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TRANSLATIONS :

Hjertet ditt, alltid slitt på ermet, magien din, alltid åpen for de som din sjel krever av, Your heart, always worn on your sleeve, your magic, always open to those of whom your soul demands.

𝐀𝐒𝐆𝐀𝐑𝐃, 𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐃𝐀𝐘

A thirteen second thrill is the best way to describe the journey up to the gold-plated nation in the sky. Asgard is a place of glory, where the rest of the Nine Realms wishes they could be. Out of every planet, this one has the best statistics in terms of poverty, wealth gap, and inner court related drama. There hasn't been a real scandal since Thor decided he would break honor code and sleep with a brothel girl at the ripe age of seventeen, which was quickly hushed up as he went on to win a great battle that led to ultimate prosperity for Asgard.

But alas, Loki's actions on Midgard brought on a new type of drama that the royal family had never seen before. His mother was worried for his complete safety while his father remained infuriated that his adopted son would smear his name and ruin his life in such a way. Before the group that came through the Bifrost, which included Loki, Pandora, Klaus, and Thor, Frigga questioned whether or not she could get away with sneaking her favorite son out of the castle. The thought burned against her mind, but she worried that Heimdall would give the location of Loki. Not even her son, who had such magical potential, could outwit Heimdall for more than a night or two.

The group found their way into the hallway with ease. Thor hadn't given the Midgardians any time to wander along the winding paths of the ancient cities or even to take a food break. The prince's eyes darted to the castle, and so they would make excellent time. Sif, Volstagg, and Hogun welcomed back Thor and gave Loki glares that made the trapped man inside want to weep. He didn't show this, however, still trapped by the magical cage the Warden placed on him.

The royal palace was a sight to behold, with its golden pillars and ancient gems that lined the archways of doors. Everything in sight was rich, from the stained glass windows to the court women who only wore the finest of dresses. Their guard had procured a wide variety of swords, the best of the best being fitted in pure Asgardian steel. On the edges of the tables one could find handcrafted napkins that were to hold the famous cutlery of Vanaheim. For all intents and purposes the inner workings of this temple is akin to a poor man's paradise.

To feel this darkness creep inside the inner workings of the castle walls so holistically would be an undertaking only the best of the royal court could undergo. It splattered against the walls in whips of deep and malevolent strokes of this magic's wicked brush, dashed through the beaming light that poured so elegantly into the corridor. This tainting of the air, which almost always smelled of either sweet red wine or seasoned grapes, left a sour taste in the Queen's mouth. During her daily routine she would see a few criminals as they come to face her husband, but these criminals are small in number and hold no attachments to her beyond the title of Queen and the power that gives her over them. Her languid magic that often found its way beyond the walls of her home darted back as a way to guard her for what was to come, both physically and emotionally.

No mother wants to witness the trial of their son.

Heartbreak in the draft of the wind as it brushed against her elder face, she took out a single feather and her favorite magical inkpot to write the letter that she feared may be the last when it comes to her Loki. Her Loki. That baby she was handed by her mate, who told her that even if they were unable to have any more children she could care for a baby who needed her now. Such a short time had passed in her eyes since that day. All but a thousand years. Nothing in comparison to her elongated lifespan of over thirty thousand years. But she couldn't fickle with her memory and the pain it brought to her on that day. She had to write, to send her... baby... her love one last time, if it were to be the last time she be able to do that for him.

And so she wrote from her magical core and her heart, as they are one in the same:

Dear my Loki,

I haven't the right tone to express my great fear for you during these past six months. For the first three I thought you to be dead, the last I clung onto the hope I knew you deserved. However astonished by the spectacle you have caused on Earth, I wish not to speak of such things. You are my son, and while I may be a Queen of this castle I am just a mother to you. Alas, I take back that statement for one quick comment: I do not believe you worthy of the ignominy your father wishes to bestow upon your name and your brow.

My magic has never failed me, this much I have taught you. Know that yours will do the same. It sings a tune only one can chirp back to. And people have a fickle way of finding one another amidst hard times. Do what needs to be done, and do it so none you are passionate for may be damaged.

Hjertet ditt, alltid slitt på ermet, magien din, alltid åpen for de som din sjel krever av.

