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weirdletPosting this here because I keep finding bits missing where I've posted it in chunks on the Norsekink meme.
Title: Erosion
Fandom: Thor (2011)
Summary: Response to a prompt asking for loving-father!Laufey's reaction to losing his child. It turned into a prequel for the Custody Battle AU.
Warnings: Mono-gendered giants, violence, weird ideas on courtship, and depressed!king in later bits.
The passions of kings were played out on a scale far larger than those of a village warrior or clan chief. Laufey had always known that armies would clash for his suit, the consummation celebrated with the clangor of battle and the ringing of swords and rattling spears, and that much territory would change hands in the proving of his fitness, and that of his mate. When it came time to seek out his companion in truth, it was all that and more.
It was glorious.
-right up until the point where his once-lover had invaded Jotunheim.
(Odin always had lacked a decent sense of humor.)
The Aesir who had styled himself ‘All-father’ was no longer as playful as he’d been in his youth- no longer did their paths cross at markets nor on the hunting-trail, and had not for centuries, as their ascensions had taken them further and farther from each others’ duties. No longer could they tussle in hay-mows and hunting lodges, roving warriors grappling until deadly contest gave way to bloodied kisses and bruising ardor.
The walls between the realms rise high with the passing of years, and the games of princes change when they become kings.
There was pressure from the heads of the great clans- secure the throne, and the rule of one king for longer than a single generation. There were always rumblings of desire for new territory, but for the Jotun to hold strong together and be taken seriously among the Nine Realms, there could be no more infighting, no cannibalizing of provinces by young and old hungry to prove themselves. To lay with any one lord would invite disaster by favoritism owed to the blood-father, to simply sire an heir and acknowledge it would bring much the same problem, and to seek among the lesser warriors for one who would not talk of his conquest would be like seeking a shard of glass in a snowbank.
So I will take a mate from amongst the Realms, Laufey had said, a strong and worthy lover to get an heir of my body, that none may dispute. And in laying the invitation, he would grant battle and booty to his captains and his thanes. With his sorcerer brother Nál at his side and loyal soldier Fárbauti at his back, the king of Jotunheim would take all the worlds could give him.
He would see his pretty Asgardian prince again.
...
Ah, but Odin was prince no longer. He was a king- and a king does not suffer his toys to be tampered with.
...
Screaming. There was so much screaming...
The long war should have been over with. He’d gone to Midgard, sacked a few of those villages of mortal animals that gave allegiance to the Asgardians as gods. Midgard was a good world, a strong world, and with the heart of winter in his hands, a temperate enough place to gather new treasures from.
Fool of a priest. Fool of a king. All those ancient souls, longing for battle- but to display their great treasure before warriors equally as greedy as they, to take that holy relic from its place and use it in war-like play- the Olympians called it hubris, and they were right to fear it above all things.
Giants’ lives were long- a good hunting trip might take longer than a human lifetime in the ancient days, if a thane trusted his household in his absence. It had been a work of years, not months, to get Odin Allfather to sit up and take notice, and to deign to travel to the field. Fárbauti had left early on- his little son Helblindi would not wait, and Laufey could not detain them without claiming the child as his blood. He gave them his blessings, swallowed regret, and pressed on in his quest.
At last the Allfather came, first by secret roads and subtle guises, to quest for the meaning of this invasion of his loose-held shores.
“Laufey,” he asked, as if they were still just old friends lying naked by a stream. “Why have you done this? Why do you not yield this world back to its rightful owners? This realm is not yours.”
“It is not yours either, Asgardian,” Laufey said, watching the imprint time had made in his old lover’s face. No scars yet, but the prettiness of youth had passed, and now Odin looked much the wiser and stronger. Likely he had chosen to, rather than remain untouched and eternal like so many of his kind.
Laufey decided that he liked it.
“What you have not bled for, you cannot claim- just like old times.”
“The worlds cannot be ruled that way any more,” Odin began, speaking as if he were not just as much a conqueror in his own lands. “It is not worthy of rulers to spread bloodshed, when we can do so much more for our-“
Laufey reached out, brushing gently against roughened skin- just enough to sting, and not to blacken. The silver words shut off.
“I recall a time when you would not have denied your nature, All-father,” he mocked, and bared his teeth to the other, hoping to win a smile in turn.
