Trickster: Chapter 1

         My mind exploded as the axe buried itself into my shoulder.
         It was really quite painful.
         Luckily, my good arm still held tight to my sword. It swung in a perfect arc, splitting the drops of my blood still lingering in the air before splitting the skull of the warrior who spilled them. He fell immediately, of course, pulling his axe from my shouler in the process. Again with the pain.
         Behind me, I heard a grunt. Far off in the distance, I watched as five of the Vanir soldiers gained ground on the only one of my comrades left on the field. I hastily cut a strip from my prey's undershirt before starting over the bodies of the fallen toward my teammate.
         As I dashed through the carnage, the endless pools of crimson dotted with the colors of both armies, tinged red with blood, I wrapped the strip around my shoulder, perhaps a bit too tight, but good enough to hold in the bleeding. The working of the spell started with a few simple words, just enough to get it going before I went in fighting again.
         My comrade fought the opposition valiantly, his spear catching two of them at once through their middles in a macabre silouette of a roasting spit before the others split his spear in two.
         I caught up with them then, my sword making a clean break in the center of the leftmost soldier's neck. His head hit the ground with a soft thud as all three survivors turned to face me.
         My eye caught the one eye of my comrade's that was visible. The other half of his face was covered in a thick wrap, once white I guessed. The many lines on his face formed into a smile as he met my gaze with his grey eye, and I swear it twinkled before he let hell break loose.
         Catching the attention of the soldier on the right with the broken end of his spear, he thrust the other half up into the Vanir's chin, right through the top of his skull. The splatter of blood on my teeth finally broke my gaze just in time to dodge the swordfall of the remaining Vanir soldier.
         The soldier looked around himself, realizing the tables had turned on him. He was now the one outnumbered, fighting for his life against impossible odds. As I raised my sword to end him, however, he fell to his knees.
         "I surrender," he cried, his sword falling to the ground with a clatter. His face contorted in fear, in subjegation as he broke into tears.
         "I'm not one for pity," I told him as I arched my arms again high into the air. "I'm one for vengeance."
         Her name was Stjarna. She was a beauty beyond words, her yellow hair glowing like wheat interlaced with gold, her eyes the exact color of the emeralds embedded in the gates to Asgard, her laugh as clear as the night sky in May.
         We were to be married. She had made a dress with her mother. It was nearly complete, with only the goldenrod and heather blossoms that had yet to bloom to be sewn into the seams. She had loved heather. It adorned her hair all summer long, its purple blooms bringing a certain light to her eyes that made me shine.
         I never knew why she loved me. I had come to Aesirhold without a coin, without a trade, without even a name. Her father took me in, taught me to melt the metals of the mines for armor and weapons and cookware. He had taught me well, his strong hands as gentle as the hare, his deep voice as calm as the waters of Wyrd.
         I saw her first in the fields. I did not know then she was the daughter of my master. I knew only that she had a radiance that put the sun to shame. Her smile could have melted the iron in my hands just as easily as the flame I had set it in. Her father caught my stare, his laugh bellowing up from his gut like the bubbles of a thick stew.
         "Eyeing me daughter, are ye?" he had asked, the worried look in his eye betraying the humor in his voice.
         "Nae," I lied, looking around to her companions for a scapegoat. They all paled in the shadow of her.
         "Aye ye are," he accused, the humor finally infecting his eyes. "She's a right good lass, that one. Pure as the dawn she is, an' finer than any wine ye'll find in Asgard. I give ye me blessing if ye can manage to catch her eye."
         That was all the permission I would need.
         I began her present that day, a silver feather made of all but two pence of my month's wages melted into the finest trinket I could imagine. Melting down the two pence left over, I fashioned a pin to fasten it to her gown.
         When I presented it to her the following month, her eyes melted to tears of thanks. "Never has anyone given to me a gift so beautiful," she had told me. "Never has anyone bothered to focus such toil and strength into a thing so delicate." I couldn't believe her, of course. Surely she had suitors lining up for horizons on end to have a chance at her hand. With beauty such as hers, I couldn't imagine I would have actually stood a chance.
         I ate with the family for the first time the next night. My master had not imagined I'd have actually taken him up on the offer, I a humble smith's apprentice, and she the pride of the world. He seemed pleased, though, that I had managed such an impossible task, and he marvelled at the brooch I had fashioned using his forge.
