Inbox (Caldera)

[coldsong]

"Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Attack while they are distracted.

Kindly leave a message."

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[thecodexabides]

Gadriel wasn't sure he followed the entire story, but what he got was: ship full of innocent refugees. A weapon they needed to interdict from an enemy. A daemon (FINALLY someone understood those). A very confusing family. (How are you related to a daemon, that's not how it works.)

"So your sacrifice not only saved your brother, but an entire ship of refugees." Does... Does Loki not listen to himself? "Brother, your courage should be legendary among your people, and your name honored." And your geneseed revered but he knows other places don't, uh, do that part. "If that is not the case, they are unworthy of you."

[coldsong]

"Well, I...I did a lot of bad things first," he says, but he's leaning into the hand on his shoulder now, clearly affected by the reassurance. "There was a...a dispute over the throne, between myself and Thor, and I learned I was adopted, which is something my parents should have mentioned when I was a child. I left home because of all that." This is a heinous oversimplification, but Loki wouldn't expect Midgardian humans to understand Asgardian royal politics, let alone a man who comes from a world like Gadriel's.

"And I was always ill-fitting. The ethos of Asgard was battle, glory, directness, and I am more of a mage than a fighter. I was considered cowardly, sometimes...ergi. Unclean, improper, weak. I don't think there's a direct translation into common language."

"Anyway. I left home, and was captured by Thanos and his Order. They had me for nearly a year. The things I was forced to do were...unforgivable. I held out as long as I could, mostly out of spite, but..."

There's a long pause, and then: "I do understand your concern about corruption. Magic is like...radiation. It can burn. There was an artifact they had. The Mind Stone. Sometimes I think it still has its claws in me. Sometimes I think all of this is an illusion, and I'll wake up and find myself in chains again, with the fires roaring outside my cell, burning me to nothing."

[thecodexabides]

Oh, Loki, if only you knew. "The Emperor's sons," Long story, but he is trying to simplify in his own way, "our Primarchs, all fought. Bitterly. Some slew others. One tried to slay the Emperor himself. That is how it is." Fighting over a throne was literally normal.

There is the whole sorcerer thing, and Gadriel could understand how that could have been a problem. "Where I am from, psykers who can fight join the Grey Knights, or if not they can become Inquisitors. Both are powerful. It sounds like your chap--your family did not know how to use your abilities. That is not your failing."

Gadriel is trying to follow "So most of the 'bad things' you have done, you were forced to do, and even then you resisted doing them?" Again. Loki. Do you HEAR yourself? "Please explain how this is not courage? Maybe not the courage of a Templar, but courage nonetheless?"

And, yes, about that. "That is my concern. That is why our Chaplains question us, especially after contacts with Chaos."

[coldsong]

That gets a look of surprise. For some reason, he didn't think Gadriel's Emperor sounded like the type to have sons, let alone permit a struggle over his dynasty. There is a lot he doesn't understand about his world, clearly. "Maybe we should talk about history more...another time."

Because he's too shaken to really appreciate the information just now. He just feels he should. They'll understand one another better if they can exchange these kinds of stories.

"My mother taught me most of what I learned. I think she was the only one who really understood me at the time."

Such praise! Is this same man who he was afraid was going to hurt him twenty minutes ago? It's not exactly helping Loki ground himself in reality, but he has been so desperate for someone to see something worthwhile in him for such a long time, the idea of rejecting this kindness doesn't even cross his mind. Maybe he'll wonder at himself later.

"Most of them?" He echoes softly. "I don't know...it's complicated. More than half, though. But I failed. I did try, but I failed, and so many people suffered for it. I don't apologize any longer, because the people that deserve it most are dead."

And there is a dark, angry part of him that wanted to kill Thor at least once or twice. Something bitter and cold and alienated that was ready, just for a moment, to watch Asgard burn out of spite. That part of him failed, too. You lack conviction. Maybe lacking conviction in your attempt to enact evil is almost like a virtue. Almost.

