Chapter Text
Midgard was too warm tonight.
Thor sat at the high table at the feast, where father usually sat. The night was wearing on, Loki was nowhere to be found, and Father had left suddenly for Asgard. Probably to enjoy conditioned rooms and a cool bath while Thor sat in his own sweat.
He wiped his eyes, wanting more than anything for a bit of ice or a cool swim in cold water. But they were leagues away from any fjords, trapped in some dull interior plain filled with bugs and dirt and this ever constant heat.
It was preventing Thor from doing his duty, from attending to the Midgardian chieftain and representing Asgard in father’s stead. Worse, it was preventing him from giving his full attention to the beautifully muscled human shieldmaidens who leered at Thor with worshipful interest in their eyes.
Such distractions could not stand.
So Thor left the table, drained his horn of mead, and went to go find his brother.
He poked around the dusty camp, popped his head into nearly every tent, pronounced apologies for witnessing acts the Midgardians probably wanted to keep private.
Finally, in a little smoke-filled hut on the very edges, he found Loki.
His brother was sitting on the ground with a Midgardian woman, chanting rhythmically, casting smoke from his hands, making a big show out of whatever seior he was working.
He’d never understand Loki’s methods. There were far easier ways to get a maid into bed.
He cleared his throat loudly. The woman turned and paled. Loki looked up, obvious annoyance in his eyes.
“I need a moment with Loki alone,” Thor announced.
The woman stood quickly, stammering. “Of course, Thunderer. I - I can - I’ll leave.”
As she turned to go, Loki grabbed her hand, drawing back her attention. “Return when the moon is highest, Daughter of Yggdrasil,” Loki intoned in a silken, echoed voice. “Then we will finish our divination.”
Norns, his brother could be dramatic.
The maiden nodded and fled quickly, not daring to look at Thor.
The moment the stick and mud door closed, Loki dropped his hands, disappeared the smoke, and began to complain.
“What, Thor? What exactly is so important that it couldn’t wait?”
The words were ground through gritted teeth, the echoing silken voice from moments before vanished.
“Well, it’s good to see you too, brother,” Thor replied, lowering himself to sit across from his brother.
“I know it’s difficult for you to comprehend, given that you spend all your time down here drinking with your friends. But I was actually in the middle of something important.”
“Hmm,” Thor grinned, waggling his eyebrows. “Well, sorry to have gotten in the way of something.”
“She claims she had a prophectic dream. I was testing her for seior to see if she was genuine.”
“Oh, just alone in a shack with a pretty maid, testing her seior.”
Loki rolled his eyes. “Look in front of you, Thor. Do you notice anything in particular?”
Thor looked down at the ground between them. There were runestones scattered about in a pattern. “Ah! Telling fortunes! That’s always a fun game to play with potential bedpartners.”
His brother looked half-murderous. But then, he often did. Thor had learned to ignore it.
“Oh look!” Thor exclaimed, picking up one of the runestones and pointing at it with a grin. “It’s Thurisaz! Thurisaz for Thor! Maybe she is a seer, could spot I was coming!”
“Maybe.” Loki replied sharply. “But some idiot interrupted the spell and just ruined the stone pattern, so I guess we’ll never know.”
Thor tossed the runestone in the air to catch it. “I am truly sorry I ruined your date, brother.”
Loki closed his eyes and rubbed at his temples. “As I have been trying to explain, we were not romantically involved. Unlike some people, I don’t try to bed every sentient I’m introduced to.”
“Maybe you should, might calm you down some.”
His brother huffed and stood from the ground, drawing himself up to full height. “Did you come in here for a purpose, or do you simply take pleasure in annoying me?”
Thor, getting a full look at his brother for the first time this evening, suppressed a snicker.
Loki was dressed as a grand Midgardian seidrmadr; draped in a long dark cloak, his hair lengthened and braided, arms and cheeks decorated with runes, his eyes a dark smudge under black paint. He was even leaning on a gnarled wooden staff.
Getting a full view of it, well, it was frankly a bit much.
A snort of laughter escaped. Loki glared again.
“I’m sorry, is something funny to you?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. I was just worried the witch of the wood here might steal me away and cook me in a stewpot.”
In a shower of golden sparks Loki’s attire turned to normal Asgardian dress. “I’m not the only one who dresses up for the humans,” he groused, gesturing at Thor’s tunic, gathered trousers, wrapped legs.
“I’m wearing normal clothes. You looked like you were going to a costume ball.”
“The Midgardians expect to see a god of chaos and magic when they look at me. I have to fit the image. You might try it sometime.”
“Ah, so you’ll be in your lovely dark wizard ensemble, and I’ll be in my battle armor constantly summoning lightning? That won’t look ridiculous in the slightest.”
“Thor, it’s important for us not to hide the truth of our magic, the truth of what we are. It does us no good to appear like regular mortals. Especially not now.”
