Chapter 95: Loki (III)

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"What brings you here, Odin’s pup?" Laufey looked at him with a curious gaze, but he mostly looked amused.

Loki, however, didn’t say anything at first. Exposed to the extreme cold, he raised his hands as they slowly turned blue; the colour travelled through his wrist and covered his neck. Slowly transforming his face as well.

Right at that moment, there was a growing sense of unrest within the surrounding giants. Some even looked ready to pounce on Loki with weapons.

Still, Laufey raised a hand, stopping them in their tracks.

"What do you want?" He asked again, this time his red eyes matched the identical eyes looking up at him.

"I..." Loki faced the rising blizzard that cut into his skin like knives and steeled his resolve. "I want to know more about you, about my father by blood."

"First a brute, now a brainless fool," Laufey smirked. "Does Odin not know how to raise his offspring?"

"Am I his offspring?" He took that as a chance to step forward.

"Shouldn’t you know?" The blue giant looked like he had gotten a new toy.

’I should know that, indeed I should...’ Loki closed his eyes for a moment; he was here to find that out.

What was he supposed to be?

The current prince of Asgard? The discarded prince of Jotunheim?

Laufey looked at this lost-looking kid before him as a toy worth playing around with. That was the very reason he was humouring this farce.

Even if this defective piece of metal was discarded once, it had been refined in the hands of someone like Odin. Thus, for Laufey, it was worth seeing if he could repurpose this thing into a dagger to slit Odin’s throat.

’Something like this would hurt much more than a flesh wound.’ Laufey shifted in his throne and sent the gathered Frost Giants back to preparations.

But Loki had more in mind; he kept asking questions. It wasn’t anything grand or something he could’ve used to unravel the knot in his heart.

What did the Frost Giants eat? How did they lead a life here? What did they do day-to-day? Their way of life and what they believed?

These were simple questions that someone like Loki should’ve learned about from the books and tales, but he wanted the real answers from the king of Jotunheim himself.

He wanted to really understand from the source since things often got twisted through the lens of hatred and prejudice. And the king of Jotunheim obliged him as much as he could, trying to ask his own questions as a way to keep the exchange fair.

Well, rather than simple questions, he had more interest in how Odin was doing and other things regarding the realm.

At the end of the day, Loki returned to Asgard. Using his magic, he placed an illusion of himself handling his duties, and spent the rest of the time reading Pluto.

Gesicht’s tampered memories, Dr. Roosevelt, the re-elected President who started the previous war, and the confirmation that Pluto wasn’t dead.

Volume 3 brought in Dr. Abdullah from the kingdom of Persia; he was also linked to the victim in Tokyo. Then there was a Ku Klux Klan equivalent for Robots, and one of its members had set their sights on Gesicht because his brother died from a Zeronium shell.

’What is a Ku Klux Klan?’ Loki wondered while looking at the cult named KR and the person named Adolf Haas.

That’s how he had developed a routine.

By day he read Pluto, and by night he returned to Jotunheim and learned about them through conversations with Laufey and other Frost Giants who had started to talk a little because of his persistence.

Still, the way the story developed, with the introduction of Epsilon and what he gained after refusing to participate in the 39th Central Asian war, kept Loki interested beyond his initial expectations.

Uran, Abdullah, the one that seemed like Pluto at first, and then the real Pluto.

’He is after Atom, huh.’ Loki wondered why this robot had such a strong hatred for a robot that wasn’t even involved in the War directly.

Or could it be that there had been some tampering with every Robot’s memory regarding what Atom had done?

"Enjoy reading, do you?" Laufey asked as Loki finally closed the book; he was still in Jotunheim this time when he started reading.

"Sometimes, do you?" Loki had picked up the habit from the All-Father, or maybe he was just trying to copy him?

"Seems like a waste of time." The Frost Giant king shook his head.

"I suppose it is." Loki looked at the book in his hand for a moment before pocketing it.

’What did I expect coming down here?’ He looked at the dark sky for a moment before heading back to Asgard through his secured way.

These past few days hadn’t brought him enough to justify the risk he had taken. But the only thing he understood was that he wasn’t like the other Frost Giants; all they had for him was disdain and how they could use him.

