fossilised | I come from a land of ice and snow

I come from a land of ice and snow

Asgard sat atop the branches of Yggdrasil since time began, and little had changed in their society in the years since. Each Asgardian was long-lived into the millennia, their lands were fertile, their people brave and strong. They had their vassals, their allies, and their enemies. Yet even those who opposed them respected the might of the Golden Dias, and the royalty who sat upon it. Currently that was Odin Borson, though he grew weary more easily now and had begun to consider passing the throne to his eldest son.

He had been blessed with many children, but only two that he considered worthy of his lineage and status. His firstborn, Thor, strong and honourable and everything an Asgardian warrior should be. His second son, Loki, was not natural born, though none knew that but his wife. He was different, a creature of magic and mayhem, of sharp intelligence. Both were worthy, but together they would take Asgard to a new prosperity, he was certain of it.

Midgard, where the mortals dwelt, was a land raided every few centuries for stock. It was seen as a breeding ground, much like a corral for cattle. Mortals were lesser, short-lived and weak, they were fit only as slaves. The last raid had taken place when Loki had been but a baby, nearly a thousand years ago, but the mortals that had been taken had been bred and cared for so that a healthy slave population still thrived. Slaves were given a weakened mixture of Idunn's crop with their food, to extend their natural lives to at least a few centuries in order to make them worth the effort to train. They had no rights, but they were taught well that this was their natural position.

All slave children were raised in a central pen and taught the same when small, those that then displayed talent at cooking, riding, hunting, housework, artisan skills, or singing were then measured off to be specially trained for higher masters. Every five years those who could afford to buy a slave, or those of high enough status to simply demand them, came to the corral and chose. Those who were chosen were special, were envied, and those who were not ended up working the fields out in the far reaches of Asgard, the most menial of work.

Anthony and Steven had been friends since they were little and being raised in the large pens together. Both had excelled, Anthony at crafting and Steven at warrior's skills, but neither were chosen when they were five, nor ten, nor even fifteen. Now, at twenty, it was their final chance to be chosen before they would be assigned to one of the meanest farmers beyond the borders of the great capital. Steven woke Anthony as the dawn rose, mingled excitement and nerves on his face.

"Anthony! Wake up, I've got news! I heard the overseer talking to one of the passing guards, and Princes Thor and Loki are coming to the corral today."

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"I have committed no wrongs and placed Anthony only as high as a favoured slave may be placed, the wrongs are in the minds of those around me, who wish to see me cast below my lot."

He had feared this ever since discovering his true heritage. He had feared that people would try to find ways to undermine him, to make him seem less of an Aesir than he was, to disgrace him so that he could be removed. His lip curled into a sneer and he swept past Thor towards the door.

"Only scant hours ago you accused me of sorcery and betrayal, now you wish my counsel? I do not forget so easily, Thor. If you wish to punish me for wrongs you have devised, I will not be complicit in it."

He went to stalk out, to go to his room. He did not believe that Thor would actually levy a punishment on him, and if he dared to do anything to remove his property then the last vestiges of affection would be broken.

After Loki departed, Thor sat for a long time in silence, hands hanging between parted knees. He could still not decide what to do and so he went instead to the other person whose council meant the world to him.

He strode into Frigga’s room without knocking but none stood between himself and the queen.

“I can not remove his slave for he will hate me. I can not allow him to keep his slave or he will think me weak and malleable and use this against me in the future. I can not strip him of his magic or he will condemn me. I can not send him away for I will be without him. Could Father not just have me serve the kitchens? I have no basis to pass judgement and—“

He paused mid stride and turned towards his mother. His face fell and his eyes softened.

“I am making this about my own desires,” he said, booming voice that much softer now that he had little desire to speak. “And I must instead think of what is best for our people. But he is my brother. In his mind we have all turned against him anyway. I know not how to change this other than to accept your course of action. I will lose him no matter what but he will have a chance to start again... and I will have a chance to be a better brother.”

