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The cell they had put him in was spacious enough, comfortable enough, but still an insulting single room.
The first few days (turned into weeks) he had raged. He raged at the father who lied and the mother who remained silent, at the world that condemned him but not Thor, never Thor, even though their sins were the same. Because Thor had not been ready to be crowned prince and Loki had steered them away from disaster, but he was punished and Thor, after a brief repenting journey, was forgiven and reinstated in his glory.
The he had listened, after his own period of grief, to the ashen words of Thanos. He had sought to be the monster they all wanted him to be, embrace his wicked nature with open arms. If you must hate me…
But they wouldn’t. They did not want him as a prince and they did not want him as adversary and now he was finally where they had always truly wanted him. Out of sight and out of mind. In a prison that was comfortable and gentle, but still the place where you locked the unwanted to keep them away and never look at again.
Must he apologize for what was praised in others? Must he show repentance for what they said was his nature? If he was wicked, then why punish what came naturally? Why ask him to be what he was not?
It had taken him a few months, but he had made his peace. He was the monster they scared the children with, the cuckoo in the nest, the aberration that should never had been. He accepted their hate and their fear and their primal wish to erase him.
He accepted everything: That he failed as a prince and as the enemy he had been groomed to be. That either way he had been set to fail and for that he should remain in obscurity. He accepted everything, except his prison.
It was boring.
And you did not imprison the gale, you didn’t chain the flood, you didn’t lock the snake or arrest the wolf. So why should he be kept in here when he had merely done what they wanted him to do?
If he was completely honest with himself, in the late hours of the night when there is nothing but the most brutal truth; he didn’t even want revenge. At least not right away. He wanted out and let his freedom be his revenge, to be whatever he wanted to be expect of what was expected of him.
Of course saying that he wasn’t planning to murder all of them and knock down the stones of Asgard one by one turning the proud city into a waste to be remembered only in songs, was not enough for his release. His word, it seemed, only had negative value. They believed his threats but nothing else.
The cell had no windows so he wouldn’t know if he was deep under the dungeons or high in a tower. There was only the entrance. First a solid door through which two guards came to bring his food which they pushed between the bars of a second door. The door to the corridor was reinforced oak with runes of power burned on its surface, the second door was made of iron with enchanted silver crafted by the dwarves of Yglisamil, the deepest mine in Nioavellir.
There was no escaping that room, it had been made abundantly clear. Loki had tried though, early during the days of rage and tears. No tool would scratch the rock that made the walls and no magic would let him pass through the doors. He had turned himself into a snake only to be deterred by a force at the bars. He turned himself into a shadow, hid next to a candle and jumped to the open door when the guards came and still couldn’t cross the first thresholdlet alone the second. He had tried enchanting the guards, whisper words in their ears, send a thought through the briefly opened door to capture someone’s mind down the corridor.
He was still in prison.
It was an honor, he supposed, to find that Odin had put all of his magic in keeping him there like the war prize he was always supposed to be. He must have called for many favors and acquired new debts. The wrought iron from the dwarves spoke of a high price, because all their work did. Behind, between the metal gate and the second one, Loki sensed the glimmer of at least three spells and the faint smell of wet iron told him of the witches of Alfheirm.
It was an honor, yes.
And a little bit insulting, because it seemed like every magic user of the nine realms had participated in the endeavor and yet all of them had failed at securing the biggest escape threat.
Loki himself, of course.
Really, they carved the rock and charmed the stone, set the door with the hexes on the hinges and the spells in between; chose the guards that would not be tricked or bribed (not Asgardian but Surtr, whose skin was of stone and whose minds were of fire and coal and therefore incapable of listening to his words). They did everything but killing Loki, binding his magic or his mind.
Insulting. What, they put all of that in place and expected him not to escape? Expected him to give up? Oh, it's hard. I guess I will spend eternity here then.
It didn’t mean that it would be easy. Nothing worth it ever is. He would be risking more than what any of them, any of those simple minds in their comfy seats, would ever dream that could be risked. Thor, perhaps, would understand it; or the Lady Sif. They could understand, if they ever were inclined to reflection, that a man is willing to dance with danger if there is something to win.
But they wouldn’t think and they wouldn’t know. They had only come once to visit months ago, and never since. Loki suspected Odin must had forbidden it, because even his mo- even Fregga’s visits had ceased.
It started with Loki singing uninterrupted for two days and two nights. He sang every song he remembered and when none remained that he cared to sing he vocalized, going up and down in scales. If his voice could be seen it would go in waves drawing a picture like a flower.
