fossilised | Jotunheimr

"For travel, I would rather fly. One day I shall take you with me when I reclaim Mjolnir. It is a ride like no other." Thor rose back to his feet, the tight packed snow not even bothering to cling to his knee. It took a moment more for him to drop Loki's hand, not because he was finding it difficult to let go, but because he did not think to do it. He did, however, kiss the knuckles first. The magic left to him protected his skin but his lips still burned from the ice for several long moments.

There was a magnetism there, but Thor wondered if that was just his mind. Loki's deep red eyes were impossible to see anything but mirth in and so it was all likely in his own head.

"How do you propose to fly us to Utgard?"

Loki felt his seidr resonate with Thor, but he imagined that it was just a reaction to the great power that Thor held within his skin and pretended that he did not. He was the storm incarnate, he could almost taste the lightning whenever Thor looked at him, and it bothered him that such a power was fettered.

Oh, what he could do with that.

He raised his eyebrows when Thor kissed his knuckles and then took a step back. He was engulfed in green for a long moment before a hawk stood where Loki had been. But this was no ordinary hawk, this was a gryfhawk, of the type seen in Jotunheim's mountain range, with a wingspan of fifty feet and a body almost as large as Thor himself.

Loki cawed and offered one large-taloned foot, an offer to carry Thor and fly, as promised.

To say that there was surprise in Thor's eyes would be akin to saying that the air here was somewhat chilled. There would be no way to overstate the shock on the Asgardian's face, though it was replaced with an admirable nod of the head. "There are few true shape shifters left on Asgard." Likely because it was difficult to trust those that could not hold shape and the Aesir had some mighty trust issues, that was for certain.

Without regard to understanding that the gryfhawk was still Loki, Thor brushed a hand over it's feathered head and across one outstretched wing. The chill of Loki's skin was gone for this creature did not have the ability to harm him from touch alone and so there was nothing for the magic gifting him ability to live here comfortably to work with.

He was full of mirth to become astride the great bird and he shouted joyously when Loki took off, both arms raised. The idiot.

Then again, the prince was no stranger of riding and his muscular thighs allowed him to easily stay where he was on the back of the Prince.

Urgh, Thor was heavy.

Loki was strong as a gryfhawk, but he was still not particularly well suited for having a full grown and well muscled Aesir on his back. He had hunted once or twice in this form, but he usually ate the kill where he swooped down on it, he had never flown with this added weight and so he was less graceful than he usually would be.

He was careful, though, not to let it show too much and landed with as much elegance as he possibly could when it finally got too much to keep flying. It would be a couple of days to get to Utgard, and he might not be able to fly the whole way.

"Tell me, Odinson," he said when he turned back into his Jotnar form, rolling his shoulders wearily. "Do all Aesir men weigh as much as a bull bilgesnipe?"

“Aye, those of any worth,” Thor said with a grin as he immediately started to set up camp. He had felt halfway through the flight that day that Loki had been having trouble with his weight and he had ceased making sharp movements to avoid disaster. Truth be told, he did not know his weight compared to beasts nor did he know his weight compared to others of his ilk. Volstagg weighed much more. Hogun, far less. But this would save Loki some pride. Thor did not suddenly grow in his own arrogance, however. He merely offered an out to a friend as he might have done to any of the Warriors Three...

With some ribbing.

“To think a giant can not carry even one Aesir... and I have not eaten as well as I might have, fearing to present myself to be all the more succulent for your appetite. But this will do. You saved us many hours. The stars have all gone to bed and now is a good time to rest.” Camp was a bedroll for Thor. Fire was not something he thought he could produce here. The Jotnar cooked, somehow, though perhaps with boiling water or with magic. Thor hadn’t rung all of the mysteries from Loki’s younger sibling.

"I can carry you."

For once it was Thor that got the better of the verbal sparring in this case, for Loki could not bear to be thought of as lesser to the other Giants who, as Thor noted, would not have any problem with carrying him. He might be smaller and slighter, but he would damn well prove himself ot be just as good as them.

