Unlocking
I shifted into my native form as we walked out of the forest, spreading my wings slightly to enjoy the warm morning sun. “Do you think it’s secure enough for us to stay here, right at the end of the trail?” I asked.
“Nobody else has ever used this path that I’m aware of, from either end,” Loki said, making his way towards a heavily weathered standing stone in the middle of the clearing. “And this is a long way away from the nearest settlement in Alfheim. It’s as isolated a spot as we’re likely to find anywhere.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” I stretched out and lay down half-coiled in the grass, watching as he anchored the shroud that kept us hidden from Heimdall’s sight to the stone, which although long abandoned still had plenty of energy stored to maintain the pattern. When he’d spread the veil across the clearing, he turned back to me.
“All right, now what?” he asked.
“Now you take your clothes off.” I grinned at him, wings fluttering a bit with amusement.
“I… what?” he said, eyebrows raised. “Why?”
“For one, we don’t want to risk you accidentally mixing the pattern of your body with your clothing while you’re learning to shift,” I replied. “Dealing with clothing while shapeshifting takes practice, and I suspect you don’t want your first experience with shifting to include trying to separate foreign material from your skin.”
“If that’s as unpleasant as it sounds, probably not,” he agreed. He cast a simple pattern that began unlacing the bracers on his arms.
“Also, until you’ve learned to control your shifting, there’s the possibility that you’ll accidentally shred anything you’re wearing. And unless you brought a spare change of clothes along, that might be hard to explain to Heimdall when we return—or your mother.”
“All right, you’ve convinced me,” he said, grimacing slightly as he pulled his bracers off and tossed them on the ground.
For a few seconds I wondered why it was taking him so long to remove clothing that he was presumably quite familiar with, before remembering the complex Aesir social taboos about nudity. I stood up and spent a while pacing slowly around the perimeter of the clearing, familiarizing myself with the aetheric patterns of the area and checking for surprises. It wasn’t necessary, but it did seem to help Loki in disrobing more efficiently. I hoped there’d be an opportunity for me to fly at least a little while in the warm, gentle air of Alfheim before I had to return to my Aesir shape.
“Is this sufficient?” Loki said, facing me with his hands on his slender hips, with an amused and slightly defiant expression. “I do hope this wasn’t just an excuse to get me to take my clothes off.”
“Certainly not,” I replied, returning to the center of the clearing and trying not to let my wings twitch too much. “Well… not entirely. Now,” I continued before he could reply, “I need you to lie down.”
A flicker of doubt crossed his face, but he flopped down readily enough, lying on his back. I paused, momentarily struck by the degree of courage it must have taken to show me so much vulnerability. Then I leaned forward, carefully examining his aura.
“Can you see aetheric currents?” I asked, claws twitching as I traced the lines and patterns of color.
“If I concentrate, but it isn’t easy,” he said.
I shook my head. “I’d have liked to show you what I needed to do and see if you could help, but I’m confident I can do it on my own. Please try to relax,” I added, frowning at a knot of orange-red tension.
“I apologize, but I’m sure you can understand why that might be a little difficult at the moment,” he replied. The sarcasm seemed to help calm him down, though. I hummed quietly as I continued mapping his aura, flexing my hind claws into the soft turf. Loki’s breathing relaxed and deepened, and he even seemed to be dozing a little on the sun-warmed grass.
Then I found the lock. I paused and looked down at him. “This is going to feel—strange. Probably uncomfortable.” I didn’t give him time to react before reaching in and tugging on the lock. I needed to know how strong it was, and how much of his pattern was tangled up in it. I winced as his muscles tensed and he gritted his teeth, then let it subside back into its accustomed place and curled a tendril of my own aura around it to investigate more closely.
“Odin didn’t weave this lock,” I said slowly, tracing the neat, simple knots of the small pattern.
“He had to have.” The Jotun frowned. “Who else could have done it?”