Then he stopped singing and said nothing more. He had no voice.
So good of Odin that he had no one to speak with, no one to notice his silence.
He went to the jug of water left on the table by the door and drunk greedily. The food had come and gone the last two days, untouched. But it always came and it was always composed of his favorites delicacies, like a permanent taunt to his will that he would not let himself starve.
(He knew it was so because the room had only one mirror and it would not break, and the knife that came with the food shied away from his flesh. Loki wasn't allowed to cut his sentence short).
Now he tore a piece of bread and ate it slowly. If he chose so he could go back, regain his voice and in a week the last few days would be erased like they never happened. But he knew he would not dare try again if he went back now. And if he kept going forward there would be no going back unscathed later, no return without a price to pay.
The next three days went as usual. He ate, he slept, he danced, he played the zither he had been allowed to have (the guards were unmoved by his music so it was judged safe) he read the three books he could have at a time. The last book had a flower pressed in its pages and Loki knew it had been Fregga’s hand that put it there. He resisted taking it and putting it away somewhere safe (in the mirror perhaps or over the table) but he also didn’t give the book back.
It was either the book or the flower that made his mind.
He would leave this place and he would laugh at the nine realms.
He sat on the center of the room and for the next twelve hours played the zither. At the start of the hour thirteen Loki thought loudly to himself “this note I will not hear” and stopped hearing that note. He went on, note by note, still playing until it was seven hours later and Loki could not hear a sound even though he felt the strings vibrating in his hand. He stopped then and felt dizzy. He could not hear his breathing or his heartbeat. The song of silver of the wrought gate, the low hum of the hexes in the corners, the heavy steps of the guards as they came down the corridor outside, all of them had disappeared.
More disturbing was the absence of the voices. The low murmurs judging him, comparing him to his brother, complaining of his actions and his very existence. They had always shadowed Loki and even here in his cell, down in the bowels of the earth or up in the tallest spire, wherever he was, he still heard those voices. Sometimes he though it must be his imagination, the twisted mind everybody complained about. But then he would catch the echo of a phrase in the stone carrying the same old song of inadequacy, or even worse, the mild excuses made on his behalf.
Loki had reasons, not excuses.
The voices were gone now and it was a blessing even if it came with the curse of being alone with the voice of his mind. For all he was called a liar, that voice only spoke the truth to him. It had spoken the truth when it said that he was not as beloved as Thor and he would never be, that he was condemned to always being almost but not enough. The voice also told him that his mad run on Midgar would lead nowhere; that, as much as he wanted to, his heart never was behind Thanos’ plan and so he would fail.
What had Thanos known about pain, anyway? Loki had thought at first that Thanos understood, but in fact that old prune had nothing but lies. Similar enough to Odin’s that he had liked them and taken them.
Losing his hearing was like sinking into a chilled bath on a summer day, a feeling of rightness that almost hurt. Like being touched by a Jotun and seeing his flesh for the first time as it ought to be. He would have ridden himself of it sooner, were it not for the need of an ear to ensure that he lost the voice correctly.
For the next five days Loki dedicated himself to the careful study of the room, the guards and himself. The room he had already memorized and he knew where every speck of dust ought to be. He had never been much of a sleeper and even with the three books and the zither there were many hours to kill. Despite his requests he was not allowed quill or paper and when he had tried to fashion his own with a mixture of ash and blood for the ink and a quill made of a fish bone, they had been taken away inside the hour. He had devised a pastime then, where he looked at the room from the center and the corners and committed to memory the size and the location of every piece of furniture, to be recalled with closed eyes to the smallest detail.
Now he looked at the guards and he looked at himself. The guards were predictable, coming every eight hours to deliver a tray of food and take the previous one. The one on the left carried the tray while they one on the right held a short sword unsheathed and ready. Leaving the tray and refilling the jug of water took less than two minutes (or a hundredth heartbeats). They never spoke and gave no sign of understanding his words. Only the one with the sword looked at him, his eyes of red flame fixed on Loki. They never crossed the second door, the one of wrought iron and silver charms. Loki thought no one ever had. Most likely the door had been put there after Loki had been brought to the room, deep in the magic slumber and tightly bound. It miffed him, that he had been seen like that. That they had looked upon his unconscious body while they built the prison that would hold him forever.
