Sorcha's Secret World, Part one.

Chapter 27, Loki, son of Laufey.

"Your grandmother?" I asked in surprise.

"Yes, my maternal grandmother." Loki kept his eyes on the road. While he had slowed down a bit, we were still going much faster than the speed limit.

"Did you think I had spawned in a cabbage patch? I told you my real parents died and I was adopted, didn't I?"

He had of course. Loki's real parents had died during an attack on his home, hours after he had been born. His mother had died protecting him, his father elsewhere. That was all I knew about his real parents.

According to the Poetic Edda Loki was the son of the Jotunn Fárbauti, and Laufey was his mother. There was no mention of being adopted by Odin. I had learned quickly not to mention the Poetic Edda to Loki, he thought of it as complete and utter nonsense and it seemed to offend him on a personal level.

According to the Marvel movies, his father was Laufey, King of Jotunnheim, who had abandoned Loki as an infant to be adopted by Odin.

I knew Loki had been adopted by Odin, but that was where the similarities ended.

"I didn't know your grandmother was still alive," I said. I wondered why she hadn't taken Loki in after his parent's death.

"She isn't, she is very much dead. She passed away long before I was born."

Oh, well, that explained that.

"So, we're just going to see her so I can meet her?"

I was trying to make it sound as if taking your girlfriend to meet your long-dead grandmother was a perfectly normal thing to do.

Don't get me wrong, I've spoken to spirits before, not all the spirits I had come across in my job were hostile, but it wasn't exactly normal to just meet your boyfriend's family like that, now was it?

On the other hand, he wanted me to meet his family, that was a good sign!

"No, I was already planning on going to see her before you invited yourself along." Loki smiled. "She has something that belongs to me, it's about time I got it back."

Oh, okay. I had misread that situation a bit, hadn't I?

"Grandmother's spirit resides in Niflheim, where she holds court over the spirits of several of the other deceased amongst my people."

Loki checked the GPS of the car, and make a sharp turn.

"There is a gem that was supposed to have been passed on down to me. It belonged to my grandfather, then my father. It was meant to be mine now, but for reasons I was never completely able to ascertain, it ended up in the underworld instead.

It is called the 'Friezegem' and it was made to be attached to a helmet, created as part of a set of armour to be worn by the consort to the queen.

It is a powerful magical amplifier, enhancing the magical strength of he who wears it.

Even without the helmet, it should still magnify my magic powers beyond what I can conjure right now."

Loki frowned.

"I am done with being captured, enslaved and treated like a lesser creature. It is time to show this world what being a god truly means!"

I could understand that. I mulled for a bit over what Loki had just told me.

"So if the gem is supposed to be attached to a helmet that was made to be worn by the consort of the queen, does that mean..."

"It means my mother was queen, my father prince consort and general of her armies. My people were a matriarchy, unlike most monarchies back then they were always ruled by a queen.