the airport. Bruce was off at a payphone confirming with his neighbour that she'd take in Curie for the time being.
"What?" Loki asked, confused.
"Last night when you came in," I elaborated, stifling a yawn. "What did you not want to talk about in front of Dr Banner?"
The fearful light of comprehension flickered to life in his eyes, and he assumed a carefree expression. "I don't know what you mean. I was wearied from the day's exertions when I returned, I admit, but-"
"Okay," I said simply, worried at least as much by how freaked out he seemed to be as for my own sake. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to." I went back to the fashion magazine I'd picked up in the convenience store and tried not to let my anxiety show.
"... that's it?" Loki asked, flummoxed.
I looked up, surprised that he hadn't just gone with it. "Yeah. You're allowed to have secrets, you're an adult. I know you don't always like being around me, but I don't think you'd intentionally lead me into harm's way. Well, not permanent harm's way, anyway," I added reasonably – Loki is still Loki even when he's on the side of good, after all.
His expressions shifted to and fro between confusion and wariness, and several times he opened and closed his mouth, as though trying to decide how to ask the question. Finally, he settled on, "Do you mean to say that you don't care if you are lied to?"
"Of course I care," I said. "It's been driving me nuts since last night. But I can't demand that you tell me about a private conversation with your father – even setting aside the fact that it would be wrong, whatever it is that's bothering you probably isn't even any of my business."
That was something I was coming to understand after living in Asgard a while – being in an important place and interacting with important people doesn't automatically make you important. I may have been History's Cutest Disciple Magda, but I was clearly experiencing a prequel comic starring Lokisame-shishou and Bruceachai-shishou.
"And what if it were?" Loki asked levelly.
I stared at him incredulously. "... I'm sorry, are... are you asking me to nag you into telling?"
"I'm asking if you have any sense of self preservation at all," he scolded.
Of course I want to know, I thought, and if you were anyone else I would press the issue. But you're a member of a royal family; you and your parents and the kingdom have lots of secrets that I don't have a right to know. Both of us know this. Why are you so stuck on this point?
And that's when it occurred to me that it had probably been a very, very long time since the God of Mischief and Magic had been in a situation where someone fully aware that he was keeping something from them didn't immediately try to shake it out of him one way or another.
"Well, is the secret about me?" I asked.
"... no," he admitted reluctantly.
"Will this information get me killed, maimed, emotionally-scarred, or psychologically-tortured if I don't know it right this minute?" I asked.
"Of course not," he said dismissively, "but that's not the point!"
"Actually, forgive me, sensei, but that is the point," I said, the palms of my hands upturned in an expression of total disbelief. "If it doesn't have anything to do with me, then why should I expect you to tell me?"
His eyes sought out the ceiling. "How can someone so cautious about so many perfectly harmless things be so thoroughly...?" He let out a short sigh, and shook his head, looking back down again. "Enough. You are impossible."
"You're welcome," I said cheerfully.
"Dr Banner," Loki said, casting a sidelong glance at a rack of novelty hats that jostled in surprise, "if you intend to keep eavesdropping on people, you might consider investing in quieter footwear."
The look on Bruce's face as he slowly stepped out from behind the rack sent me into a fit of giggles.
=
Two first-class hours (it would have been ten, but sensei had no patience for air travel and cheated outrageously) and a twenty-minute car ride later, we were in a handsome wood-panelled office in the Edificio Central of the Universidad de Sevilla, and I was trying to decide if Professor Randolph was just a naturally nervous person or a cokehead. He had a stutter that I was sure couldn't be part of his normal way of speaking, what with being a professor bilingual enough to teach at a Spanish-language university, and a general haste to his speech that made it clear he didn't want us around any longer than we had to be. Everything he said was perfectly polite and inoffensive, and he nodded at each of us whenever we asked a question, but I couldn't escape the feeling he was trying to hurry us out the door.
