Sorcha's Secret World, Part 2: Mystery and Mischief.

Chapter 17, Tomatoes.

"We are not using mice to test them!" Carter yelled at Loki.
The two of them had been tinkering away until they got to a point where it was time to start testing if the portals, or more accurately, teleporters, really worked.
"I'll name the mice! I'll give them all the cutest names and little outfits and you will feel terrible if something happens to them!" I threatened Loki.
"You are supposed to be on my side!" Loki glared at me.
"Well, I'm not. I'm with Carter, we are not using mice to test out if the teleporters work."
"Be reasonable, Sorcha! The modifications we made to the devices mean the effect of travel might not be the same as going through the existing Jotunn portals! We need to discern the effect the teleportation magic has on living tissue!" Loki was visibly trying to control his temper.
"Then use me as your test subject, I can't die anyway!"
"And me," Carter quickly said, "I'm a Bee too. We'll pop back up again, the poor mice won't!"
"Are you two listening to yourselves right now? Who in their right mind volunteers to be test subjects for what is completely experimental magic?"
"Us!" I yelled hotly as Carter nodded along.
In the blink of an eye, Loki was not only completely calm and collected but sporting a triumphant smirk.
"Wonderful! That was easier than I thought it was going to be."
"Wait what?" Carter looked confused.
I rolled my eyes and shook my head. "We walked right into that one didn't we?"
Loki cackled.
"He was never going to use animals to test the magic, that was just to get me to volunteer. He knew I'd come up with about a hundred reasons why it would be dangerous to test on us if he was the first to suggest it. But now I just volunteered us without thinking because I was too outraged," I explained my defeat to Carter.
"You make it so easy sometimes, darling," he giggled.
"Doesn't it annoy you when he does that?" Carter glared at Loki.
"All the time, but he's cute and sexy, so he gets away with a lot more than he should," I admitted as I started grinning despite myself.
Loki's smile beamed smugly around the room.
"Please just test it first on an inanimate object at least," I begged him.
"Of course, that's why I got these," Loki lifted a crate of tomatoes up on the workbench.
"So that's what those are for," I mumbled.
"What? You didn't think I was cooking tonight, I hope?"
"No, why would I think that?" l lied, my hopes dashed.
"Why tomatoes?" Carter asked curiously.
"Because they will give a satisfying splat if things do go wrong. We might as well have some fun with this!" Loki grinned.
"May I remind you that one of the house rules is that if you make a mess, you clean it up yourself?" I reminded him.
Loki looked around the study with its myriads of books and magic items.
"Yes. Well. Carter, let's move the teleporters to one of the empty rooms, shall we?"

Originally, Loki had started out trying to fix the broken Jotunn portals we found. The more he worked on them, the more he realised the old magical portals were broken beyond repair.
Instead, he had used them as inspiration for creating his own devices; two portable disks that could be placed anywhere and should theoretically be able to teleport people and items alike between them.
Carter's internship was only meant to last a few weeks. She had felt she had learned so much from Loki in that short time, however, that she had decided to stay for the summer. Loki would never admit it, but he was glad for her help. Carter was almost as clever as Loki was, and they worked well together.
Loki and Carter spent the rest of the day with the two teleporters and Loki's crate of tomatoes. I decided to leave them to it, if they needed me as a test subject they would be sure to come and get me.
I didn't hear anything that afternoon, besides the occasional giggle from Carter and cackle from Loki when one of the tomatoes met a particularly gruesome end.
When I went to check in on them they were both covered from head to toe in tomato pulp, the room looking like a set from a B-rated horror movie. I was just in time to watch the last of the tomatoes explode.
"Not a success then?" I asked sympathetically.
"On the contrary," Loki's eyes sparkled bright blue in a face smeared with red, "That one made it to the other pad! This might actually work!"

Anthony Ryan was finally starting to make headway with the Jotunn tablets. Now that he could actually read them he had thrown himself into the work of sorting and cataloguing them.
One interesting find was a tablet mentioning the use of the room with the rectangular stone boxes we had found in the hold.
The sarcophagi were neither sleeping births nor burial coffins, but restoration devices, meant to speed up the already impressive healing capabilities of the Jotunn race. With their aid, even mortal wounds could be healed, if treated in time.
Loki had gone from being delighted that the mystery was finally solved to being frustrated with the puzzle that they now posed.
While he now knew their purpose, he had no idea how to make the chambers work.
Loki finally concluded his uncle must have sabotaged them beyond repair. After all, the last thing he would have wanted was for Fárbauti and his warriors to recover from the poison he had dosed them with.
It was again an interesting insight into the life of Loki's people, our people, another piece of evidence they were far from the savage and barbaric people Asgard had made them out to be.