Madness of the Serpent

It was not possible. There was no reason, understanding, or validity to what the spirit now saw. Its eyes widened in a refusal of acknowledgement at the twisted appendage that now represented its right hand.

A pattern of raised, dark scales slowly crawled down its forearm, shredding the fabric of the suit as it spread towards its elbow like a hungrily festering disease. Pointed, heavily-armored black scales were replacing pale skin. Wickedly curved claws were supplanting fingernails. Rough, dark leather was spreading over its soft, smooth palms.

Jerking away in abject horror, it released the golden apparatus to bounce against the black slated floor. The spreading abruptly stopped, but the deformity of its right hand remained – a jagged black gauntlet molded onto its flesh. It backed away from the sceptre, as if somehow putting distance between it and the weapon would make its flesh return to its previous state.

Loki chuckled softly as he began to move to his left, circling slowly as he fixed the spirit with an expression of triumph.

“What a delightful turn this is,” he remarked smoothly, eyeing the mutated digits of its hand with bright interest. “Who knew such a shocking event like this could possibly occur?” Loki tapped his finger against his chin in a false show of deliberation. “Oh yes, I did.”

The spirit did not respond to this assertion, widened eyes fastened to the horrific mutation of its still-unfamiliar flesh.

Loki continued to speak, apparently having little need of an attentive listener.

“I knew. As soon as the Other trapped you within the orb rather than disperse your energy, which would have been far simpler… I knew.”

“What?” it asked in a strangled voice, trying to interpret Loki’s words while simultaneously staring at its armored hand with incomprehension.

“A being who caused the Other so much concern that he would not, or could not, obliterate it? That was something of interest. That was something I needed for my own.”

“This should not be…” it quietly rejected his words, unable to look away from the distorted features of its appendage. “This is wrong.”

“On the contrary, this could not be more right. My gambit has finally given me what I have aspired for – you still retain some of the qualities of your former form.”

It finally pulled its eyes from the armored skin of its hand, staring at Loki in disbelief.

“You are mistaken. I possessed no such trait in the time before.”

The spirit’s explanations were met with an amused sneer as the Jotun-Asgardian continued to circle around it.

“Did you always think you were a floating phantasm of disembodied thoughts? Do you know so little of the spirit realm that you are ignorant of the most significant truth of your existence?”

“Your words hold no sense,’ it managed to reply, its voice wavering from the stress of their encounter. It knew it should not ask for any knowledge he possessed about the bodiless ones, should not feed into more of his deceits and twisted words. There was no truth the spirit should believe while his mind was clearly plagued with darkness.

Instead of addressing the spirit’s confusion, Loki said, “The Chitauri have come… and they will win. The heroes of Earth will fall. And you…”

Loki picked the sceptre off the ground, pointing it directly at the spirit as it froze in alarm, only now realizing they had switched positions within the room.

“You will join me, willingly or not. You are, as they say on Earth, my “insurance policy” if the Other’s master decides to come calling.”

“The… the one with the deafening voice?” it asked incredulously, beginning to slowly pace backwards from the Jotun-Asgardian and his bladed weapon. What did Loki think it could possibly do against the owner of that terrible laughter?

“Just so,” he replied, his grin a little too tight. “Let’s see how extensive your skills are, shall we?” Loki inquired with false courtesy before leaping at the spirit, swinging the sceptre down in an arch above his head as he descended like a winged predator, emerald cape flaring behind him like unfolded wings.

Reacting without conscious thought, it raised its taloned hand and caught the blade in its claws, sparks flying from the hard friction between metal and organic material. The force of Loki’s attack drove it backwards, boots skidding across the sleek floor as it braced its legs under the violence of the blow. The edge of the blades dug into its gnarled hand but could not penetrate the armor. The azure orb glowed with an eager, sinister glow, as if yearning to bite its flesh.

Loki jerked the blades out from between its talons and flipped the sceptre around, jamming the butt of the weapon into its stomach, knocking the wind from its diaphragm. Gasping for breath, it scrambled backwards, tripping over a set of short stairs as it attempted to gain distance from the aggressive Jotun-Asgardian.