Poor guy, I thought. Sensei's little interview must have finally started making the rounds on 'real' news shows. He's tryin' so hard to be cool about it, but I bet he's worried we're some kind of freaky cultists.
... but we are a freaky cultist, I pointed out.
Not surrender-bank-account-number-and-sexual-agency-and-call-an-unemployed-smooth-talker-Dad-freaky! Just... share-a-drink-with-an-invisible-friend-on-special-occasions-freaky.
Wow. When you put it like that we sound like a Christmas-and-Easter Catholic.
Shut up, listen to what he's saying.
I didn't listen to what he was saying. Or, if I did, I don't remember it now.
Yeah, there are gaps in my memory around this time. Usually I'm only bad at remembering names, faces, addresses, phone numbers, timezone differences, measurements, dates and times; but on this particular day, it's like someone went through my recollection of events and clipped a whole bunch of things out. Sensei told me it's one of the side effects.
Perhaps you've seen the later films of the MCU and you know all about the Berzerker Staff. I still haven't; I feel conflicted about whether I should even try. Anyway, I drove into the wormhole on April 1st, 2014, so I didn't get the chance to see Captain America 2, let alone Thor 3 or wherever the thing inevitably showed up.
(Yes, I got kicked out of my home universe on April Fools' Day. Believe me, it gets less funny when you have to live with it for a while.)
Even if you haven't seen all of Phases 2 and 3, or whatever, presumably you can still understand, going off of what you've already read here, why I had to be the one to carry the angry power-up stick. Bruce was right out of the question, and if Loki had been unable to bring it under his control it would have taken the Hulk to stop him. By contrast, the worst we had to worry about if I lost it was some incoherent screaming and wildly-undertrained fighting that a Prince of Asgard with several hundred years and pounds on me could fairly easily put a stop to.
What do I remember of that day?
Well, I remember the catacombs really fucking stank. And I was wearing gloves – just a cheap pair of black acrylic ones, because like hell was I going to carry an Asgardian Red Lantern Ring barehanded – not even a fragment of one. I remember trying not to get the hem of my jeans wet, looking for footholds here and there and willing myself not to scratch my itchy nose for fear of getting whatever the hell was lingering on the walls onto my face. I don't remember finding the staff, but I do remember when I picked it up.
Mostly because that was when the headaches started.
It was really mild, I don't want to give you the wrong impression; if it had happened over a couple of hours instead of every twenty minutes or so I probably wouldn't have noticed any difference from normal. But the first moment I got the Staff in my grip, it was like it was holding me right back – like it was shaking my hand to take my measure, the way my dad's army friends used to. Even without fully activating it, there was no mistaking what I was carrying.
I remember leaving the resting place of that first piece a lot less clearly than I do entering it, because the first swell that hit me was exactly like sleep deprivation, such that I'm amazed I didn't end up passing out and faceplanting right into the sewage. That stands out in my memory more than anything external I experienced, because it was the first time since I arrived on Asgard that I felt truly and genuinely exhausted.
So, given all of that, I'm inclined to believe what Bruce told me later, that out of the blue I launched into the most manic and stubborn rendition of Put One Foot In Front Of The Other he'd ever heard.
"Is she all right?" I remember him asking.
"As long as she doesn't touch it with her bare hands, she'll be perfectly fine once she puts it down," Loki replied.
"Hey," I said, presumably breaking off mid-verse, "don't talk about me like I'm not in the room."
"None of us are in a room, Magda," Loki told me in a soothing tone, "we're in the car, now, you see?"
I realized I was now sitting down. I turned my head to the left, and watched the buildings and pedestrians pass by. Oh. Yay, I made it!
"Well, like I'm not in the car, then," I corrected myself in a dreamy tone, arching my back like a happy cat. "Mmm... are either of you hungry? I'm really in the mood for something spicy."
"Wonderful idea. We're late for breakfast as it is. But first," Loki said, still in that pleasant murmur, "you need to lay down the staff. You can't very well eat with it in your hand, now can you?"
"Your point is well-seen," I conceded, and I put the staff down.