Something troubled seemed to settle on Loki’s brow, something entirely unrelated to brotherly teasing. Thor squinted a moment, trying to puzzle out the source of it.
But a bead of sweat dripped into his eyes, and Thor suddenly remembered the meaning for this visit. “Loki, brother, I have a favor to ask.”
“You come in here, interrupt my affairs, insult my attire, and then expect favors?”
“Just a small one. Can you conjure a bit of ice for me? Or perhaps cast a spell to cool down the temperature? Just a teensy bit?”
“Ah I see. No.”
“Loki-”
“I’m not good with that kind of magic. Do it yourself. After all, you’re the weather witch.”
Thor scoffed. “I summon lightning to my command using the might of Mjolnir, I’m not a ‘weather witch.’”
“Lightning is weather, dear brother. Whip up a thunderstorm to push the hot air out of this valley.”
“But you’ve always been so much better at magic than me. Please?”
Loki sighed.
“You are an absolute child,” Loki stated. “Honestly, anyone would think you had less than a century on you. Fine, come here. Sit.”
Thor did, and Loki moved to sit behind him on the packed dirt floor. He ran a hand through Thor’s hair, making him jump.
“For the Norn’s sake, sit still Thor.”
“I didn’t know you were going to touch my hair!”
Thor couldn’t see his brother’s face, but he could hear the eyeroll in Loki’s voice. “I have some spelled thornweed with me; if I braid it into your hair it should cool you down some.”
“You can’t just do a spell directly?”
“I want to conserve my seior. If Father’s right, we might need it. Be grateful I’m doing anything at all.”
“So you can cast runes to impress a Midgardian maid, but not to help me?”
Loki huffed in irritation. “It's not even hot. You know I always get more bothered by heat than you do, and I'm fine. You're just drunk."
Thor whipped around. "I'm not-"
But Loki pushed his head back into place. "For the last time, sit still.”
Thor felt Loki’s long fingers unwind the leather strip that was keeping his hair up. It tumbled down, falling to the center of his back.
He breathed out low, relaxing into himself. “I’ve been thinking of cutting this, you know. Just a bit.”
“Whatever for?” Loki replied, voice only half-interested as he separated Thor’s hair into sections.
“Fandral cut his. He says shorter hair is more stylish.”
“Fandral’s new haircut makes him look like a human thrall. Mother will kill you if you do that to yourself.”
“It was just a thought. I wouldn’t cut it all off, maybe just to the shoulders. It would be easier to endure this humid dusty heat with less hair.”
“Yes, well,” Loki hummed, sounding preoccupied. “We don’t know how long we’ll be here.”
“It could be a while. We were here for nearly three years once. By that beautiful fjord. Remember the swimming, brother? How clear and cool the water was?”
“Of course,” his brother’s disinterested voice answered, his fingers working busily through Thor’s hair.
“And the feasting!” Thor continued. “The feasts there were some of the best I’ve had on Midgard. That Jarl was a great man, his stories were like nothing else. I would love to be sitting in his hall right now.”
“Well Ragnar’s been dead over a century, so I doubt it’s quite the same,” Loki said quietly.
“I just wish we could be in a proper hall,” Thor groused. “I can’t believe this is where father settled us this time. I know he likes us to talk to the mortals. But this isn’t even a village, just a scattered collection of tents and mud huts. And the chieftain here is a bore. ”
“Show some respect,” Loki chastised, pulling a bit harder on Thor’s hair than he had to. “The man is named for you after all.”
“That doesn’t mean anything, half the men here are named for me. I can’t throw a stone in this part of Midgard without hitting a Thorir or a Thord or a Thorsten or a Thorson-”
“Well that’s what happens when you do try to bed every single sentient that you meet.”
Thor snorted. “This chieftain, ‘Thorir Hund,’ isn’t any issue of mine. I could never have such a dour child.”
Loki’s hands stuttered. “You don’t think he has reason to be dour?”
“Why should he be? We’re here, there’s a feast, life should be merry. The only problem is this damn heat.”
Loki yanked on Thor’s hair.
“Ow!” Thor yelped, turning toward him. “What was that for?”
“Do you listen to any conversations happening around you? Did you pay any attention at all when father was talking to us before we came down here?”
“Yes,” Thor huffed. “We’re here to help with a war.”
“Against who?”
And suddenly Thor realized he wasn’t certain. “Uh…the Frost Giants?”
Loki yanked on Thor’s hair again.
“Stop doing that!”
“It’s a war between the humans, Thor!”
Thor paused. “I thought we didn’t get involved in wars between the humans?”
“Well, that was before father decided this group of Christians was a threat.”
“Christians?” Thor questioned. “They’re not even good fighters. Since when does father think they pose a threat?”
“Well I don’t know, probably since Olaf Haraldsson slaughtered the priestess of Mimir and destroyed the Water of Sights.”
