The Soul Cages (Ship of Nails, Part 13)
Dec. 10th, 2020 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coldsongHe senses her presence before she even speaks. Skurge, too, tenses in his saddle, and Loki gives him a sober nod before pushing past him. This is not a fight that will be won by strength or numbers. Skurge may have a score to settle with the Death-Goddess, but it will not be settled with weapons. Loki is careful to put himself between them.
“Here I was ready to credit you with being the cleverer Odinson,” Hela’s voice echoes from all sides, dark and rich with amusement, but he can see her silhouette looming up ahead. She seems taller now, and the angular crown on her head is a frightening, magnificent thing, branches of dark glory that extend and wind through all the intricate passages of the realm that bears her name. On Asgard, she drew from the power of the planet; in Hel, she is herself part of the landscape.
“To face me in this place, on my terms, is beyond arrogance. I’d be impressed if it wasn’t so stupid.”
“What is it,” Loki answers, “that you imagine I am here to challenge you for?”
“It scarcely matters,” she answers with barely a missed beat. “Everything here is me, or mine. I am the Goddess of Death.”
“I don’t dispute that,” he says. “But you have not claimed to be the goddess of the Dead.”
There is hesitation, for just a split second, and he presses the advantage. “There is a distinction, wouldn’t you say? You claim the art of slaughter, not the guardianship of the souls of the dead. In fact, I would venture to say you cannot justly claim that guardianship at all, given your fondness for raising draugr to your own ends.”
“You see it now,” he steps closer to the shadowy form. “Guardianship of the souls at peace in Valhalla and Folkvangr is established. But here, we find a power vacuum, do we not? And you and I are agreed on one thing--a power vacuum must be filled.”
“If you mean to fight me,” she says in slow, soft, menacing tones, “I warn you, I will take more than one of your eyes. I will break your jaw, cut you apart, leave you blind and deaf, unable to speak or swallow your own spit, stumbling through the night until thirst claims you--as I did to countless others of your kind in wars with Jotunheim.”
The mental image actually makes him nauseous, and she smiles coldly as she goes on: “Oh, I knew when I first saw you. I don’t need the sight of your skin to tell me what you really are. You are no brother of mine. You’re Odin’s trained animal, pretending to be one of your betters. And you presume to challenge me?”
Her laughter is devastating. It’s the sound of rocks tumbling, landslides flattening villages and burying bodies in liquefaction, never to be found or mourned again. Whole families, whole civilizations lost in a torrent of dark mirth.
She is so much like Thanos. The only difference is he was determined to think of himself as nobly motivated, the misunderstood savior of the universe. Hela is indifferent, a conqueror, proud of her ability to cause suffering for suffering’s sake. Somehow, Loki finds that purer, almost reassuring, regardless of the fact that he is about to run afoul of it.
It would be false to say he does not feel the scorn and shame in her words, that he does not shrink under his cobalt skin and feel the runes and ridges like brands on his body. But these are familiar feelings. Part of being Loki is ignoring indignity and ignobility when that is what is required.
“Animal or not, monster or not, I am tame to no one’s leash,” he says. “And Odin is not here. You cannot win your quarrel with him through me. You will have to contend with your rage against him some other way.”
That draws her up short. He’s scored a point, and it helps him to rally, drawing his spine up straighter.
“Do you think I have no perception of my own? I have hated him deeply enough on my own behalf, and Thor’s, to read your bitterness. You slew the Valkyrior, and you would have destroyed your own people, to prove him wrong about you--just as I would have once upon a time. So, of the two of us, who dances better to his tune? I have grown. Have you?”
He expected her to explode into violence at this goading, but he was not prepared for the intensity of the onslaught. It is like nothing he’s ever seen before; there is no lean, sharp body for him to meet with his daggers, no incoming magical light and fire. Instead there are branches of darkness that rise and tear at him from all directions. He cuts at one and two more rise in its place, and when he fails to defend they pierce into him like needles. She will tear him apart.
Where blades fail, though, he has one final defense, and that is venom. The poison that circulated in Harley’s veins after her bout with the Joker, the poison he drew from her body into his own, in protective love for her and trust in his own Jotun strength--he still has it. And it takes only a slight shifting, a subtle maneuver, for him to pull it from its pocket dimension and put it in the way of the piercing tendrils. They draw it up like the roots of a twisted Yggdrasil, drinking from an abyssal Mímisbrunnr.