And frowned, blinking away the fatigue like it was nothing more than a stray eyelash. "... okay, that was weird. Why did it make me tired? I thought it was a Berzerker Staff."
... and is it me or did I just quote Jar Jar Binks? .__. Dear god.
"It is," Loki affirmed. "Fear not, the next time you carry it you'll hardly notice the weariness. It's the staff's diagnostics at work – it has to determine your endurance and so forth in order to best know where and how to enhance your capabilities." He knocked on the glass separating us from our driver. "Take us to a respectable restaurant. One with a lax dress code." The man grunted, and we made a right turn at the light.
My eyes widened. "You want me to learn how to use it?"
He smirked. "You didn't think I wanted to retrieve it just to tuck it away in the armoury with the others, did you?"
"... am I even allowed to use it?" I asked with a shit-eating grin.
"Of course," he said. "You're exactly the kind of person the staves were designed for; inexperienced but enthusiastic."
The excitement I felt at that time is among the few positive emotions I can remember having over the course of this little Indiana Jones hunt, and I'm reasonably sure that the reason I do remember it is that it was at least half eager anticipation of acquiring the ability and the opportunity to bust some fucking heads. I'm sure I must have been happy at other points on the trip, but I couldn't tell you when. Those memories are just gone.
Case in point: I don't remember the taste of the steak I had for lunch that day, or what the three of us chatted about, but I do remember the woman on the plane to Ireland who sat behind us, because she slept the whole time with a nose-whistle and refused to answer her child no matter how many times he whispered 'Mom' and poked her arm. All I can say is thank Loki for time-dilation spells, or long bfore we arrived my pounding skull would have demanded I pinch her nose shut until I reduced the cartilage and the snot to a single revolting mush between my finger and thumb.
=
The second piece of the staff was tucked away in a monastery, and wasn't that a lovely smell to subject my aching head to; I've never liked being inside churches and religious buildings, and it isn't a pagan thing – it's the smell. In Protestant churches it's some kind of soap or I don't know what, and in Catholic or High Anglican ones it's the goddamn incense – it always makes me want to throw up. One of the nice parts of being pagan is that tradition encourages worshipping outside, weather permitting; whatever weird stuff you might end up burning, at least there's a breeze to cut that shit.
Anyway.
The second piece was a little more intense than the first, probably because it was the head of the staff. It didn't cure the headache the first piece had inflicted on me, but it made me not mind it so much, because apparently the head of the staff governed the part of diagnostics directly related to regulating the nerve endings and how much pain they register. Kinda hard to care about a headache when your skin keeps surging from the inside.
But like I said before, this stuff was mild. I wasn't going all Crucio up in here and floppin' on the floor; I was just... uncomfortable.
=
"You're sure you're-?" Bruce asked for what felt like the three hundredth goddamn time that hour, and I snapped: "No I am not okay because you keep fucking asking me whether I'm okay!"
He shrank backward a bit, his hands held up in the universal gesture of peaceful intentions. "Magda, you don't have to do this if you don't want to. There has to be-"
"Oh for fuck's sake," I nearly shouted, "I know you think you're trying to help, but seriously, you shouldn't be concerned about me. You should be concerned about what'll happen if some little douchebag Left-Hand-Pathier-Than-Thou uni brat hears that Loki is a real guy and decides, 'Hey, maybe all those Nordic death weapons are real too! I'll bet I can get tons of hot granola bitches all up on my goffic junk if I can just get my hands on one!'" I shook the stunted Staff for emphasis, and he flinched again. "This isn't even a legendary-class weapon! They mass-produced them! If some little fucker got his hands on Durandal or Excalibur or the Kusanagi or a cosmic cube, we can kiss a small city goodbye. Or," I added with a hysterical laugh, warming to my subject, "better yet, how about what happens if a major government finds one? Or a minor government with a crazy person in charge? The era of the one man army is coming, thanks in part to you, and if I have to go a little Sith-y for a while in a totally containable way to prevent this particular fire from starting, so fucking be it!"