“It is our natures that I have striven to overcome, Laufey.” There is heat there, in the quiet way the white teeth bite off words, glacial in their convection. “The Aesir, the frost-giants, the Norns, the Vanir- we cannot go on as we have. I have a wife-“
“Would you have me appear a woman, then?” he laughed, and conjured the barest hint of an illusion, displaying the breasts of a mother giant, or an Asgardian sorceress. “Or a weakling mortal, ready to fall down and worship at your pillar? I am here, and I am as you have always known me. Would you truly desire me to be other than what I am?”
The Asgardian’s blue eyes narrowed, and his rough hand reached out, pressed through illusion to the truth beneath it. Laufey felt the tingle of magic, the assertion of strength that would keep the touch of his flesh from destroying his lover’s.
“No.”
...
Laufey had felt the stirrings in his body, and knew his task was done. A sigh for the sweet night that would not be had again, and he prepared to transport the Casket and himself home, leaving his favored captains to carve out what they wished.
But the Asgardians came again.
And again.
And again, in force.
And this time Odin was at their head, spear blazing, smile burning bright.
He is a fool who does not know his part is done. Laufey would not withdraw while the frozen tracts of land he had taken were still contested, and dared not leave it seeming as if he would flee at the first sign of resistance. There was time yet.
And then there wasn’t.
Laufey had sounded retreat and passed through the shadow path with his remaining troops, sealing the gate behind him. The Asgardians would have to find some other way into Jotunheim if they wished to pursue, disrupt trade and travel to bring further war- and why should they do that? Their territory defended (and much as it stung his pride to lose, he did not precisely miss it), they would surely go home to Odin’s mead hall, and drink to their manly deeds.
For a time, it seemed that they had.
...
The news found them in the royal chambers, behind the main hall. Laufey was repairing a favorite mantle, sewing little metal scales to the newly patched leather, and smiling to himself as Fárbauti’s son toddled over. Helblindi was fascinated with the way the king’s stomach would kick back when patted, and it was hard not to indulge the child. He and Laufey’s son would be blood-brothers, once the line was secure, and even were they not- he was the child of an old and beloved friend.
Fárbauti looked up from the missive he was studying- the southern sea-ports were calling for repair to the roads that crossed their lands- as Nál stepped inside, robe flying behind the smaller giant.
The look on the sorcerer’s tattooed face told all.
“They’re on the way. They’re destroying everything.”
...
Orders flew on the wind, white hawks with rolled message-hides in their talons. With the child heavy in him, Laufey-king could no longer lead the charge, but he ordered his strongest generals to the front, and used Nál’s magics shamelessly to speed their communications. The Asgardians would not take what they had come for without a fight.
But what they had come for, it seemed, was the whole of his kingdom.
Laufey could not go to the front. Week by week, though, the front came to him instead.
With the Bifrost screaming outside the farthest gate, his villagers, his capital city being torn apart, the pains came upon him. The palace servants, warriors all, were on the walls and in the courtyards, preparing to defend their king. Nál was elbow-deep in blood and frost-runes, striking all about to keep the Aesir soldiers from easily reaching their goal.
Fárbauti helped him, brought the child forth early and small, but breathing. Laufey cradled the little prince close, felt the ripple of his tiny form- too young from the womb to have a firm grasp of what shape a jotun needed.
He would learn.
“Go. Take him to the temple- and my prayers with him.”
“My king-“
“Go!”
Fárbauti lowered his head, then grasped the infant and fled. The sanctuaries were already closed, iced over to prevent the enemy from finding them- too far, too dangerous. Perhaps the sacred confines of the House of Winter would keep them safe.
Laufey rose from his bed, bloody and shaking, and called to his brother for healing.
...
He stood at the front gates of the sanctum, naked of armaments or decoration. Blood and tears and milk dried away by brute magic, Laufey-king stood, whipcord and bared teeth and sinewy, grasping hands.
The Allfather appeared. Their armies battled one another in the distance, the city falling even as its citizens rallied.
Laufey did not ask why. There was no why big enough. Odin’s grandiose plans had long since ceased to matter to him.
He did not let a single word escape Odin’s mouth.
...
In another time, another place, he might have ripped both eyes out and left his once-lover’s head for his soldiers to find.
Another time, another place, the birth-wounds might not have been so raw, nor he so drained, so overwhelmed with the why he thought did not matter. But it did. Their dances had always been on others’ ground before, never on sovereign territory. Never with so much at stake.
