Sorcha's Secret World, Part one.

Chapter 41, Professor Loki.

"Can I borrow a quill? I didn't know we were supposed to bring parchment and a quill," Thor's whisper was loud enough to be heard throughout the lecture hall.

I gave Thor a pencil from my pencil case and a sheet of paper from my notepad. We were sitting in the front row, I had made sure we had arrived early enough to pick a good spot.

Thor and I had been invited by the Templars to a lecture for field agents about the waning of magic on Midgard.

Loki had not been invited but had made his way in anyway, sliding in just as the doors closed and the lecture began. He was hanging against the wall in the back, his eyebrows raised as he eyed the hall and the people in it with a belligerent attitude.

Richard was the one who was supposed to be lecturing us, but he was having technical difficulties with the projector.

I suspiciously glanced behind me at Loki. Was this his doing? I wouldn't put it past him.

Loki just shrugged, he had no idea what was happening either.

"Very well then, I will simply have to do this the old-fashioned way," Richard admitted defeat, picked up a marker and tried to write on the whiteboard. The marker wasn't working either and I started to feel sorry for him.

"Here, take mine," Thor helpfully gave his pencil to Richard. He had been using it to doodle little Mjolnirs on the sheet of paper I had given him.

"Ehm, thanks," Richard took the pencil with a puzzled look on his face. It wasn't much use on a whiteboard, but Thor couldn't know that.

Eventually, an aide brought a working marker and the lecture could start.

"Welcome to today's mandatory lecture on "The Waning of Magic on Earth," Richard said, as he wrote the words on the whiteboard.

"As most of you know, almost two years ago a bomb in Tokyo set off a chain of events which we now know was meant to awaken the Dreamers."

Richard wrote the words 'Tokyo' and 'Dreamers' on the board a drew a line between them.

I carefully copied it into my notebook, this all seemed important.

I glanced at Thor who was frowning in concentration as he used the red pen I had given him instead of the pencil he had given away. When I looked at his paper I saw he was drawing red hearts around the Mjolnirs he had drawn earlier.

Okay...

Then I saw him add a T and an S to them. Awww, 'Thor heart Sif', that was kind of cute! Not what we were here for though. I elbowed him when Richard wasn't looking.

"...trapped in the Gaia Engines, supplying us with the anima we need for magic to exist in this world," Richard continued.

I nodded, I already knew all of this because Loki had explained it to me.

"Now the engines are failing and earth's supply of anima is dwindling because of it."

I carefully wrote that down too, it made sense.

"So what we are going to talk about today..."

"If I may be so rude as to interrupt," Loki's voice was clearly heard throughout the lecture hall, "but that is the worst sort of nonsense I've ever heard in my life and I had to listen to my brother talk for centuries."

"Hey!" Thor sounded a bit wounded, but people ignored him.

Loki made his way to the whiteboard.

"Do you people even bother to give even the slightest amount of thought to anything you are saying? Are you not supposed to have scientists, researchers and academics at your disposal whom you pay large, and from what I can tell completely and utterly wasted, amounts of money to inform you this is complete and utter twaddle?"