st_ratagem | Final steps

Loki had spent the last hour or two before sunset preparing, and the first hour afterward. He’d taken ruthless advantage of the fact that the Inn staff was desperate to give people towels and had carefully interwoven the. On the floor such that there was no chance of getting at the actual carpet below without effort. He’d selected a dagger from his collection - a very old one that he hadn’t actively used since childhood, one of a pair given to him by his mother - and sharpened it to an almost perfect edge. He’d opened up the balcony door to let the early-winter night chill in. He’d even out together a little aid kit (disinfectant, pads, bandages, needle and thread) for afterward.

In many ways, the hardest part was settling on the towels with the in-etched staff resting in front of him and forcing Odin’s enchantment away, knowing that he wouldn’t be allowing himself to go back to normal possibly for hours. And that, as soon as Thor arrived with a bowl and his hands, it would all have a witness.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

st_ormbreaker

"I'm sure," Thor says, clapping a hand on Loki's shoulder. "So let's go make some ice and snow." Truthfully, Thor has no idea what Loki's powers are capable of, but ice and snow seemed like it'd fall under the umbrella of "things an ice giant can do".

From:

st_ratagem

Loki jerked away from the hand on his shoulder, even though it hadn’t lingered. “You’re always sure. But - and I can’t believe I have to keep reminding you of this - I’m not you, the universe doesn’t fall at my feet just because I exist. I don’t want to spend however-long being a freakish blue failure for an audience who thinks it’s great fun.”

From:

st_ormbreaker

Thor blinks.

"The universe doesn't fall at my feet just because I exist," Thor argues, and he knows as soon as the words leave his mouth that he should just stop and let it sit there, but he doesn't. "I don't think you're a freakish blue failure, either. If you don't want to do it in front of me, then just say so."

From:

st_ratagem

“I meant that nothing’s ever difficult for you. Failure isn’t a thing for you, so it can’t possibly be a thing for anyone else. If something’s difficult for me or I fail, it’s just me being ridiculous because of course it’s not actually difficult.” Loki clenched his bandaged hand again, but the sting wasn’t enough to smooth anything out. “If I have to fail, and I always do, I prefer to do it without being an object of fun, so yes: I would rather not do it in front of you.”

From:

st_ormbreaker

Thor starts to open his mouth to protest again, but shuts it before he can say something else. They'd already barely avoided one of those I'm not talking to you for a few days fights today already. He doesn't want to have another.

"Okay," he says instead. "Just tell me when you're ready to show me."

From:

st_ratagem

“I wish it was as easy as you think it should be,” Loki offered after a moment. “I think I’d mind the whole Jotunn thing less if I could manage some bare minimum of competence. I know you don’t understand. It’s a series of problems you don’t have.”

From:

st_ormbreaker

"Most things generally aren't easy." Thor was willing to concede that most things requiring sheer willpower or brute force came way more easily to him than most people, but learning how to use his powers to their full potential after Hela broke Mjolnir, well...

That had proven difficult. More quickly resolved than it might have been for other people, but still difficult.

"I have lost before, you know," he says. "You just haven't been around to ever see it."

From:

st_ratagem

“Then losing isn’t the same as failure. If it was, you wouldn’t keep insisting that - no, I’m tired of this fight.” Loki stood up, forcing Odin’s enchantment away as he did, and called the staff to his hand. (At the very least, it was more responsive to his will than the plain stick had been, that was something. “Come on. You can have your ‘ridiculous’ blue freak show, I hope it entertains you.”

From:

st_ormbreaker

Thor starts to open his mouth and for not the first time tonight, closes it. Instead, he stands, brushing off the front of his slacks and follows after his brother.

From:

st_ratagem

After a moment of consideration, Loki walked out onto his balcony and from there to the roof. Going out into the desert would have been better generally, but on foot would have been annoying since Thor couldn’t shapeshift into a faster runner and Loki couldn’t fly under his own power.

Once there, he started to concentrate, trying to feel out the amount of water in the air, whether it would even be possible to get ice instead of vague chill.

From:

st_ormbreaker

Thor follows after him and sits down on the roof. He doesn't say anything when his brother begins to focus; he doesn't want to risk breaking his concentration.

From:

st_ratagem

The air was dry, because of course it was. Apart from being inconvenient, this was a desert. “Damn.”

