Serpent

There is a snake that circles the world.

You scoff, but you know that it is true.

He came to awareness in mid-stride, running as he hit the ground. He could feel the poison in his face evaporating, his flesh healing, growing whole with amazing speed. This seemed natural, seemed right, but he did not know why.

Nor, at the moment, did he care. The reasons for the miraculous speed with which he healed could wait until he knew who he was.

He was not ready to ask that particular question, just yet.

The question now, he thought, is whether or not they are chasing me, whether or not I've escaped.

The man halted at the corner, wiping his hand across the sweatless brow that lay beneath his long scarlet hair. He slouched against a nearby wall, more out of a sense of the appropriate than because he was tired.

He didn't think he had ever been tired.

He leaned his long slender frame to the left, just far enough to peer past the corner, his eyes darting back and forth, methodically searching for pursuers.

But no one pursued.

Finally, he straightened his back and slid to a crouch, relaxing his guard, closing his eyes, and, and turned his attention to the questions he had put aside earlier. What had happened? Who was he?

Drip.

(He is imprisoned in an enormous cavern. He lies on a stone pedestal, bound in a cord made from entrails.)

Drip.

(The entrails of his own son.)

Drip.

(A woman stands beside him. Her face and form reveal the remnants of a great beauty, shattered and torn by sorrow and despair.)

Drip.

(Her clothes are worn to tatters.)

Drip.

(She holds a simple, earthen bowl above the prisoner's head.)

Drip.

(Some unidentifiable liquid, viscous and foul, drips into the bowl from above.)

Drip.

(But for her, it would fall directly into his face.)

Drip.

(But she does not let it fall.)

Drip.

(The bowl has almost filled.)

Drip.

(Tenderly, she brushes his face with her free hand, and whispers softly into his ear.)

Drip.

(She walks away to empty the bowl. Now he can see the serpent.)

Drip.

(The serpent. From whose fangs drip a glistening liquid.)

Drip.

(Venom.)

Drip.

(Pain.)

Drip.

(The venom seeps into his cheeks, his eyes, his entire face, eating away his very flesh.)

Drip.

(A flood of curses streams from his lips, directed at his captors, the serpent, and the woman.)

Drip.

(He flays her with words, stabbing and cutting and ripping at her with all the edges of his snakelike tongue.)

Drip.

(He hurls at her every word, every syllable he has.)

Drip.

(Save one.)

Drip.

(The serpent's venom falls on stone. He has used the one, whispered word that she gave him.)

Drip.

(He is free.)

Drip.

(The word is his name.)

Drip.

(The woman is his wife.)

The man stretches his arms, summoning powers locked away from him for millennia. He stands, the scarlet mane crowning his head replaced by the true fire that was his aspect, his truest form, the mortal clothing that had adorned him replaced by a robe of darkness, the fabric of lies, spun on a loom of betrayal.

He is Loki, wolf's father, giant's son.

He begins his journey, moving in the sky in the manner of the gods that he has finally rejoined, that he has finally escaped. He journeys to the rainbow bridge, whose guardian will be his death, as surely as he shall slay the guardian.

He is Loki, who is fire and wit and hatred.

He pauses at the entrance to a cave, staring into its inky depths. Deep within, far past the limits of frail human eyesight, the serpent returns his gaze with its endless, night-black eyes, and by the woman's - his wife's – soft brown ones.

He is Loki, and he is chaos, and treachery, and evil.

With an imperious gesture, he sends the fire that is his blood, his air, his life, coursing through the cavern. Snake and woman writhe as one in terrible agony, and are devoured, reduced to less than ash.

He is Loki, and he will be beholden to no one.

Far away, atop the rainbow bridge that spans the distance between our world and the gods', between cold fact and raw, burning magic, his nemesis stands, watching everything that occurs with a bitter resolve.

Heimdal waits.

Ragnarok comes.

Once, there was a snake that circled the world. You may scoff, but you know that it was true.