I don't even remember where I was when I said all this. We might have been in a rental car driving out of Oslo, or already hiking out to find the tree where the last piece was hidden, or in the middle of Times Square at rush hour for all I knew or cared.
"... you're probably right," Bruce said after a long while. "Whatever comes of... all this, I'm a part of it. I have been from the start. And if people – governments – start investing in supersoldiers because of a... a 'Hulk gap', that's on me at least in part." He looked me dead in the eye. "But I didn't deserve what you just said to me. You think I don't care about some kid getting in over their head with this insanity, well, you're wrong. You and he are thinking about hypothetical kids, but it's this kid," here he poked me in the arm, "who's actually, currently suffering, right in front of me, that I care about at the moment."
I bit down on the impulse to declare that I was not a kid.
"What the hell for?" I asked instead. "You just met me yesterday."
When he spoke again, his voice was soft, and hesitant. "... I think it's safe to say you aren't likely to find someone who understands what it's like to have something... ugly, inside, trying to get out... better than me. And how frightening that is."
Despite myself, despite the fact that I didn't think of my anger that way, despite the fact that I felt like finally getting to let myself out of the cage would be a blessed relief... I sighed.
I just couldn't stay mad at him. I mean, Jesus, have you seen him? He's like a rescue dog in human form.
"Okay," I said. "Free information time. Word of God on this, and it's the basic damn premise of the series, so it seems kind of stupid to me that you should have to go through life not knowing. The Other Guy? Isn't ugly or evil. He's just pissed the fuck off – every now and then for a good reason, even. Give him a strong opponent, preferrably an asshole of some description, and a place you aren't too attached to in which to fight, and he's golden. When people treat him like a person, sometimes he can even be reasoned with. So, deal with that, Frawnkensteen."
Bruce stared at me like I'd said it in Esperanto.
I shrugged. "What, you thought the hero of a comic series for kids would have no redeeming qualities? C'mon."
This was turning out to be Bruce's day for long pauses.
"... the... the Hulk is the hero?"
Fun fact; the Staff can, in the short term, neutralize my ability to shed tears.
"'Course you're the hero," I said firmly. "Don't be a retard."
=
Now, the final piece... look, I 'remember' this part, but you have to understand, the Staff is meant to run diagnostics over maybe two minutes, tops, and then you're supposed to grab hold of it with your bare hands, get juiced up, and run into battle. If you prolong the wait time between diagnostics and showtime... well, like I've been saying, you get headaches, and sometimes your skin hurts.
And sometimes you hallucinate your teacher calling forth Kirby krackle from the firmament to strike at the bark of a centuries-old tree, and proceed to gently peel back the layers of bark and rings one by one, as though pushing aside the set dressings of a stage play, only to finally invite you forward to claim your prize at the heart of the mighty oak.
"Fucking finally," I grumbled, stomping forward and, prising the bloody stick out of its hideyhole, I stuck it onto its brother-sections. "Can I please go mini-Hulk now? There's no one else around, and you said a good conk on the head and some bedrest would snap me out of it if I go too nuts."
"Of course you can," Loki said, sounding remarkably cheerful. Actually, now that I look back on it, he took all my grouchy moods and snappishness on that trip in stride. "You've exceeded my expectations entirely; aside from one or two entirely verbal outbursts you've shown admirable restraint."
I growled something approximating a thank you.
He spread his hands, and conjured a scarf lying across them. With this, he took the Staff from me. "You may remove your gloves."
Well, this is it. No more broken memories from this point on.
From now on, everything is absolutely clear.
I'm told that sometimes the Staff gives people visions. Like the ZERO System, I guess, only with hatred instead of protection/destruction sorting algorithms.
Me? All it did was blast out anything my new, aggression-focused paradigm considered distracting in the recent past, and leave nothing behind but lust and rage, and a thirst to hurt and be hurt.