Once they had been princes playing at war. Now-
Now Laufey-king lay where he had been thrown, a spear point at his throat. And Odin-king stood exhausted over him, pinning him into place with a bleeding socket and a wordless sigh.
Would it had been a ballad of the old tongue, the warriors’ passions exhausted so that they might have died right there together. It might have spared them what came next.
Odin could still walk. And that he did, turning and leaving his defeated lover broken upon the ground.
...
“-Laufey- Laufey-!”
Nál was shaking him, and Laufey gasped for breath as consciousness hit him all at once. He grasped his brother’s arm, bruising the spellweaver.
“Up. I need-“
He did not need to say more. His blood-brother helped him to his feet, and together they staggered toward the walkway to the temple.
Nál kept up a soft stream of talk as they made their way. Laufey did not listen, could not listen- just pulled ahead as much as he could.
The city could be rebuilt. He needed to see-
Pain built and dragged at him, but rising terror flooded with an opposing tide and turned into a hollow maelstrom to the pit of his stomach. With every step, his breath grew more ragged. There were no guards, no soldiers here. The gates hung open.
Where was Fárbauti?
They found him curled around his wounds, almost dead among the others. Nál dropped to his side and set about sealing the worst of it with what little he had left, while Laufey pulled himself along the wall, inch by inch toward the deepest part of the shrine.
...
Screaming. There’s so much screaming...
But the temple was quiet. Silent as the grave.
The hum of winter’s song, the mingled voices of a thousand generations of frost giants- it was gone. The plinth stood empty.
The furs beneath it, empty as well.
Who is screaming?
The answer came to him, in the ache of ribs and torn muscles, in the lines of fire down his face where his nails had raked. The pounding of footsteps behind him and the hands seizing him, trying to hold him back.
His baby was gone.
...
There was a storm that night, the likes of which had not been seen in a generation. Some said it was the angry ghosts of fallen warriors, with nowhere to go but the winds. Some said it was the grief of their broken king, silent upon his throne.
Laufey listened to the litany of things destroyed, lords and generals slain. In his hands, he held the pelt that had been his child’s wrapping for a brief few hours.
Provinces destroyed. Herds scattered. Walls cracked or blown to flinders, swathes of people slain. Fortresses brought down, sorcerers’ towers broken like snapped sword-hilts.
His son was gone.
The Casket of Ancient Winters, the lens through which their ancestors screamed their joyous fury, had been taken.
The child was gone.
Giant after giant made their way through the snow to the foot of his throne, some bleeding, some broken, some holding up their fellow survivors. They made their reports, listed what they had lost and what they had heard. The high-ranked berated him. The low-ranked begged him.
They all received the same response.
Eventually the stream thinned to a trickle, and at last ended, for the winds were too fierce for even their own kind to stand. And Laufey sat through it all, knowing that no nick or cut of flesh, not even in their thousands, could hurt half so much as his hollowed heart.
At last, even Nál left his side, to see to what healing he could. The witch-lights dimmed without the multitudes needing them to see by, and Laufey breathed, slow and ragged, in the dark.
Alone, in the crushing silence, the rage came upon him. He rose, feeling the protest in every aching bruise and torn muscle, and paced like a caged beast, casting all about for something, anything to break, to bleed against, to kill.
The outer walls had fallen down. The precious artifacts had long been moved into storage, and the more mundane hangings and carvings with them. Jotun did not surround themselves with small and decorative breakables, even at the height of their excesses, and there was something terribly unsatisfying about making rubble out of more rubble.
There was nothing left to destroy.
Nothing left between him and the horror of everything that had come to pass. The silence of his ancestors, the breaking of his world.
The aching emptiness of his arms.
Amid the shattered remnants of his palace, heedless of his reopening wounds, Laufey dropped to his knees and howled. Only the storm outside answered.
...
Time went on. The dawn came, and then another. And another.
Fárbauti had tried to crawl from his sick-bed, to beg forgiveness for his failure. He was heard, and ordered back to heal.
Nal gave him such a look after that, Laufey was tempted sorely to do something he hadn’t done since childhood, and that was to strike a sorcerer of Jotunheim. But he was not suicidal yet.
The first assassin gave him something to kill at last.
He had failed Jotunheim in all ways as a king- but still he was king, and those who blamed him, or wished to replace him, would have to remove him first. There was so much to be done- and without the guiding voice of Winter, it was that much harder to do it.
