Fic: Worlds of Chaos (Miranda) Chap. 10

[bookishwench]

Loki enjoyed chaos, of course. It was his birthright. The wild spinning of worlds and shattering of rules was a thrill he loved, filling him with glee, drawing an answering wildness from his own heart.

But he did not love Miranda.

Long ago, he had been acquainted with this planet’s namesake, a beautiful island girl raised in near perfect isolation with only her father and Caliban for company. She had been very innocent, though not nearly as stupid as he had expected. Somehow, her sanity had been preserved through conversations with her noble father, a relatively accomplished magician, and Loki had taken a liking to her. When Caliban had attempted raping her, Loki had deftly urged her father to the right place at the right time, preventing the attack’s culmination. When she had seemed too lonely to carry on much longer, Loki had arranged for a little shipwreck, bringing her a first glimpse of the world of men and claiming her back to what passed for civilization then. It had all ended happily ever after that time. He had briefly considered taking the girl himself, but whether it was a protective charm of her father’s or that his heart was elsewhere at the time, he deferred, and the world spun evenly on its axis.

The planet the Alliance had named for the girl of long ago was far less fortunate.

Pax was meant to bring about permanent peace through chemicals. The humans, a species never suffering from a dearth of hubris, had tried to eliminate chaos, exterminate it, gas it out of existence like a cockroach.

They neglected to remember that cockroaches are canny enough to survive even the blast of a nuclear bomb.

The result was not his. He was not the one who created Pax, nor was he the one who spread its invisible, silent presence across the face of the newly colonized planet. Only he could hear the serpent-like hiss of it as the humans breathed it in. He did nothing but watch, knowing if he stopped them, if he reversed their free choice, they would do this again and again and again until the result could not be contained and would engulf the ‘verse in madness. The stench of their smug certainty that they could change human nature made him gag, and he wanted to leave, but he watched. He waited.

Loki saw thousands grow still, become like stones. Their thoughts were painfully slow, like a wounded leg dragging across concrete, leaving a trail of blood that no one would clean. He watched, silent, unseen, standing in the midst of what the world was like with chaos removed: dead. For this once, as he saw the people cease moving, cease breathing, cease thinking, become bereft of the spark of life itself, Loki, god of chaos, wept in silence at what the idiocy of humanity had done to these poor unwitting fools. They did not merely die. They ceased to be. The endless quiet as they dissolved was appalling.

He turned to leave, anger kindling inside him, when he heard a noise. Scratching. The animals, pets, vermin, wild, tame, all had died as well, but he thought for a wild moment that some hideously large insect had survived. Then, he saw the first of them.

Survivor was not the word he would use for it. It was no longer human now, and it was not purged of chaos but entirely composed of it. It dragged itself along the ground, not like a human or even an animal. Not like anything he had ever seen. It bore wounds in its flesh made by itself for no reason, not from necessity or loathing, just from a mindless desire to destroy. Transfixed with horror, Loki looked into what passed for the thing’s eyes now, pools of lunacy that reflected the world, and knew that it saw him.

His blood turned cold as ice, and the son of Odin, master of mischief, player with the destiny of worlds, knew fear.

It lumbered towards him, picking up speed, wanting something that it could no longer name, and Loki abruptly disappeared, winking into existence in a different spot several yards away. It turned, made a noise that had nothing to do with speech and everything to do with endless hunger, and clambered towards him.

It was not alone.

He felt them before he saw or heard them, the remnants who had been warped and twisted into horrific forms, whose sole desire was to shed chaos everywhere, destruction complete, unmake the universe.

He saw the mirror of his soul shattered into a thousand shards that were surrounding him, sharp, cutting, biting, vicious, horror unending. They were drawing closer, drawn to him as the only whole (or was he?) being left in this world. He drew upon his power, but the terror he felt was so deep that his magic sputtered away, leaving him helpless, alone, vulnerable.

“Heimdall!” he shrieked as they came closer. “Get me out of here!”

His eye had been upon him all along; Loki was sure of it as the Bifrost opened. He felt himself leaving this tomb of the living dead, and he wept with relief as he fell upon the floor back home in Asgard, too weak to move for long minutes.

“Prince Loki?” Heindall asked. His tone was never gentle, but even he had some concern at the shivering mess that was Odin’s second son.

“They will pay,” Loki finally managed to say, the clinging tendrils of horror making embarrassment unimportant as he curled into himself on the ground. “They will be made to pay for what they have done! This is an abomination!”

Heimdall looked at him, never blinking, but nodded his head slowly in agreement. They would pay as all did who stepped too far, even the one who lay before him, panting in revulsion at chaos beyond even himself.