fossilised | Jotunheimr

"I am firstborn, Odinson, know what you have asked to be your guide, lest your ignorance shame even the dull creatures you came from."

Loki was not offended, he would have been if these insults had come from one of their own who had understood the weight of what he was saying. But the Odinson was obviously ignorant, completely so, which was a shame in itself. He was to be King of the Realm Eternal one day, did he have no training? Did he do no study on the other realms and cultures that he would supposedly be protectorate over?

Even Grynd, last in line for the throne and a Jarl of a far northern state had done his lessons on the other realms, for to do otherwise was to risk a fool on the throne, and that could not be allowed.

"Perhaps if you have such a fancy to it then we shall have one made for you, and you may show the whole court your worth in wearing it."

The embroidered kilt was only for those with a connection to seidr, though a certain embroidered kilt was also worn by the very young or infirm to denote they could not yet take part in battle.

In less than an hour’s time, Thor was happily wearing the gifted kilt, proudly moving down the corridor at Loki’s left. There were strange looks given to the pair, though Thor had yet to truly read the emotions of the Jotnar and could not tell how amused they were at the shame of the princeling. Perhaps it didn’t matter if Thor was not aware that he was the butt of the joke, however, for Odin’s son was all smiles despite the chill he felt, chest bare and hair left a scraggly mess.

He was sure that, as Heimdall was likely watching, his father would have him home in no time. He was showing humility, if forced, cultural sensitivity, and he had even made a friend in the form of a prince. Surely that would do?

“If you are to be my guide,” Thor said of Loki, pausing at a junction in the hall with his hands on his hips, “I would like you to guide me to the peak over there.” His gesture was vaguely towards the range of crags to the east through a naturally formed gape in the tower wall. “I will fetch Mjolnir there.”

A friend? No, not at all, Loki was a serpent and Thor was all the more a fool if he could not see the mocking behind his smiles and polite words. The Silvertongue was not one to win battles with brawn, and he knew that many in his court already believed that he had got a magnificent point over on the Odinson by making him visibly appear a child to any who saw him.

"I will guide you if you answer my three questions correctly. After all, have you not been brought here to learn more of our people?"

That was something that Loki took seriously. He did not want another tyrant like Odin Spearshaker on the throne, he wanted one who would give back the Casket and who saw the Jotnar as actual beings, not monsters.

"What is the name of my dam-- or 'mother', is the term I believe you use, the Jotnar who birthed me? What started the war on Midgard? Who is most likely to be King when Laufey-King returns to the ice?"

Riddles were just a bit beyond Thor and he cared even less for trivia. His eyes narrowed and his hands dropped from their triumphant pose. He had not thought this punishment would last so long. Surely he had gathered all he needed to go home. His quest was complete, was it not? And likely in record time! Thor was still greatly optimistic about his abilities here and had learned exactly nothing.

“I do not see what these questions have to do with fetching my hammer,” he snapped. “Nor was I tasked with learning about you or your people so much as a lesson my father failed to fully define. I care not for who your mother is, as you must likely care little to know of mine. The war for Midgard was caused because your people attempted to overtake a Realm that was not theirs and kill the rightful inhabitants. And if you are first born, you are heir. Though it would likely be better for the king to chose a taller brother. Now show me the proper way to go or I will go myself.”

"You are wrong on all counts, Odinson."

Loki dropped his frivolous tone for once to a true sneer, to show how abysmally ignorant he found the man in front of him. Surely he had reached his majority already, and yet he knew nothing of other realms and, apparently, very little about his own history if he truly believed the war had been caused only by their presence on Midgard.

"You are not permitted to wander without your guide, and I do not think your father will think you suitably cowed if you disobey so readily. If you wish to retrieve the Star-Hammer, I suggest you find those answers. I shall even gift you the first one for free - my dam, you have met, I was birthed by Laufey-King."

Though Thor wanted more than anything to be utterly incensed by Loki, he found the final revelation to be too confusing for him to process. “Your father... is your mother...”