There were no more tears. Just stone.
...
With further bits to follow.
Title: Erosion
Fandom: Thor (2011)
Summary: Response to a prompt asking for loving-father!Laufey's reaction to losing his child. It turned into a prequel for the Custody Battle AU.
Warnings: Mono-gendered giants, violence, weird ideas on courtship, and depressed!king in later bits.
The passions of kings were played out on a scale far larger than those of a village warrior or clan chief. Laufey had always known that armies would clash for his suit, the consummation celebrated with the clangor of battle and the ringing of swords and rattling spears, and that much territory would change hands in the proving of his fitness, and that of his mate. When it came time to seek out his companion in truth, it was all that and more.
It was glorious.
-right up until the point where his once-lover had invaded Jotunheim.
(Odin always had lacked a decent sense of humor.)
The Aesir who had styled himself ‘All-father’ was no longer as playful as he’d been in his youth- no longer did their paths cross at markets nor on the hunting-trail, and had not for centuries, as their ascensions had taken them further and farther from each others’ duties. No longer could they tussle in hay-mows and hunting lodges, roving warriors grappling until deadly contest gave way to bloodied kisses and bruising ardor.
The walls between the realms rise high with the passing of years, and the games of princes change when they become kings.
There was pressure from the heads of the great clans- secure the throne, and the rule of one king for longer than a single generation. There were always rumblings of desire for new territory, but for the Jotun to hold strong together and be taken seriously among the Nine Realms, there could be no more infighting, no cannibalizing of provinces by young and old hungry to prove themselves. To lay with any one lord would invite disaster by favoritism owed to the blood-father, to simply sire an heir and acknowledge it would bring much the same problem, and to seek among the lesser warriors for one who would not talk of his conquest would be like seeking a shard of glass in a snowbank.
So I will take a mate from amongst the Realms, Laufey had said, a strong and worthy lover to get an heir of my body, that none may dispute. And in laying the invitation, he would grant battle and booty to his captains and his thanes. With his sorcerer brother Nál at his side and loyal soldier Fárbauti at his back, the king of Jotunheim would take all the worlds could give him.
He would see his pretty Asgardian prince again.
...
Ah, but Odin was prince no longer. He was a king- and a king does not suffer his toys to be tampered with.
...
Screaming. There was so much screaming...
The long war should have been over with. He’d gone to Midgard, sacked a few of those villages of mortal animals that gave allegiance to the Asgardians as gods. Midgard was a good world, a strong world, and with the heart of winter in his hands, a temperate enough place to gather new treasures from.
Fool of a priest. Fool of a king. All those ancient souls, longing for battle- but to display their great treasure before warriors equally as greedy as they, to take that holy relic from its place and use it in war-like play- the Olympians called it hubris, and they were right to fear it above all things.
Giants’ lives were long- a good hunting trip might take longer than a human lifetime in the ancient days, if a thane trusted his household in his absence. It had been a work of years, not months, to get Odin Allfather to sit up and take notice, and to deign to travel to the field. Fárbauti had left early on- his little son Helblindi would not wait, and Laufey could not detain them without claiming the child as his blood. He gave them his blessings, swallowed regret, and pressed on in his quest.
At last the Allfather came, first by secret roads and subtle guises, to quest for the meaning of this invasion of his loose-held shores.
“Laufey,” he asked, as if they were still just old friends lying naked by a stream. “Why have you done this? Why do you not yield this world back to its rightful owners? This realm is not yours.”
“It is not yours either, Asgardian,” Laufey said, watching the imprint time had made in his old lover’s face. No scars yet, but the prettiness of youth had passed, and now Odin looked much the wiser and stronger. Likely he had chosen to, rather than remain untouched and eternal like so many of his kind.
Laufey decided that he liked it.
“What you have not bled for, you cannot claim- just like old times.”
“The worlds cannot be ruled that way any more,” Odin began, speaking as if he were not just as much a conqueror in his own lands. “It is not worthy of rulers to spread bloodshed, when we can do so much more for our-“
Laufey reached out, brushing gently against roughened skin- just enough to sting, and not to blacken. The silver words shut off.
“I recall a time when you would not have denied your nature, All-father,” he mocked, and bared his teeth to the other, hoping to win a smile in turn.
