Loki's Daughter

Chapter 3: Ice & Volcanoes

On the other side of the portal, Loki's feet sank into deep, deep snow. His heart sank with them. He looked around in disappointment. He was waist deep in snow drift and all around him was a dessert of snow dunes for miles, save for a small outcropping of rock in the distance.

"Oh no," he said. "Please, don't tell me this is Jotunheim." He looked up to the sky. Two large planets orbited closely in the sky. Auroras flitted across the sky in ribbons of green and purple and pink. Loki let a relieved huff. Jotunheim was not orbited by any other planets. So, at least it wasn't that monstrous realm.

He glared at the tesseract. "This is not funny," he growled at it. A glimmer flashed up at his face inside the cube. He thought this was the stone's way of laughing at him for thinking he could fully control its powers without a true harness. In truth, he was often just along for the ride during jumps. Occasionally, he could get the tesseract to behave and follow his will, but he didn't always get what he wanted.

Loki felt a shivering arise on his chest and suddenly remembered Kuna. He looked down. She was shaking in his arms from the cold. Her lips had turned blue and frost was beginning to build up on her eyelashes and matted hair.

"Shit!" Loki said. He looked around, desperately. He squinted into the distance and found the rocky outcropping again. A single cluster of peaks, clawing their way out of the snow. Perhaps, they could get behind it to shelter themselves from the wind at the very least. He put the tesseract away and removed his cape from his shoulders, wrapping the child in it. He pulled it up over her head and held her close to him.

"I'm hardly one to keep you warm, either," he muttered. Her teeth chattered. There was no way they could jump again. At least not for a while. Loki was surprised she had not passed out from the jump. The tesseract had a perverse way of seeking out physical weakness and exploiting it, often until death or madness.

He trudged through the snow, holding Kuna just above its surface. The trek was hard and exhausting. He too was feeling the fatigue of two large jumps in a single day as well as the faint dizziness of intoxication. The wind whipped at his hair and howled in his ears.

Slowly, they were approaching the rocky outcropping, rising out of the snow. Loki thought it must have been the peak of a tall mountain that had been buried over years and years of constant snow. The driving wind had whipped up snow all along the frontward face and along its sides.

As he approached the side of the peak, the snow rose up in a tall drift. His legs were growing tired and heavy. They were starting to burn from the exertion of plowing a path through the snow and he was breathing hard, his breath creating aggressive clouds of mist in front of him, condensing and freezing on his eyelashes. Kuna was barely alive on his chest. It had taken him nearly an hour to get this far. If she wasn't hypothermic yet, she would be soon.

"My lineage could not have at least given me the power to walk on top of this wretched stuff?" he shouted at the snow, but the wind whipped his voice away. Kuna flinched in his arms and let out a shuddering breath. He trudged on, groaning with effort. He tried to keep his eyes on the horizon so he didn't have to see how slowly he was moving.

He was approaching the top of the snow drift that surrounded the peak. As he reached the top, he could see a massive bowl of snow and rock below him, created by the swirling wind behind the mountain. He looked for a way down. He could see a rough crack in the rock of the mountain. Hoping it was a cave they could take shelter in, he took a step forward to get a better look. Suddenly, the snow gave way from under his feet and sent both he and Kuna tumbling down a massive mountain side, into the crater below. Loki hit the snow hard and bounced, letting go of Kuna. He heard her cry out as she tumbled down the hill in front of him.