I didn’t want to tell him, knowing how hard it would be for him to hear, but comforting lies were the root of this whole mess. As I hesitated he gripped my forearm where it rested beside him. “It… she couldn’t have,” he said, his voice wavering. “She wouldn’t.”
“There’s only one other person who could have known, and who had the skill to do this.”
His hand dropped away, then covered his eyes. “Mother… Frigga.”
“She did it to help you,” I said, examining the lock again. “At least, she did it with concern for your well-being. I can see it, traced all through the pattern.”
Loki’s hand dropped away from his face, and he shook his head. “I will discuss it with her later. At least now I can be confident that she will tell me the truth.” He took a deep breath. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“All right. I’m pretty sure I can unweave it all at once.” I settled myself on my haunches, crouching over him, then paused. “This is… probably going to hurt.”
His expression was perfectly calm as he looked up at me. “Important things often do. I was expecting it. Go ahead.”
I nodded, then reached into his aura with my claws, drawing it up into the air a little removed from his body. I didn’t need a lattice this time, as the task was relatively minor, compared to breaking the geas on Ragnar. I poked two clawtips into the knotted bundle of aetheric strands I’d identified as the pattern lock, and began to unravel it.
With my attention focused on my task, I was only vaguely aware of Loki’s reactions. I knew that pulling his aura up and away from his physical form would give him some detachment from the process, the closest I could give him to an anesthetic under the circumstances. Still, over the centuries the lock had become absorbed into some of the core parts of his pattern, and there was no way to avoid a certain amount of tugging, although as I worked I grew more confident that I would be able to unweave and remove the lock without actually severing any of his own threads.
Finally, after one last twist and pull, the pattern began to unravel on its own. I watched carefully as it slipped free of Loki’s aura, releasing his ability to shapeshift, before teasing it out and letting it dissolve into the background aetheric fields of Alfheim. As I relaxed my hold on his aura, it drifted back down to settle across his body.
“Did it work?” Loki was still lying prone on the ground, his eyes closed.
I looked down at him and blinked, then nodded. “Yes… I’d say it definitely did,” I said.
He opened eyes almost the same shade of crimson as my scales and grinned at me. “I feel—fantastic. Light, but strong and full. I feel like my skin never really fit before.” He sat up, wobbling a little, then raised his hands and looked at them, examining their rich, cobalt hue. “It’s all true,” he whispered. I created a reflective patch of air before him, and he peered at his face, tracing the raised patterns of runes that were etched into his skin all across his body. “I knew, but this is more than knowing… this is truth, down to my bones.”
I did my best to smile at him, but there was an edge of sadness and anger in me that I couldn’t completely hide. Loki didn’t notice, instead trying to stand up. I held out a forearm to steady him as he staggered to his feet.
“So now I can change into other things, yes?” he said, delight in his voice. “I could be—like you?”
“You could, but a dragon’s form is rather complicated,” I said with amusement. “Holding a form that isn’t the one you were born with takes practice,” I continued, reciting lessons I’d been given as a hatchling. “You’ll instinctively blend in with the people around you that are closest to your birth-shape—you probably changed your skin to that of an Aesir spontaneously when Odin first… found you, and you’ll do it again when we return to Asgard without having to think about it. But the more different a shape is from yours, the harder it is to make the pieces fit, and the more concentration it takes to hold.”
“Hmm…” He closed his eyes, and his form rippled, blue skin changing to a golden tan, as muscles bulged out. When he opened his eyes again, they were the clear blue of the sky above. He looked at himself in the reflective pane and grinned. “Hello, Thor,” he said, turning his head back and forth. “I even sound like him—though far more clever, of course.”
“You sound like him because you’re copying his aetheric pattern, one that you’re very familiar with,” I said. “If you stayed in that form long enough, you’d probably gain some of his powers—and start thinking like him, too.”
“I’ve used illusions to make myself look like other things, but this feels completely different.” Loki pulled at his beard and stuck out his tongue, examining it in the reflection. I planted the elbows of my forearms in the turf and propped my chin on my hands, content to enjoy watching as he discovered his innate abilities.