"Tomorrow I will take a different form, a direwolf perhaps, your weight will be easier to bear on four paws than two wings."

He flopped down in the snow and pulled out two sticks from his pack, which he handed out to Thor with a small smile and some stinking bloody meat.

"Then make yourself more succulent, I have a hunger and you must sate it."

“You must make yourself as large of a direwolf as possible then,” Thor said, accepting the sticks with great ease and using them to start a fire once he’s dug his heel into the hard ground to form a pit. “My weight will only increase if you are determined to let me fatten up.”

He missed the innuendo this time, joking more on Loki’s potential desire to devour him literally instead of while he reposed in his furs. A few rubs of the sticks caused the fire to crackle large and the thick ice proved that it would not be melting anytime soon, not even with such a strong heat. The crackle of meat made the fire even more cozy and Thor sat in close to it to warm his bones and watch the marbling on dinner sizzle.

“Tell me a story. A good one. Your brother claimed you tell them best and I’d like to hear for myself the lengths your silver tongue might go.”

"I thought you were too chaste to see the true lengths my silver tongue might go."

He grinned, sudden and bright and wicked, before he reclined to watch the fire. He wasn't keen on the heat, not Jotnar were, but they knew that it was necessary sometimes in order to do things like cook or heat the water for bathing injuries.

"But I suppose that I can tell you a story."

He sat up straighter. Even if he had an audience of one, even if it was an Aesir, he would never disgrace himself by not telling the best story that he could. His voice was low and enchanting, illusions and lights danced around him as he spoke, illustrating the tale in shadows around them both.

"Once there was a Eisbar who lived in the great fjords in the North of the realm, she was a youngling and thought on nothing more than love. She had such notions of what true love meant, that she would find a mate who would warm her as they slept at night and help her bring cubs to the world. They would be happy and frolic, they would fish and hunt and live in happiness. Her mother tried to warn her that the Heart of the Realm had been taken, the ice was slowly melting, and there would be hard times ahead. But she believed that if she had love, she would be able to find any hard times.

Time passed and she grew, and she eventually found a mate. He was not all that she dreamed, he was coarser and had less humour, but he cuddled up to her at night and she could overcome some imperfections for the sake of love. He gave her cubs, small white bundles of fur that nipped at her flesh when she tired and were so helpless. Her attention became so focused on them that her mate left and did not return. She cried for him, but she had her cubs to love now. They would be happy, and so would she, and her life would still be good.

Her mother had not been wrong, though, and the ice melted more each year. There were less things to hunt, less plants to dig for through the snow, and her children cried for hunger. Weeks passed and she caught only one fish, not enough to feed both her and her cubs, and that was when she learned the true nature of love.

The cubs ate the fish and, when they cuddled up to the warmth of their mother's fur, they wondered why she was so still. They wondered the same the next day and the next, for she never moved again. She was right that her life was for love, she had just not known as a cub herself that this was what it would mean."

The stories on Asgard were proud and of great warriors and overcoming hardships. The stories on Jotunheim had a different song to play and an underlying sadness that touched even the Thunderer. He listened with a rapt smile upon his face until the horror of the ending make itself clear. the story of sacrifice, or of what love may well cause another to do, was much darker than any Thor had heard before.

There was a rumble overhead. A snap of electricity that Thor himself did not notice. His mood brought forth the promise of a storm, as it had done when he was a child, but his conscious mind shifted from tales of sorrow to the dinner at hand

“We will not have to risk choosing which of us will live. There is enough for all,” Thor said, mostly to shake the discomfort he felt.

He slept and rose and rode Loki. He listened to more stories by fire light and became ingratiated by the innuendo Loki tossed his way. He nearly thought, once, of asking Loki to his furs but he was already cold and the Jotnar would chill him. Besides. It would be a sin to bed him, would it not? Neither side would understand.