Hela tastes it at once, and shudders, and for a moment he has respite from the piercing pain.
“What was that?” Hel is silent around them, oppressive. He can hear his own pulse in his ears.
“Failure,” he tells her. “The terror of losing a loved one. The shame of helplessness, of being unable to protect them. Mistakes made, which led to suffering for those you hold dear. Eternal regret, self-condemnation. Drink it, Sister. You’ve dodged it for too long.”
“You’re bluffing,” she says. And she isn’t wrong, really. Even imbued with his magic and his words, the poison racing through her form will not last long. She’s too powerful. She shudders with discomfort, but her energy surges as well, and he imagines she is picking it apart, down to the molecular level, dissolving the virulence in a way he was incapable of doing, even for Harley’s sake.
But in the end, that just makes it another layer of failure upon failure, and if he lets it, maybe that strengthens him in some way, too: failure, loss, survival. Ice rises in his veins as he braces for another stand. There is no endgame here, no further trump card. He will face her until he outlasts her; he has no other choice, but he was prepared for that.
He may be without options, but he is not the only one here. There are hoofbeats as Skurge races toward them, and Loki wants to scream at him for his foolish courage, but at the last second the horse swerves and darts around Hela instead of charging into her. Playing chicken with death itself. If any were there to witness, that would be glorious, he thinks, but then he realizes there are footsteps, as well. Running feet, shouts and showers of rocks and embers--he turns his head with difficulty in the binding branches, and finds an immense crowd around them, shades of every Asgardian peasant and merchant and farmer imaginable, poised with axes and pitchforks. Behind them are thousands of soldiers, the Einherjar that she murdered, hungry for vengeance.
He was right. Hela owns Death, perhaps, but not the Dead. They are free to choose a side here, just as they are free to choose neither side and ignore the conflict.
Freedom is life’s great lie, he remembers. And I am the god of liars.
Skurge and his charger harry Hela once again, strafing past her, and some of her branches withdraw from Loki to reach for the Executioner, instead. But now, there are silvery shapes overhead, the sound of wings churning the air, the beat of a drum in the depths of Loki’s chest.
Valkyries. He falls to his knees as the branches release him, and lifts his eyes toward what passes for the sky here. It is full of them, light upon light, swords and arrows blazing as they circle. If anyone deserves Valhalla, surely it would be these warriors who themselves choose the slain--but as Skurge said, you only stay there if you feel you belong there. Do they feel they failed, defeated at Hela’s hands? Or maybe they only wait for Brunnhilde to join them.
“You had never known defeat until Ragnarok,” he tells Hela as her branches start to crack and wither and fall. “I was born a failure, a runt, fit only for sacrifice. That is where we are most different. My providence is those who lose, who are cast out and broken. There is no consistency in the universe but that the mighty will be brought low, Hela. The meek will also be brought low, but they don’t have as far to fall.”
“Here, now, you will fail a second time. But you were already mine. You just didn’t know it yet.”
She cannot accept it, and for a long while she struggles, branches lashing, crumbling, reforming. This is a struggle that could be endless, a war between death and the dead, but there is enough doubt in his words, and enough force behind the Valkyrie screams and the rage of the dead of Asgard that she wavers. Uncertainty for even a moment on the field of war means loss.
He watches the blackness of her crown curl in on itself, like a dying spider, and finds a moment of pity in his heart before she vanishes into the ground.
The crowd does not disperse, but neither does it rally at once to his side. He had dared to hope--but really, there are too many here whose courage and nobility outweigh his. His people were unwilling to watch him be tortured, but that doesn’t mean they’re eager to come to his banner. Skurge, though, dismounts his horse and offers Loki a hand up. He is not ashamed to accept it.
“Thank you,” he says, and looks out at the sea of shades. “I think it was your call they came to, friend, not mine.”
“Little of both?” He shrugs. “You’re the god of the dead now, I reckon.”
“She’ll be back either way,” he says. “But I’m not sure I am, actually. One of the most humblings things I’ve found in the last couple years is that those that need me most usually don’t want a god at all. Why should those who have suffered under authority want a divinity over them?”
