A cavern, screamingly open and vast.
Dreaming, Alyxa, sees a simply altar, pulled from the rocky floor itself. Upon
it, a young boy with the face of such love-crafted beauty that it breaks her
heart when she sees the shackles chaining him to the unforgiving surface. A
young woman stands beside him, weeping at the sight. In her hands a bowl full
of violent green. She holds it over his face, catching the droplets tumbling
from the ceiling. The bowl is full, hastily she drains it over the side, but a
drop manages to touch skin. The boy screams in agony. Alyxa starts forwards,
but she cannot help him. Fates are at work here, Fates that she cannot control.
The boy turns his head, unseeing, towards her. The poison has streaked his face
in red gashes, scoring the youthful beauty. She has seen this before, but she
cannot remember where or when; she knows this story.
“Does this disturb you, little
Dreamer,” a voice whispers in her ear, “seeing him like this?”
In the Dream, Alyxa turns. An man
stands before her, old and yet not, with one eye covered by a patch.
“Lord Odin,” she murmurs and his
head nods an assent, “I...don’t know. I don’t know what I’m looking at.”
“This is my son,” he tells her, “locked
thus for his crimes against the world.”
Alyxa looks back at the boy.
“I thought Baldur would be older
looking.”
Odin chuckles, coming forwards.
“I have many sons. Most of them trouble-makers,
to my shame. This is not Baldur.”
“Then wh- ,” Alyxa stops herself
short and looks again, straining her mind for a half-remembered story.
Odin waits patiently for her to
put the pieces together. She stares at the boy, names and stories manifesting themselves
in her mind.
“Loki?”
