Editing AfterRagnarok:The Mythic (section)

== Loki #420 ==
 
The heart is warm and tough. As you tear at it with your teeth, hot coppery blood fills your mouth, flows down your throat. You feel its warmth fill your stomach.

Above you, the sky grows overcast. So focused on the work of devouring the heart, it's not until the first snowflake brushes your eye that you look up.

Realise you stand alone on a plain of ice. 

A cold shadow passes over you. You cannot help but shudder, know it's the cold of death, of eternity on the Corpse Shore among the murderers, the adulterers, the oath-breakers.

And the vast bulk of the worm Níðhöggr crashes to the frozen earth. 

You feel the ice shake beneath you as is raises up, shakes itself. Malice Striker, scaled in scabarous blue and grey. 

As it turns towards you it stretches out its terrible wings, feathered with the bodies of the inglorious dead.

"Ah," the worm hisses, fixing you with a basilisk eye. You cannot move, cannot speak. "One of mine." Its skull-like head comes forwards on a long sinuous neck, death in the jaws that gape.

"Not yours." A voice behind you. Völva steps from your shadow. "His fate lies elsewhere than Nástrǫnd."

The worm rears its head back, hisses. "Has he not murdered? Has he not broken oaths - is he not planning to break one even now? I can see it wriggling in his mind like a red worm." It writhes, and flaps its wings, and the foul corpse stench rises from its body. "Is the child that nestles beneath your heart not his?"

"The adultery is mine," Völva says, raising her chin as you wonder at her calm. "I will answer it in my own way."

"No," the worm growls. "You will answer it in mine." And one great wing sweeps forward, quick as thought, to brush across Völva - her face, her breasts, her belly - with a terrible gentleness.

She staggers. Sobs. Drops to her knees in the snow. And is gone.

You feel the worm's attention turn back to you, like an avalanche descending.

"Would you too deny me?" Malice Striker purrs, winding its great head towards you. "You, who calls yourself Loki. Hah! Murderer, deceiver - will you deny what you are?"
"I am a wolf, unfathered," Loki answers, before lunging at Malice Striker to rip it to shreds.
The worm rears back hissing as you leap at it, machete swinging. The smell of it is foul, this close - the rotting, inglorious dead. 

Your first wild upward blow scrapes on the boney plates of Níðhöggr skull-face, the tip of the blade scoring a line up towards the eye as its head draws back.

It roars, spreads its corpse-hung wings. One heavy foreleg knocks you staggering. You feel the claws bite. Its bulk is over you, its death-cold shadow swallows you. Span-long teeth snap inches from your face. Foul dark ichor runs sluggish from the cut you gave it, beading beneath the eye like a tear. 

And your heavy second swing bites deep into one outstretched wing. Tearing through corpse-flesh, ancient bindings, skin and tendon.

Níðhöggr roars again, in dismay and pain. The stink of its breath is the wake of battle, the days-old unburied dead. It recoils from you, hisses. "You are not Loki!"

You advance, grinning, feral. Desperate, it spreads its wings again, leaps at you, past you. Knocking you flat. A crash shakes the ice. You scramble back to your feet, turn. The worm is struggling to rise, wing hanging ragged at its side. It wheels, tail whipping at you. Crashing into your shoulder, tumbling you back to the ice. You rise, blade in hand, blood in your mouth.

"Peace, unfettered!" the worm roars. You sense its desperation. "I mistook you!" 

You snarl like the wolf you are. 

And Níðhöggr... flinches. Then-

-you are on your back in the snow. The taste of bile in your mouth. Your gang milling, shouting, confused. Hel kneeling beside you. The hilt of a knife between your teeth. Blood and snow and sunshine. And the road.

You try to rise, feel weakness flood you. Where the worm struck, in your shoulder and your hip, flesh and bones are screaming.

Volva lies foetal in the snow a couple of feet away. Pale, shivering. Weeping silently. Agneta squats nearby, watching her worriedly.

