As You Wish
The clawed hands that drag him to his feet aren’t gentle, but he hasn’t the strength left to give more than a token struggle, his head lolling weakly to one side. His body’s too broken to do much more than glare, though he does take a grim satisfaction from the dozens of bodies that lie slaughtered around him: At least he didn’t go down without a fight.
And at least—even if they kill him now—he’s out of the void. No longer falling through endless darkness, a non-place not kind enough to kill him; no longer faced with the awareness that he would give anything to take it back, to hold tightly to Gungnir and get pulled back onto the Bifrost and accept whatever punishment Odin saw fit… but also that it was far too late to make a different choice.
Within that emptiness, that stretch of non-time and non-awareness, he had lost track of everything, lost the ability to reason, lost even the sense of his own body falling through the blankness.
Until the impact.
Battered, disoriented, and vulnerable, he’d woken on barren rock, unable to even stand. The void had drained his energy away, so there was precious little left to speed his healing—and wherever he’d landed, he could sense no more than a scant trickle of power to refill his stores.
But he hadn’t even been allowed to rest.
When the insect-like creatures had shown up to nose at his body, he’d taken down most of their forces with one tremendous shockwave, but the defensive move had burned through the few remnants left of his seidhr, and there were more enemies to come. Kneeling weakly, he’d still managed a few more kills before being overrun by the swarm.
A pale, two-thumbed hand grasps his chin, moving his head around to look him over; Loki can’t help but shudder, even as he growls out “Get your grimy hands off me.”
“You have power,” the hooded one murmurs, undeterred, and Loki wishes that were true. He can’t fight his way out, can’t use his illusions—can’t do much of anything, really. Too dazed to bargain, too proud to beg, and too pathetic, it seems, to threaten, even by bluff.
How far he’s fallen, indeed.
“Bring him,” the hooded one says, and drops Loki’s face, turning away and striding off ahead.
Following their evident leader, the creatures drag Loki inexorably through the colony. Not even allowed the chance to get his footing, he finally gives in and goes limp; his feeble struggles did little but bring him more pain.
He’s forced to his knees before a giant floating throne. A purple face stares down at him dispassionately.
They exchange words—the purple one and the hooded one—but Loki fades in and out, his head pounding; the most he hears is “void” and “power” and “dozens before we subdued him.”
The expression that crosses the purple one’s face is mildly intrigued. “Bring him closer,” he commands.
As the insects drag him forward Loki musters what strength he can find. “Unhand me! ” he demands, falling a bit short of the imperious outrage he’s managed on other worlds. “You dare lay your filthy mitts on a prince of Asgard?!”
“A prince, is he?” the purple one rumbles, words laced with amusement. “Well, his royal highness commands, and we must certainly obey. Gentlemen… our visitor has spoken.”
(Centuries spent at court has left Loki with a highly tuned sense of hidden meanings, and a frisson of fear shoots down his back.)
The insects release him and scurry away; lacking the strength to hold himself upright, Loki collapses the moment they let him go. And then watches, sideways, from the floor, as a tall, slim, noseless man detaches himself from the side of the throne and, in no apparent hurry, approaches.
The noseless one raises a hand, and thick cords snake around Loki’s limbs, lifting him upright and binding his legs in a kneeling position. Despite his instinctive struggles, the cords overcome him with ease, holding his body rigid, bowed backward to the edge of pain.
“P-Perhaps we could… come to an… arrangement,” Loki chokes out, finding breath difficult.
Then his gauntlets get pulled off, flung carelessly over the edge of the floating platform, and the cords tighten on bare skin and pull his arms forward, crossing one wrist over the other. Whatever telekinetic hold the noseless one has over the cords, it’s powerful and precise; all Loki’s feeble writhing doesn’t budge them a fraction of an inch.
“Arrangement?” the purple one says, almost indulgently. “But this is all by your command, your highness.”
“I realize we got off to a bad start—” Loki begins, but fingers grab his head from behind, and he feels a sudden unwelcome presence in his mind—
the cords pull taut, and slice his hands off at the wrist.
It’s quick enough that he hasn’t time to react, just to stare in shocked horror at the diagonal cuts and the bloody hands now fallen to the floor. His stomach roils and he starts to shake before the pain even reaches his brain.
Then the cords yank his arms behind him, shove the severed edges together, bind his arms tight—and Loki realizes, to even greater horror, that the skin is even now beginning to heal into that shape, the flesh fusing together as the bones will be doing soon enough.
Panting, he searches for words, his famous silver tongue deserting him. Then a dark cloth and a sort of metallic half-mask rise up in his view. “No no no no no,” he babbles, divining the intent. “No please—”
The mask shoves into his mouth, a jutting piece of metal forcing his tongue down and his mouth open, blocking the sound of his shriek as the rest of the metal bends around his head, holding itself in place.
He can’t even shake his head, the mask keeping him in place as the cloth positions itself over his eyes, shrouding him in darkness while hot tears drip down his face.
“Crying already?” comes that deep, rumbly voice again. “Come now, we’re not even touching you.”
It’s the last words he hears before something soft and slightly wet squishes into his ears, blocking out the world around him, leaving it muffled and barely audible.
A moment later he’s pulled into the air, slowly, until it feels less like him leaving the ground and more like the ground leaving him. Suspended this way, he’s in a bubble without sight or sound, with no way to move anything useful—utterly helpless.
The brush of air against his face tells him he’s moving, but already he’s so disoriented that he can’t even tell the direction, and he hadn’t paid enough attention to the room around him to even guess at what they’re moving him toward. Then the movement stops, and he’s simply there, floating in the darkness, as if he’s back in the void again. As if he never actually left.
With his ears blocked up he can’t even hear his own despairing, muffled screams.