Loki suspected that the guards had no key and no ability to open the door, so that even if Loki did the impossible and managed to seize control of their minds or their hearts, he would still be imprisoned. He had tried to make himself writing tools twice more, and they had always burned in his hand and the ashes scattered, so he knew they had some power beyond the gate and that he was observed. But they never crossed.
Loki sat himself with his back to the door and adopted a careless pose. He had chosen a place where the mirror was very obviously out of the way and instead looked at the guards in the reflection of the lacquered and polished headboard. He observed their movements and learned their pattern. In turn Loki offered an image of boredom and disinterest, taught them to think of him as deliberately ignoring them.
And he learned to react minutely to the times when he should hear something.
If they ever dropped something and he didn’t see…
But they were trustworthy and repetitive. It would never happen.
There was nothing in his cell to tell him the pass of time (the hourglass he had made with the ashes of the failed writing tools had melted without trace). He knew the guards came every eight hours and learned to go to sleep when they brought warm wine and that breakfast had bitter tea.
Now there was warm wine and meatloaf. Loki ate slowly and left half the food in the plate. It had occurred to him that after tomorrow there would be many foods he could not eat. Better start now, slowly, so as to not make an abrupt change. He hadn’t been eating much lately anyway. The food has lost all taste and it was only the smell that made it tolerable.
He drank the warm wine in a single swallow and went to bed. He laid face up on the soft mattress. The bed, he knew, must have been at the center of a big confrontation. It was narrower than anything he had ever slept in (at least to Odin’s and Heimdall’s knowledge) and lacked all the usual decorations of asgardians beds. However the mattress was soft and the sheets were silk and at the foot there was a chest with more blankets than he could ever need. It seemed that someone had feared he would be cold in his prison.
Loki had laughed at that. The Jotun being cold and miserable.
The room was lighted by seven perpetual candles. He had been amazed at the discovery because the wax of the bees of Gallumbiae took years to collect and was closely guarded. The candles never went off and Loki was spared from dwelling in darkness, but they never dimmed and nothing he did would kill the flame. If he was to sleep it would be with as much light as a midday before the harvest. He didn’t know if they had meant it as punishment.
From the bed he could see the carved rock of the ceiling, the dancing flames casting shadows on it. Sometimes he saw a dragon and sometimes there were two men locked in a fight. But he didn’t like that pastime much. It lead to nothing.
Loki closed his eyes to the dragon and the geese shepherd at its feet. There were black and red spots moving behind his eyelids, but with concentration the flashes of color faded until there was mostly black.
“There shall be only black” Loki thought, strong and unbending as these thoughts had to be. “And after, not even that. There will be nothing.”
Three hours passed before he fell asleep, and when he woke the next morning, later that it was his habit, he opened his eyes and saw nothing.
However, no one would ever know that Loki had been blinded. He left the bed and crossed the room with the same lazy stroll of the day before. If his heart was beating harder than usual, his face didn’t betray it. A faint smell of bread told him that the guards had come a while ago. Loki drank the lukewarm tea and ate the bread, ignoring the eggs and fish and the three jars of honey and cream to spread on the bread.
He was confident that he could spread the honey without making a mess, but if he got something on his clothes or his face he wouldn’t know and unfortunately it would be terribly out of character for him. He didn’t think that they would automatically suspect an escape plan, most likely they would think he had started to succumb to despair. But the risk remained that someone would come visit and deaf and blind as he was now, it would be hard to feign normalcy.
He spent the hours until the next meal sitting on the floor with the book on his hands, turning a page every five breaths. It was not as boring as he had feared, a low stream of excitement cursing through his veins. The eighth hour came and Loki found that he felt a small air draft when the door opened and caught the faintest smell of hot stone. He didn’t turn, because he wasn’t absolutely certain that he would direct his eyes in the right direction, but he inclined his head as if he had heard them.
Once again he ate only the bread. After some careful consideration he also had a peach. By the smell there was some tender beef and a vegetable sauce and possibly an eel pie. He left those untouched.
Loki felt exhilarated. He had lost much but that was all necessary for winning. There was the thrill now, the fear that suspicions would raise and he would be discovered, the tension in his gut at making just one little mistake and crippling himself forever. He saw how despite its comforts the cell had truly been a burial place and now he was coming back alive.
Nevertheless, being restless would not help, particularly when he was cultivating a defeated air to justify the smaller meal portions and the unkempt hair. As the hours of the afternoon bled in to the evening Loki executed a careful dance in the little open space in the center of the room. The exercise was good to tire himself and the repetitive movements sent him into a relaxing meditative state.