The eager taste for blood was given to the sceptre as the blade flashed forward, slicing the back of its thigh as it tried to regain its feet. The spirit gave a startled cry as it stumbled again, limping in desperation as a sensation of fire traveled along the flesh of its leg.

It did not scurry far before the Jotun-Asgardian stood before it, grabbing it by the neck and twisting it around to shove its back onto the waist-high counter of the bar, his fingers digging cruelly into the soft flesh of its throat. He pinned it to the hard surface with the length of his body and began to squeeze.

Lashing out, it kicked him hard in the lower region of his abdomen, causing him to double over with an expression of agony on his face. It barely had time to pull in a breath when he pointed the sceptre forward, and it dove over the counter to avoid the blast. The blue bolt slammed into the bottles directly above it, showering it in glass and foul-smelling brown liquid. It covered its head with its gauntleted arm, protecting its head from the falling shards.

Loki rounded the corner of the counter with sceptre gripped tightly in hand, only to be met by a heavy, still-intact glass bottle hurtling toward his head. He just had time to move aside out of its path before the desperate spirit tackled him around the middle, the wound in its leg almost forgotten as the adrenaline fueled its frantic attempts at survival.

Loki’s back slammed into the ground, its shoulder digging into his chest as its weight crashed onto him, causing him to give a strangled cry and loosen his hold on the sceptre – enough for it to wrench it free from his grasp.

The spirit continued to travel from its momentum, rolling across the floor with the golden weapon, rotating its body onto its feet and whipping the sceptre around to aim at the ground where he lay prone.

The Jotun-Asgardian was already standing, and he brought his booted heel down near the base of the blade, attempting to knock it loose from the spirit’s grip. It refused to relinquish its hold, and the blade struck the ground with considerable force, the stone floor shattering under the impact as stone sparks and dust flew into the air.

Loki laughed in delight as the spirit drew the weapon sideways, attempting to swipe at his legs with the shaft in order to bring him to the ground once more.

He merely stepped backwards, farther than the sceptre’s length would allow, and danced out of the reach of the weapon as it attempted to strike down at him again.

Until now, the spirit had remained defensive and protective of its physical integrity, but the heat of anger had returned once more, feeding the part of itself that desired to cause pain in return.

“You have extraordinary strength, I grant you that, but you are laughably sluggish. Do not be so timid – I will not break if you become rough with me.”

It began to grow frustrated as he continued to deftly dodge and maneuver gracefully out of range from every blow the spirit attempted to land. It knew somewhere, in the back of its thoughts, that it was doing everything Loki desired. He was distracting it from the true threat, and with each passing moment, that threat grew at an alarming rate.

It knew this, logically, and yet it could not stop its offense. Loki’s teasing and taunting had stimulated the aggression of its body, and it desired nothing more than to squeeze his neck between its tapered talons.

Something blurred out of the side of its vision, and it had not realized Loki had moved to its side until it was falling onto its stomach, his foot having wedged between its moving ankles.

“Come now, Trinity. You can do better than this,” Loki chided as it attempted to push up from the floor, a heavy weight pressing down on the small of its back preventing this action.

It glared over its shoulder from the vantage point on the ground to see Loki pushing his boot against its spine. He noted the expression on its face and smirked. “You’re not wroth with me about the ‘cheap parlor tricks’ jab, are you? Goodness, spirits are sensitive.”

The pressure increased along its lower back, and it squirmed against the unyielding weight, afraid he meant to snap its spine. “I did not truly mean it. Your displays of strength have been most impressive, if a bit… unrefined.”

The spirit turned its face away from his cruel smile, wrapping its black appendage around the golden handle tightly, releasing an unsteady breath as it felt the segments of its spine rub together from the painful pressure. “I especially enjoyed when you destroyed a significant portion of Stark’s acropolis-“

Loki halted in his speech, his eyebrows drawn together as he looked down at the space the spirit had previously occupied, mystified to find it empty. His perplexed expression did not last for long, and it was replaced by a grin.

