fossilised | Jotunheimr

What Thor wanted to do was anything other than walk beside the giant away from his friends and without his horse or his strength or... Anything. He was silent as shame kicked in while they walked, three strides of Thor’s for each one of Bylestir’s. His shame was less about his actions, however, and more his words to his father. He had not done enough to make him understand, Thor thought, his heart beginning to feel naught but ache. He had been unable to speak with his mother at all on his way to this terrible exile. When would he see her again? Or the Warrior’s Three? Or Sif?

These were the questions Thor wished to be answered but knew in his heart that no get of Laufey could tell him.

He found himself hungering as they arrived at the halls of Jotunheim and Thor leaned back to gaze upon the jagged spires that sliced into the blackness of the sky.

“You do not truly live here,” he asked, his first question if Laufey’s youngest son. He even chuckled, dumbfounded. “How desolate!”

"I do not see my home as desolate, though the land has declined following the theft of the Casket, it will die if it is not returned before long."

Perhaps it was unwise to lay out such vulnerabilities towards one who thought them monsters, but Bylestir was not given to untruths and he held a childish hope that if he could make the Odinson feel for them, then maybe he would be moved to demand the Casket returned to its rightful place.

"There are things you must learn before you stand before Laufey-King and choose your guide. You are little liked and less trusted, you would be wise to choose a lower standing Jotnar, though Laufey-King can refuse you none but himself or a dam heavy with child. You may choose myself, if you wish, but I do not recommend that you request my brothers. Helblindi harbours great anger toward the Aesir, and Loki is a Fýri, so unpredictable."

There were no magic users on Jotunhem. That much Thor knew, as it made strategy against them that much easier. To hear that one of Laufey's get could have the ability to use and tap into seidr made Thor immediately suspicious. Had these being been lying to the All-Father all this time? Could this be all a ruse? But why then would this giant willingly tell him?

Thor was not the smartest man in the Nine Realms, but he was more prideful and childish than he was openly idiotic. He gave Bylestir a glance upwards but fell into silence as they were permitted into the keep itself.

For the moment, word of the casket (stolen, ha!) fell upon deaf ears.

Thor was not used to being so dwarfed and he strode as largely as he could to the chamber where he was to meet the King and choose a companion. He was not at all prepared to see what the hall of a demon king might look like...nor how similar it might be to his father's own throne room. There were many smears in his direction, many curious red eyes. But Thor kept his own facing forward and scowled at the monster on the throne.

"I am Thor, son of Odin All-Father, come in peace and penance but not out of desire to be here. Tell me at once what I must do to leave this place!" Deaf ears indeed.

Laufey-King was twice the size of Bylestir, a towering craggy figure that seemed like he would dwarf a mountain. Unlike Odin's throne room of gold and beauty, Laufey's was ice and austerity, his only clothing the kilt that adult Jotnar war that left his chest bare, and a torque around his neck to denote his station. His red eyes gleamed, and his voice was dry.

"You have those answers already. To send you from my realm is not in my control, the All-Father has chosen to exert his will upon my people again by having you here, your stay is in your hands alone. All I care for is that your presence does not upset my people, and you do not cause war with your idiocy."

From behind the throne two more figures stepped; one of a size with Laufey himself, though slightly more slender and with a scar running along his face. The other was only Thor's size, lithe and slender, though he bore the Kyn lines of his two brothers.

"So you will take a guide to force you to temperance while you remain here. You may choose any you wish, but know that you must heed their word as law."

"The only law is that of my father," Thor said stubbornly, raising his voice to be heard in the cavernous great hall. There were murmurs that sounded like ice flows ebbing and flowing, like snows tumbling down a mountain. Thor attempted to stand his ground, his hands morphing to fists. He did so want to fight but he could not. A touch here would kill him, of that he so keenly was aware.

He no longer had the protection and might of Mjolnir and his father had stripped nearly all of his being from him. Thor's breath came out in icy bursts as the massive king stared at his subjugator's child. "And your father's law demands this as us as much as of you. Choose."

Thor turned slowly, surveying what seemed to be all living Jotnar, young and old. He could not tell one apart from another (save for the runt of course), but he decided he would be hornery and go completely against virtue and reason and kindness shown to him by Bylestir.

"I choose Loki," Thor said loudly, the one Jotnar he was not meant to chose at all.

A ripple of noise swept across the room at the temerity of the Aesir. Did he know what he had asked, to be given one of the precious few seidr users as a guide? Was this a calculated move, a way of saying this his worth was so great that he demanded such a thing for a simple guide? Half expected Laufey-King to refuse, but he was bound by the guestrite, something that the Jotnar adhered to far more closely than most other realms.

Jaw tight, he gestured a massive hand and the runt stepped forward and further into the light, revealing that he was different from his brethren in more than just size. Where they all wore simple leather kilts, Loki wore one with silver thread woven across it in delicate embroidery, and several jewelled bangles on his arms. He also had hair, where most Jotnar were bald, long black hair that was plaited into intricate braids down his back.

He grinned, a grin of amusement and triumph, as he came to stand in front of the Aesir.

"I am Loki Laufeybarn of Jotunheim, Odinson, and I believe your choice a wise one."

Bylestir groaned and covered his face with a hand, as if watching a big cat toying with prey that could not hope to escape now. Why had the Aesir prince chosen so foolishly?!

Thor, however, was pleased as well by his choice. Loki was still monstrous but he was also different from he rest and his choice seemed to upset the others. It was a wise choice, then, for Thor had not learned humility despite the shame he had forgotten that he felt over disappointing his father. Now there was just the curiosity of the ridiculously unworthy. Thor, as expected, started off this conversation on as bad a start as he had with Loki’s father.

“Call me Thor,” the idiot said jovially. “And tell me how is you’re so much smaller than the others? Am I again being had over?”

There was silence from the crowd. Utter silence. Thor, who had lifted his arms expecting laughs or jeers from these creatures, frowned, shoulders shrugging rather than dropping.

It was dangerous to insult one as Loki, not simply because he was of the Seidr but because he was least likely to listen to the decree of the king to bring Thor no harm. “Bilgesnipe have your icy tongues?”

Loki was delighted in this Aesir prince.

He was such a fool, like a dog in the skin of a man, and he was an embarrassment to the house of Odin. It would please him greatly to parade him around his homeland and humiliate him in every way that he could think of, while never overstepping the bounds of what he had been told to do by his dam.

He could almost feel Laufey-King beginning to stand, to answer this insult with angry words and a refusal, but he cut off the words before they could begin. His own tone was light and amused, as if Thor had said something as simple as a small child who had asked why the sky was up and the ground was down.

"I am smaller for the same reason that you have the same brains as a rutting cur, because our blood runs true and we are the true sons of our Houses."

He was a runt, a Seidr user, and the pride of the royal line. Thor was an idiot because he came from a line of idiots.

“Every second born is less a giant?” No, Thor did not understand the insult. Loki would have to be far more creative to shame the son of Odin. He had not truly lived before, he had never been exposed to nasty jests and insult was part of his friend-culture back at home. Fandral was very fond of poking fun at him and Thor had learned to laugh at himself. And to laugh at everything.

Because nothing in life for a boy destined to rule all was naught but fun and games, right?

He actually rather enjoyed being called a rutting cur, too. It was a different sort of slang than he was used to and he intended to use it back home to prove how he had grown culturally to Sif. She’s hit him. They’d fight. It would be a fantastic time had by all!

“And has hair? I like your shiny skirt though.” There were icy tinklings of gasps throughout the audience, but Thor’s steady blue eyes were filled with numbing delight at having found one creature here not so horrible as the rest.

"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.”

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