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The furniture had long since been destroyed, the books that Mother, Frigga, Mother had left him lying scattered on the floor. Loki didn’t know how long he’d raged, only that he no longer had the energy to continue. Slumped against the wall, two events kept replaying in his mind. His last conversation with his mother. And his only conversation with the creature who’d killed her.
You might want to take the stairs to the left.
It had been just another day, the endless monotony of his cell after Mother’s visit broken only by the arrival of a new bunch of prisoners. Until the creature in another cell somehow managed to break free. Loki hadn’t expected him to get far. Not with every guard in Asgard on high alert. But then he had begun breaking the other criminals out as well, smashing the barriers in front of each cell as if they were nothing. Each and every cell. Until he got to Loki’s.
Once the barrier was dispersed, Loki could have run. He knew the palace, knew every path. Knew how to avoid the incoming guards, how to sneak past them without resistance. He would have been blamed for the breakout, of course, forced to run for the rest of his life, but better that than millennia in the cell.
He would have been free.
But the creature had turned away. Had smirked at him. Had been one more in a long line of beings to look at him, Loki, and deem him unworthy of attention. The creature had freed every last prisoner of Asgard and yet chosen to leave Loki behind. Forgotten once again. And that, Loki could not allow.
You might want to take the stairs to the left.
Oh yes, Loki knew how to get out, how to best avoid the incoming guards. The path that would provide the least resistance, versus the path the guards would follow as they rushed to quell the breakout. Not that the creature would have been likely to escape either way. “Least resistance” was relative when Asgard’s might was roused. Still, one set of stairs would have allowed the creature to get … farther, anyway. The stairs to the right.
But he had been angry. Despite his seemingly calm demeanor, inside, Loki had raged. This creature thought it was safe to ignore him? Then Loki would see him pay the price. And so he offered his advice, sweet-sounding words that would see the creature tossed into a stronger cage within the hour.
Loki had been careless. He’d looked at the creature and seen just another brute, powerful, yes, but far from intelligent. He’d assumed the creature would take his advice without considering why he was offering it.
He’d been wrong. The creature had smirked one last time before taking the safer path. No dumb brute after all, he’d known better than to trust Loki’s suggestion. For a moment the rage had nearly consumed him at the thought that he, Loki Silvertongue, had just been tricked. But he quelled it with the reminder that the creature certainly wouldn’t get far. Unless he knew the secret paths between worlds, (and oh, dumb brute or not, that was hardly likely), he would have no way out of Asgard. Loki had sat back, watched the fighting, and smiled. Surely his new friend would be returned before the day was out.
Then the dungeons had shuddered, and the guards had started shouting about an invasion, an invasion of Asgard, who would be stupid enough to try such a thing? Then the shields had failed. At least, according to the guards.
Loki still couldn’t understand that. The stairs to the right were safer specifically because they led nowhere in particular. If the creature had been responsible for the failing shields, as the guards seemed to believe, how had he gotten there? The mechanism was nowhere near the prisons, nowhere near the creature’s path. Had he threatened a guard into revealing the information? Somehow been made aware of the location before his arrival? How had he gotten there?
It didn’t matter. Whatever means he’d used to find the mechanism that controlled the shields, his next stop had been the palace. Had been where Mother was, with no one there to protect her. Odin and Thor had been busy with other matters. Loki himself had still been locked in his cell. And oh, how that burned.
You might want to take the stairs to the left.
Would things have been different, if he had not spoken? Would the creature have chosen the same path, have gotten so far, have done so much damage, if Loki Liesmith had for once in his life been silent?
He didn’t know.