Any Asgardian of Thor’s age or younger would find this hard to accept. There were certain truths of nature and one was that a female carried and bore a child. It was her right and her duty. For a man to take that from her would be a terrible crime. Or so Thor thought. The subjugation of Jotunheim had closed off all scholarly pursuits of the mysteries and marvels of the Realm. It had not entirely been Odin’s intention but it was easy to Other and vilify the people that caused great deaths throughout Asgard.

To subjugate them had brought blood upon the soil and no family was unaffected.

Even Thor’s, though he had never been told that Hela was kin and her casting down to Hel was not priveledge but punishment. As was his casting down to Jotunheim.

"No, my mother is my mother, if you insist on using your word for it. Farbauti-Consort sired me, and would be my father by your reckoning. How is it that you are heir to the golden dias of the Realm Eternal, and you do not even know the simplest thing about one of the realms of Yggdrasil?"

He asked the question as though he were genuinely curious, though there was real contempt beneath his words. How could any King raise a child for rulership that was so unaware of who the peoples around him would be?

"Jotnar are not Aesir, not yet mortal, we do not have two genders. We are all men and we are all women, we may all sire and dam as we wish, though it is only the children carried to term by the King who are of the royal household."

“Knowledge of Jotunheim has always been forbidden,” Thor said simply, though it made him frown. At last, after the day he had spent here and the hours previously spent trying to hunt a monster with his friends, there was some sort of sense coming over him. He realised that what he’d just said made relatively little sense at all.

Asgard had been to war before. Multiple times. He’d battled outliers since he was half a millennia old, happily swinging his sword at the smaller of the opposing forces.

But that had never rendered any of their previous enemies as beyond knowledge.

How could Thor know, when it was kept so secret, the man his father had been prior to the sundering of Jotunheim when all knowledge of it was covered up and changed? No wonder the Jotun were demonized. It kept anyone from being curious.

The whole thing rubbed Thor poorly and he stood there with an angry, partially disgruntled look on his face.

"That is a lie, or it is a truth you ought to have questioned."

Loki no longer looked amused; in fact, he now looked at Thor as he might look at a piece of scum served to him at dinner instead of food. He was less than a child, less than an idiot, if he thought to take the throne this way. Why had Odin allowed this ignorance? Was it so that he would have a puppet when he did hand over the throne, so that he could remain tugging the strings?

"If we were your enemy, then any warrior or leader knows that intelligence about your enemy is the only way to defeat them. That you do not even know our most basic of biological truths suggests that you would find it hard to beat us in a fight."

Good for them. Or, at least, it would be if Odin didn't perpetually have a sword to their throat with the hostage of the Casket.

"Here is your second lesson - I will not rule Jotunheim if I am not elected so. My brothers and I, all of Laufey's get, will stand before the Council and one of us will be chosen. The one most worthy, the one that Jotunheim needs for her future. It ensures that the King will always be one who is best for the realm. Perhaps Asgard would do well to follow that custom, for it seems to have naught but a figurehead in you."

Thor no longer found Loki to be charming or amusing. He no longer thought of him as a temporary friend needed to return to the golden city. Instead, in stubborn need to still hold his father true; Thor felt his heart harden. He did not always, nor often, feel the need to brood when his whole life had been one joyous moment after another, but he felt sullen now and in need of a place to think.

Thor was not a simple bullish warrior without brains, after all. He was just young, young but still worthy to be chosen by the hammer that rested on the crags he could see but not yet obtain.

“You will cease speaking,” Thor demanded, heart pounding too loudly. “And you will show me where I am meant to stay while exiled.” He held his tongue on insult though his tone suggested he wanted so badly to give it.

"Ah, Odinson, many before you have demanded a cease to my tongue, but none yet have managed it. You chose me, and you will bear the truths that I have to tell you, for that is the price of my guiding."

He would have been far better placed to choose any other. Most of the Jotnar would have been so keen to be rid of the Aesir that they would have carried Thor to Mjolnir and never spoken a word to him, some were frightened, most were angry. Loki was angry too, but he used his words as weapons.