"You're his height. Thanos. Built like him, armored like him. You're not like him, though. More and more I see that. Maybe you could even have fought him to a standstill, if you had been there."

His walking slows for a second, talk of the Mind Stone distracting him, and he rubs his forehead with the heel of his hand. "I hadn't thought of that angle until now. I am used to magic being a natural part of my body. I was born with it. I was born to change my shape and ride the wind. But there's magic and then there is...that. Fragments of the infinite that are simply too big for any one person, even a god, to come into contact with and escape unchanged. This is what you fear when you try to warn us about Chaos?"

[thecodexabides]

Gadriel only knew as much theology as he needed to, but what he remembered of it said that the Emperor had a grand purpose to it all, and saw it all coming, all spun out on the web of destiny including Horus's betrayal.

Where Gadriel is from, brothers support their brothers. When one falls or falters, another is there to help them up. If Lyreo or even Chairon had come to him like this, he would remind him of the same. Loki's brother did not sound worthy of the title.

"Everyone fails. Eventually. Victory or loss is not the measure of worth. It is the attempt. Every man falls in time. Not every man tried to stand first. It sounds like you did, many times."

He listens, slowing his steps to keep pace. "Psykers are born with their abilities. Even they know they are susceptible to Warp corruption. I saw an astropath taken by a Chaos sorcerer. He tore through her body like a curtain of blood. If it could happen to a trained psyker, with all the protections we know..." He shrugs. No one was ever truly safe. "That is how it is where I am from, at least." See, he's learning. He's not assuming.

[coldsong]

"I...I did. I tried." Feels like he's been trying to live up to one ideal or another and failing ever since he was a child. Learning he was Jotun and not Aesir at all explained it perfectly for a while, and then he rode the wave of his own rage until it broke. Then he ran on fear and pain. Until this place, where there is just enough space to catch his breath and think and try to piece himself back together.

A task he doesn't relish. But Gadriel has a point here, as well. The attempt to stand is valuable in itself, even if there is no guarantee of success. Maybe Loki is destined to be the god of losers, or simply a loser without the benefits of divinity, but he is, at least, capable of trying. Still. Again.

"So not all magic is directly from the Warp? What is the distinction between a sorcerer and a psyker?" No, this is good. Maybe they can cobble together a language that they can both understand, in this moment where Gadriel's good will is at a high ebb, and Loki's defensive walls are down.

cw; slavery just to be safe?

[thecodexabides]

No one fully lives up to their ideals for themselves. That is why one met with the Chaplain regularly, to discuss one's shortcomings and commit to better. It sounds like Loki's world would benefit from someone wearing a human skull as a mask to discuss one's failures at length.

Maybe not though.
Gadriel's no Chaplain but he knows that much.

That's an interesting discussion and Gadriel's not entirely sure. "Sorcerers have given over their lives to Chaos. They channel a specific Chaos god's powers and are beholden to their demands." So, magical slaves, really? "Psykers have natural abilities, but they are not as strong as sorcerers. And some pledge their loyalty to the Imperium." Pledge...or be forced to pledge on pain of death? Same same.

[coldsong]

"That sounds more akin to what we would call a warlock, where I come from, or maybe the avatar of a particular sort of god." It sounds like the sort of thing Hela might have done, claiming mortals or weaker gods as her vessels, granting them power in exchange for servitude.

"For me, it's not like calling upon something greater, some well of chaotic energy or dark power. It's more like telling the universe around you a story, and telling it so well and so sweetly that the world believes it and changes itself accordingly. Some of what I can do I was born to do, and some I learned from my mother, or other teachers."

"But I've seen dark powers, too. Demons, angry gods, Cosmic Things that are so far beyond life as we know it that they draw no distinction between creation and destruction. Svartálfar that wanted only to return reality to primordial darkness--they were like the drukhari you speak of, I imagine. It is...complicated. The spiritual world is rife with both good and evil, and it's tricky to tell the one from the other."