Loki seethed as he materialized in the dank recesses of an abandoned subway terminal beneath New York City. His shoulders heaved with each ragged breath, cheek stinging from the open hand that had struck him back on Asgard.
Thor's words burrowed under his skin like poisoned thorns. "Know your place, brother..."
Scoffing bitterly, the disgraced prince tugged at the conjured illusion cloaking him from mortal detection. It wouldn't be enough to hide indefinitely on this wretched rock of a realm. Not from the all-seeing Heimdall nor his dogged "brother" determined to hunt him to the ends of the cosmos.
The air reeked of piss and decay, drifting in fetid clouds through the crumbling underground maze. Dimly glowing service lamps flickered their dying light against rusted rail tracks worn smooth by decades of disuse. Even the most discarded corners of this backwater planet bred ugliness and filth it seemed.
And to think he'd once sought to rule this pathetic cesspit teeming with insects and their arrogant ignorance.
His fists clenched, frost chasing across torn leather knuckles as fresh waves of bitterness lapped at his soul. How easily Thor and his self-righteous ilk trampled upon his ambitions, content to leave Loki in the cold once more.
Crimson rivulets trickled from where his cheek had split upon impact. Yet physical wounds had never cut quite so cruelly as the verbal lashes flung by his own blood. Rejection and scorn from the only family he'd ever known.
You'll never be one of us...
Norns how he despised them all. Even now, Thor's pitying gaze burned like acid in his memory. As if the God of Thunder alone could dictate who was worthy and who should languish in darkness! Well, he would disabuse his dim-witted sibling of such folly this day...
Loki grunted, expelling a frosty breath through clenched teeth as he strode deeper into the dank expanse. His boots splashed through shallow puddles, thick steam swirling in his wake. Every footfall resounded with renewed purpose and willful solitude.
After suffering the ultimate humiliation, what choice did he have left but to fully embrace the monster they so reviled? To wield his inborn power as a weapon rather than buckling under the weight of such bitter scorn?
The mortals of Midgard would know its first brush with true terror soon enough. And perhaps in sowing such calculated chaos, Loki could finally unmake the chains of self-loathing weighing upon his fractured psyche. Yes...he would show them all.
His seething monologue of torment ground to a sudden halt at the telltale scrape of movement up ahead. A figure emerged from deeper in the cavernous archways, distant footfalls echoing out of rhythm with his own.
Pulling his shoulders back and willing his icy seidr coiled and prepared, Loki crept forward with silent menace until a small shape came into view through the gloom, hunched before a nest of scattered belongings strewn across the cracked tiles.
She couldn't have been more than nineteen by Midgardian standards. A slip of a mortal girl filthy and unkempt, ragged clothes hanging loose upon her too-thin frame. Brunette locks spilled in matted tangles over wary, sunken features as she rifled through a worn backpack laid open before her.
Her expression... Norns, it cut straight through Loki's blackened heart in a way he dared not dwell on. Such weary resignation painted her delicate features, eyes dimmed and ringed by darkening circles. What cruelties had this realm already dealt to crush a mere child's light so thoroughly?
He hovered on the edge of her periphery, canting his head just enough to catch the movement of her chapped lips silently mouthing to herself. Counting, Loki realized with a cruel sort of irony, as her chilled fingers shifted through every scant possession over and over.