Additionally, he knew it looked beautiful and graceful. So much so that the spies that were always watching hadn’t noticed the hidden pattern. While his hands drew flowers and birds and stars in the air, his feet followed the complex pattern of a knot circle.
Of course it did not have the same power. A knot carved in stone, burned in wood or even drawn in ink by a careful hand could perform magic. Most likely that concern was at least partially behind the writing prohibition, let’s he draw a summoning circle and call a death shadow to his cell.
It did not have the same power, but it was some power. No lesser, just different. It was not the magic that would break the stone and tear the doors apart, but it worked as a source of energy for Loki to keep the delicate balance.
Dinner came and Loki ate with gusto as it marked the pass of a day. Two more until he could work again.
Something happened. Loki was furious and terrified and he had less than a second to compose his face and make a decision.
It was the second meal of the day and he could smell on the tray the roasted meat of a veal from Nihiriel surrounded by something sweet and tart. The meat was a delicacy, his favorite, accompanied by a thick sauce of forest fruits. It was very faint but nevertheless he thought he recognized the smell of the apples of Idun.
The restricted magical apples of Idun. Turned into one of his favorite dishes.
Loki put a finger in the sauce and lifted it to his nose. His face settled in a confused expression. A change of routine didn’t come out of nowhere. This was a response to something.
He drank the water and ate the bread and left the meat and the sauce to cool and congeal into a mess of fat and fruity syrup. They could change their routine all they wanted, but he was not breaking.
He danced again in the afternoon and when evening came, he thought that perhaps the guards dallied a little more, a few heartbeats. But it was difficult to tell when he only had a faint smell and a little air draft to go by.
There were no apples the next day, just fish soup and a bigger piece of bread. That night, he buried his nose in the cup of warm wine, taking in all the spices. He had come to rely so much on his sense of smell! Unexpectedly so. Dropping his vision ought to have been the hardest but now he looked with dread at the prospect of an odorless world. The food would truly taste like paper and there would be no comfort in the gentle and simple aromas.
He did it anyway. One by one he forgot all the smells until he could suddenly smell himself, his blood and his hair and his sweat. It was easy getting rid of those. No one is used to smelling themselves. Then there was just the smell of water and the air of a closed room, and he forgot those too.
He felt like he could cry, the forsaken creature with no voice to scream and no ears to listen to his own sobs and no eyes no produce tears. But he didn’t. He just took a big breath and went to bed. It was too late.
He had to wait five more days. Five days to act with normalcy and guide himself with touch alone. If he had a voice, he would scream.
On the first day, he played his zither.
On the second day he rested his fingers and pretended to read.
On the third day he danced, again and again, drawing the knot on the center of the room.
On the fourth day he was bored and almost gave up, but he would never regain his voice and he liked being able to speak. He decided to compose a poem then, in which he told of the ingenious escape.
On the fifth day someone came to visit. There was the draft of air but it remained cold while it always turned to heat with the guards. Loki kept himself still on the chair, his back turned to the door. Sixteen intakes of breath later the visitor left.
As long as he didn’t move it didn’t feel like a prison anymore. Nothing in Loki’s surroundings told him that he was locked in a room. As long as he remained still he was free.
If he walked, though, seven steps east to west or twelve steps north to south he would find the rock wall. Rock in every direction except for the metal door that if touched hurt like an electric shock.
But this would end soon. One way or another Loki would no longer be in that cell, imprisoned. He would be free by the mere fact that he would not be there.
But first, the last sacrifice.
He remembered one feast night with a half-drunk Volstagg explaining to him in detail the basics of fighting. At the time Loki had been miffed that the gigantic oaf had forgotten that he trained too and was quite adept at knife fighting. Now Loki felt the weight of his arm over his shoulders as Volstagg explained to him and everyone in the vicinity that a good warrior never gave the chance of being hit by the enemy. Hogun had spoken then, said that a better warrior would give the illusion of being vulnerable to make the enemy move and lower their guard. Which was all very nice but sometimes, Loki had argued, illusion wasn’t enough. Sometimes you had to take a hit just to be able to hit back twice as hard.
Loki remembered because it must have been one of the few occasions he and the lady Sif had been of the same opinion.
Loki waited until after the third meal of the day. He wasn’t sure how long this part would take but if he missed breakfast they wouldn’t think anything of it, not right away. Lately he had eaten little and erratically. The guards wouldn’t think anything of a whole day of fasting if it had to come to that.
And even if they did. How long to open the second door and come to his side and check? Long enough that it would be done, then.