Thor’s mind ground to a halt. A mortal, a Midgardian mortal, had managed to destroy a site of ancient magic? Even Thor, with his limited interest in magical education, knew such a thing was bad.
A half- hundred thoughts and worries ran through him. Eventually one came out of his mouth.
“Who’s Olaf Haraldsson?”
Loki rolled his eyes up to stare at the mud ceiling, seemingly asking the Norns for strength. “He’s the King of Norway, Thor. And before you ask, Norway is the country we’re sitting in right now.”
“I know what Norway is!”
“Are you certain?”
“I’m not a simpleton, Loki!”
“I’m not dignifying that with a response, it’s too easy.”
Thor turned his back on his brother with a huff. There was a long pause as he tried to compose his thoughts. “The Water of Sights is ancient seior, isn’t it? Twinned throughout all the nine realms? How could a mortal destroy it?”
Loki sighed, continued to work on Thor’s braid. “I don’t know. Apparently he made Christianity the official religion of the land a few years back-”
“He what?”
“-and there was resistance to it among the people. So Haraldsson and his men went from village to village, slaughtering our Midgardian followers, destroying any places of worship he could find.”
Thor was too stunned to speak. “Slaughtering our-”
“Eventually,” Loki continued, “that led Haraldsson to the Water of Sights, where he killed the priestess who held Mimir’s magic, consecrated the ground, and built a church on the land above. It warped the seidr in a way that shouldn’t be possible. Father is still assessing the damage. He said another priestess will probably never rise, which means the magic is unbound, and who knows what damage that could do.”
Thor felt like he couldn’t breathe. “This king has been killing people for supporting us?”
Loki’s clever fingers paused. Thor felt him nod.
A horrible thought occurred to Thor. “Are we…are we putting these people at risk by being here? We can’t stay forever. What will happen to them when we return to Asgard?”
“I don’t know.”
A wave of anger swept through Thor. “Why aren’t we fighting this false king openly? He spits on our legacy, he spits on our followers, he spits on Asgard. Why are we letting this happen?”
“Well, Father did leave to convene his War Council and consult with his seers. We may fight them.”
But Loki sounded uncertain, and it made Thor uneasy. “What do you think will happen?”
His brother was grim as he tied off Thor’s braid.
“I think it is as you said. Father does not like to get involved with the human’s wars directly.”
Thor sat, stunned. “So what, we just-”
“We’ll probably try to repair the damage to the Well of Sights, to make sure Yggadrasil remains whole,” Loki cut in. “We might guard the area for a while, remind these people their gods are true. But as for fighting this king…the people are likely on their own.”
Thor was troubled as he made his way back to the feast hall. He could not help but look upon all the mortals enjoying each other’s company, wondering what fate would find them.
He nodded his greetings to his friends as they drank and laughed, but he barely seemed to see them.
Instead he stared at a pair of human shield brothers toasting, at a little girl on her father’s shoulders, at a pair of young lovers in the corner.
They’re just mortals, he tried to remind himself. Their lives are fleeting anyway.
But these people trusted them. Trusted Asgard.
And they’d left them to be slaughtered by some charlatan.
The chieftain was making his way over with a small smile and two horns of mead. Thor struggled to smooth the anger off his face.
When the man reached him, he handed Thor a horn. “I wanted to toast to you, Thunderer. And to tell you that it is heartening to know our gods are truly with us.”
Thor took the horn and nodded, an odd lump growing in his throat. “I thank you, Thorir Hund, for your hospitality.”
They drank together. The chieftain finished first, placed the horn on his wooden table.
“I’m still in a bit of disbelief. To host the gods is an honor I never hoped to have, even in my grandest imaginings. To see you, to know -”
“Thank you,” Thor cut him off. “The honor is mine.”
“My grandfather used to tell stories about you. And not just the old stories. He claimed the mighty Thor had sat at his own table, dined with him. Raided with him.”
Thor smiled sadly. He stared at the bottom of the empty drinking horn. “I hope he spoke well of me.”
“Oh he did, Thunderer, he did. Said he never saw fighting of your like in this world.”
Thor simply nodded in response, not quite in the right mood for compliments. Thor wasn’t even sure who this man’s grandfather had been. Some guardian of Midgard he was.
The chieftain paused a moment, then leaned close, dropped his voice. “We’ve had a scout tonight. He says old King Olaf and his men gather in the north. We mean to march within the week, join with other clans, and meet Olaf in battle before summer’s end.”
Thor straightened, looked at this chieftain's face, serious in the firelight. “Is that so?” he returned quietly.
The chieftain nodded. “It would be the honor of my lifetime if you would ride with us to meet him. To show them the power of our people. Of the gods he turned his back on.”
Thor knew he should hesitate. Should wait for Odin’s return, seek his counsel.
He did not.
Thor grasped the chieftain’s forearm tightly, reveled when the man gripped his own in turn.
“Take heart,” Thor rumbled. “Asgard will stand with you.”