Choices

Chapter 66
They appeared inside a stone structure. The roof low like a small house, Thor had to tilt his neck to the side to fit. "This can't be right." Cephera said. "The frost giant woman was far too large to fit in here." Cephera fit fine, though she wouldn't want to live there. She was to used to large palaces now.
"There's a door." Hogun pointed ahead. Hogun was the best for tracking people, no matter where they might be, he'd find them. A skill he'd been honing these past few decades Without a word, or a sound, Hogun crept up on the door as if it might attack him. He pressed his ear to the wood and then eased it open and peeked inside. Without turning to look at his companions he waved them to come forward.
Cephera snuck up as quietly as possible, but even with his bent posture, Thor walked with heavy steps. Cephera rolled her eyes and followed Hogun through the doorway. The roof automatically gave way to a vaulted ceiling of stone. Handcrafted by the looks of things.
Across a long narrow bridge they crossed, below was certain death should they fall. A hazy glimmer of light below made Cephera wonder if it might be lava. The bridge was a very firm structure, thankfully. Cephera wasn't thrilled about the height and lack of railing to stop a slip and fall. On and on they went until the reached the end and at the end was a larger wooden door.
Hogun placed his ear to this one as well and held to a hand for them all to stay still. Thor brought Mjolnir up, ready to fend off an attack. Hogun stood straight and nodded. "There is someone inside." He told them pulling his curved blade from its place at his hip.
He opened the door and allowed Thor to be the first one inside. Thor charged it, hammer raised and a look of determination on his face, but it wasn't needed. Inside, the whole room reeked of dark magic. Bitter and stale. Cephera covered her nose and her eyes first fell upon the sorceress. Her skin was blotchy with brown patches and peeling. Her eyes, blood shot, peeked half open to stare at them.
The second thing Cephera's eyes fell on was Loki, whom Hogun had safely made it too. "He's alive." Hogun told them his eyes resting up at the naked woman. Weak and frail in her state, she was unable to move.
"Help me," she begged, her lips cracked and bleeding. All the arrogance gone from her face, all the mocking and joy. She was dying. Poisoned from using too much black magic for too long. What had happened?
"Why should we witch?" Thor taunted. "Tis' your own actions that brought you here. Kidnapping a prince of Asgard is no petty crime." Thor didn't seem the least bit sympathetic, but Cephera felt bad for her. The man had done this to her, he must have, but for what purpose?
Hogun's eyes were looking down where Cephera could not see. They were wide and worrisome.
"You wouldn't leave my children without their mother, nor will you take their father." Her voice rattled as she coughed. Cephera's heart thrummed against her chest and she stepped forward, closer to Hogun, closer to what he was staring at.
Sure enough, three children lay with Loki. A half human half skeleton baby girl, a tiny wet puppy and around Loki's arm was wrapped a serpent. The only human-like child to come from this magic was staring up at Cephera with her one green eye. Green like Loki's.
Thor was behind her. It was clear the frost giantess was no threat in her condition and so he'd lowered his hammer. "Monsters." Thor breathed. "Do you not know what abominations come from creating life with magic." He shook his head disgusted. "There is only one thing for it." Thor raised his hammer and Cephera flew between him and the children. "Thor don't!" She cried. "They are only children."
"They are monsters." Thor retorted hammer still raise as he glared down at her.
"They are Loki's." There was a stale truth in the air that Cephera was trying to fight off. The urge to cry her heart out was threatening to overtake her, but she held it in. There had to be an explanation as to why Loki would do this. She had to believe that, or her entire world would drown with her in it.
Thor looked to his brother, unconscious on the cave floor, before turning his irritated eyes back on Cephera. You are too soft." He told her and proceeded to pick up Loki, shaking the baby serpent from his arm first, and heft him over his shoulder. "We should get him to a healer." He suggested not looking back. He walked away and Cephera turned to the babies and the giantess.
"What will you do?" Angrboða asked only one eye open now. Her face greying to the color of ash.
"I don't know, but they don't deserve to die for your mistakes, no matter the circumstances. They are innocent." Cephera frowned. Though she meant the words, a flutter in her belly made her wonder if she was doing the right thing.
"After everything I told you, you'll risk the fall of Asgard by allowing my children to live?" Angrboða raised an eyebrow with great effort.
"I won't let that happen." Cephera promised not to the sorceress, but to herself. Whatever the circumstances where, Cephera would do everything she could to avoid this so called prophecy from come true and she would do it without killing.
"And you'll leave me here to die?" Angrboða asked.
"I can't save you now, no one can." Cephera inhaled deep, her hands shaking. Hogun was beside her and put a firm hand on her shoulder. Hogun wouldn't kill an innocent, in this he would take Cephera's side.
"That I am." Angrboða agreed before closing her eyes. She didn't speak again but she was still alive.
Carefully Cephera approached the wide eyed wolf cub who was now curled next to the serpent. 'So this is what black magic does when used to create life.' She thought to herself and frowned. This is what Krystoff would do to her if he had the chance, and Cephera would no more be able to kill those children than these ones.
She couldn't leave them, it was unfair, they didn't ask for this. Pulling her cloak from her shoulders she tentatively picked up each of them and folded them inside making a makeshift basket. She carried them with both arms and out of the cave where Thor waited for them both.
He turned up his nose when he saw Cephera had taken the 'monsters'. "Father will take care of them accordingly. You are only bringing them home for him to do what I was stopped from doing." Thor told her.
"He won't kill them." Cephera insisted narrowing her own eyes.
"We'll see."
***
Frigga stared down at Loki's offspring and then at Cephera, who hadn't spoken a word since the shouting fiasco with Odin, who had indeed wanted to have the children killed. Frigga had put a word in on Cephera's behalf, but it only caused Odin to become angry.
"It there is no such prophecy then why do you fear letting them live!" Cephera had shouted at the king.
By the time she'd managed to win her verbal battle, Odin was red in the face and had sworn that should anything bad come of these children it would be her fault and that they were in her care. He'd also said nothing good could come of anything created from dark magic.
Loki still lay in the healing room. Sadness, anger, fear, Loki was still unconscious and unable to explain what had happened and so Cephera was left wondering and sometimes her wind wandered to the worst before she quickly pushed those thoughts aside.
Currently curled in her lap was the now clean wolf pup. His fur pitch black with a small amount of grey along his ears and jaw. He had weaned and whined until she picked him up. The other two were sleeping in an old crib Frigga had the servants fetch. It looked odd, a serpent sleeping next to a semi-human baby girl, but Frigga thought it was best to treat them as children, not as the animals they appeared to be. "If dark magic created them, there is a chance they will have some essence of human within them." She explained.
The baby girl, though she looked asleep, didn't seem so. She opened her one eye quickly when they'd check on them and stare at them with a spine chilling gaze. Cephera hadn't named them, they were not hers to name.
She wondered how Loki would feel when he woke. Would he be surprised to still have the children around? Angry? Happy? At this point even Frigga couldn't even guess. It would all depend on what had happened in that cave.
Cephera gasped in surprise when the pup latched onto her finger and sucked. "He's hungry, what do we feed them?" Cephera looked to the queen, she'd never taken care of anything in her life.
"I'll have a servant fetch some warm milk and some bottles for the cub and the girl. We can try baby mice for the serpent." She suggested. She left to fetch a servant outside the doors. They'd kept this affair private. No one else had seen the children, smuggled into the room under a second cloak while still wrapped in Cephera's.
Cephera stroked the top of the pups head, he pushed into the rub. At least he was friendly.

Notes