“...I didn’t say I was enthusiastic about it,” Skurge admits sheepishly.
“Unfortunately, my providence seems to confer more obligation on the god than on the subject.” Loki says wryly.
“But as for our people, will they follow you? Will they follow us?” Loki looks around him. “There is a battle coming, for the sake of the living, for all the realms. Thanos has already slain half of all life, and if he is not stopped, he will take all of it. I do not ask for your forgiveness or your worship, but I will beg for your alliance.”
There is an undercurrent that ripples through the shades around them, an energy Loki can feel in his very bones, rumbling up from the ground, threading through his spine. Skurge shudders; he can feel it too, and Loki smiles at him. “I think you are elected as the shepherd of the dead,” he says. “At least for now. Executioner, will you execute your peoples’ will?”
Skurge looks bewildered, dazed, but the shades around them are turned toward him now, and after the space of several breaths, a look of absolute joy dawns on his face. “...yeah.” He says. “Hell, yeah! Let’s...let’s keep some people from joining us. Sooner than they should, I mean.”
There is peace in finding out where you belong, Loki knows. He rolls his aching shoulders and carefully begins to conjure armor of ice. “As far as getting to the field, I have one hope--”
He touches the amber bead around his neck with icy fingers, then feels a thump on his shoulder, and the clasp of a powerful hand. “You could have asked.”
Heimdall’s shade is no shade, but rather a silhouette of tawny gold light. And Loki would swear on his soul that it wasn’t there a second ago, because he is sure he would have noticed the glow on his skin and the faces around him.
“My intent is still to carry your corpse to Ran,” he tells him, smiling. “As is fitting. But clearly your spirit wanders where it will.”
“It always did,” Heimdall confirms. “And it will serve with the shepherd of the dead, to take them where they’re needed. But you’re no shade, Loki. You’ll need a vessel.”
“I know where to find one,” Skurge says. “We have a shipwright.”
Loki takes in a deep breath and lets it out, a sigh of blended nerves and satisfaction. Sometimes stories are truer than one thinks, and prophecies come out in the ways one least expects. Other times, things simply fall flawlessly into place. “That,” he says, “is exactly what I was hoping you would say.”
((Musical Inspiration))
“Here I was ready to credit you with being the cleverer Odinson,” Hela’s voice echoes from all sides, dark and rich with amusement, but he can see her silhouette looming up ahead. She seems taller now, and the angular crown on her head is a frightening, magnificent thing, branches of dark glory that extend and wind through all the intricate passages of the realm that bears her name. On Asgard, she drew from the power of the planet; in Hel, she is herself part of the landscape.
“To face me in this place, on my terms, is beyond arrogance. I’d be impressed if it wasn’t so stupid.”
“What is it,” Loki answers, “that you imagine I am here to challenge you for?”
“It scarcely matters,” she answers with barely a missed beat. “Everything here is me, or mine. I am the Goddess of Death.”
“I don’t dispute that,” he says. “But you have not claimed to be the goddess of the Dead.”
There is hesitation, for just a split second, and he presses the advantage. “There is a distinction, wouldn’t you say? You claim the art of slaughter, not the guardianship of the souls of the dead. In fact, I would venture to say you cannot justly claim that guardianship at all, given your fondness for raising draugr to your own ends.”
“You see it now,” he steps closer to the shadowy form. “Guardianship of the souls at peace in Valhalla and Folkvangr is established. But here, we find a power vacuum, do we not? And you and I are agreed on one thing--a power vacuum must be filled.”
“If you mean to fight me,” she says in slow, soft, menacing tones, “I warn you, I will take more than one of your eyes. I will break your jaw, cut you apart, leave you blind and deaf, unable to speak or swallow your own spit, stumbling through the night until thirst claims you--as I did to countless others of your kind in wars with Jotunheim.”
The mental image actually makes him nauseous, and she smiles coldly as she goes on: “Oh, I knew when I first saw you. I don’t need the sight of your skin to tell me what you really are. You are no brother of mine. You’re Odin’s trained animal, pretending to be one of your betters. And you presume to challenge me?”
