Prologue
King of Fools
Description: Loki didn’t mean to love her. She was meant to be a sacrifice. A sack of flesh to satisfy his debt to the God of Souls. LokiOC
Summary: Loki visits the Vault of Souls to strike a deadly deal with the God who resides there.
Loki cast his gaze around the seemingly empty space. Darkness prevailed. The vaulted stone ceiling was slimy with moss and dead things and stone carvings of gangrel creatures adorned the walls. It was more of a tomb than a vault.
The Vault of Souls. A repository for lost spirits. For wraiths and the half-dead.
You should not have come here, Loki Godson.
The disembodied voice echoed off the walls. It seemed to have no point of origin.
“I am no son of Odin.” Loki said wearily. The denial came almost automatically to him now. I am not your brother. Not your friend. Not your son. Over and over he had said it, but Thor was an adamant fool.
Have it your way. Loki, Son of Pitiful Monsters.
He pretended not to hear. “I have come to pay my debt.”
I released you from your brother’s custody. You owe a life, taken in my name. Your debt would have been better paid from a distance.
“If I paid my dept from a distance I would not be able to ask another favour of you.” Loki surveyed the pitch that surrounded him, trying to discern the source of the disembodied voice.
You have come to claim the Staff of the Undying.
It was not a question. Loki answered anyway. “I have come to claim the Staff of the Undying.”
You would ask me to name my price.
“Yes.”
You owe me a life.
“I do.”
I will give you a life, and you will pay it back to me in three years.
Loki paused, casting his cool gaze around the vault. “I do not understand.”
She was claimed by the sea, but I wrestled her from its greedy grasp and brought her here. I saved her from death. You will guard her from it, and always keep her close.
“To what end?”
She is the sacrifice. I will take her back on her twenty-first birthday.
“Why not just sacrifice her now?”
She is not of age.
“Why not find someone of age?”
She is the only mortal I have managed to conjure in centuries. They do not long survive the Vault.
“You want me to raise a girl like a pig for slaughter?” Loki was capable enough of doing it, but the idea did cause some trepidation.
If you take her now, and return her later, I will be free of this cell. If you do this, I will judge both your debts fulfilled.
“Will the staff enslave Thor?”
Yes.
“The Hulk?”
A pause.
For that feat, there is an additional price. The Staff will require an energy source to perform such a task. The manbeast’s mind is not like other minds.
“I call that a fair price.” Loki replied lightly, making to lean against a wall but then remembering that it was covered in slime.
Your heart is black as pitch.
That annoyed him. “You would murder a girl for your freedom. A human maxim about throwing stones from glass houses comes to mind.”
You bring her to me. Three years hence. You bring her back.
“You have an accord, God of Souls.”
A hollow, booming laugh. You will not have a choice. I am the taker of souls. Deny me, and I shall take your essence and claim the hollow thing that remains. You will bring her. Of your own volition, or as an empty shell. The choice is yours.