It was lucky that Frigga had finished the spell that severed their realm from the one that had been so recently under threat and threatening at the same time. She felt drained, so much seidr in such a demanding task was much to ask even of her, but she was never too drained to speak with her sons.

Her face was soft and understanding as she came to stand in front of him, her hand raised to cup his cheek.

"I would take those burdens from your shoulders if I could, you are my son and I wish only to see you smile. Perhaps if you follow this path, you both may smile in days to come. Do not feel that you must, the other paths in front of you are viable if littered with pitfalls, you must follow your heart."

Much as she loved her Loki, this was his doing and she wished she could make him see that. Yet she had seen that darkness from a long time ago, she had just hoped that he would harness his chaos for other purposes.

Odin would claim that this was the doing of the slave. He had done his best to banish the son of his dear servsnts in hopes that he would live happily there until purchased by an artisan or perhaps a guildsnan kr craftsman. He had never once expected Loki, who had no desire even for Bruce to help him throughout his days, to go to the village and find the very slave Odin wished to never see again.

“You are saying that if we take the last few hundred years of his life from him, to live again, he will never learn? Mother, there must be a way to teach without it becoming a slight?”

Thor could simply not think of one, and in frustration, he went back to pacing.

“This is not the first time he has put Asgard at risk. His disregard for our people is escalating and— I fear choosing what I know to be the right course of action. He will hate me no matter the choice and so I can not allow that to blind me. In reverence for his position as prince of Asgard, I can not make his punishment public. But the slave can not be left with him. And he can not be easily retrieved or Loki will simply go to him.”

Thor straightened.

“I fear there is no happiness in rule. There is nothing but chains and weights.”

He would have the slave killed, but justly, so he could go to Valhalla in honour.

Frigga had serious misgivings about the slave being taken. She could sometimes see the threads of Yggdrasil that connected people who were meant to be together, across all realities and times, and they were two of them. Anthony and Loki, Loki and Thor, she and Odin.

"That is not what my words mean, Thor. Should he learn again, there are many different ways that his life could go without there being slights, without there being this darkness upon him."

She took another step forward and put a hand on his shoulder.

"There is happiness in rule as well as sorrow, you must learn to find it or you will be crushed, and I do not wish to see this. I must ask you to do something for me, if you choose my path, do not also take the slave. If you do not, the make the cut swift and clean."

Thor was too young and too proud. He might have sat on the throne for a year and half that time again just after but he was not ready to rule. Now that he felt somewhat overly coddled by his mother, as much as he loved her and sought her advice, it was too ingrained in his mind that this punishment was meant for him.

Thor should never have been put in this position, but it was much too late.

He left without a word, no sign to Frigga of his thoughts, and went to his father with his choice. “I will carry out the sentence promptly and myself and tonight I will join the kitchen servants to uphold the remainder of my punishment.”

Steven was waiting for him in the hallway leading from Odin’s chambers and fell into step behind his master, watching curiously tense shoulders as Thor headed towards where Bruce and Anthony were.

Frigga watched her son leave and sent a silent prayer to the Norns that he would find the wisdom to do the right thing, and not plunge their whole family into further pain. She did not know whether she would be called upon to change her youngest son back into a boy once more, she did not know if there would be innocent blood spilled this night.

None knew but Thor.

Steven fell into step beside his master, his face contorted as he tried to hide his sorrow into something more decorous and failed entirely. His voice was hoarse when he finally spoke up, afraid.

"Are you going to kill Anthony, my prince?"

It could not be so, the plea was clear in blue eyes. He trusted so much in the fairness and goodness of the Aesir, that he could not imagine they would kill Anthony when he had been a good slave. It wasn't right.

“You of all people know the rules as do I,” Thor said, tightly. He’d had to shut his heart off to this. He could not allow himself to be swayed from his course. “You will wait outside.” He knew, vaguely, that Steven was familial with Anthony, but he had never paid much attention to anyone’s lives outside of how they connected to his own. His learning had been incomplete, but he was still in many ways a boy. As a boy, he could not see all of the greater picture, no matter how much his father attempted to teach him by throwing him into the middle of it all.

