Chapter Text
The fifth moon of Jotunheimr shines a soft green light over the landscape, and he comes into being. The gentle Mother is dead, the seventh king’s reign ended. Now Jotunheimr has a new king, the eighth ruler, and so a new presence has been born. It is the beginning of a new age.
As he comes across villages and markets and travelling squadrons, it is clear that he does not look like them, these big and blue people. The Jotnar.
He is a jotun, though his size and features may as well have been of the dreaded Aesir. His skin is blue and his eyes are red, but he possesses no claws and no fangs, no proud warlines on his body. Smooth skin, white hair, small stature, a strange-looking runt who wanders the wasteland.
….
There is a war between the states, a common enough occurrence. Lord Thrym of Glæsisvellir fights the Jotun Menglad at Vimur River, and the water is painted bluer with Jotun blood. He walks over corpses and fallen weapons as the second moon of Jotunheimr shines golden over dirty snow, and is grabbed by some Jotun warriors under Thrym’s lordship. They’re all taller than he, but they marvel at the sight of such a foreign thing.
They take him to Thrym, and after some consideration, the fearsome Lord decides he will present his find to the new king as a show of goodwill. Jotunheimr has become weak after the last war with Asgard, but any Jotun with a good head on his shoulders can see that the new king will bring great change upon the land. Better to be in his good grace from the beginning.
At that, they throw him into an ice-cage, and set off towards Utgard. He eats when given food, and sleeps much during the journey. When awake, he spends time looking at the ice beasts; they are most peculiar.
….
The palace’s throne room is large, and very beautiful. It is not a deliberate kind of beauty, but rather sturdy and hard. Huge columns of ice support the transparent ceiling, forming two straight lines, reflecting light from suspended shining crystals. The sky is dark as it always is in Jotunheimr.
At the end of the room sits the eighth winterking on his ice throne, and he listens to Thrym’s servant announcing his gift, who has been let out of the ice-cage to stand forlornly by his own. The king’s eyes don’t leave him, for this strange creature emits the same magic that surrounds Jotunheimr. Like a soft and warm hum drifting through the perpetually cold wind.
“I thank Lord Thrym for his gift,” Loki tells the servant, “it is most gracious of him.” As is the custom, he waves the Jotun away to receive a returning boon.
The small white-haired Jotun has his undivided attention as he walks to stand in front of the thing. They are easily two heads apart, so he lifts the other’s chin up to look at his face.
“Have you a name, little thing?” The smooth blue skin under his hand is not cold to the touch, but not warm either. How curious. And the thing has no warlines presenting his heritage either.
“I have no name, King.” Round red eyes look up at him, painting a picture of subtle innocence, “if it pleases you, you can give me one.”
Tempting, and bold. To think he can give the king permission to do anything. But Loki is not in the mood to find fault, so he will let this one slip.
“Anton, then,” a fitting name for his gift, “Why do you feel like the magic of Jotunheimr?” It is indeed an odd occurrence.
“My Mother is dead, so now it’s my turn to exist as one with the land.” Small hands find the king’s face, “because of you, I think. A new age, a new king, a new presentation.”
….
Loki has heard of this from Laufey. It is a secret not meant to be recorded, only passed down from king to king. Jotunheimr always has a personification, someone whose life is tied to the land, whose health reflects the citizens’ hearts.The place has been crippled for too long, and so the last representative died, leaving her small son to take her place.
Loki is possessive by nature, and Jotunheimr is his, so Anton will also belong to him. This secret he will keep, for himself.
….
The servants working in the palace have become familiar with the sight of this small Jotun who their king calls Anton. He is not a servant, or a concubine; his majesty hasn’t given him a title either. Anton just wanders the halls and castle grounds, sometimes helping the servants, sometimes reading a book he takes from the royal library. He is very quiet, even as he speaks, but he would smile brightly at their king as they have a meal together.
What startles them is that the king would smile back at Anton.
You see, the eighth ruler of this land is not cruel, like Laufey has been, but he is ruthless and firm. His orders should always be carried out with precision, his words the absolute law. And it works, for this has been the best decade the Jotnar has seen after the war. Trading with other realms is reestablished, shelters and strongholds rebuilt, nourishment bountiful and rebellions crushed.
What the king has in common with his late begetter, king Laufey, is their cold countenance. They do not smile often, rarely speak without necessity, and prefer silence to company.
….
One day when the sky is not so dark, Loki takes Anton to a branch of Ifing, the main river that runs through Utgard. He has always found rivers to be fascinating, how they refuse to freeze in this cold land. He helps the smaller get down from the ice beast they rode here on, and Anton goes to kneel on the bank, hands cupping up water.
Loki thinks it may be a blessing ritual, as the smaller Jotun places a kiss to the water in his hands, then lets it drip down to the river again. Familiar as he is with magic, he has never understood this sort of thing. It feels more like sentiment than a spell, after all.
“Does this river have a story, Loki?” Anton asks absentmindedly as he flops down, playing with some small translucent fishes gathering at the disturbance. Brave little creatures.
Snow piles up on the king’s black hair as he thinks back on the tomes of stories he has read.
“No such story,” he says at last, “there is belief that Ifing was created when an ice dragon fell down and died here, however.”
“Ice dragons, huh?” Getting bored of the fishes, Anton turns back to his king. “Do they still exist?”
“Yes. Though only on the highest moutains in the northern hemisphere.”
“Can we go see one? I want to see one.” Now he sidles closer to Loki, the sly thing.
“Yes,” The king runs his thick claws through the tuft of white hair, careful not to draw blood, “when the kingdom is more stabilized.”