Chapter Text
The war had been raging for a century. Asgard and all her allies charged through Svelnheim, trying, sometimes victoriously, sometimes in vain, to beat back the forces of their sworn enemy. No one really knew why; they simply marched, and fought, and died by great bloody heaps on the battlefield. Odin had decreed it must be so, to fulfill a vow he had made in anger so many decades ago. He sent his own sons to fight, a captain and a general, utilizing their unique skills to lead his platoons.
No one on the battlefield could remember which engagement this was - it could have been the thousandth or the millionth, not that it mattered to the warriors who lived for the excitement, the honor, the glory of swinging their blades and cutting down foes. Even the ones who died felt only pride as they bled out in the dirt, comforted by the war cries and shouts of their comrades around them.
Loki did not feel the same gutteral pride as the common soldiery. This war had summoned him too many times for him to feel anything more than irritation at being called away once again to captain the ranks. Not that there was much captaining to be done here, among the mayhem of battle; mostly he gave orders, shouted commands, drew up plans of attack and when the time came, rode into battle alongside his men. But he did not engage the enemy in the same way his warriors did. Messy hand-to-hand combat with heavy swords and brutish maces didn't suit him. His fighting style was more finesse than force, and often those he felled never even realized he was near before they were taken down by either his blades or his magic. He didn't pride himself on his body count, only on the looks of surprise that registered on their faces when they realized what had happened.
He stood at the edge of a jagged cliff overlooking a barren tundra and felt awed by the stark majesty of the place. They would win this battle and possibly the war by the end of the season, and it made him sad, not for the end of the fighting, but for the land itself. No longer would it be home to the people who had carved it from the very stone of the newborn planet so many millennia ago. It would belong to Asgard. It would be ruled by Odin. Its people would be rounded up and enslaved, if any of them survived.
Movement far off on the horizon caught his eye and he squinted to see what it was. The glint of a red cape snapping in the arid wind beneath a golden head clued him instantly that it was his brother, scaling the crags toward a cave that was rumored to be the resting place of the ruler of this desolate kingdom. The dragon queen.
For thousands of years she had been a legend. More a symbol of her people than an actual ruler, she was rumored to be a shapeshifter of the highest order, able to take the form of the most majestic creature in the cosmos at will. Loki had never seen her, no one from outside this realm had - not even pictures, as no one dared to commit her image to paper. She was feared by all. Since childhood Loki had wanted to cross paths with her, his admiration for her shapeshifting skills encouraging his own studies into the morphing arts. The closest he had ever come to the avian realm was the ability to change himself into a raven.
Hoping to see her should his brother prove successful in flushing her out, he sat on the cliff's edge and waited. His soldiers had taken this mountain hours ago so he was alone and unbothered as he watched Thor climb the opposing ridge. He hoped the oaf wouldn't slay her before he had a chance to catch a glimpse of her.
The rocky cliff facing was jagged and slow-going, and he estimated it would take Thor at least a couple more hours to reach the outcropping that led to the cave's opening. Loki stretched his legs out and leaned back against a boulder, crossing his arms over his chest for a nap. He was sore and exhausted from fighting, his throat hoarse and dry from shouting orders, and he knew his men were doing little more now than rounding up scragglers and harassing the villagers who inhabited the little burg far beneath his perch. He closed his eyes and willed his mind to clear, drifting into an alert half-sleep as the hot wind whipped around him.
To be continued...