“You misbehaving, cheeky little thing. Stealing tactics from your master? I did not raise you to be a thief, young lady,” Loki remarked mischievously, attempting to goad it into speaking, as it had tricked him when their roles had been reversed.

“Mmmm. Except you’re not quite a lady, are you? That’s the question of the day. What is Trinity Frost?

Unlike Loki, the spirit did not mind being silent. It focused its thoughts very carefully, using the complex powers of the mind-jewel to stay unnoticed by his perceptions. The deceit was so strong that he had not known it had remained trapped under his foot, released when he had removed his heel.

“Ghost? Ghoul? Beast? Benevolent being? So many possibilities, all of them tantalizing in their own right.” Loki smirked in delight, his humor unhampered by the disappearance of the spirit, his expression devoid of any sort of concern.

“You cannot hide forever, Trinity. The longer you draw on the powers of the orb, the more twisted your form will become.”

The mention of its sudden deformity caused it to look down at the taloned hand, the tips hooked and deadly sharp, the black scales upturned and even in their pattern along its forearm.

“Of course, if you want to see what happens when those abominable scales completely consume your body, I could hardly blame you. I am fairly curious to see the transition myself.”

Loki laughed harshly as he held out his arms to the empty space of the room, as if inviting it to partake in the madness with him.

“What say you, wisp? Attempt to overpower me as you are now, or wait until you are an unrecognizable monster?”

It did not respond, holding the hateful instrument as far from its body as it could, shivering as it attempted to quiet its breathing and retreat toward the door which led to the rooftop. It had been distracted for too long by the Jotun-Asgardian’s poisonous amusement, and he was most likely correct in his assumption that the affliction of its arm would continue to grow the longer it held onto the golden apparatus. Though how the instrument was able to inflict such a horrible condition upon its body, it had no idea.

“Tick-tock, Trinity. Tick-tock.”

The spirit continued to ignore his taunts, its feet slowly traversing the debris-strewn floor as it kept a vigilant eye on the unhinged Jotun-Asgardian.

“Surely it’s been eating away at you, the question of your origins. The strange stares the mortals give you, the way their tiny minds can only perceive your harmless exterior but their baser instincts can sense your difference. Your misplacement. Your inner… abnormality.” Loki gave a slow grin, growling the last word as his pale eyes followed something along the floor.

“They can smell it on you, like a wolf guised in the skin of a sheep.”

Glancing towards the ground, it witnessed a thin trail of crimson liquid leading along the ashy floor and ended at the heel of its footwear – originating from the wound crossing the back of its thigh.

Its widened eyes flashed upwards to find Loki staring back, his grin vanishing as his pale eyes blazed with malice.

The spirit was unable to react as the sphere of green fire formed in Loki’s hand, his teeth gritted in a wordless cry as he sent the ball of emerald flames directly where it stood frozen in fright.

The spirit held its heavily scaled forearm in front of its body like a shield. The energy blast exploded against its arm and sent it rocketing through the air, crunching into the wall as the sceptre was once against lost from its grasp, the concealment broken as it collapsed to the ground.

Struggling to recover from the overwhelming attack, it pushed onto its hands and knees, its armored arm smoking and smoldering with flickers of green fire. The heat was unsettling, and there was a sharp stench from the heated material, but otherwise, the only pain it felt was from colliding with the interior of the tower.

Two black boots entered its lowered field of vision, scuffed and marred from battle. Its eyes trailed up the lanky, imposing body, its own form frozen as the deadly curve of the silver blade glittered meanly in front of its eyes, the tip hovering somewhere near its ear.

The sceptre was forced from its thoughts as Loki grabbed it by the hair, lifting the spirit to its feet and slamming it against the wall. The sceptre did not reenter its field of vision – instead it felt the cold, bitter blade of the weapon lightly press against the vulnerable flesh of its throat. He did not release its hair, forcing its head to remain still and fixed on him as it regarded him with frightened exhaustion.