"There is still the matter of the final question I asked you, on how the war began. Do you still believe it so black and white that we invaded Midgard for... what reason? Jotunheim is our home, Midgard little use to us with a climate that, largely, cannot support us. Why would be breach the peace so, to invade the mortal realm, Odinson? What reason drove us to that act? If you can answer that, perhaps you will find the true start of the war."

“I said cease!” Thor thrust out his hand as if to strike but made sure to turn his body away from Loki so his gesture did not connect. He had s great deal of physical control over himself, though it would be emotion that always got the best of him. Thor might have been stripped of his power, and yet his only true weakness still was his heart. “You tell only lies. Or enough truth to mask it. And I will hear nothing else.”

Thor was not permitted without his guide but he also would it be stopped as he stormed away. Once not long ago, it might well have stormed in the sky above him. The hallway might have shaken beneath his might.

But the Thunder had lost his thunder. And his power. And everything he knew. If Loki would not show him to solace, he would go himself. .

Thor would have trouble finding solace in the palace of the ice King. An empty room would not be difficult to come across, but keeping it private would be all but impossible. Loki allowed him to go for now, and instead sought out his youngest brother to send Bylestir to Thor. The youngest of Laufey's get was the kindest and most honest, it would be a good counter to Loki's manner and would hopefully help him see the lies of his people.

All to plan.

Thor would have only ten minutes alone before the doors to the room he had chosen opened and the Jotnar from earlier entered, his bulk filling the doorway and dwarfing even Thor's size and muscles.

"I warned you against choosing my eldsibb, Odinson, his is a tongue to set even the most level head crooked."

Thor was not pleased to see any of the Jotnar, royal or otherwise, and he had spent the better part of the day (or night, Jotunheim was cast in darkness always so it was difficult to tell) trying to seek answers from those that happened upon him.

It was why he was sat now at a table too large for him made of ice and stone. He did not wish to be seen in this kilt. One of the children had explained why it was so amusing to them not all that long before and he felt, as Loki had been hoping, a relative amount of shame.

As Bylestir approached, Thor frowned at his knees. “I thought you attempted to trick me. I have never met a Fyri either and he looked...”. Thor didn’t know. He could hardly bring himself to say that he thought he might be able to trust Loki. “Tell me, where might I find the records of your war with Midgard?”

He was hoping that there was no such thing as a library on this Realm. He did hate to read.

Bylestir wasn't sure what he thought of the Aesir. Like many of the younger Jotnar, he had grown up in a ruined Jotunheim and had never experienced the bounty of before or the cruelty of Asgard firsthand. It made him a better companion for Thor than an older one, because he could look at these things more pragmatically.

"We have few libraries left from the war, and no documentation of during it. But I have learned my lessons and can tell you all I know, if you have specific requests."

He smiled, a strange expression on a Giant.

"I am afraid that I am not the storyteller my eldsibb is, you should hear Loki weave a tale, he has the name Silvertongue for a reason. But if it is just fact you need, then I can provide that."

“Facts— I have been told my own facts. I can not be sure any are true.” Why did his father send him here? Thor could not puzzle the All-Father out on this one. He could puzzle nothing out. His entire life may have been told a lie or worse, he was meant to puzzle the lies of these people in the name of his kingdom and for his own betterment.

Thor did not have the ability to know which line of thought to believe but he found himself, after less than a day, unable to hate these people. They had a strange physiology and a stranger way of being. They were both male and female, both of ice and of... of whatever Loki was. Flesh and cold and magic.

He was much like his mother. Vanir but more than that. Different. And a tale weaver as much as this deformed Jotnar was.

Thor tried not to look so indecisive but his temper was raging.

He thumped his fist upon the table and sat back, ignoring the cold along his spine. “Tell me your truth. I will share mine. Together we may understand which is a lie.”

Bylestir watched the show of temper with mild consternation. In some ways, Thor reminded him a little of Loki, so quicksilver and odd compared to most Jotnar, but he was even more so for his temper was unknown and his 'facts' even more so. He took a seat at the table, and folded his arms.

"I will tell you the facts I have been taught and, though you may mislike them, I ask that you do not strike out at me for speaking what I have learned."

With that out of the way...