To them, he was just some Asgardian, even if he looked like them. Would everyone in Asgard also look at him this way?

What about the ones that already knew? How did they see him?

Still, he had spent quite a few days between Asgard and Jotunheim. Going back and forth, learning things and sides of people that weren’t mentioned in the heroic sagas.

And he was also able to see the true face of Laufey, his biological father, in his time here.

But he couldn’t get what he really wanted from this.

Back in his room, Loki re-read the second volume again. Always looking at that scene with Brando.

Volume 4 built up to a confrontation between Pluto and Atom; it seemed that this whole fiasco of killing the seven most advanced robots was happening because of the destruction of the Kingdom of Persia by the hands of the robots.

It was a fight for revenge fuelled by hatred.

"He’s being taken over by pure hatred. Perfect."

That was all Abdullah said as Atom also fell to Pluto.

Loki was sure there was more to it, but for now, this was more than enough. It wasn’t that he had no interest, just that something else took up all of his thinking capacity at this moment.

"Maybe this is the only way forward..." And he could see a way to understand where he stood between two extreme ends of Frost Giant and Asgardian.

Although he had been trying to delay this to the best of his abilities, now that he had faced his biological parent, it was time to face the ones who had raised him.

"Are you just going to hover around the door as usual, or come in for once?" Frigga came from behind, tapping Loki’s shoulder.

"Well, I wasn’t sure if my presence would help or not." He had his usual suave smile.

"Since when did you start thinking about things like that?" She tilted her head, looking at him up and down.

"I’ve always done that." Loki chuckled.

"Unbelievable..." Frigga couldn’t help but think back to all the ruckus Loki had caused in the name of his pranks; acting as a snake to stab Thor, cutting Sif’s hair while she was asleep were not even the worst of it.

But even beyond that, there was something different about him today compared to the usual Loki. Frigga waved the two maids that had followed her away and placed a hand on the door.

The runic symbols on the polished bronze door shone with a dim light before it opened inwards.

"Don’t just stand there, where’s your usual shamelessness?" She urged him inside with her hand, almost pushing him through the doorway by force.

In the middle of the lavish room was an oval bed where Odin was on his back, eyes closed shut. And beside the bed that was veiled in a golden barrier were two chairs.

"Has someone else been visiting?" Loki asked, gazing at the empty chair.

"I had it placed here for you. But you didn’t come by at all, at least not inside." She sat down in the chair she had been using this entire time. "Well, I get that you were too busy with the duties, but you had plenty of free time these past few days, didn’t you?"

"You noticed?" Even if he had been distraught, Loki had made sure his work wasn’t sloppy.

"I am almost offended that you’d think that’d fool me." Well, she was the one who taught him everything after all.

She should also know everything about him. Still, he wanted to make sure. But Loki didn’t have to say anything; all it took was a look, and she understood the question that had been in his mind.

"I knew." Frigga had studied the sorcery Odin had used on Loki from the moment he was handed to her.

"Then why didn’t you..." The words slowly died in his mouth. He had asked that question to All Father as well. There was no need to keep repeating it.

"Because I didn’t want you to feel what you are feeling right now; he didn’t want that either." She stayed calm while glancing at Odin.

Loki had learned a lot about the conflict between the Frost Giants and Asgardians during his stay in Jotunheim, and he already knew the Asgardians’ side of the story.

There were so many grudges, so much unresolved hatred. Even if the conflict had died years ago, the fire remained.

There was no way an Asgardian could live down there, between those Frost Giants. And the same was true up here.

"You think that others would’ve looked at me as if I were a monster?" The words that had been gnawing at him came out at last, but it wasn’t really about how the general populace looked at him at all. It was more personal.

"It’s not about how others see you or how I did; it was about how you’d see yourself." Frigga tapped his cheek lightly.

The veil of light sitting on his skin tore open. Beneath that veil of the perfect and presentable acting king of Asgard was a man with deep dark circles under his eyes and shaggy hair. It was like he hadn’t eaten or taken care of himself in days.

"No matter the form, I cannot hide anything from you..."