         "The texture's amazing," he wiled, brushing the delicate strands with his calloused fingers. "Such detail. Such beauty." His eyes widened when he felt the emotion imbued directly into the metal, my longing radiating from my toil. Perhaps it was some accidental magick, maybe just the very strength of my heart focusing every bit of itself into the trinket, but the effect was the same. He was heartened.
         But it wasn't to last.
         Maybe we were naïve to live so close to the walls. Maybe we had just run out of luck. Either way, the result was the same: disaster.
         The war, raging for years in the heartlands of Vanaheim, had spilled over into Asgard. It happened without notice, no warning. We went to bed that night happy and hearty, laughing about the possibilities of our children, how they'd be either gorgeous like her and smart like me, or they'd be gorgeous like me and smart like her.
         But we didn't wake to the morning light. We woke to the Wall of Asgard falling around us. The war had destroyed the town, set fire to our homes, our livelihood, our happiness. I guarded her with my life, crying along with her as her father fell beneath the falling stone, crushed and never to be seen again. We fled to the south, toward the safety of Valhalla, where the soldiers of Odin would protect us from the death that we'd left behind.
         Her mother and sister were cut down by Vanir soldiers, innocent women with no guilt at all in the eyes of the enlightened. She fell, the grief breaking her snow-pure heart to splinters too small to ever put back together. I held her, dragging her along with me as I ran to anywhere, my own heart quickly falling apart as I tried to block out her agonized wails of mourning.
         Then it happened. I fell. I faltered, leaving her behind me only half a step. The arrow came from above somewhere, undetectable in the darkness of the night. I realized it before she did, her own grief too sharp for her to feel any more pain. It protruded from her at the exact center of her chest, just to the right of her heart, and it dripped her innocent blood onto her grass-stained white dress. Her brooch fell into the grass in front of her, torn from her dress.
         I screamed my agony, the falling tears bringing me back to this moment in time, where I watched the soldier's head fall onto the ruined body of his friends, making no sound over my screams.
         My own comrade stood in either fear or awe of my madness for several long moments, unaware of the memories that had just played over in my mind before he found the ability to speak. "I suppose ye didn't like him?"
         My rage subsided to laughter, completely uncalled for under the circumstances, of course, but inescapable under the same circumstances. I sobered a bit as I attempted to clean my blade on a somewhat unstained section of a dead soldier's exposed undershirt. The desired effect wasn't quite achieved, but I suppose it got close enough. Sheathing my weapon, I stood back up to face the battle's only other survivor.
         His robe was a dark brownish purple shade, so deeply stained it was impossible to tell its original color. He stood tall and proud, as should a victorious warrior. He held the remnants of his spear in his hardened hands, brushing the carnage from his war-worn face, missing the pieces that stuck in his coarse beard. I wasn't entirely sure his hair was actually red or if it had just been stained that color by the blood of the battle.
         His silver eyes shone with a hint of familiarity, though I couldn't place where I'd seen him. Those eyes had seen many deaths on the field of battle. Nearly as many deaths as my own eyes had witnessed, I imagined.
         "Why do your eyes do that?" he asked into the silence.
         I averted my eyes, well aware of that which he spoke. I felt the blood rush to my face, knowing it colored my eyes with tiny pinkish bursts. "They've always done so," I lied. "I cannot be certain why." Vicious lies they were. I knew well why my eyes changed, but I did not owe this man any explanation.
         He took my word, the knowledge of its falsehood apparent in his gaze, but he didn't question it further. It was good that he knew his place. Too many people let curiosity take the reigns, and I found that annoying. So a man who knew when to shut up about it was a good man in my book.
         I began my trek back to camp, my gaze shifting from the man who had survived the battlefield with me toward the eastern horizon. My comrade caught up with me after only a few bodies, a look of determination apparently getting the better of him.
         "Heading home, are ye?" he asked, his eyes focusing on the horizon along with mine.
         "Nae," I told him, not bothering to shift my gaze. "Vanaheim."
         He stopped for a moment, taken aback by my casual tone. "Ye cannot just walk into Vanaheim," he finally objected, hurrying to meet my strides. "It's a death trap for us."
         I stopped then, turning to face the hulk of a man who just helped me clear nearly a thousand warriors. "I've revenge to exact," I told him, my voice low. "They've taken a life from me. A pure life that need'nt be taken. A life the Aesir themselves would've died to protect. The debt they owe is too great to ever pay with less than their souls."
         His eyes flashed for a moment at the mention of the Aesir, realization of my love blossoming in his head. "Ye loved her."
