Heist

`Uh, yes, whyever did I agree to that stupid bargain?` The Prince of Asgard, disguised as a light elf and garbed in vanaheimi style to further conceal his identity, lets out a long, silent sigh as he comes out of the Between on his destination.

Or rather, destination planet, and he only has a vague notion of where to steal the pearls from.

This place looks quite solid, as well, with brown-grey permafrost – and is that… a patch of purple mushroom? – visible under the uneven layers of ice, while the old books and records that referenced the pearl mentioned that the thing could be found under the sea, which runs along the middle line of this planet.

`Twenty favours are too few for this,` he grumbles, as, after a thorough check that no sentient anything is nearby, his hands and fingers move, weaving a Working that will tell him approximately where he might find his quarry and the distance between him and it.

There are two places that he could go to, it turns out, and one is far more distant than the other.

He trudges to the nearer location, which is surprisingly quite near, behind the cliffs standing tall to his left, and wonders to himself, `A trader? A stash left by a thief? An underground treasury bunker? An underground outlet to the sea?`

He climbs up and through a cleft between the cliffs, using spare amounts of seiðr to aid him in order to both conserve his strength and prevent early, easy detection and tracking by the natives.

And, suddenly, from the rather small space between two jagged rock faces, he beholds the answer.

The main ‘palace’ of Laufey, the leader of the frost giants, as depicted in many of the war accounts: an edifice melding seamlessly with the surroundings, as though the top of the hill it rests on naturally sprouted a sturdy crown of gleaming ice in shades and combinations of blue, green, black, purple, grey, white and brown.

It is the most colourful object Loki has found thus far on this acurst planet. It naturally draws the eye.

And he sags against the cliff when he realises that the heist would see him rob Laufey.

If the beast did not catch him, did not kill him for the trespass, his own king-father would!

`I had better go to the sea and face the wildlife inhabiting it.`

But the thought alone of trudging that far for the prospect – not at all a certainty ! – of attaining a pair of pearls makes him sag further.

`Damn it. Why did I ever agree to that bargain? I could have shut Fandral up through other means!`