With my love, always,

Mother

There was a certain treachery to those words she wrote in fine calligraphy. The sight of the letter itself almost brought her eyes to weep. With her slim fingers sealing the envelope with a simple wax seal she often used with her correspondences to her youngest son, she collected herself. Today was not the day to cry over what she cannot control. With everything said and done, she freed herself from what could have been. Although in the back of her mind she did find herself pondering on what should have been: her son coming home to be happily reunited with her after these long six months apart.

Against the hard stone floors, Loki kicked his feet in anticipation. The warden believed himself to be strong enough to bypass usual Asgardian security. The thoughts he implanted in the prince's mind filled the man with an undeniable cynicism. His magic, the best of the best, had failed to protect him, so how could Pandora or his mother be able to free him from the trap that bound his soul in darkness? The question was simple: Is the warden stronger than everything his heart and soul wanted for his future?

The answer to that question couldn't be answered at that time, but Loki was hoping it was a resounding no, as he would rather die than stay in this prison for another... another... How many years would he stay here? How long would it be until death released him from this terror? Would the fates be kind and kill him in battle? Would he die of disease? Could he find a way to die so his body wouldn't be used in such an evil way?

Loki hated this. He hated everything that's happening right now. His heart thumped against his ribcage as Thor finally dragged him into the throne room, where his father, or at least the father he'd been raised by, was perched on his golden seat of triumph. But when Loki looked into the eyes of his king he saw no love, no comfort, and no mercy. All of which he prided in himself and his family was absent from those icy blue eyes (that resembled his current ones). Father, Loki wanted to say. He desperately clung to the little amounts of love he'd received from his father during his youth, the memories serving as a sad reminder of what he lost when he was placed under the stone's control.

"Ah," The Allfather started, not giving any showing of how he felt about this. Why would he? The Allfather, the caretaker of Asgard as well as it's beloved king. Son of Bor, the fierce son of the man who founded Asgard's royal family. But to Loki he was just his father, the one who showed him how to use his shortsword as a young boy, the one who first showed interest in his magical ability when other teachers told him that he was uncontrollable. Because even if he wasn't his favorite, he had to care. But does he care now? "Loki, prince of Asgard, back within our court. I assume that it was you, Thor, who brought him back to us."

Yet the wise king hadn't seen Pandora or Klaus yet, who were stationed right next to Thor. With Loki in chains it was quite hard to notice anyone other than the man on trial, but shouldn't Pandora's magical presence be intimidating? Loki's internal thoughts were stopped when his father tapped his cane (which was pure gold, like almost everything in the castle) on the ground, sending a loud clunk through the air.

"Yes, father, it was I who brought him back to you," Thor said with little emotion, odd for a man who almost always wears his heart on his sleeve. Odin raised an eyebrow. Loki's brother let out a deep cough before continuing, "I would also like to tell you that I was required to bring two Midgardians to this trial." Many who had come to witness the sentencing of Loki gasped at this statement, Frigga included. Who would dare bring up Midgardians? Humans have no place on Asgard! "They are... Well..." Thor stumbled on his words for a few seconds, "They claim to be former students of Loki. They also mentioned that he may be under a spell...?"

Damn Thor and his goldfish memory, Pandora thought, making sure to mentally shield herself as she walked forward to face the Allfather himself. To face a God. "Yes, there is a clear magical energy, not of Asgardian origin, surrounding your son and cloaking his mind from me. In the past I have always been able to get a read of him, to have his magic reach out to my own. This is a grave change from when I was a student and I wish to get to the bottom of it." Odin looked unamused by this. This angered the immortal, who valued the truth of authority figures above all else. "The physical evidence is already here. Signs of magical takeover are, as you know, presenting themselves in a physical form," Pandora came closer to Loki and pointed at his face, "His eyes are not blue. They're green. Like emeralds when shining in the light of the dawn."

"Was he not on Earth, needing to be disguised?" Odin brushed it off, "Midgardians have modern ways to change their eye color."

"Do you honestly believe that your son could kill innocent people?" Pandora nearly lost her temper at the ridiculous idea, "because last time I checked you sent your oldest when interacting with the civilians during war. Not only that, but Loki was already planning to live on Earth once he finished his duties as a second born prince with no sights for his father's throne. To come be with us, the ones he practically raised as if we were his own blood." This caused a great outcry to fall in the courtroom. Loki, leaving Asgard for Earth? "I still want him there with Nik and I, so I will make sure that he is released from this magical trap immediately. He is not in his right man and so should not be tried as if he is!"