Thor did not slow until he reached Bruce’s quarters. He had not been inside since he was much smaller, when he would storm this room demanding Loki cease his reading and go out to play with him. He knew it would be filled with ancient tomes and hidden knowledges, with a Midgardian who could berserk standing in the centre, mild mannered when he wanted to be and a demon when he did not.

Thor pushed his way inside, the hinges on the great old door crying out as if they knew what would happen next. He stepped inside and the door closed behind him with growl. He did not look at all at Bruce, and Anthony stood slowly, face a mask, eyes huge and sorrowful behind it. He could almost feel Loki’s shriek, taste the way it would rock through him, when he found out that his own inability to have a conversation with Thor spelled doom to this poor innocent.

Thor pulled the dagger from his belt, Loki’s dagger, one that had tasted his blood often, and heft it in his hand. It was too small for him, expertly balanced and edged, but it felt like a child’s toy. “You are of my brother’s heart and of my brother’s mind. You share his chaos but host your own logic. This is not your fault. It is mine. It is Loki’s. Do not become too comfortable with where you are to go.”

Thor inhaled as he flashed the blade across mortal skin, no match at all for the dwarven worked steel, and as Anthony dropped, Thor turned, leaving blood on the blade, before he left the room.

Blue eyes set upon Steven as Thor pushed the blade into his belt. “You will bring him to Loki. And then you will tell my brother that I await him in the observatory.”

With that action, Thor had signed the writ that meant that he and Loki would never call themselves true brothers again, and had set an enemy against his whole kingdom for as long as Loki might live. Steven did not even need to bring the body to Loki for him to feel the death, he was connected to Anthony in ways that even he did not fully recognise, the threads of seidr connecting them so thin and yet so numerous that cutting any one of them was agony.

Thor would hear a cry of rage and grief from the courtyard, and then the whole palace shook.

Not the paltry show of grief from before, when Anthony had been taken but could be recovered, this was an explosion of every ounce of magical energy that he possessed within him, and it burst out with enough power to chip away at the architecture of the palace and make the grounds heave as if the very earth trembled below them.

Steven did not make it two feet from his master before falling to the ground, eyes wide in horror from what had occurred and what might be about to occur.

Fate was for the Norns, for the simple folk that lived their simple lives, and for people that could not help but follow the path that they had been on since birth. Loki could only ever be this person, and Thor had known that in a way. He knew that this had been the end of everything when he made his mind up because it was better to have it all happen now, before there was no one left that could manage to stop Loki from destroying everything.

It had been decried long ago that Thor would bring forth Ragnarok, the end of days, and as the sun fizzled in the sky, and Mjolnir had been stripped from him, he knew suddenly that this would be true. And yet, he also knew that his mother would find a way to keep the universe from collapsing. She and all the sorcerers of Vanaheim would salvage this.

The steps broke beneath his feet and people fled around him. Surely Loki would come to see this for what it was. He might tell himself he saw Anthony as property, but it was not true. Something had to change or order would need to be restored.

He did not stop his march from the shaking palace, however. He would go to the observatory or he would be stopped along the way by a brother that would never call him brother again and, likely, would see him dead. Thanks to Odin, that could well happen. Thor was not afraid of death. James would be waiting.

It was well that Thor was not afraid of death, for his was coming to meet him.

Loki did not go to the Observatory, he descended through the palace, killing at will, and retrieved the Tesseract from the throne room. His birthright in place, his anger tapping into all of his potential, and the entirety of Asgard lay before his feet. He gave Thor not even a second glance as he slaughtered him and threw his body over the side of the Bifrost, he cared nothing when Odin fell to the Odinsleep other than to kill him as he slumbered, and he hesitated only a single moment before ending Frigga's life as well.

Such a cord should never be severed, and now the world paid the price for it. An end to thousands of years of prosperity, Ragnarok come at last.

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I come from a land of ice and snow

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check plurk, Jeni my dear, plotting must be had since we destroyed this world