I sighed contentedly, if not a little longingly. My headache was gone, and so was the pulsing under my skin; it was like I was back to normal, except I was better.
Loki smiled. "It seems you're a natural. How do you feel?"
I bared my teeth in a feral grin.
So of course that's when Thor showed up.
Chapter Fifteen, Part One
Let's just get something out in the open that you likely suspect already; if Thor hadn't shown up, I would have headbutted Loki in the nose and jumped right into a full-on Klingon flirting session without so much as a by-your-leave.
So... on the one hand, I am eternally grateful for the thunderer's lousy timing.
And on the other, you can understand why, at the time, I wasn't about to listen to anything he had to say.
New plan see how you stack up against the mood-killer smite him holy shit we're gonna fight Thor this is awesome all the smashy-smashy you could ever dream of hahahahahaha smite smite smite!
"Brother-" was about as far as he got before I rammed the head of the staff into his stomach, just below his rib cage.
"Magda!" Loki yelled in alarm, grabbing me by the shoulders and pulling me out of the way. "Ah, brother, I apologize, she's-"
Thor coughed, and frowned down at me. "You think yourself a match for the might of Thor?"
I certainly hope so, I thought with a manic grin.
I hauled back to hit him harder, but sensei hooked me into an arm lock like it was nothing.
"Thor, listen, she's not herself!"
"The fuck I'm not!" I hollered indignantly, kicking and squirming; longshanked bastard that sensei was, I was about a foot off the ground, so I didn't have a lot of escape options. Not that they would have improved much if I were on the ground – the standards for qualifying as 'Thor's wimpy tagalong' are equivalent to a normal Asgardian's 'What the Hel! I thought he was supposed to be a pushover! Brothers, a little help?' and an enhanced but untrained human's 'Oh god I didn't know I had bones there to break'. I might as well have had Vibranium shackles around my arms for all the good my struggling did.
Silently, I rebuked the stray thoughts that hopped up and down in excitement at this unprecedented amount of physical contact and the way he tightened his grip the more I struggled.
We aren't on Plan Apocalyptic Love Shack yet, stay focused. First we get a nice fight out of Thor and make him fuck off back to Asgard, then we can get all Trent Reznor up in here.
"The Staff!" Loki said over my cursing. "She's under the influence of-"
"I heard," Thor replied, still frowning. "I came to offer my assistance. Is this what it does to people?"
Loki sighed right behind my left ear. "Apparently."
Thor gave me the kind of once-over I usually only see people give appliances that're making a funny noise. "A shame. She was so docile before."
THE FUCK?!
And just like that, let's-have-a-scrap-and-maybe-a-shift-mode became let's-see-what-shade-of-red-Asgardians-bleed-mode.
I planted my feet on Loki's knees and wrenched myself forward as far as I could, caring little for the dislocation of my shoulders (I think Bruce said something at this point, but I didn't hear what it was). "Why don't you go home and fuck your mother some more?"
Thor twitched. "Have a care with your words, Magda Quickfinger," he said darkly, "there may yet be a reckoning for them."
I snapped my teeth at the finger he was pointing in my face, and he yanked his hand back abruptly just as Loki reasserted his grip.
"She doesn't know what she's saying, Thor," he said desperately, jabbing a thumb into my back in warning.
Thor's frown softened somewhat, and he nodded. "... I'm beginning to sense a pattern to your academic projects, brother," he commented, apparently trying to lighten the mood.
For just a moment, Loki's arms stiffened around mine for reasons that had nothing to do with my squirming.
And that, of all things, is what revived my self control.
When I was in grade three, after I bit maybe my third (fourth? for me it was Tueday etc. etc.) classmate, I was required to undergo an anger management course in the general-use room across the hallway from my class. It was only three days, and I don't remember any of the details besides 'climbing Anger Mountain', and the tips that the entire rest of society re-enforces constantly; take deep breaths, be aware of when you're angry and take a little break, count to ten.
None of these tips are as effective as winter.