Come morning, four days after the tale of the Eisbar, they happened upon Utgard, high on a snowy ridge to overlook what even Thor could see had once been a beautiful, sprawling metropolis.

Now? Now there was evidence of war everywhere, a thousand years later. The snow was black. The buildings were rubble. The Jotun living in the valley were broken.

And the true, terrible meaning of the story he had begged to be told was clear.

“The mother died for love. And her cubs? They died because there was none left to love them. Is that what happened here?” Black hail pelted their shoulders. Thor could not hold ihis sorrow back.

Loki had felt the weather change at the end of his story and it had thrilled him in a way that little else had. There was a terrible and amazing power beneath Thor's skin and he so wanted to ride the storm and harness it. He very nearly jumped Thor right then and there, electrified and delighted, but he held himself back. It was obvious that the aptly named Thunderer did not know what he did and he needed to approach this carefully.

He felt that power again when hail rained down on him outside Utgard, filthy black and sticking to their clothes and skin to turn even his cobalt blue skin a shadow of its former self.

"That is what is happening to the whole realm."

For once, for impact, his voice was not lilting or mocking. This was plain and simple truth, the suffering of his people.

"Eventually this blackness will cover the whole of Jotunheim, and all will be dead. The Heart of our home has been taken and we have no power to get it back, this is no subjugation, this is a millennia long execution. A genocide."

"The Casket of Ancient Winters. The spoils my father took to join the trophies in our armory." See? Thor listened sometimes. He could put things together in his head from time to time too. He was not entirely dull and he was even less heartless than the Jotun had initially seen him as. What he showed Loki now was not his power, though the ash of death and ruin turned his golden hair to a horrible sooty grey.

Without warning, though if one had a good read of the situation, this was inevitable, Thor took off down the hill, sliding across the dirty snow.

He didn't know what he would do down there, he didn't know how he could help the broken, or what they might do to see an Aesir here of all places, but his reasoning was morally sound. The idiot. He wanted to help. And he'd end up killed for it.

"Thor!!"

Loki shouted after the fool, but the foul wind whipped his words away. This was an act of supreme idiocy, the Jotnar who still lived in Utgard, tied to the land with twisted bodies and futile hope, would not hesitate to slaughter him... if they got the courage to do so.

The first thing that Thor would find when he got down there was a child; young, obviously, for he was only about as tall as Thor himself. He stared into blue eyes and screamed, terror stark on his face as he fled.

"SOUND THE ALARMS! THE AESIR HAVE RETURNED TO SLAUGHTER US ALL!"

“No— No, I have come to assist you—“ But Utgard has not been privy to the command of their king and even if they had, they would have still acted out of fear. There are almost none left that remembered the war but all alive now knew the aftermath. The Aesir were the demons to steal their get and destroy them all. The Aesir had come for their final reckoning.

Blood red eyes peered at him from the darkness as the hail storm ceased. He found himself surrounded by bent and misshapen Jotun, all of whom had turned their arms into icy spears with his death in mind.

Thor stood, jaw set and hands at his sides.

“I am Thor Odinson. I am Prince of Asgard. I am heir to the throne. I come unarmed. I come without guise. I come without my people. I am here to listen to you. To see you. To help you!”

A child threw a rock at him and blood burst from his skull to pour down his face as an adult raged at him in ice and horror. “Do you have the Casket? No? Then you are no help false prince!”

This would not do.

Loki had been to Utgard before. As one of the only Fyri left, he came each year to offer what healing and aid he could, and his father often sent gifts of food and clothing. None of Jotunheim were ever forgotten, so at least his face should be known as he scrambled down the snowdrifts to stand beside Thor and hold his hand out imperiously.

"Stop. I say stop, do not defy me. This Aesir is not here as our enemy, and should you kill him then you will invite Odin Kynkiller back into our midst." Probably not a name that Thor had heard for his father before. "He is a fool and he is ignorant, but he does not mean harm with his words. He is under my protection, harm against him, is harm against me, know this."