"You are no queen of this kingdom and shall not tell me how I should run the trial of my son! You have no right —" Odin was cut off by someone he did not expect to go against him.

"But I am the queen and I agree," Frigga said at once, taking a step forward from where she was in the crowd. "I felt the darkness when they entered the palace. It is dark magic from off our world," she confirmed. "If there is a chance that it was not our son behind the attacks, if his body is a prison for him, I'd damn well think you'd be happy to find out the answer." The scolding left a sour taste in the people, who didn't know if the queen's confidence would create a fight between her and their king. "My son was not trained to be evil in the ways he works. He's never done anything like this before. Never has he shown any malice for the people of Midgard, nor has he ever desired to be king of any planet. He has no motive and with this new evidence I wish to see these Midgardians of whom he has tutored and get to the bottom of what has happened to our child. Do you understand me, Odin?"

Beyond their marriage, Queens of Asgard have much more power than one would expect. When it comes to their children, they have full control. If Frigga wanted she could claim this to be within her power and watch it go down in another court with a jury of their people. She would win, and so Odin had to let Loki go through whatever decontamination his wife wanted to put him through.

"Yes, I understand you, my queen," he said quietly.

There was nothing more to it.

---

That night Pandora couldn't sleep. Whenever she managed to doze off on her overly comfortable mattress, she was littered with nightmares built for a trauma survivor. The only way she knew they weren't dreams were because she woke up drenched in sweat, tears pooling in her emerald eyes. It wasn't as if she could remember them once the shock dissipated, but she knew they were horrific by how her body reacted. When her head would finally drop back onto one of her fluffy pillows she would let out a deep sigh. How could she manage these terrors? She had to get a good night's rest, lest her magic be nullified in the morning.

No matter how hard she tried, her body didn't want her to be ready for the magic she would have to perform at sunrise. Her limbs were exhausted, damn near impossible to lift off the bedding. It took all her might to find her way down the winding stairs of the castle, with a guard at her side, of course. Even if Odin didn't like her presence, he knew she was powerful enough to damage him if he allowed her to be attacked by some rogue servant or thief in the night.

Knowing her power and knowing her were two different things. Pandora reminisced on all the times she'd encountered witches with clear superiority complexes, watched as they trembled in her presence. It was as if her magic made sure they knew that they were lesser than her, that whatever spells they did could backfire in a second. When it comes to magic grabbed out of the clutches of nature itself she would always have the upper hand. This trailed off into a new idea when she found herself in this castle, with people with magic she did not command with her very existence. Odin knew that she commanded Midgard's magical beings in some way, and so he knew her might. But the connection to her home planet made it so that he made assumptions about her character or ability. What a fatal flaw for him to have, believing that a Midgardian immortal could not come face to face with an Asgardian God.

As Pandora's body and magic made its way into the Great Dining Hall of Asgard, something clicked. Asgardians know nothing of humanity beyond their somehow superior fighting skills. The immortal came to the conclusion that most of the warriors in this room, dressed in fine Asgardian steel, genuinely thought of humanity as truly inferior. It made her blood boil, as they still believed her to be human, to be mortal. Her and Klaus could crush their skulls with their pinkies, or drain them to the point of death without barely lifting a finger. Compelling these brutes would be easy. Many believed that only humans could be compelled, but Pandora thought this to be idiotic. Any sentient being could be manipulated with relative ease, it just depended on whether or not the being doing the compelling used their magic well.

The blackness of the steel drew her to a table of younger guards: A set of identical twins with bright red hair and two of their friends, of which had curly midnight hair that dropped to their shoulders. Pandora couldn't find Klaus anywhere, and so she made her way to the table of guards, who were howling at some joke one of the twins made. They tensed at her presence, but the immortal didn't care that much. This predicament would only last for at most half an hour, or at least until Klaus came down from his rooms to make her time in the room better. When she grabbed a plate of fruit one of the twins cackled with laughter.

"You eat so little, my lady!" Oh, now she knew he had to be intoxicated in some way. But so early in the morning? Maybe he stayed up the night before, drinking Asgardian wine (which is known to last until the morning, even if you do fall asleep). He pointed his fork at her and grinned. "With all of this food for the picking? We even have —" He let out a cough and waved his hand to a dish I didn't know the name of off the top of my head, "Food. Good food!"

