Consequences

23

As the next century began, Brynja felt something change and she could not place her finger on what. She woke up one morning with the chill in her spine that was her Witchery telling her something was not quite right. She brought her concern to Sunny after breakfast and Sunny brought her up to Loki's study. Sunny sat before the scrying bowl, poured the water in it, and gazed into it.

"This only works once in a while when Thanos' realm is close enough. I don't see anything today. Father has been keeping me from seeing through his eyes lately. I don't take that as a bad sign, though, since it means he is still strong enough to push me out." What she did not tell Brynja was that it could also simply mean that Loki no longer had the strength to open his eyes. It was just one more secret she kept.

Brynja had brought her small crystal globe with her and set it on the table next to the bowl, "I haven't used this in many years, but it was once my speciality." She concentrated on Loki and searched for him in the glass, but all she saw was fog and darkness, "Nothing," she said, disappointed.

"It was worth a try. Perhaps it wasn't about Father. Maybe the feeling is for something else all together."

"I know, I was just hoping...."

Sunny took her mother's hand, "I know. So was I."

Meanwhile, Thanos watched Loki as he lay on the cold rock, his clothing long since destroyed, his hair thinning, his body barely more than skin stretched over a skeleton. He'd stopped feeding his prisoner nearly a century before, keeping him alive on magic and the minimum amount of water that it took for him to survive. Loki was finally dying.

Loki had spent the first century hoping against all hope that he would somehow be rescued. That Sunny's brilliance with sorcery would deliver him a miracle. When he had finally given up on that unrealistic dream, he had relived memories from his childhood beginning with a very early memory of being so small, Brynja not many years older helping him up into a tall tree, the bark rough on his young hands, her body warm against his as they cuddled on the branch and he marvelled at what the realm looked like from his new vantage point. He detached from the torture his body endured and tried to live only in his memories, using his own magic to fight against Thanos' corruption of his remembrances while also trying to keep Sunny from seeing the worst of his punishments, gently pushing her from his mind when he knew she was watching and the pain was too brutal. His fatherly protectiveness of the sensitive young child he had met in Jotunheim was still strong even while being tortured. Now, though, as his breaths came in gasps, he could not hold on to the memories very well, the cold of the stone beneath him all too real, all too present. He also could not push out Sunny as she tried to see through his closed eyes. He was dying, he knew that, and he did not want his daughter to know. He had no way to stop her, though, his sorcery far too weak.

Thanos called to death, in any form, hoping to gain the attention of whatever death was these days and to get it to manifest at his feet. A Jotun prince seemed a fair sacrifice to attract the attention of such a creature.

Loki's eyes were closed, his breathing only a rattle, when he whispered, "Hela...."

She heard. Sitting in her hall, she knew that her father was dying and that there was little chance he would be claimed by those who took warriors slain in battle to a glory beyond. She sighed, she took those who died from illness and old age, from starvation and exposure. Every death in the realms that was attributed to these things echoed in her head. She largely blocked out their voices, still welcoming them to rest in her realm, but unwilling to let every voice speak to her as it died, knowing that they would only overwhelm her. This world of hers was not on the same plane of existence as Asgard or Midgard, Svartalfheim, Jotunheim, or Vanaheim. There were few ways to get to her halls other than to die.