Thor’s heart already bled. A few more stabs would make no difference. He mostly tuned out any further exchanges anyway, his eyes focused on the very young that clung to their sires or to their dams, chips in the icy masses of their body as if they were malnourished or suffered disease.

Both, Thor thought to himself, his eyes growing darker. This was not something that should ever, ever happen to one of the Nine Realms. This suffering should have never been allowed to happen.

He set his hand on Loki’s bare shoulder, the cold of his skin sweeping through him, and lightly moved him aside so he could speak again. All attention, all hate and distrust, was on him.

“I will not allow this to continue. I will beseech the All-Father to return the heart of your Realm.”

“Lies,” one hissed, and more answered with a similar call.

“Call me liar if I fail, but not before I’ve tried,” Thor insisted, his grip on Loki tightening. “We must retrieve Mjolnir. And I must have counsel with Heimdall, guardian of the Bifrost.”

Loki stepped forward after Thor had moved him aside, ducking out from under that hand on his shoulder before the idiot could burn the flesh from his palm and ruin his hand for holding anything again, let alone the Star-Hammer. He moved gracefully forward to stand in front of one hulking giant and looked up at him without fear, voice low and slow and soft in the language of Ice.

"Be not afeared, I will take him far from here. Whether he lies or not, I will return as I always have when the solstice draws near and give aid to your barns. Let us go in peace now, I beseech you."

Loki tilted his head over his shoulder, red eyes commanding.

"Thor Odinson, turn around and walk back out the way you came. You are not welcome in this place, and we will speak when we are back outside its bounds."

They would speak when Loki caught up to Thor who evidently had decided to go across the great tundric planes of Jotunheim all on his own so that he could retrieve Mjolnir and seek his audience. He did not need Loki’s help in this and he knew his reasons to be right and just.

The children of this Realm were dying. It would have been less cruel to kill their parents and be done with it but it seemed as if Odin ‘Kynkiller’ wanted to draw it out and make it slow. To make it painful.

Thor has never hated anything as much as he did the actions of his father right now, for even if the rest of the story were lies told and Hela was nothing more than the rightful guardian of the dead, this was utterly unacceptable.

Luckily for Loki, he was a quick one, capable of taking flight, and overcoming the brooding prince would not be difficult.

It took Loki a while to settle the residents of Utgard to at least trust his word, as a Prince of the Realm, if not that of the Aesir. At least, in that, they had faith. He might be a trickster and a liar in many cases, but all knew that none of Laufey's Kyn would lie when lives were at stake.

Eventually, surprised at how far and fast Thor had managed to travel alone, the large gryfhawk landed before him and turned smoothly back into Loki, his embroidered kilt still soiled by the twisted wreckage of Utgard.

"Have you at least half the wit of the drunken donkey? I took you there to show you what had been wrought, not to have you make things worse. Did you not think that those who live there would never want to see another Aesir?! You absolutely arrogant and short-sighted moron."

“I was offering my assistance, why would I wish to put a suffering people through more suffering?!” Thor’s voice was a roar, proving another reason for his nickname. The ground did not shake and the lightning did not snake overhead but that was only because anger was the only emotion Thor truly had a handle on. He had been taught by Frigga to control his rages... but just barely. He turned to slam his fist into a tall standing stone and felt his knuckles bruise instantly.

The pain was intense, more than he thought it had reason to be, which made him angrier still.

“You brought me here specifically for a reason. And yet I am the fool?! What did you wish me to accomplish from high atop a hill?!”

"I wished you to see the truth of our history, and observe what the actions of the All-Father had led to, and then think on it. Surely you must be a mere babe in the eyes of Asgard still, because no child of royalty could ever be so selfish. I do not care what your impulse was, a King cannot act on impulse. What use will you be to your people if you cannot stop for even a moment and allow thought to form?"

Loki's rage was so much that he no longer cared to fetter his tongue for Odinson's sake. These were harsh truths that he felt needed to be said, because truly the Nine were in for pain if such a thing took the throne of the Realm Eternal.