They both gasped for breath, their bodies covered in dust and ash. Loki appeared just as fatigued, his grip on the sceptre trembling, as if the fiery energy he had conjured had cost him much.

Loki’s body may have been drained, but the manic light blazed as brightly as ever from his eyes, and it feared it was too late to appeal to what remained of his sanity. Much too late.

It tried for one last, final plea. Every passing moment it spent attempting to reason with Loki was another moment given to the Chitauri to bring their shock troops through – but it had to try. If it stopped trying to reach through to him, if it abandoned Loki to his fate, then it would have to finally admit that everything it had done since finding him adrift in the void had been in vain.

It would have to admit that it never should have resuscitated him. It would have to face the undeniable truth that it should have extinguished his life before he could become the twisted, broken person it saw now.

A mercy-killing.

“Please… the portal must be closed,” it gasped through ragged breaths, the skin of its neck uncomfortably tight against the biting edge of the blade.

“Even now, you seek to betray me,” Loki growled, his lips crinkling back like that of a snarling animal.

“I never betrayed you,” it denied with a grunt of pain as the grip on its hair tightened.

“Never… never betrayed me?!” he questioned in a voice bordering on hysteria. “You left me, abandoned me, in the jaws of those beasts! You left… and I…” His voice cracked with emotional and physical strain, his eyes red-rimmed and glassy. “I suffered, greatly. Forgotten. Alone.”

It was impossible to discern who was more surprised at his words. The spirit had expected accusations of treachery for surrendering to the humans – not for failing to save him in the dark place.

Loki’s unintended confession made him appear both confused and extremely fearful, his pupils dilating as his body responded to the sudden anxiety.

Did Loki truly believe the spirit had intentionally left his side? Did he truly not understand it would have never let him remain within the power of his tormentor if it had had a choice? It needed to communicate to him that this was so – it could not bear another moment of Loki believing the falsehoods in his mind. It was more than the spirit could accept.

“I did not forsake you. I did not leave of my own accord. My actions may have been insufficient, but… my concern for you has never been relinquished.” The spirit studied his expression, pleading for him to understand, for him to hold on to that remnant of lucidity that must still remain within him.

It felt dissatisfied with its staggering, awkward words. Cautiously, gradually, it lifted its hand, the one which still remained unmarred and whole, and gently placed it across his fingers which still braced the sceptre’s blade against its throat.

“I am here. For you,” it quietly spoke, its fingers slightly curling around his. “Trust that these words are true.”

Loki seemed unprepared for the light, warm touch on his hand. His gaze flickered, unsure, indecisive. The spirit used the opportunity to incrementally guide the blade away from its throat, watching his expression as the Jotun-Asgardian remained shaky and hesitant. It held his gaze, willing him to see that its intentions could be believed. That it had only wished to protect him. That it had not forgotten their bonding in the blackest reach of the void, even when he did not remember.

Something dark flickered in those pale blue eyes. Even while they remained wide and lost, the deceit formed inside of them.

“Truth… Such a subjective concept, isn’t it?” Loki whispered in a soft voice as he gave the spirit a gentle look – a gesture all the more painful by his inevitable betrayal.

Loki’s expression hardened in the second before he viciously yanked on the locks of its hair, forcing its head back to expose its neck as he attempted to slice the blade across its flesh.

The spirit’s unmarred hand – which had been resting lightly across his fingers – now gripped his knuckles tightly as its palm braced against the metal shaft, halting the lethal strike with strength that came from within rather than from the cursed instrument itself.

In the same moment, it struck forward with its monstrous hand and gripped his head tightly, pressing its rough palm against his brow as Loki roared in unfettered hatred.

The spirit did what it had sworn not to do, and it speared straight through into Loki’s mind, drawing on the intended purpose of the mind-jewel as it felt a white-hot pain stab into the fleshy area between its neck and left shoulder.

The spirit immediately seized onto the dark thread it discovered in his mind, and once it traveled down the connective tether, it was in a place both unknown and unnervingly familiar.

Notes