First you build a fireplace around your anger. Then you build a cabin around the fireplace. Then you grow the woods around the cabin.
And then you put five hundred miles of blizzard and black ice and frostbite between you and the person who angered you.
I could see a faint look of relief in Thor's eyes; obviously sensei had gone with the joke and pasted on a smile. Like always. Business as usual.
Oh, son of Odin, I would have words with thee.
"You are completely blind to the pain of others," I said in a low, clear voice. "And that is the single worst quality a king can possess."
That's when sensei finally knocked me out.
Let's just get something out in the open that you likely suspect already; if Thor hadn't shown up, I would have headbutted Loki in the nose and jumped right into a full-on Klingon flirting session without so much as a by-your-leave.
So... on the one hand, I am eternally grateful for the thunderer's lousy timing.
And on the other, you can understand why, at the time, I wasn't about to listen to anything he had to say.
New plan see how you stack up against the mood-killer smite him holy shit we're gonna fight Thor this is awesome all the smashy-smashy you could ever dream of hahahahahaha smite smite smite!
"Brother-" was about as far as he got before I rammed the head of the staff into his stomach, just below his rib cage.
"Magda!" Loki yelled in alarm, grabbing me by the shoulders and pulling me out of the way. "Ah, brother, I apologize, she's-"
Thor coughed, and frowned down at me. "You think yourself a match for the might of Thor?"
I certainly hope so, I thought with a manic grin.
I hauled back to hit him harder, but sensei hooked me into an arm lock like it was nothing.
"Thor, listen, she's not herself!"
"The fuck I'm not!" I hollered indignantly, kicking and squirming; longshanked bastard that sensei was, I was about a foot off the ground, so I didn't have a lot of escape options. Not that they would have improved much if I were on the ground – the standards for qualifying as 'Thor's wimpy tagalong' are equivalent to a normal Asgardian's 'What the Hel! I thought he was supposed to be a pushover! Brothers, a little help?' and an enhanced but untrained human's 'Oh god I didn't know I had bones there to break'. I might as well have had Vibranium shackles around my arms for all the good my struggling did.
Silently, I rebuked the stray thoughts that hopped up and down in excitement at this unprecedented amount of physical contact and the way he tightened his grip the more I struggled.
We aren't on Plan Apocalyptic Love Shack yet, stay focused. First we get a nice fight out of Thor and make him fuck off back to Asgard, then we can get all Trent Reznor up in here.
"The Staff!" Loki said over my cursing. "She's under the influence of-"
"I heard," Thor replied, still frowning. "I came to offer my assistance. Is this what it does to people?"
Loki sighed right behind my left ear. "Apparently."
Thor gave me the kind of once-over I usually only see people give appliances that're making a funny noise. "A shame. She was so docile before."
THE FUCK?!
And just like that, let's-have-a-scrap-and-maybe-a-shift-mode became let's-see-what-shade-of-red-Asgardians-bleed-mode.
I planted my feet on Loki's knees and wrenched myself forward as far as I could, caring little for the dislocation of my shoulders (I think Bruce said something at this point, but I didn't hear what it was). "Why don't you go home and fuck your mother some more?"
Thor twitched. "Have a care with your words, Magda Quickfinger," he said darkly, "there may yet be a reckoning for them."
I snapped my teeth at the finger he was pointing in my face, and he yanked his hand back abruptly just as Loki reasserted his grip.
"She doesn't know what she's saying, Thor," he said desperately, jabbing a thumb into my back in warning.
Thor's frown softened somewhat, and he nodded. "... I'm beginning to sense a pattern to your academic projects, brother," he commented, apparently trying to lighten the mood.
For just a moment, Loki's arms stiffened around mine for reasons that had nothing to do with my squirming.
And that, of all things, is what revived my self control.
When I was in grade three, after I bit maybe my third (fourth? for me it was Tueday etc. etc.) classmate, I was required to undergo an anger management course in the general-use room across the hallway from my class. It was only three days, and I don't remember any of the details besides 'climbing Anger Mountain', and the tips that the entire rest of society re-enforces constantly; take deep breaths, be aware of when you're angry and take a little break, count to ten.