All the same, Loki tried dropping the nearby temperature as far down as he could, through the staff and everything he’d invested in its creation. Just to test. Just to see. Even if there was nothing to freeze, cold could be proof of concept of sorts.

The temperature did drop, but not by much - noticeably chilly but still above freezing. He’d managed that much on his own before, but it was different. This time it felt like simple resistance, more like a fishing line caught on something instead of hitting a wall. “...huh.”

From:

st_ormbreaker

Thor can feel it too, as if several hours in the night had passed almost all at once and the temperature had fallen with it.

Thor's lips tug up into a smile.

"I think that's a pretty good first attempt, right?"

From:

st_ratagem

“Nothing I can’t do anytime on my own. If all I wanted was to be able to force people to consider going to get a light jacket, you’d be right.” But it wasn’t and Thor wasn’t, so Loki tightened his grip on the staff slightly and moved it as if tugging on a line tied to its head. Physically miming his mental yank at the resistance keeping the temperature above freezing.

Magic was shaped partly by belief, and foci allowed belief to shift. Once, Mjolnir let Thor believe that it had control for him while in reality he’d developed his own. The staff - which would probably need a name at some point - had been tended to be similar, a sort of stand-in to throw ice where Loki couldn’t. Instead, it was apparently a crowbar of sorts: a lever to force locked doors open or move heavy things out of the way.

No surprise, really. It had been the oldest and ugliest limb of a tree sacred to the man Loki hated almost as much as he hated silence, carved at night by a blade given to him by the mother whose death he’d set in motion, finished with his own blood during an argument with the only being in the universe he loved. Of course it was a bleak, stubborn, angry thing.

And, eventually, it worked. After pouring effort into it, the resistance snapped. The runes on the staff flared blue-white (like the Casket of Ancient Winter rather than Loki’s usual green) and the temperature around the brothers plunged well below freezing. It was a strain, but it worked, and better? Loki understood why it worked.

Which meant he could also believe it would work again. “This is a good first effort.”

From:

st_ormbreaker

Thor snaps up to his feet, his grin broadening.

"It's a better second effort," Thor says, clapping his hand against Loki's shoulder a few times in brotherly pride. He's not willing to concede that there was no first effort or that it wasn't good in its own right. "And the runes!"

Thor points at them excitedly, as if the light on them isn't abundantly obvious.

"It's great!"

From:

st_ratagem

“I could wish for a little more subtlety, but that may be part of the point.” Elemental force was force. It could be made smaller and subtler, but naturally it was... well, Thor. Intensely straightforward. Which was probably one reason (likely among others) that Loki had needed a focus: he wasn’t very good at straightforward. It wasn’t how his mind worked.

It increased the strain on what now seemed to be severely atrophied magical muscles, but Loki applied a little more force and concentration to the little water in the air. A few seconds later, the runes pulsed and a few small ice crystals swirled in the air. Another good start, but then Loki had to let it go, let the temperature return and the ice melt. Too much at once would only set him back. “I believe I should apologize, brother. Did you know there are two ways to start an avalanche?”

From:

st_ormbreaker

Thor's face brightens even more at the sight of the few crystalline snowflakes his brother has created; he holds out a hand to catch them in his palm and finds they melt before they hit the surface.

No matter. Thor's slightly-damp hand is back on his brother's back. He gives his brother's shoulder an encouraging squeeze.

"What do you mean?"

From:

st_ratagem

“You can start an avalanche by blowing up one side of the mountain or finding exactly the right place to drop a snowflake. I’ve been trying to one-snowflake this, and it was never going to work that way.” Asgardian magic often did, at least the parts he was good at. “This is more like a set of muscles, not a set of rules.” Which and eperfect sense, but somehow he’d never thought of it that way.

From:

st_ormbreaker

"You're right." Thor gives Loki's shoulder one final pat-pat, then withdraws his hand. "Finesse isn't a word in my dictionary." Not, at least, when his powers were involved.

From:

st_ratagem

“Yes. And I’m not good at brute force.” Loki sighed. “At least I have a framework now.”

From:

st_ormbreaker

"You did it once. No reason to believe you can't do it again."

Thor's grin softens into a smile as he looks over at Loki.

"I'm proud of you, you know."