"Well," Ketil says, kicking the pile of still-steaming reindeer meat. "I sure ain't eating any of that."

"You... alright, boss?" Hel says. More calculating than concerned.

''Later…''

The fire and the wind. Burning ice, biting flame. And you, caught between them. There's laughter around the fire.

The wolf within you snaps and snarls, struggles to free itself from its fetters. A silken ribbon, strong as iron. You recall the binding, the merriment - the relief - as you strained and snarled and could not work yourself free. The taste of blood, the consequence. 

And the expectation. That subtle moment as your fetters... gave. Just a little.

The wolf within looks up, its mouth bloody still. Its eyes promise nothing; only destruction, chaos. A tearing down of things.

The bindings on its jaws are fraying, weakening. It will work itself free, sooner or later.

A slash of your knife could quicken the process.
Focusing in further, Loki imagines his knife—so comfortable in his hand but so clearly of it—and starts to worry at the bindings of the wolf with it. "No chains, inside or out," he mutters as he sets to his work.

The fetters part under the blade of your knife like they'd been waiting for it, and the wolf lunges up. In an eyeblink it has you on your back, your knife off buried in a snowbank somewhere. Mad red eyes stare down into yours, and there's no gratitude there. A low growl rumbles up out from out of its great black body, and the wolf opens its jaws-

Abruptly, with a dreamlike discontinuity, you are surrounded by grazing reindeer. The wolf's head snaps up. 

The deer panic, scatter in all directions. Among them, the leaders of the herd; a golden stag with mighty antlers and a sleek, shimmering silver doe.

The wolf leaps off in pursuit. Pauses. "Hunt with me, brother!" it cries over its shoulder. Then it is off, running, jaws gaping against the snow and sky.

With a laughing howl, Loki follows after, chasing with reckless abandon.

The reindeer scatter before you, criss-crossing your path and that of your... packmate? Whatever the huge black wolf is to you, he runs like the wind, jaws gaping, breath wild and ragged. A panicking deer darts across his path and he rakes it open from neck to rump without breaking stride, blood spraying in the snow.

But you are fast, and faster still. Your paws pound the snow as you hit your stride, closing the gap between you. You scent the blood, and it is rapturous. But above and beyond that, your sharp eyes make out the headlong flight of the herd leaders. The stag, proud and golden, its rack of antlers a fearsome weapon - but heavy, and slowing it. Ten strides ahead, the silver doe - quicksilver fast, slippery and wise.

Most of the herd are behind you now - and you are alongside your packmate. Lost in the joy of the hunt. He dwarfs you - a mass of muscle and rage. 

But you are no pup even so, a killer, an alpha. Behind you, you sense your pack has joined you; four or five wolves at your back, running hard.

And as your muscles begin to burn, as the two deer begin to veer apart, the hunt truly begins.
Without hesitation, Loki follows after the silver doe, after the true challenge. He has no doubt he could kill the stag in battle after running it down. But to hunt certainties is to not hunt at all.
The doe is fast, and sure-footed in the snow. It jinks through the snowdrifts, and mighty leaps carry it over the deepest drifts as it aims to lose you; while on the ice it seems almost to fly, abandoning cunning for sheer straight-line speed.

it's all you can do to keep up. Your lungs are straining, your muscles roaring with exertion. But you begin to close the gap.

The doe, seeming to sense the race is lost, tacks suddenly, sharply right. Off the ice and towards the copse of dark trees that rises from the edge of the frozen lake.

A desperate move. You can feel the forest's strangeness, its vast, alien indifference to wolves and men alike. Shadows flit between the trees, shapes bigger and more fearsome than any man or wolf.
The hunt is to perfect to give up, Loki presses on, and as the doe makes her desperate turn, he launches himself to take her throat and life.
As the doe turns at bay, you launch yourself at her throat; but you realise mid-air you've misjudged – both your leap, and her determination. She skips nimbly aside, spinning to deliver a double-hoofed kick to the ribs that lifts you off the ground and dumps you gasping in the snow.