He had scratched the rock wall and the wooden headboard and the table to count the passing of days, but all the marks disappeared within minutes. He had resorted to scratching his arm with his fingernails. One mark on the left arm for every day that passed and a longer one on the right for every five days, to let the left one heal. The system was far from perfect. Depending on the food he ate Loki healed quicker and lost some days during the night. Mostly he just had to trust his mind to keep the count straight. Besides, he didn’t know how long he had been kept asleep at first so he had lost some time there.
Still, he guessed they were near the Midsummer Day. That was important. There were festivities and the arrival of merchants and jousts and songs and everybody was busy. Loki was certain nobody suspected a thing but he liked having contingency plans for when Fate goes after you. Even if the guards rang the alarm, it would be a while until Odin could be reached and longer still to opening the door.
He lay in the center of the room, in the bare floor where he had danced and drawn a magic knot. Loki could feel the hardness of the rock and a soft chill climbing up his flesh. He could also feel the little air currents created by the flame of the candles. He could feel the clothes over his skin.
The cold was easier to ignore so he went for that first. Then the air. The clothes. But as he closed down on sensation new ones arose, the faintest ones that had been hidden by the others.
Loki could feel on his jaw the low hum of the spells on the door. His bones echoed with the vibration of the guards steps on the corridor.
He stopped feeling his heartbeat on his neck. He stopped feeling himself breath.
The steps he kept noticing, which was annoying. A rhythmic thud, thud, thud that expanded like ripples through the floor.
He shut it down with irritation and just as they were disappearing he though he sensed a new set of steps, heavy and quick, approaching.
But it didn’t matter because now there was nothing. No voice, no taste, no hearing, no sight, no smell, no touch. It was just Loki’s consciousness.
It could not be properly described but after weeks and weeks of feeling enclosed now there was an unfurling. Loki expanded. He was as big as the room and he was spreading and spreading until his self surrounded the whole planet and his sides met.
He kept growing. His mind touched the sun, made a circlet of moons to crown his head and then descended slowly playing in the sun rays.
Loki was no more.
First, Loki felt his body. His chest rising with his breathing and the heartbeat on his throat. Down by his left leg a small stone was poking the flesh. That was new.
So was the grass he could feel under his hands. It had definitely not been there before. It was short and a bit dry, but it was grass and Loki’s toes curled with pleasure when his hands closed over it. There was a sharp wind biting his face but the earth under him was still warm from the sun.
Smell returned in a wave, like water moves from a dropped glass. There was of course the grass and the earth, but now he also noticed the dandelions and further away the fur of an animal and a hint of rain from two days ago.
There was red dancing behind his eyelids and Loki felt a jolt in his heart. It was very faint, more black than anything else, but it was the beginning of sight…
He made himself breath slowly three times before opening his eyes and learn how much he could see and if there was something lost. (Would he be able to read?).
The world was purple and dark blue and gray. All colors, he thought, fitting for a Jotun.
He allowed himself to simply lie there and look at a world beyond his cell. He wouldn’t be able to stand, anyway, not the way his blood was rushing right now. There he was, there he was! Out, out, out of that place.
After a while the colors changed and it became obvious he was not looking to the world through Jotun eyes, although he found that he hadn’t minded. The purple receded and the blue expanded and became black. The first stars were visible in the sky, each of them a blessing to Loki.
He got up then to look at where he was and as he turned he heard the whisper of the wind and the hum of insects.
He had done it.
He was out and he was whole. He had defeated Odin and all the magic users that came to Odin’s call like low lackeys.
He would speak, now, for the first time in twenty one days. Silence was sacred and the first word uttered carried power with it. A word in the high language, the old language, then; a word powerful by itself and doubled now by his silence and his sacrifice.
What to say.
Revenge? But he didn’t want for his first act of freedom to be an answer to Odin. That was another chain. One harder to remove as he had put it himself.
Justice. Only it tasted like sorrow in his lips.
Loki, then. He would say his name and get a mark of power.
Oh, how perfect and sweet, that Odin’s imprisonment led to Loki acquiring new strength. That their fear and their spells had sent him in to the path for greater power.
It was the adequate ending, the perfect resolution, and Loki smiled for it.
And as he opened his mouth a soft giggle escaped his lips like a water spring. That was not it.
That was- Bolts! That was ruining it, the word left with no effect.
Which in turn changed the giggle into a full laugh that went up to stars and left Loki on his knees, tears in his eyes, and not caring much about the loss because all he could do was laugh and laugh and laugh.