Her laughter is devastating. It’s the sound of rocks tumbling, landslides flattening villages and burying bodies in liquefaction, never to be found or mourned again. Whole families, whole civilizations lost in a torrent of dark mirth.
She is so much like Thanos. The only difference is he was determined to think of himself as nobly motivated, the misunderstood savior of the universe. Hela is indifferent, a conqueror, proud of her ability to cause suffering for suffering’s sake. Somehow, Loki finds that purer, almost reassuring, regardless of the fact that he is about to run afoul of it.
It would be false to say he does not feel the scorn and shame in her words, that he does not shrink under his cobalt skin and feel the runes and ridges like brands on his body. But these are familiar feelings. Part of being Loki is ignoring indignity and ignobility when that is what is required.
“Animal or not, monster or not, I am tame to no one’s leash,” he says. “And Odin is not here. You cannot win your quarrel with him through me. You will have to contend with your rage against him some other way.”
That draws her up short. He’s scored a point, and it helps him to rally, drawing his spine up straighter.
“Do you think I have no perception of my own? I have hated him deeply enough on my own behalf, and Thor’s, to read your bitterness. You slew the Valkyrior, and you would have destroyed your own people, to prove him wrong about you--just as I would have once upon a time. So, of the two of us, who dances better to his tune? I have grown. Have you?”
He expected her to explode into violence at this goading, but he was not prepared for the intensity of the onslaught. It is like nothing he’s ever seen before; there is no lean, sharp body for him to meet with his daggers, no incoming magical light and fire. Instead there are branches of darkness that rise and tear at him from all directions. He cuts at one and two more rise in its place, and when he fails to defend they pierce into him like needles. She will tear him apart.
Where blades fail, though, he has one final defense, and that is venom. The poison that circulated in Harley’s veins after her bout with the Joker, the poison he drew from her body into his own, in protective love for her and trust in his own Jotun strength--he still has it. And it takes only a slight shifting, a subtle maneuver, for him to pull it from its pocket dimension and put it in the way of the piercing tendrils. They draw it up like the roots of a twisted Yggdrasil, drinking from an abyssal Mímisbrunnr.
Hela tastes it at once, and shudders, and for a moment he has respite from the piercing pain.
“What was that?” Hel is silent around them, oppressive. He can hear his own pulse in his ears.
“Failure,” he tells her. “The terror of losing a loved one. The shame of helplessness, of being unable to protect them. Mistakes made, which led to suffering for those you hold dear. Eternal regret, self-condemnation. Drink it, Sister. You’ve dodged it for too long.”
“You’re bluffing,” she says. And she isn’t wrong, really. Even imbued with his magic and his words, the poison racing through her form will not last long. She’s too powerful. She shudders with discomfort, but her energy surges as well, and he imagines she is picking it apart, down to the molecular level, dissolving the virulence in a way he was incapable of doing, even for Harley’s sake.
But in the end, that just makes it another layer of failure upon failure, and if he lets it, maybe that strengthens him in some way, too: failure, loss, survival. Ice rises in his veins as he braces for another stand. There is no endgame here, no further trump card. He will face her until he outlasts her; he has no other choice, but he was prepared for that.
He may be without options, but he is not the only one here. There are hoofbeats as Skurge races toward them, and Loki wants to scream at him for his foolish courage, but at the last second the horse swerves and darts around Hela instead of charging into her. Playing chicken with death itself. If any were there to witness, that would be glorious, he thinks, but then he realizes there are footsteps, as well. Running feet, shouts and showers of rocks and embers--he turns his head with difficulty in the binding branches, and finds an immense crowd around them, shades of every Asgardian peasant and merchant and farmer imaginable, poised with axes and pitchforks. Behind them are thousands of soldiers, the Einherjar that she murdered, hungry for vengeance.
He was right. Hela owns Death, perhaps, but not the Dead. They are free to choose a side here, just as they are free to choose neither side and ignore the conflict.
Freedom is life’s great lie, he remembers. And I am the god of liars.
Skurge and his charger harry Hela once again, strafing past her, and some of her branches withdraw from Loki to reach for the Executioner, instead. But now, there are silvery shapes overhead, the sound of wings churning the air, the beat of a drum in the depths of Loki’s chest.
