Chapter Text
His howls sounded like a wounded animal. The blood was pumping in my ears and yet those screams rang through, their pitch carrying through the solid brick walls. They felt so close. No matter which way I turned, the cries sounded like they were coming from right beside me and it set my teeth on edge.
Have to find him. It was the only coherent thought my brain could manage, a sentence repeated over and over almost as jarring as his cries.
Rounding a corner into another dead end, I smashed my fist into the offending wall in frustration. My knuckles came away bloody and already bruising. The punch had left me with déjà vu of the right hook I had thrown earlier, that one had hurt, even though it had just sailed straight through the smokey form of our captors, and the memory of the pain caused me to brace for another wave of it, but it was lost in my body, the rest of my mind a mash of adrenaline filled panic.
His cries were worse now.
Our captors had promised his demise.
The wails that echoed around me were overwhelming and I had to fight the urge to collapse and hug my knees to my chest. I forced myself to turn back and keep running.
Have to keep moving. Have to find him.
It was a sound I had heard before. A child’s scream, the kind that tells you something is very wrong. The kind that hurts to hear. That fills you with panic. I had never heard him sound like this in all these months of exploration.
I ran clean past the door. It took several seconds to process that what I had seen had been real and not another hallucination courtesy of our gracious captors. Making my way back, I stared at the door, hesitating for just a moment. Why did I feel like I had heard these particular screams before? The cries were the loudest they'd ever been, and a moment of clarity hit me. It sounded just like when my younger brother had broken both his ankles falling from the tree in our backyard. It was almost eerie.
Another cry washed the thought from me, and I desperately tried the handle, and when it wouldn't budge I smashed against the wood with my shoulder, and then again, and again, but the heavy wood didn’t even rattle, when suddenly -
On the fourth try it swung open violently and I fell through, my hands and knees screaming from their impact with the concrete. The door shut behind me with a loud crack.
It was silent. The cries had gone quiet, everything had gone quiet, not even a creak or moan from the old building around me. I couldn't bring myself to look up. To see the empty room around me. To know for certain that I had been tricked again. Loki wasn't here. He was probably never here. The wails… They'd pulled them straight from my mind, from my memory of my brother’s injuries when we were kids. How had I missed that?
I didn't want to cry but the hot tears blinded me. They stung as they built and I made no effort to wipe them away. What was the point? Who knows where they'd been holding him but it wasn't here. I had been alone the whole time. Sobs wracked my body, and I felt as though someone had pushed a hot poker through my chest. I was never getting out of here.
A memory was pulled from my mind with such precision that I knew it was the work of our captors.
The tavern that Loki and I had visited for dinner a week into this quest. The atmosphere was lively but the food was bad, and tensions were high because the mission was going much slower than anticipated. I’d made a remark about a new lead that I was thinking of looking into, and Loki, who had been silent for the majority of the evening beyond snippy one liners, finally met my eyes.
“Foolish human.” The memory captured his sneer perfectly. “Don’t you ever get tired of wild goose chases endowed to you by more important people?”
“The more time I spend with you the more I question the nickname ‘Silvertongue’.” I’d rolled my eyes and buried my face into the glass of foamy alcohol in front of me. I had to remind myself that it was just a memory, but even now as my captors forced me to relive it I swore I could taste it.
“I will have you know that I am very talented with my tongue.”
The magic had leapt from my fingertips before I could even think of the command. A wave of purple energy that wrapped around his throat and roughly pushed him back against the booth, restraining him. For only a moment a look of surprise tugged at his green eyes, but then he cracked the first smile I’d seen since I’d met him the week before. No one around us even noticed. He was quickly released from my hold and I’d drained the rest of my drink.
It was almost full circle to have that memory played again. “Foolish human.” Loki was right. I was a fool. They’d tricked me so many times, but I’d ran through their maze looking for him. Played their games.
Suddenly my hands clamped to my sides like invisible ropes had snapped around me and I was lifted into the air, my feet scrambling for purchase. The voice, their voice rang in my head, like nails on a chalkboard. They were laughing at me. Laughing. I was surprised that I still had the room for the rage that flooded me.
“See…” Their voices made my head ache, but I had no choice but to listen. “ Look at herrrrr…”
I tried to call out, to tell those serpentine voices to fuck off but my voice was stuck in my throat. They continued to talk amongst themselves, and I realised that the bastards weren't even talking to me. They were in my head, chatting like it was nothing and they weren't even talking to me. I meant nothing to them. I was just a toy placed in this godforsaken place for their entertainment.
“She'ssss ssso angry… Magnificcccent.” There was an obvious back-and-forth to their conversation, like they were talking to someone else, someone not in my mind. Someone I couldn’t hear.
I wanted to kill them, to turn these smoke monsters into a solid being just so I could plunge my weapons into the soft parts of them. If I could regain the magic they had stolen from me, I could make it so much worse for them, prolong it until I felt satiated.
“Ssssssee Loki…” His name rang in my head like the sound of metal on metal. “ If you insissst on playing games with usssss… We will play gamessssss with you.”
There wasn't enough time to comprehend what was going on before I was thrown hard at the wall and the blackness overtook me.