Sentencing
We were ushered into a locked waiting cage off to the side of a great hall constructed of towering arches. They were old, older than anything I had ever seen on Hel, even Dotta's neighborhood. They brought both of us in, wrapped in shackles and the dirty clothes we had ran in.
I caught myself and my reflection in one of the thick one way mirrors that lined the cage, and gasped. I looked like a monster, with dried blood running down the side of my face, matting my hair, spilling onto my shirt. I always knew head wounds bled a lot but I didn’t realize it was that much. My headache was completely justified.
“There won’t be a trial” Loki said to me. “Just the sentencing.”
“How do you know?” I said. “We always have trials in Hel.”
“This isn’t Hel”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve been here before.”
“You’ve always been this big of a criminal?”
“No. My father.” His voice tripped over the word father, and he stammered to halt.
“Your father what?”
He remained silent.
“Loki. This is important. Tell me.”
“Odin, he raised me. My tutor and Odin brought my brother and I here once, to visit.”
“Why?”
“To learn about all the different systems of justice in the Realms.”
“And what did you learn about this one?”
“That once you get here there is no trial, only sentencing.”
“Oh...” I muttered. I was just barely alert enough, between my bashed in head and the confusion of existing in a place outside of Hel, to be scared.
We sat there quietly for awhile, silent in our shackles, shifting every so often to try and get comfortable.
“Loki,” I said. “I’m terrified.”
“Don’t be. It’s my fault. I’m going to make that clear. We’ll work something out. We’ll fix it.”
The door creaked open, and a set of guards, four for each of us, came in and helped lift us to our feet.
“Your turn.” one said, not unkindly. He looked at the state of my face and asked if he wanted them to take me to a room with a sink to wash off.
Just as I was about to say yes, Loki spoke on my behalf.
“No. She stays with me at all costs.”
“As you wish, sir.” my set of guards said compliantly and deferentially. It was as if they knew him.
We walked down a long corridor into an even greater hallway. At the very end of it a downcast and gloomy woman sat at the end, wrapped in expensive and gorgeous garments, ermine, fur, and leather. She was dressed as a contemporary of Loki, as I remembered him when he first fell to Hel and I picked him up in the park near my home.
We shuffled as best we could towards her and stopped only when the guards pulled on our chains to signal wordlessly for us to stop walking.
She looked up, and with a commanding voice began to speak.
“We meet again, friend.” She said to Loki. “I have not seen you since you were a young boy and your father asked for a dispensation to come visit, and come watch.”
“Odin,” Loki said, commandingly, and as if this woman was his equal, or even his inferior , “is not my father.”
“And because you believe so strongly in that you feel as if you can come to Hel and play with everything we use as the foundations of this realm?”
“No.” He said. “I didn’t mean to come here at all.”
“There are consequences.”
“What can you do to me?” He hissed at her.
“Nothing, I admit.” She said, looking up and smiling. “I can do nothing to you. I’m surprised you even let me keep you in chains and shackles this long.”
Loki smiled, took a beat, and then nodded at her, saying nothing. “You must care much for the girl.”
Loki glanced at me, and rose up to his full height. I expected him to finally say something. They were both silent, staring each other in the eyes. The guards were spellbound, unused to and startled by a sentencing like this, with someone who was as unafraid of the woman as Loki was.
“So,” She continued. “Because you care so much for this girl, so much that you risked collapsing everything in Hel, putting billions of souls in jeopardy, to save her. Because you thought that bringing in a stolen Asguardian boat, opening a channel to the tunnels beneath Hel for her to dive through, and then instructing her and obstructing any other exits so she’d have a clear path to run through would work...”
She took a breath and looked at me. I realized she was about to address me and I instinctively looked down at the ornate tile floor I was standing on. “Because he did all these things and you are the one thing he cares about, since he seems to care nothing for his family any more, and since I can do nothing to him save release him in unpleasant places, you will have to bear his punishment for him.”
“What?” I gasped, grasping at the words she had spoken. “How can I possibly do that?”
“He cares about you, and he cares about so very little right now.” She said grimly. “A consequence has to hurt. Loki, by nature of who he is, is very difficult to hurt. He does not seem to understand the limits and he soon must. You will teach him. Because of that you will have to cease to exist. You will be gone from all realms this very evening. Loki will bear witness to that and understand, by what you are bearing for him, that he is, under no circumstances, to ever come to Hel again. Worse, than the loss of one soul in billions, will happen should he ever dare to return. What is happening to you will happen to many more, and not as a consequence, but as a natural reaction to his disruption of the realm I am the caretaker of.”
“So,” I said, rising my face up to meet her, looking her square in the eyes. “I am to be collateral for his sins.”
“Yes.” She said lowly and loudly. “It is the only way.”
“Is there no other way?” Loki said, continuing to stand there as a king would before a diplomat who had just declared another kingdom against him.
“No” she said, turning back to him. “There is no other way.”
“What if you release her with me?”
“And have an infinite soul floating around the other eight realms with you? Too dangerous. Too foolhardy. She would outlast even you, weaker though she be.”
A sharp breath caught in my chest. I had not realized that a soul in Hel could outlive someone like Loki, an Asguardian. Even they had their limits, I realized.
“What if you send her back to Hel, and we simply rid her of memory...”
“We could never. You know that doesn’t exist. She knows now what she knows. There is no returning.”
“Loki. What other way is there?” she said, nodding at the tall, silent men that stood on all four sides of us.
The guards jostled us back out of the hall, down the corridor and back into a different holding cell.