Then your pack catch up, and are on her. Bursting through the trees into the clearing, circling her, keeping her turning. Nipping at her rear and flanks as you regain your footing. You join the harassment, and she does her best to keep her face to you, but the constant pressure of the rest of the pack is wearing her down. You can smell her fear, her desperation as she tries to break out but is driven back into the centre of the clearing by the pack's snarling lunges. 

One of the wolves darts in, but too slow; she spins, knocking him howling with a sideways butt of the head. There's a gap in the circle as he scrambles. 

An opening, an opportunity. She takes it.

And so do you.

This time your leap is true. Your weight staggers her, and your forelegs wrap around her shoulders as the two of you tumble in the snow. She kicks, writhes, but the pack close in tight. You bite and bite, taste quicksilver blood in your mouth, hot and salty. She's on her back, your jaws on her throat.

She goes suddenly still, and in her wide black eye you sense a recognition of the inevitable.
Loki savours the exhilaration and anguish of the hunt for a moment before he closes his jaws to take the life of the beautiful creature.
The doe thrashes once, hooves kicking in the bloody snow. The pack are pacing back and forth; all hungry eyes and hungry jaws. The trees loom dark, pressing in at the edges of the clearing.

There's a moment of intense dislocation, like your heart and mind were suddenly hooked sideways a thousand miles, and you're sitting in the dark. Back in yourself, two legs two arms. The taste of quicksilver blood still rich in your mouth.

Pitch dark, total and entire. No moon, no reflection off the snow. Nothing. You can't remember the last time you were so utterly, utterly blind.

''Later...''

Loki pops a pain pill and swallows it dry, moistening his lips after on a handful of clean(ish) snow. "Anyone who can hobble over for some pain pills, give them. Collect those who are salvageable and load up to make our way to someone that can really patch us up." Loki blinks his eyes and mind as clear as he can, and looks at the sky to try and get his bearings on who would be the best to go to. All the while feeling the howling of the blizzard making promises, promises about better routes to go through the snow, about better destinations. With a snarl, he lets the howling wind in, hoping to clear the cobwebs at the very least.

You open your mind and the blizzard rushes in, and it knows exactly where you should be. Marching among the un-numbered dead; howling as you cut a swath through the einherjar; tasting the all-father's blood on your teeth. This is the Wyrd laid out for you, your fate.

The frost you invited in, it eats away at your mind, your soul, your sense of self. You feel yourself growing indistinct.

Yet something in you speaks out; reminds you, you have a choice. Surrender to fate, or carve your own path. Loki, you named yourself - the deceiver, the betrayer, the rebel. And the voice that rings in your blood and in your bone, it asks: will you earn that name? 

Or are you just a wolf?

Loki holds to himself, as agonizing as it is, letting the winds cut through him and then readying himself to push on.

The blizzard blows through you, and it has ice in its teeth. You can feel it driving you, turning you, pushing you in the direction Fate has laid out for you, and you struggle to stand, to hold your ground, to remain Loki.

It takes all your will, your stubbornness, to cling to who you are. And it costs you - every icy gust strips something away. A memory, a dream, a piece of your past. But one image remains, unyielding, though you cannot quite recall what it means. An older man, his beard turning grey, half his face in shadow - a brother? Father? Whoever he is to you, whoever he was, he nods; and you feel his approving hand on your shoulder, callused and heavy.

Something snaps. Like a thread in some great tapestry, it all begins to unravel. You brace...

A drop of liquid strikes your forehead, and you wake. You open your eyes wide with sudden pain as the venom begins to burn. It runs down into one of your eyes, and as half the world goes black you start to scream. Where is Sigyn? High above you, wound through the stalactites that dot the roof of the cave, the serpent hisses with delight. You watch another drop of venom form at the tip of its fangs, all the colours of Bifröst packed into its swelling curve. You hear Sigyn's hurried footsteps, returning with her bowl. Too late, too late. The drop is falling.

And you wake again, in truth.