None of these tips are as effective as winter.
First you build a fireplace around your anger. Then you build a cabin around the fireplace. Then you grow the woods around the cabin.
And then you put five hundred miles of blizzard and black ice and frostbite between you and the person who angered you.
I could see a faint look of relief in Thor's eyes; obviously sensei had gone with the joke and pasted on a smile. Like always. Business as usual.
Oh, son of Odin, I would have words with thee.
"You are completely blind to the pain of others," I said in a low, clear voice. "And that is the single worst quality a king can possess."
That's when sensei finally knocked me out.
Chapter Fifteen, Part Two
"Magda. Wake up."
Unfortunately, when I awoke in the passenger seat of the speeding rental car, there was no grogginess or lapse in memory. I went right from unconsciousness to OhmygodIjusttoldThortogofuckFriggaIamadeadwomanohgodohgodItoldhimhe'snotkingmaterial...!
I didn't have time to have a full freakout, though, because it quickly became apparent that what had woken me was a combination of disturbingly close thunderclaps and the Hulk bellowing in rage.
I sat up, groaning, rather gratified to see my seatbelt was on. "Oh, god. What set him off?"
"Dr Banner took exception to my knocking you out," Loki replied, swerving to avoid hitting a bolting moose holy shit!
"... man, you're two for two. The Hulk really does not like you, does he?" I said.
"This is no time for jokes, Magda." Loki's voice was sharp. "Who is the villain?"
"What?" I asked.
"In the films of our reality," he said urgently, "the ones you saw, who is the villain? You said it wasn't Banner, so who is it?"
I stared at him, wide-eyed.
... fucking of course my favourite turns out to be the metagamer of the bunch. What the fuck else would he be?
You can't tell him, Fangirl-Magda insisted. Look how he reacted to finding out that he was just a member of aspecies that had brought pain and suffering to his people! If you tell him the truth it will devastate him!
I took a deep breath. "Loki, are you sure you want to know-?"
"Who?" he hissed.
Frantically, I ransacked my mind for something I could say that wouldn't be a lie.
... well, Sensible-Magda and Fangirl-Magda said slowly, he said films, plural...
They grinned at each other in triumph.
It was nice to know that some parts of my psyche felt like smiling; the bit near the surface was still stonefaced and panicking.
"Thanos," I said, as calmly as I could, "the Mad Titan."
Hope and fear sprang into Loki's eyes as he glanced over at me, but otherwise his dark expression held fast. "And only him, and his agents?" he asked. "No one drafted to his cause?"
God fucking damnit. Why can't I be attracted to stupid guys?
I shrank in my seat, feeling like shit.
"... you invade Earth on his behalf to take the Tesseract," I whispered.
What he did next shocked me completely.
His shoulders sagged as though he had just set down a great weight, and he sighed in relief.
"Good. Now, we have to get them to stop fighting. Normally I'd let you take Thor, he prefers not to hurt women, but in light of-"
"Whaddya mean, 'good'?" I shouted incredulously.
"Magda, later," he said briskly. "As I was saying, I'll handle Thor," here he jerked a thumb in the direction of the Berzerker Staff in the back seat, "if you and our allies can distract Banner long enough for me to put him under again."
"... the Hulk gets stronger the angrier he gets," I warned him, willing myself to focus on our present situation. "And he has a tendency to no-sell magic that's been used on him before, once his body's had a chance to develop a counter to it."
Loki sagged in the exact opposite of relief. "... that would have been helpful information to have the first time I fought him," he said pointedly.
"You ran off last time before I could tell you!" I objected.
"Never mind," he said, shaking his head. "We're almost there."
"Almost where?" I asked, looking around at the forests that seemed to stretch for miles up and down the surrounding mountains. "Is there someone out here?"