“It is our natures that I have striven to overcome, Laufey.” There is heat there, in the quiet way the white teeth bite off words, glacial in their convection. “The Aesir, the frost-giants, the Norns, the Vanir- we cannot go on as we have. I have a wife-“
“Would you have me appear a woman, then?” he laughed, and conjured the barest hint of an illusion, displaying the breasts of a mother giant, or an Asgardian sorceress. “Or a weakling mortal, ready to fall down and worship at your pillar? I am here, and I am as you have always known me. Would you truly desire me to be other than what I am?”
The Asgardian’s blue eyes narrowed, and his rough hand reached out, pressed through illusion to the truth beneath it. Laufey felt the tingle of magic, the assertion of strength that would keep the touch of his flesh from destroying his lover’s.
“No.”
...
Laufey had felt the stirrings in his body, and knew his task was done. A sigh for the sweet night that would not be had again, and he prepared to transport the Casket and himself home, leaving his favored captains to carve out what they wished.
But the Asgardians came again.
And again.
And again, in force.
And this time Odin was at their head, spear blazing, smile burning bright.
He is a fool who does not know his part is done. Laufey would not withdraw while the frozen tracts of land he had taken were still contested, and dared not leave it seeming as if he would flee at the first sign of resistance. There was time yet.
And then there wasn’t.
Laufey had sounded retreat and passed through the shadow path with his remaining troops, sealing the gate behind him. The Asgardians would have to find some other way into Jotunheim if they wished to pursue, disrupt trade and travel to bring further war- and why should they do that? Their territory defended (and much as it stung his pride to lose, he did not precisely miss it), they would surely go home to Odin’s mead hall, and drink to their manly deeds.
For a time, it seemed that they had.
...
The news found them in the royal chambers, behind the main hall. Laufey was repairing a favorite mantle, sewing little metal scales to the newly patched leather, and smiling to himself as Fárbauti’s son toddled over. Helblindi was fascinated with the way the king’s stomach would kick back when patted, and it was hard not to indulge the child. He and Laufey’s son would be blood-brothers, once the line was secure, and even were they not- he was the child of an old and beloved friend.
Fárbauti looked up from the missive he was studying- the southern sea-ports were calling for repair to the roads that crossed their lands- as Nál stepped inside, robe flying behind the smaller giant.
The look on the sorcerer’s tattooed face told all.
“They’re on the way. They’re destroying everything.”
...
Orders flew on the wind, white hawks with rolled message-hides in their talons. With the child heavy in him, Laufey-king could no longer lead the charge, but he ordered his strongest generals to the front, and used Nál’s magics shamelessly to speed their communications. The Asgardians would not take what they had come for without a fight.
But what they had come for, it seemed, was the whole of his kingdom.
Laufey could not go to the front. Week by week, though, the front came to him instead.
With the Bifrost screaming outside the farthest gate, his villagers, his capital city being torn apart, the pains came upon him. The palace servants, warriors all, were on the walls and in the courtyards, preparing to defend their king. Nál was elbow-deep in blood and frost-runes, striking all about to keep the Aesir soldiers from easily reaching their goal.
Fárbauti helped him, brought the child forth early and small, but breathing. Laufey cradled the little prince close, felt the ripple of his tiny form- too young from the womb to have a firm grasp of what shape a jotun needed.
He would learn.
“Go. Take him to the temple- and my prayers with him.”
“My king-“
“Go!”
Fárbauti lowered his head, then grasped the infant and fled. The sanctuaries were already closed, iced over to prevent the enemy from finding them- too far, too dangerous. Perhaps the sacred confines of the House of Winter would keep them safe.
Laufey rose from his bed, bloody and shaking, and called to his brother for healing.
...
He stood at the front gates of the sanctum, naked of armaments or decoration. Blood and tears and milk dried away by brute magic, Laufey-king stood, whipcord and bared teeth and sinewy, grasping hands.
The Allfather appeared. Their armies battled one another in the distance, the city falling even as its citizens rallied.
Laufey did not ask why. There was no why big enough. Odin’s grandiose plans had long since ceased to matter to him.
He did not let a single word escape Odin’s mouth.
...
In another time, another place, he might have ripped both eyes out and left his once-lover’s head for his soldiers to find.
Another time, another place, the birth-wounds might not have been so raw, nor he so drained, so overwhelmed with the why he thought did not matter. But it did. Their dances had always been on others’ ground before, never on sovereign territory. Never with so much at stake.