"A King is not a strong arm, a King must think. He has warriors to fight for him, he has healers to give aid in his name, but he must always stand apart and think for the good of the realm. You would have been killed down there and what use would your wish for gifting assistance be then? None. Your actions would have brought about your death, and that would have brought the All-Father's wrath upon us. Because you did not think instead of acted, you might have brought death to all you claim to have wanted to help."

He spat directly in Thor's face, furious and passionate, eyes flashing and hair wild in the wind.

"You are no Prince, you are a mewling infant. And if you are allowed to take the throne, then all of the Nine Realms will suffer while you 'try to do good' without any notion of what would actually be good for them, and only what you believe good in your own heart."

It was not Loki’s desire to bait Thor, but there were ways in which the other was right and needed to hear what was being said to him. This was probably not the best way to go about it, but it could not be taken back now. Nor could Thor’s immediate gut reaction. To the spittle on his cheek, Thor raised his fist as if to strike Loki, teeth flashing white and angry.

He did not follow through, however, not because he was afraid what would happen if he gave Loki the initial go ahead to defend himself, but because he knew, immediately, that what was said to him was the truth.

Aching fist and aching pride, Thor wiped his face with his sleeve and fingers shift towards his palm and relax again.

“Do not again speak with me, Loki of Jotunheim. I am through with these lessons.”

"And there you prove yourself again unworthy."

Loki might be sorry about being so cutting later; not because his words weren't warranted or true, but because when people had taken the sharp wounds his tongue could give out, they seldom warmed to him after and he had possessed plans for the Odinson that were now likely useless.

"A worthy man, not even a King, listens to his faults and thanks the one who pointed them out so that he may work on them and fix them. Lessons are never through, not as long as breath is drawn. But by all means, have your injured silence."

The days were long. The nights were longer. Thor did not attempt to make Loki laugh. He did not ask for the fire to be made. He ate if he was given food and whenever Loki attempted to speak with him, Thor turned his shoulder away from the other.

Seven long days and nights followed and it was pure exhaustion that had Odom’s son breaking for camp with the Tower visible in the distance. He could not force himself to go the last few miles.

Thor made for a heavy shadow as he sat, Loki beside him or across from him or perched overhead, when greater shadows still trudged from the broken tree line.

Helblindi was by far the largest of the three Laufey barn and the Jotun that had come with him were not much smaller. He spoke the tongue of ice and snow to Loki alone, though his tone had Thor standing.

“We have heard all of that which happened at Utgard. It is time to put an end to Orin’s line.”

Loki did not attempt to speak to Thor at all. If he were fool enough to want his injured silence, believing himself the poor victim in this, then Loki would not try to speak to him. He was owed an apology from the Odinson and he intended to have it before he made overtures of friendship again, he had his own pride to satisfy of course.

He sighed when Helblindi and his companions, as though his brother were a child playing with fire rather than a dangerous warrior with seasoned fighters who were dedicated to their cause.

"If you do this, then you make yourself a traitor to Laufey-King, your Kyn, is that what you want? He has given guestrite to the Odinson, we have not the right to take his life unless that is rescinded. Even if it were rescinded, to spill his life's blood would only bring Odin's wrath down on us, and our whole realm will become as Utgard is now."

“We will use him, little gryfhawk, as bait and barter for that which is ours. Odin will come and your birthright will be returned to you. You will end them all with the Casket.” Helblindi was not as dumb as Loki gave him credit for. Killing Thor was one thing but Thor had brothers. Brothers that needed removal as well.

He was speaking to his brother in the wilderness away from their king because this was indeed treason. He could only hope that Loki would find the prospect more enticing than guarding a sullen prince who did not know how to even begin to rule.

“Think on this. You may well be the strongest fyri to be born to our world, my eldsibb. No other would be able to do what you will be able. We have waited since your birth for revenge. Finally we can have it.”

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