Valkyries. He falls to his knees as the branches release him, and lifts his eyes toward what passes for the sky here. It is full of them, light upon light, swords and arrows blazing as they circle. If anyone deserves Valhalla, surely it would be these warriors who themselves choose the slain--but as Skurge said, you only stay there if you feel you belong there. Do they feel they failed, defeated at Hela’s hands? Or maybe they only wait for Brunnhilde to join them.
“You had never known defeat until Ragnarok,” he tells Hela as her branches start to crack and wither and fall. “I was born a failure, a runt, fit only for sacrifice. That is where we are most different. My providence is those who lose, who are cast out and broken. There is no consistency in the universe but that the mighty will be brought low, Hela. The meek will also be brought low, but they don’t have as far to fall.”
“Here, now, you will fail a second time. But you were already mine. You just didn’t know it yet.”
She cannot accept it, and for a long while she struggles, branches lashing, crumbling, reforming. This is a struggle that could be endless, a war between death and the dead, but there is enough doubt in his words, and enough force behind the Valkyrie screams and the rage of the dead of Asgard that she wavers. Uncertainty for even a moment on the field of war means loss.
He watches the blackness of her crown curl in on itself, like a dying spider, and finds a moment of pity in his heart before she vanishes into the ground.
The crowd does not disperse, but neither does it rally at once to his side. He had dared to hope--but really, there are too many here whose courage and nobility outweigh his. His people were unwilling to watch him be tortured, but that doesn’t mean they’re eager to come to his banner. Skurge, though, dismounts his horse and offers Loki a hand up. He is not ashamed to accept it.
“Thank you,” he says, and looks out at the sea of shades. “I think it was your call they came to, friend, not mine.”
“Little of both?” He shrugs. “You’re the god of the dead now, I reckon.”
“She’ll be back either way,” he says. “But I’m not sure I am, actually. One of the most humblings things I’ve found in the last couple years is that those that need me most usually don’t want a god at all. Why should those who have suffered under authority want a divinity over them?”
“...I didn’t say I was enthusiastic about it,” Skurge admits sheepishly.
“Unfortunately, my providence seems to confer more obligation on the god than on the subject.” Loki says wryly.
“But as for our people, will they follow you? Will they follow us?” Loki looks around him. “There is a battle coming, for the sake of the living, for all the realms. Thanos has already slain half of all life, and if he is not stopped, he will take all of it. I do not ask for your forgiveness or your worship, but I will beg for your alliance.”
There is an undercurrent that ripples through the shades around them, an energy Loki can feel in his very bones, rumbling up from the ground, threading through his spine. Skurge shudders; he can feel it too, and Loki smiles at him. “I think you are elected as the shepherd of the dead,” he says. “At least for now. Executioner, will you execute your peoples’ will?”
Skurge looks bewildered, dazed, but the shades around them are turned toward him now, and after the space of several breaths, a look of absolute joy dawns on his face. “...yeah.” He says. “Hell, yeah! Let’s...let’s keep some people from joining us. Sooner than they should, I mean.”
There is peace in finding out where you belong, Loki knows. He rolls his aching shoulders and carefully begins to conjure armor of ice. “As far as getting to the field, I have one hope--”
He touches the amber bead around his neck with icy fingers, then feels a thump on his shoulder, and the clasp of a powerful hand. “You could have asked.”
Heimdall’s shade is no shade, but rather a silhouette of tawny gold light. And Loki would swear on his soul that it wasn’t there a second ago, because he is sure he would have noticed the glow on his skin and the faces around him.
“My intent is still to carry your corpse to Ran,” he tells him, smiling. “As is fitting. But clearly your spirit wanders where it will.”
“It always did,” Heimdall confirms. “And it will serve with the shepherd of the dead, to take them where they’re needed. But you’re no shade, Loki. You’ll need a vessel.”
“I know where to find one,” Skurge says. “We have a shipwright.”
Loki takes in a deep breath and lets it out, a sigh of blended nerves and satisfaction. Sometimes stories are truer than one thinks, and prophecies come out in the ways one least expects. Other times, things simply fall flawlessly into place. “That,” he says, “is exactly what I was hoping you would say.”
((Musical Inspiration))