loki laufeyson (toberuled) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-03-18 21:27:00 |
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Entry tags: | door: marvel comics, loki |
Who: Loki (Narrative.)
What: Visiting home. Taking home over. Becoming the new king of Asgard. No big deal, you know.
Where: Through the Marvel door, Asgard.
When: Recently.
Warnings/Rating: PG-13 for some violence?
Beyond the door lay an abandoned world, and the god of mischief was intent to take his piece of it. Where was the tedious cavalry, all wrapped up in their chivalric desires and obsession with protecting their little world from people like him? All gone. And good timing too, because Loki had decided that Midgard would belong to him, as he would belong to it - belonging nowhere else.
But Asgard first, the realm that had rejected him. He no longer cared about being part of it. No, he wanted to possess the realm, to be its king. Once he had wanted the throne to do right by the people that lived there, and at last find respect from them. Now he wanted to know it was at his beck and call, and keep it in his pocket like a keepsake, to teach the people who to bow to. And where once the thought of the hordes defending the land would have deterred him, he had a sneaking suspicion that Asgard was an empty fortress, just waiting to be claimed.
Loki arrived in Asgard by sliding neatly through the side ways and by ways of the universe that only he knew how to navigate, dark paths through the shadows that even Heimdall could not see. He stepped through space, carefully picking his way between stars, through the atmospheres of the nine realms, and through the nebulas and black holes beyond them.
Before long, Loki stepped forward one last time, and space parted around him, rippling to admit him into Asgard. His boot clicked on the remnants of the Bifrost's shattered metal walkway.
He looked behind himself at the gaping hole at the end of the world, once the one way entry and exit point from Asgard. Yes. Appropriate that he should be here now.
For his return to his homeland, Loki felt nothing. Asgard was no more home to him now than anywhere else.
He shielded himself from sight, as he had done so many times before, and walked through the streets of the golden city. The citizens were all going about their usual business, buying and trading, loving and talking, cooking and cleaning, the normal tasks of a busy empire capital. The first difference he noticed, though, was the guards, tromping together in tight groups, in larger numbers than he'd ever seen before. None of the regular citizens paid them any mind, so it was not news to them.
Up the winding pathways then, up lightning fast elevators and down steep tunnels into the castle. He slipped inside its walls with ease, following behind one of the patrols as the gates opened to admit them.
He had never seen so many soldiers in the castle. In the long years of peace he had been raised in, the barracks had never been more than half-full. Now they brimmed to the top. Many of the recruits spoke with broken voices, and smooth chins showed under heavy helmets. A hasty recruitment, but by whom?
The throne room was guarded by thirty men, but all it took was tapping the mind of one of the weaker, younger recruits to get him to shove the doors open. The other soldiers reached to pull him back, but Loki was already past him and through. His cover splintered and disappeared with the effort of manipulating the boy. By then, though, all the soldiers could do was watch as he turned his hand and the massive gold doors slammed shut, locking themselves.
There was a bristle of steel behind him, and the guards on either side of the throne advanced. And on the golden chair? Was it Odin? His brother? No. It was Soren, the head general, who had answered only to the Allfather himself.
The guards were moving toward him still, carefully, slowly. Someone must have warned them. These men had never seen real action, hardly ever been forced to wield their swords outside the practice ring except in minor skirmishes, and they knew nothing of magic. From the fear in their eyes, he wondered how the old stories they used to tell about him had been warped after he had left Asgard, how the people had let the prejudice they had always held toward him run wild once they no longer had to mask their distaste.
"Missing the master, Soren?" he asked. Loki appeared unarmed, wearing the newer, better forged armor he had made for himself, but crowned with the horned helmet he'd always worn. "You've been trying on his crown to console yourself, I see."
Soren had stood, and his mouth was set into a thin, grim line. He said nothing in reply, only nodded to one of the guards when they looked back at him for support. Outside, the guards had begun banging on the doors.
"Let me see if I can trace what's happened," said Loki, spreading his hands. "Odin is gone. Thor and Sif and the warriors three, all missing. Heimdall no longer guards the gate, and the royal family has abandoned Asgard. The people were frightened. They needed a strong man to take the reins in this time of crisis, so you, naturally, stepped into place. I see you recruited children for your army, brought its numbers up threefold. What were you preparing for?" He seemed to think it over, and then, with mock surprise, put his palm to his chest. "Me? Oh, now, Soren, have we not always been friends?"
