Fallen Star

Fallen Star Chapter One

Fallen Star

"Into the blue
And faded world of my daydreams
I feel I'm falling deeper everyday
Melting away down a dark and endless abyss
I'm grasping at straws and I'm chasing the wind
As I fall on my face over and over again..."

-Into the Blue, Sara Jackson Holman

CHAPTER ONE

Loki's eyes snapped open. He sucked in a gasping breath—it tore through his chest. His vision would not focus, no matter how hard he blinked. Blurred, dark shapes punctuated by brilliant dots passed over him in a blur. Panic grabbed him. He took another breath. It snagged.

He exhaled a sharp cry of pain. His voice sounded like a slap—raw and close in the silence. He ground his teeth as needles of pain danced across the ribs of the right side of his chest and back. He screwed his eyes shut, forcing himself to take quick, shallow breaths, even as faintness threatened to take him.

Sensation began working its way down through his limbs again, like water through frozen pipes. There—he could feel his arms, now his fingers. They clawed downward into dusty sand. His legs lay crooked, a large stone between his feet. His green cape draped halfway across him, like a blanket haphazardly thrown over a prisoner. He opened his eyes again.

His vision cleared. Black sky replaced the dark blur. And stars—sharp points of white—replaced the flickering lights.

Loki frowned hard, his brow twisting, as he stared upward. The sky looked wrong; it looked—

Another wave of throbbing washed through him, and his hands came up without his consent to press against his chest. Again, he made his throat unlock, he closed his eyes, and forced his mind and breathing to calm so he could retrace what had just happened.

He had fought with his brother. His brother Thor, the master of thunder. They had clashed on the bridge leading to the gate—Thor had broken the bridge with his awesome hammer, severing the lethal hold the Bifrost had on Jotunheim, the realm of the Frost Giants. The severance had caused a colossal explosion that had nearly ripped all of them to shreds. Both he and Thor had tumbled helplessly over the edge. Loki had caught hold of the All Father's staff—Thor had grabbed the other end. And, at the last instant, Thor's feet had been snatched by Odin.

And as they hung there, dangling over the abyss and the pulling tide of the receding wormhole, Loki had looked up into the eye of the one he had called "Father" all his life. He had expected to see rage, condemnation, displeasure in that limitless blue gaze.

But instead, all he had seen was disappointment.

It shook him to the core—and before he knew he was drawing a breath, he had cried upward in a voice like a little boy.

"I could have done it, Father!" he had shouted, almost pleading, as his hand slipped on the staff. "I could have done it! For you!" His voice had caught. "For all of us!"

Odin had paused. And then, he shook his head once.

"No, Loki," he had whispered.

The word had broken him more completely than one of Thor's hammerfells.

And so he let go.

As he tumbled down, yanked toward the wormhole with mighty force, he heard Thor roar a heartbroken denial. And then the whirling blue chaos swallowed Loki.

The throb of his broken soul was instantly overpowered by the frantic need to survive. He had no weapons, and as he fell he tumbled and whirled and spun through the blazing white fire and penetrating dark, so dizzy and sick he could not right himself.