"Jotunheim was ever a prosperous realm. The Midgardians may call the Aesir Gods, but we are older, we are something far older than a God. We are one with our land in a way no other race is, and it made us strong. We had fine artisans of silver-working, and delicacies in pelts, meat, and fish that were valued in many places and made our realm rich. Though our magic users were few, they were oft strong enough to rival even the Vanir and so our realm flourished. Until Asgard's eye fell upon us. The King and his firstborn daughter sought to steal treasures from every land and conquer their peoples, to make Asgard's reign supreme. Some realms fell easily, some willingly went into vassalage, but Jotunehim refused to bend the knee."

He paused, only for a moment to gather his thoughts.

"At the time we were still at peace with Asgard, though we owed no fealty to them, and we did not believe we were in danger. But Hela and her armies came through with stealth and force, a tactical attack that wiped out all but a half dozen of our magic users and crippled our forces. They stripped our land bare. We needed to regroup if we were to hope to take back our homeland, and so we fled to Midgard. Odin ruled this as an invasion, an excuse to openly declare war. It was bloody and desperate, and ultimately we were left crippled when he took the Casket of Ancient Winters from us, the heart of our realm. Loki, my eldsibb, was the last child born before the Casket was taken, in the dying throes of the war, and he is the last Fyri to be born to us since then. Our realm has been mostly closed off since then, you are one of the first Aesir to set foot on Jotnar ice since the war ended."

While Thor was not entirely pleased that he’d come off as being a brute, he understood that he was as unknown as Jotunheim was to him. There were still many giants alive that had fought in the war, that was the truth of the matter, and the losing side did not have the ability to rewrite the war as their opponents so often did. As Bylestir spoke, Thor could not keep belief from crowding into his thoughts. That did not mean he understood it, but there was no ring of lie, as much as he wanted to shout that surely there was.

He rubbed a broad hand, minuscule to most of the Jotnar, across his lips and though he wanted to pace, he did not know where he had left the clothing he had been exiled in and he would not strut around naked and vulnerable here in the camp of people who hated him.

And, likely, rightfully so.

“You say that Hela, who rules the land of the honoured dead, is my sister? That is impossible,” he laughed. “I am my father’s first born.”

Of all the things that Bylestir expected Thor to dispute about his tale, that he was not the firstborn of his father was not it. How could he not even know about his own older sister? The Jotnar did not really know what had come after the war, which had been bloodier and more merciless than Odin had been comfortable with and opened his eyes to Hela's ambitions and power.

It had been that which had decided him to imprison her and reform his rulership, raise his infant son in a way that would better fit what he wished for Asgard's future.

"I-- do not know what to say to that. I have been taught that Hela is Odin's firstborn child, but you must know your family better than ours. Perhaps it is a mistranslation, such as you do not understand our dams and sires?"

“Is Loki telling everyone of my ignorance?” Loki was so much like his lost friends that Thor wanted to find the runt and toss him around a bit. He obviously could not as he was meant to stay peace braided, but that did not lessen both his dearly wanted nostalgia... and his partial admiration. That Loki danced to his own beat was remarkable. That people who had been so obviously wronged could still allow such a thing to occur was even more so. “I must end that, Bylestir. I know I chose poorly in my guide, as it ought to have been you, but since you are likely here with me now at your brother’s behest, I need for you to tell me all that you know of your people. I will not be caught without answers the next time he attempts to use that silvertongue against me.”

Thor could stay up for many weeks. He need not sleep, though he enjoyed it, nor eat, if he had not the time for such things, and he found that the knowledge meant to be his reigned supreme today.

As long as Bylestir was willing to speak, Thor would be willing to listen.

It was a strange transformation for Thor but he needed to know what to do.

They would not have many weeks.

Loki was not one to give up a prize like the Aesir prince for too long, but Bylestir would at least be allowed one night to speak to Thor. He did not have a natural gift for storytelling, but he had a gentleness, kindness, and patience which belied any stories that had been told about monsters.

He explained the nature of a family - that it was only usually the dam who had a hand in raising the children, and that the sire was of much less importance. Jotnar did not equate sex and love, but once they had taken a consort, that was for life and should not be disgraced with other dalliances. He explained the chief trades of the Jotnar, how they had herding nomads, and that they were a series of Jarl led territories ruled over by the King. As well as how important the rare seidr users were, and how it allowed Loki to get away with much more than other Jotnar might be allowed.