"Quiet, Liesmith." Soren advanced down the steps from the throne. "We all know how you betrayed the king and your brother besides."
His brother? Loki was, briefly, incredulous, and then his face split into a delighted grin.
"They didn't tell you, did they?" He couldn't believe it. Even he could never have predicted this. Odin had been so ashamed of his frost giant liability that he'd kept it secret. It was amazing, even for Odin, eschewing responsibility for his mistakes to the last. "Well yes, that's all true, every word they told you. But you, my friend, have been telling grand lies. I might just have to give up my title to you."
The soldiers stopped a few feet from Loki, spears down and bristling. Soren stopped just behind them, his expression darkening by the moment, clearly seeking an opening for attack.
"This army was never for me. This force has been built to combat the return of the family." He stepped to the left, and the soldiers turned to follow. He chuckled. "Don't be ashamed, Soren, I know what power does to men. Odin coming back now would be such an inconvenience to you, wouldn't it? Or my brother, perhaps? How you must dread their inevitable return, and arm these boys to fight for your new crown if they ever did."
Soren began to turn red in the face, just as Loki had hoped. "I am loyal to my king," said the general. "You will make a fine prize to present to him when he returns, to answer for your betrayals." The soldiers steeled themselves. After a moment of pause to hopefully throw him off guard, one thrust forward with his spear.
Loki's style of fighting had always been to take the strength of his enemies and use it against them. He took the soldier's spear from him with a quick grab, yanking it from his grip and turning the shaft up to block the other soldier's thrust. His boot came down on the second spear, pulling the surprised soldier down with it, and the butt of the one in his hands knocked the first soldier off his feet and into the general behind him. From within the folds of his cloak, Loki conjured the Cask, the heart of the frost giants that was his by birthright, and turned it on the soldiers, firing off two quick blasts of permafrost. The soldiers became statues, frozen to the floor, and the general scrambled to his feet to face a frost giant in the throne room.
Loki watched as the General's eyes widened, first in surprise, and then in disgust, as the veneer of Asgardian normality disappeared and Loki's pale skin faded to blue. Loki fired then. It was unspeakably satisfying to freeze the general's expression at that moment of realization. It was everything he had ever expected from his people if they ever discovered what he really was. He saw there all the hatred and revulsion that a true Asgardian must feel for the monsters they had learned to fear all their lives.
Behind him, at the door, the heavy percussion beat of the guards continued on. He knew the three soldiers were still alive inside their frozen casings. They would die inside them eventually if not freed, their endurance notwithstanding. He stood above Soren, looking down on him, and twisted his wrist. His frozen head twisted off his rigid shoulders with a sharp, sickening crack of ice and bone. It rolled bloodlessly across the floor.
The doors slammed open, and a flood of guards rushed the throne room to find Loki, the last vestiges of blue skin fleeing back beneath his sleeves, any sign of his true appearance gone too quickly to be caught, the cask already folded away in the pocket of space where he kept it safe.
"Gentlemen," he said, idly nudging Soren's head away from him with the toe of a boot. "Do you not know to bow to your king?"
It didn't take long, with their only leader dead, to convince the soldiers to follow their new king, particularly since Loki was the only member of the royal family left in Asgard. Soren's corpse, left in the throne room as a grisly display, did much to keep the rest in line.
The citizens of the city were uneasy with the change in rule, but those who spoke out found themselves dragged to the palace. The soldiers acted in defense of their families, who remained unharmed so long as they followed orders, and those who behaved themselves were awarded with leadership positions. Order was established quickly, smoothly, and with a minimum of bloodshed.
Really, so far as coups went, Loki thought it decidedly neat.
Only one act of rebellion had any marked impact. A citizen, desperate to get a message to the rest of the nine realms, used what little magic she knew and fired it through the tattered remnants of the pathway the Bifrost had once linked to. In the darkest hours of the morning, a wash of brilliant color in the sky over Midgard and the rest of the nine realms declared something was not right.