"Leave the lady alone, Einar," his twin said, shoving his chair further away from Pandora. "I am sorry about my brother. Bloody drunk at this point. He can't hold anything yet he insists on drinking after every trial because the law is to be celebrated. Celebrated my ass." This made the immortal let out a small chuckle, which made the redhead smile brightly. "My name is Endre. The two giants over there are Fisk and Garth. They're cousins but we pretend that they're brothers."

An uncomfortable feeling settled at the bottom of Pandora's gut. She wasn't used to conversing with those she doesn't know, or talking with people who aren't Klaus or Loki in general. This table brought her out of her comfort zone in ways she didn't know if she could handle. The loud noises all around made it impossible to filter and focus. Not that she could filter out audio in the first place. 

"If you didn't get told, my name is Pandora Laureldottir," she said as calmly as she could, taking a bite out of a ripe peach. As she swallowed she felt the table begin to stare. Not in the rude way where one would feel ashamed for whatever they were doing that provoked such a thing, but in a way where it felt as if they knew of something she didn't know. It felt like respect, in the oddest way, but another word could not describe the feeling as a cold chill ran down her spine. "What? You're all staring at me as if I am an animal within a zoo you've never seen before."

No attempt was made to break into the minds of these men and figure it out through their thoughts. That would be too invasive, a bad look for all her teacher taught her about the privacy of others. Pandora would not smear his name in such a way, but the staring still baffled her. When else had she experienced such a thing? When people stared, it's often a hard glare; negative connotations are made. But with this group of guards it was... positive? Almost as if they'd heard good things about her, or that her name was well known in their little gang of misfits.

"Do you mean the Pandora Laureldottir?" Fisk asked, putting the mug of ale he'd been drinking down on the table. All of their eyes widened as she nodded. Had someone spilled that she was an immortal? How could Asgardians know her name? Revere it, even? "The tales they tell in battle, the reason why we leave Midgard alone. A story of a girl made from the heart of a magical tree. She defied the ways of life and took a mortal boy to be her immortal wolf companion. The half-wolf immortal." Pandora almost shuddered at the slight incorrectness of the story, but she assumed that it may have been for dramatization purposes. "The story of her, of you if you are who you say you are, is well known throughout the Nine Realms. Warriors tell it to their children who have magical potential, to show that if you have that magic you can do anything with it."

This revelation of her own knowingness throughout the Nine Realms shook her with a new kind of insecurity. She couldn't live up to such expectations that she was given! She thought of herself as a powerful being, but only in the sense of her immortality and magical prowess. Battle, stories... These warriors must want her to be something worthy of her tales, and she didn't think of herself so highly in that regard. What could be better than being admired in such a way? But no matter what way she looked into the words this older Asgardian man used, she could not find an ounce of who she really is or ever was.

"That does sound about right," Pandora muttered under her breath, taking a bite of an unknown pastry that one of the men threw at her. Since honesty is always the option for Asgardians, whose magic is known for detecting faults in any person's character, she went for complete and utter silence that seemed to carry throughout the room. Not that she minded this, she didn't want to be near these men anyways, especially now that she had been recognized by them as some sort of great myth, a legend that had been tampered by the likes of men for the amusement of young warriors. Because in dramatizing her life story they'd completely forgotten her. Not that they would have known her in the first place, but this was the final snap of the honesty the story could've had in the end.

This sort of thing is what she'd expect Klaus to like. The glory, the honor, the fear. Yes, Pandora did often like to strike fear in those of whom she hates, but that was always planned malice directed at only those who deserve such from her. Everything about being a myth loses its appeal when those who know it decide to lay down expectations. You must be powerful, you must have this, you must have that; none of it is possible for any person throughout the realm. Even the tales the weaker vampires tell about Klaus are mostly false or exaggerated.

"You have a cosmos full of people to talk about." She slowly got up from the table, seeing that Klaus was going to miss breakfast. This is not a place she would like to spend her time. "And yet you talk about me as if I am the center of it.

"I am not a good person. Powerful, yes, but not worth your time."

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The next few chapters will be denser and have more scenes. The scenes are more important, so I implore you to not skip any of them. If you do, you will miss a bunch of lore and development. It's the shorter end of the stick, but I've picked it for you.

Sorry for missing this update! I was supposed to update yesterday but to be fair I was asleep most of the day. Be prepared for some severe angst the next few chapters, and more focus on Mystic Falls and the good ol' Elena gang (I'm assuming we all hate her haha so yeah be prepared for some severe Elenabashing just like in my other TVD book, The Original Heretic/Throne)

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