After the Fire (After the Fire: Book the First) by J.L. Murray

Author:J.L. Murray
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Hellzapoppin Press
Published: 2013-02-14T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Loki stepped out of the rancid-smelling hut and breathed the cold air deep into his lungs. He felt the snow fall onto his face, melting immediately upon contact. He loved the snow. It reminded him of home. It had been so long since he'd been home. It would not be much longer, he thought.

There was a crash and snarling inside the hut and he sighed. It was difficult for him to remember that these beasts were his blood. Had he been free when Fenrir fathered them, he would have intervened in the way they were raised. Beasts like this, with their strength and bloodlust, had to be trained. They could have been the most powerful fighters in the world. But they had their father's shortsighted mind. They only cared about tearing and ripping and the small doses that Perun had been doling out to them. If only they knew they had been getting a few drops of what Perun could give them. The foolish god used the rest for himself when they were dazed in the snow. Loki had been watching.

It would be a happy thing when he did to the lightning god what Perun had been paying Loki's grandchildren to do. Perun was getting old. He saw Zaric everywhere he looked. In the end, Loki would make Perun tell him why he was so desperate to kill the fire god once and for all. It made no sense. It had always vexed Loki. Perun had killed Zaric once, of course, but that was because the bone horn had been bestowed on him.

Loki touched the heavy pouch at his waist. It wasn't the horn, but the symbols that carried the power. . The symbols, carved over a century old, so old they had nearly been worn away. All this had been explained to Loki when he had been freed from his prison, from the torture that Odin had devised just for him. So many seasons, made to feel even longer because they had cut out his wife's tongue. She couldn't speak and when she did, it came out garbled and inexact. The burning poison on his face had been nothing compared to the lack of stimulation. He had talked to himself for a hundred winters. His sweet wife, Sigyn, had gone slowly mad, at first from infection and pain, and later from the banality of it all. Loki ground his teeth when he thought of it. She never should have died.

The pounding in his head brought him back around from his rage. Not now, said a voice in his head. Odin will pay later.

Loki nodded to himself. When he was strong enough he would take Odin. He would have Odin's essence in the end. He would drink it from the horn like the finest mead. All of it had been Odin's fault, even Sigyn's suicide. She had shoved her own face into the mouth of the snake. And then he had felt the now-familiar pounding. And the voice. And then he had been free.

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