Loki laughed shortly under his breath. "You see, now, Magda, that's why I like you."
Asdfsnsaklfiewfcdsjnkjhafiuew;efnk OUT OF CHEESE REDO FROM START
"Any sane person would have said 'there's no one out here,'" he continued, pulling onto a switchback road and flooring it. "And, consequently, they would have been absolutely terrified when I did this."
I didn't even have time to scream before we shot over the cliff.
"Magda. Wake up."
Unfortunately, when I awoke in the passenger seat of the speeding rental car, there was no grogginess or lapse in memory. I went right from unconsciousness to OhmygodIjusttoldThortogofuckFriggaIamadeadwomanohgodohgodItoldhimhe'snotkingmaterial...!
I didn't have time to have a full freakout, though, because it quickly became apparent that what had woken me was a combination of disturbingly close thunderclaps and the Hulk bellowing in rage.
I sat up, groaning, rather gratified to see my seatbelt was on. "Oh, god. What set him off?"
"Dr Banner took exception to my knocking you out," Loki replied, swerving to avoid hitting a bolting moose holy shit!
"... man, you're two for two. The Hulk really does not like you, does he?" I said.
"This is no time for jokes, Magda." Loki's voice was sharp. "Who is the villain?"
"What?" I asked.
"In the films of our reality," he said urgently, "the ones you saw, who is the villain? You said it wasn't Banner, so who is it?"
I stared at him, wide-eyed.
... fucking of course my favourite turns out to be the metagamer of the bunch. What the fuck else would he be?
You can't tell him, Fangirl-Magda insisted. Look how he reacted to finding out that he was just a member of aspecies that had brought pain and suffering to his people! If you tell him the truth it will devastate him!
I took a deep breath. "Loki, are you sure you want to know-?"
"Who?" he hissed.
Frantically, I ransacked my mind for something I could say that wouldn't be a lie.
... well, Sensible-Magda and Fangirl-Magda said slowly, he said films, plural...
They grinned at each other in triumph.
It was nice to know that some parts of my psyche felt like smiling; the bit near the surface was still stonefaced and panicking.
"Thanos," I said, as calmly as I could, "the Mad Titan."
Hope and fear sprang into Loki's eyes as he glanced over at me, but otherwise his dark expression held fast. "And only him, and his agents?" he asked. "No one drafted to his cause?"
God fucking damnit. Why can't I be attracted to stupid guys?
I shrank in my seat, feeling like shit.
"... you invade Earth on his behalf to take the Tesseract," I whispered.
What he did next shocked me completely.
His shoulders sagged as though he had just set down a great weight, and he sighed in relief.
"Good. Now, we have to get them to stop fighting. Normally I'd let you take Thor, he prefers not to hurt women, but in light of-"
"Whaddya mean, 'good'?" I shouted incredulously.
"Magda, later," he said briskly. "As I was saying, I'll handle Thor," here he jerked a thumb in the direction of the Berzerker Staff in the back seat, "if you and our allies can distract Banner long enough for me to put him under again."
"... the Hulk gets stronger the angrier he gets," I warned him, willing myself to focus on our present situation. "And he has a tendency to no-sell magic that's been used on him before, once his body's had a chance to develop a counter to it."
Loki sagged in the exact opposite of relief. "... that would have been helpful information to have the first time I fought him," he said pointedly.
"You ran off last time before I could tell you!" I objected.
"Never mind," he said, shaking his head. "We're almost there."
"Almost where?" I asked, looking around at the forests that seemed to stretch for miles up and down the surrounding mountains. "Is there someone out here?"
Loki laughed shortly under his breath. "You see, now, Magda, that's why I like you."
Asdfsnsaklfiewfcdsjnkjhafiuew;efnk OUT OF CHEESE REDO FROM START
"Any sane person would have said 'there's no one out here,'" he continued, pulling onto a switchback road and flooring it. "And, consequently, they would have been absolutely terrified when I did this."
I didn't even have time to scream before we shot over the cliff.