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bookishwench“The sea is always good,” the king mumbled to himself as he looked down from the decrepit parapet of his castle into the roiling waters below.
Loki stood, silent and invisible, watching him. This particular human was unusual because of what he was not. Greed was commonplace among Midgardians. The lust for gold, silver, gems, even the less tactile and more elusive currency of power was humdrum by now, but Haggard seemed ultimately unimpressed with any of those. Actually, his lack of connection to practically anything in the world was in itself unusual, though Loki would have found it boring if that had been the mortal’s only trait, but there was one thing for which the old man possessed an inextinguishable passion.
Lir could not see them. A hero, yes, and perhaps a bit too similar to Loki’s own brother for him to be met with anything but a sneer by the silent watcher, but blind as a bat when it came to things in front of his own nose. Loki’s attention had been drawn to the water at once, and more to what lay just beneath the surface, clawing with delicate hooves at the sand beneath their feet, necks tossing in perpetual affront at their imprisonment by this creature with the lifespan of a mayfly, horns tinted palest green and blue glowing beneath the water and pulsing with magic. Each white-tipped waves showed their manes for a moment, pure white as seafoam, touching the outer air for a heartbeat before sinking beneath the surface once more and succumbing to the threat of the Red Bull.
For personal reasons he preferred not to dwell upon, Loki was not overly fond of seeing magic imprisoned. He had experienced it too often himself, and the pitiful cries of the unicorns pierced the shells of his ears like the high screeching of the hawks that circled Haggard’s lonely keep. He watched but kept still, a cloak of darkest green pulled close about him as the sea wind whipped through his black hair. Perhaps if Haggard had looked beside him, he might have discerned the pallor of Loki’s skin or the flash of his eyes in the darkness, but he gazed only and ever at the sea until the rest of the world crumbled from his notice.
He was also blind to the other horror of his castle that had arrived of late, though for this Loki could not fault him. She sat upon the shattered tiles of the roof, her claws scrabbling at stones like rats. He gave her a wide berth. Chaos has power, but it does not do to forget that destruction can come in other flavors. Mommy Fortuna had chosen her death at the talons of Celaeno, but he did not share the carnival keeper’s taste. Now the harpy roosted atop the castle between the ramparts, eyes hungry, free once more and with a taste for cruelty. He inclined his head to her slightly in a sign of respect, and she twisted her neck sharply towards him, keen eyes clear of the glamour he cast to keep mortal eyes fogged, and stared at him for long moments before returning the gesture while a smile twisted her features.
Vultures and ravens circled battlefields, but woe to the place where a harpy waited for death to do its work. Loki was not certain exactly what fate would befall this place, only that it would be dire.
He looked again at the sea, to the majestically writhing forms of the unicorns kept a hair’s breadth beneath the waves, beauty to enchant the fanatical eyes of the king alone. He had stolen nearly all the beauty from the world, locked it away, threatened it with the bull, kept it at his beck and call.
Nearly.
On the horizon, Loki saw the light that mortal eyes were denied, though the form was wrong. The girl was lovely enough that he could have wept at her beauty like a soppy boy, fallen at her feet and worshipped, fallen under any spell she cared to weave, but she was no girl. The spot on her forehead, like some reverse mark of Cain, sang forth, filling the air with a memory of things long forgotten and trod into the dust: wonder, harmony, perfection, and most of all, innocence. He had not been innocent in a very long time, and a sense of yearning filled him that nearly made him pity the king for his mania.
Nearly.
Loki’s eyes flitted to Celaeno again as her powerful wings furiously beat the air, and a chill ran down his spine as he saw recognition on her features. She spoke to him, for there was no one else to hear her words, and her voice was like the cracking of doom.
“My sister has returned.”
“Sister?” he asked, shocked at the lunacy of her words. “Do you not know what that girl is?”
“The instrument of destruction,” Celaeno said, her words hissing like venom eating into stone. “She will destroy this place, this king, this prison so that all will hear the tale and know what fear is.”
Loki was chilled to the bone but looked again in the direction of the vessel that held the unicorn.
“And it will destroy her as well,” he said with certainty.
“That is my gift to her for restoring my freedom,” Calaeno said, and her smile came again, the wind suddenly whipping with an icy chill from the sea. “She will know love and all its ecstasy and pain, she alone of all her kind.”
Mortals have never heard the laugh of a harpy. There is no sound it can be compared to. Picture the wanton shredding of angels’ wings, the moment when life and joy is snuffed out in the universe, the darkness at the center of the deepest cavern filled with things too horrible to utter, and that is a pale form of it. Loki heard it now as Calaeno opened her mouth and laughed while the sea churned more desperately with the wild struggle of those beneath it.
“As do you, Prince of Asgard,” she said as she settled into a chuckle like bones clicking together. “As do you.”
While he stared at her in horror Calaeno spread her wings and took flight, and even Haggard shuddered from the chill. Loki watched as she became a speck in the distance, then looked again at the three approaching forms. Pity moved him, and he bestowed the smallest gift. The man now had within him the seed of power which, when time passed, would grow into something more, something that might prevent perfect annihilation.
It was all he could do. He looked once more to the sea, to the captives within, to the captor who watched and waited and signed his own death warrant. As the red glow of the bull began to stain the sand of the beach like blood, Loki left this realm. If his heart broke as he went, he spoke not a word of it.