By the dawn, Thor might have a much better idea as to Jotunheim, and perhaps the wrongs that Asgard had done to it. Loki interrupted as the light began to pool over the horizon, splitting the light from the ice into a rainbow prism of colours. He needed only to arch an eyebrow to have Bylstir hurrying to stand and leave.

"I see that you have taken the favour of my youngest sibb, should I find offence in that, Odinson?"

“He has not yet attempted to ridicule me while I have already been cast so low,” Thor said immediately. Bylestir had earned from Thor as much consternation as respect. His knowledge was key, but he had learned half through that he was not her in his majority and Thor was left as unsure of what to believe as he had been when he started the afternoon proceeding. “If you must feel jealousy for kin, then do so.” Thor was weary. It was in his voice and in the slump of his shoulders.

Odin has allowed him the strength to withstand this Realm but it has taken much out of him. Where Thor has once fought for weeks on end in glorious battle, one night had left him drained.

“I would rest now and remove this child’s frock you tricked me into wearing. Do you still refuse to show me to my bed, Loki? Shall I rest here for your further amusement?” Whatever Bylestir has shared with Thor, it had soured his pride. The blond smirked. “Or will you instead rouse my spirits with well praised tales and grand gestures of shape shifting?”

Bylestir had shown nothing but love and awe for his kin.

"Should you wish me to tell my tales, I will do so, but not when you are in so poor a humour as this. I am no common feast day entertainment to be called upon at whim, I am Silvertongue."

Yet though his words were arrogant and cutting, there was a small smirk behind them. Thor would need to learn that this was simply how Loki was, and there was rarely malice in his mischief or words unless he chose to put it there. At the moment, he did not choose as much, he had gained his point for the kilt and that would suffice for now.

"I will take you to your bedchamber only after you have answered my final question. Did I not tell you that those three answers were my price for guiding you anywhere? That holds true whether you wish a guide to the Star-Hammer, or just to your furs."

He gestured to send Bylestir away, though he gave him a look of fondness in return. There was no jealousy between this Kyn, he loved his younger brothers both, though Jotnar ways of displaying their sentiment were less demonstrative than those of some other realms.

To his furs? Thor was eternally grateful that Jotun had furs on their beds. Otherwise he might have a very difficult night of lying around on frozen stone. He’d had worse but not much worse.

“I have not yet determined the truth, but your brother— “sister? Thor did not know and so stuck with the male turn of phrase. “—informs me that the bloody rule of a sister I did not know I had prompted an attempt to flee from war, and that seems to have brought upon the All-Father’s wrath for an invasion that had never been intended nor carried out.” Thor chose his words carefully. He gave weight to them but he also gave a healthy dose of skepticism.

His eyes were keen as he watched the smallest of the frost giants.

“I want to know the truth of my birth. And the truth of my family. And I can not yet do that without my clothing and without Mjolnir.” It worried him, however. “Will you help me or will you continue to sneer and twist my words?”

The All-Father sent him here for no mere exile. Of that he was now certain.

"Can I not do both?"

Loki made a twisting motion with his hands and Thor would find himself clothed. Not in his old Aesir clothing, but in stiff leathers with warm white fur stitched in places designed to help ward off the chill. A kilt, still, but a plain one such as all the adult Jotnar wore, was also gifted.

"That is a worthy task, and I find that I am also interested in the truth of your family. I was born as the war ended, I remember nothing of it, but I have lived with the legacy of the death it brought for a millennia now. But if you believe that I will cease to sneer when you act the fool, then you have much left to learn."

He gestured for Thor to follow him back into the corridors of the palace, where he would lead him to one of the guest rooms. Austere as with everywhere else, but with a huge bed covered in furs in the centre.

"I pity you, if you have lived a life where words of scorn are few, for it means you have lacked true friends. Those who care for you will not hesitate to correct you, not merely simper at your every word."

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bed must happen, have a good night <3

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