Once they had been princes playing at war. Now-
Now Laufey-king lay where he had been thrown, a spear point at his throat. And Odin-king stood exhausted over him, pinning him into place with a bleeding socket and a wordless sigh.
Would it had been a ballad of the old tongue, the warriors’ passions exhausted so that they might have died right there together. It might have spared them what came next.
Odin could still walk. And that he did, turning and leaving his defeated lover broken upon the ground.
...
“-Laufey- Laufey-!”
Nál was shaking him, and Laufey gasped for breath as consciousness hit him all at once. He grasped his brother’s arm, bruising the spellweaver.
“Up. I need-“
He did not need to say more. His blood-brother helped him to his feet, and together they staggered toward the walkway to the temple.
Nál kept up a soft stream of talk as they made their way. Laufey did not listen, could not listen- just pulled ahead as much as he could.
The city could be rebuilt. He needed to see-
Pain built and dragged at him, but rising terror flooded with an opposing tide and turned into a hollow maelstrom to the pit of his stomach. With every step, his breath grew more ragged. There were no guards, no soldiers here. The gates hung open.
Where was Fárbauti?
They found him curled around his wounds, almost dead among the others. Nál dropped to his side and set about sealing the worst of it with what little he had left, while Laufey pulled himself along the wall, inch by inch toward the deepest part of the shrine.
...
Screaming. There’s so much screaming...
But the temple was quiet. Silent as the grave.
The hum of winter’s song, the mingled voices of a thousand generations of frost giants- it was gone. The plinth stood empty.
The furs beneath it, empty as well.
Who is screaming?
The answer came to him, in the ache of ribs and torn muscles, in the lines of fire down his face where his nails had raked. The pounding of footsteps behind him and the hands seizing him, trying to hold him back.
His baby was gone.
...
There was a storm that night, the likes of which had not been seen in a generation. Some said it was the angry ghosts of fallen warriors, with nowhere to go but the winds. Some said it was the grief of their broken king, silent upon his throne.
Laufey listened to the litany of things destroyed, lords and generals slain. In his hands, he held the pelt that had been his child’s wrapping for a brief few hours.
Provinces destroyed. Herds scattered. Walls cracked or blown to flinders, swathes of people slain. Fortresses brought down, sorcerers’ towers broken like snapped sword-hilts.
His son was gone.
The Casket of Ancient Winters, the lens through which their ancestors screamed their joyous fury, had been taken.
The child was gone.
Giant after giant made their way through the snow to the foot of his throne, some bleeding, some broken, some holding up their fellow survivors. They made their reports, listed what they had lost and what they had heard. The high-ranked berated him. The low-ranked begged him.
They all received the same response.
Eventually the stream thinned to a trickle, and at last ended, for the winds were too fierce for even their own kind to stand. And Laufey sat through it all, knowing that no nick or cut of flesh, not even in their thousands, could hurt half so much as his hollowed heart.
At last, even Nál left his side, to see to what healing he could. The witch-lights dimmed without the multitudes needing them to see by, and Laufey breathed, slow and ragged, in the dark.
Alone, in the crushing silence, the rage came upon him. He rose, feeling the protest in every aching bruise and torn muscle, and paced like a caged beast, casting all about for something, anything to break, to bleed against, to kill.
The outer walls had fallen down. The precious artifacts had long been moved into storage, and the more mundane hangings and carvings with them. Jotun did not surround themselves with small and decorative breakables, even at the height of their excesses, and there was something terribly unsatisfying about making rubble out of more rubble.
There was nothing left to destroy.
Nothing left between him and the horror of everything that had come to pass. The silence of his ancestors, the breaking of his world.
The aching emptiness of his arms.
Amid the shattered remnants of his palace, heedless of his reopening wounds, Laufey dropped to his knees and howled. Only the storm outside answered.
...
Time went on. The dawn came, and then another. And another.
Fárbauti had tried to crawl from his sick-bed, to beg forgiveness for his failure. He was heard, and ordered back to heal.
Nal gave him such a look after that, Laufey was tempted sorely to do something he hadn’t done since childhood, and that was to strike a sorcerer of Jotunheim. But he was not suicidal yet.
The first assassin gave him something to kill at last.
He had failed Jotunheim in all ways as a king- but still he was king, and those who blamed him, or wished to replace him, would have to remove him first. There was so much to be done- and without the guiding voice of Winter, it was that much harder to do it.
There were no more tears. Just stone.
...
With further bits to follow.