         It wasn't a question, I noticed, but a confirmation, so I didn't bother to answer. Turning back to the east, I continued my walk toward Vanaheim, the Vanir Lords and Ladies themselves the object of my hatred.
         "Well, if ye plan to die," he pressed, "at the least, ye could tell me your name."
         I could have told him my name was Loptr. My family had called me that since birth. 'Lofty One,' it meant. I preferred the term 'ambitious,' but whatever. I could have told him my name was Laufeyjarson. The sages and witches I'd learned from over the years had called me by that name, associating me with my mother's legendary magick as if I weren't a person of my own making. I could have told him my name was Rauðr, Stjarna's affectionate name for my reddish hair she loved to brush each night. Or Balli, her father's name for the boldness that had brought us together in the start.
         Of all the names and titles and badges I'd gained through the years, I had outgrown them all. The creature created by Stjarna's death was dark beyond what I could have imagined coming into this. I had become a monster, a beast, a bloodthirsty demon with nothing left to keep me living except revenge.
         I'd become the Endbringer.
         "Loki," I told him, smiling at the ring of it in my ears. "My name is Loki."


-(-(-(-)-)-)-


         I wasn't entirely sure exactly where I had gotten myself to, though I was sure it was part of Vanaheim. The silver thatch of the roofs proved as much, standing in light contrast to the golden lids of Asgard's own palaces.
         A palpable scent of heartache permeated the air, the legendarily kind-hearted people of the kingdom theoretically regretting their place in the War. Unlike the Asgardians, the Vanir wasn't used to living with war, a fact made clear by looking around myself.
         They had sent their best out to the battlefields, leaving an unsuitable company to guard the treasure of their royal city. I had cut them down quickly and easily. They didn't even know to signal my presence to the city.
         Here I thought I'd face a challenge.
         As I walked, confident and bloody, toward the first palace I saw, I noticed only a few men, all young and herding their women and children into their homes, as if I'd attack them. They needn't have worried. I bid them no ill will, as they'd done me no wrong.
         As I approached the enormous silver door, its owner's servant guards scurried. Some guards, I thought, pressing my miraculously soft fingers to the intricate etchings in the door to realize the guards were just decoration. The huge doors themselves were capable of keeping out intruders.
         Someone had spelled them.
         The magick was powerful, having been imbued directly into the carvings, such that any other than those who knew its secrets could not enter. Unfortunately, I was one such person, unenlightened to the key.
         Of course, I had enlightened myself in many other ways, the primitive witchcraft used to seal this door in no way hindering my own more powerful magick. I touched my fingers to the etching, feeling for the telltale vibrations to reveal its maker's spirit to me.
         My mind's eye opened to the sight of woman whose beauty almost rivaled Stjarna, anger, sorrow, and fear clouding her eyes in the vision.
         Sýr, my mind whispered. Goddess. Witch.
         I watched as she worked the spell, etching her spell into the silver as golden tears dripped from her cheeks. I felt her palpable sorrow, the loss of her young son prompting her passionate magick. She swirled her tears into the metal, the gold leaving sparkling trails along the lines her fingers traced, the base charring the silver with its bitterness.
         I cared little for her feelings, my own losses outshining hers by legions. Instead, I focused on her touch.
         Soft fingers brushed the silver in a pattern, slowly becoming more and more predictable. In minutes, I felt the next movement before she made it, and I had seen all I needed to see.
         Returning to the present, my fingers traced the pattern I had envisioned, sweeping wide, then narrow, up, then left, intricate, then vague. The metal stirred under my touch, a crack making itself visible on the dead center of the door before deepening, deepening, reaching, impossibly far into the metal. Finally, a shaft of pinkish light broke through the crack.
         The heavy doors swung open surprisingly easily, stopping only after pounding against the walls, sending a shiver of fear through the palace itself.
         "They should run," the high stone walls echoed, my whispers bouncing between them with malice. "If they've anywhere to run."



NOTE: This is a work in progress, and is lacking in many areas, but I'm not really sure where. The biggest problem I am facing at the moment is this: Loki can't kill Sýr (as she becomes Freya/Frigg/Mardöll later on). Something has to stop him, because his actions don't end the war. The War of the Gods ends with a treaty and an exchange of leaders, so Loki can't do anything too drastic, but his actions also have to fall in line with the situation he's in. I've kind of worked myself into a hole here, I realize, but I feel like this scene is necessary to explain some later developments. HELP! Please. lol