“Forms that I’m familiar with,” he said musingly, and then rippled again. The changes in his body were more dramatic this time, and a flush crept across his face as he looked down at himself. “This feels distinctly odd,” he said, peering at Sif’s face in the mirror. “Things feel different—inside.”
“Different enough that you could be impregnated by the species whose shape you’re wearing,” I said. I knew Loki couldn’t understand the smirk in the angle of my head and ruff, but he could certainly hear it in my voice, and the blush spread further down Sif’s chest. “You’re close enough to an Aesir that the offspring probably wouldn’t be too different, but there’s usually odd effects from shapeshifters crossbreeding. The effects get stranger the farther from your birth shape you breed.”
“I have no intention of breeding, in this form or any other, for at least several centuries,” Loki replied. His tone was casual, but his body rippled back into his native blue form as his concentration slipped.
I stretched my wings and huffed. “I want to fly. Would you like to try? I can help.”
“Help me—to fly?” he said, raising his eyebrows.
“It won’t be too risky if we don’t go very high,” I replied. “I can shift into a simple flying form, so you can copy the pattern. I’ll help with that, too.”
“I could fly?” he said, sounding slightly dazed, then nodded vigorously. “Yes! Yes, please.”
I transformed into the fast flying pattern I’d had grafted, doing it fairly slowly so Loki could see what was happening. In a few moments I was a snake, half of my length reared up and wings unfolded behind me.
Loki looked at me doubtfully. “And how do I…”
“First, you’ll need to look at my aetheric pattern,” I said.
He nodded and closed his eyes, then slowly opened them again. I could see the shift in his own aura as he opened his awareness to the aether, and I helpfully highlighted the important parts of my travel pattern.
“Now—start here,” I said, making a part of the pattern glow. “Find that shape within yourself, and change it to resemble this.”
I watched as his brow furrowed, bunching up the patterns of runes in the blue skin of his forehead, and strands and shapes of his own aetheric pattern began lighting up. “Here… this one,” I said, reaching out a tendril of aether and guiding his attention to the relevant area. He nodded, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes again. Slowly, the shape I’d pointed out shifted.
“That was the hard part. The rest of the pattern will follow much more easily.” Sure enough, his body was already changing, legs fusing to become a sinuous tail and arms reaching out behind, sprouting webbed membranes between elongated fingers. He opened his eyes, which still glowed with the same red hue, and examined himself in the reflective patch. His body was covered with blue scales, the color of his native skin.
Loki opened his mouth and made an odd hissing screech. I could tell that he was startled and alarmed, body language familiar to me from the species whose shape I had simulated. “I’m sorry—I forgot, since you copied the pattern from me, you’ve got a dragon tongue now.” I stuck my tongue out to demonstrate, and he did the same, going a bit cross-eyed as he tried to look down at its dark blue length. “It’s what we use to speak in any form that breathes air. I’ll have to teach you how to use it, at least a little.” I watched him wriggle with frustration at his inability to make a comment in reply, and grinned.
“I’m going to change back to my native shape,” I said, and did so before he could blink. “This way I can fly, and catch and carry you if I need to. Also, I’ll create lift around you—the form you’re wearing is very buoyant in air, but you’ll need to be concentrating on holding the pattern and working unfamiliar wings at the same time, so fewer distractions will make everything easier. Now, do as I do.”
I spread my wings and watched as he did the same, mimicking my movements. I reared up on my hind legs, and after a hesitation he stretched up on his tail. I gave a single flap, cheating a bit with some air lift of my own, and was airborne. I watched, hovering, as he flapped and then squeaked, his serpentine form nearly shooting up into the sky. I laughed, manipulating the air around him as his wingbeats gained confidence, and lifted both of us a bit further. Soon we were forty feet above the turf, and Loki was zipping rings around my body almost faster than I could follow, his aura blazing with joy.
We flew in large circles over the forest around the clearing, at a fairly slow pace. Loki made it obvious that he didn’t want to go further away, and I took his direction, content to follow him as he soared and twirled, luxuriating in the opportunity to stretch my own wings. He tired quickly, though, and almost as soon as we’d landed on the springy turf he switched back to his Jotun form, then immediately fell over, laughing as he sprawled on the grass, his shoulder-length mane of curly black hair artlessly fluffed. “I forgot how my legs worked!” he said, rolling over to grin at me.
“How did you like that?” I said, stretching out alongside him.
“Ever since Thor learned how to fly with that stupid hammer, I envied him for it,” Loki said, sitting up and smiling widely. “When I was younger, I was far more jealous of that than his succession to the throne. Now—I imagine how it must feel to be dragged along by the thing, having to cling to the handle or risk falling, while I can simply grow wings and fly.”
“He will probably never experience what you just have,” I said, nodding. “And there’s more, when you learn to hold your pattern more securely, or get one grafted. Oceans to explore, the silent darkness above the clouds, even swimming through molten rock.”
The light in his eyes dimmed somewhat and the bright colors in his aetheric pattern darkened. “I cannot thank you enough for what you have done for me,” he said. Before I could demur that I would have done it to free any trapped fellow shapeshifter, he put his hand on my forearm, looking at me intently. “I mean it. This is the first time since I learned I was a—a Frost Giant, that I haven’t resented the fact. I tried to be angry with you for telling me, but I’ve always known I was different. And now, by removing that block inside me, you’ve given me…” He stopped, seeming at a loss for words, but when I started to speak he put one hand gently on my muzzle.
“I do not have it in my power to repay you, but there is one thing, one valuable thing, I can give you in return.” A strange pattern began to form in his aura, knotting across his chest. “I can give you truth.”
I tilted my head to one side and looked down at him, the draconic equivalent of a raised eyebrow, but kept my silence.
Loki took a deep breath, wrapping his arms around his legs, as the new pattern in his aura grew and spread. “I’ve built myself around lies and secrets, and I didn’t even know that I myself was the greatest secret, the greatest lie, of them all. I would tell you that you could ask me anything and I will give you truth, but I have been careful, and I’m not sure you would know what to ask.” He looked away from me, though he held his chin up. “I knew about the attack on Aizerue before it happened, and I guessed who was behind it—but I had no idea they had a Spellbreaker.”
I nodded slowly. It was one of the possibilities we’d discussed, so it wasn’t entirely a surprise, but it still hurt.
“I could have stopped it.” Now he looked at me, and I could see the pain in his expression. “I allowed it to happen, but made sure to be close when it did, so that I could leap in to rescue you. I wanted you to—trust me.” He almost snarled the words, then scrubbed his face with both hands. “Odin told me before your group arrived that I was to ingratiate myself to your people and try to discover your secrets, see if I could learn your magic, anything that might give us an advantage in the negotiations. At first, I picked you because you happened to be the one facing me that first day, in the throne room. But… I got to know you, and it became increasingly difficult to remain indifferent.”
His half-smile looked twisted, as if he were mocking himself. “And then everything went completely out of my control. Thor’s attack and banishment, what happened on Svartalfheim—it’s all been happening too fast. I truly thought that I could direct events to our, my own, favor, but Tyr and his allies have been a step ahead the whole time.”
I stared at him, at his aura, looking for the telltale golden flicker of a lie, but instead there was only the strange, growing pattern. It was wrapped around him now, slowly brightening, sprouting fine green tendrils as it integrated with his aetheric form.
“There is one more thing,” he said. “I was not able to prevent myself from—to maintain detachment.” He shook his head, looking frustrated. “Damn, why is this so hard to say?” The new pattern flared and merged with his own as he raised his chin, looking more imperiously regal than I had ever seen him. “I have—Sigynazor, I think I have fallen in love with you.”