A Short Story for the Month

This author is now pleased to present a short story, written with a prompt that included the line, “He had scarcely told the lie when…” and the words “crouch,” “futile,” “gouge,” “idiotic,” and “crooked.”

It began as he knelt before the sorriest excuse for a throne he had ever come across and a lie slipped from his mouth, easy as an escape artist from a cage: “Ulterior motives? Of course I have no ulterior motives.”

He had scarcely told the lie when he felt a hand on the back of his neck, shoving his head down to the floor. Startled, he flung out his hands and barely saved his face from being bashed into the stones of the throne room.

          “You lie!” the Troll King roared, and Loki barely resisted the urge to role his eyes as he pushed himself to his knees again.

He could not, however, resist the urge to speak, and muttered words dripping with sarcasm tumbled from his lips. “No, whatever gave you that idea? Surely it wasn’t the fact that I’m the God of Lies, was it?”

That earned him the crack of a spear butt against the back of his head, and he reeled forward yet again as his ears rang and his eyes swam with tears of pain. He bit back a curse and focused, channeling his magic through the injury. The tingle of healing at the base of his skull threw his mind into sharp clarity, and Loki drew in a deep breath and ordered his thoughts before he once more raised himself to his knees.

          This, to put it mildly, was ridiculous. He should be in his own home in Asgard right now, enjoying the company of his wife as he told her stories and wove the fire into fantastical shapes to accompany his words. But the other Æsir had insisted that he be the one to deal with this little problem, which he found entirely unfair. It wasn’t even his fault this time! Thor had managed to get himself captured by a bunch of trolls all by himself, and Loki really shouldn’t have to be the one to rescue him. But did Odin listen to Loki’s reasoning? No, of course not. He just insisted that the whole situation reeked of mischief, and Loki, being the God of Mischief, should take care of it. And so here Loki was, crouched on a dirty floor that had a distinct odor of old meat and older mold, trying to convince his audience that he was innocent.

          Which, obviously, he wasn’t.

The Troll King glared at him, an expression that did nothing for his already bestial features. It was clear that this creature wanted little to do with Loki’s woven words, but the trickster pulled his face into a dazzling smile nonetheless.

“Your Most Esteemed Majesty,” he began, as he clasped his hands in front of him and dipped his head in pretended respect, “I assure you, my intentions are entirely pure. I was merely passing through your fine country, and when I saw your marvelous castle, I couldn’t help but pause in my journey in an effort to see if the inside of your palace was as charming as the outside.”

Unbelievably, he managed to say that with his smile firmly in place, despite the fact that the troll kingdom currently ranked third on his list of most unattractive places to ever exist, and the troll castle was about as charming as a leprous wild boar with a sinus infection and digestion problems.

The Troll King looked at him suspiciously. Loki dialed up the force of his smile, purposefully widening his unnaturally green eyes and blinking to make himself look as innocent as possible.

Finally, the Troll King responded with, “Uh, could you repeat that?”

Loki didn’t bother to hide the eye roll this time. “I have no ulterior motives,” Loki said, a repeat of his earlier lie (after all, ulterior motives were practically his life, these days), “I was merely drawn to the beauty of your castle.”

The blank-eyed expression on the faces of the trolls surrounding him did not exactly fill him with confidence.

With a deep sigh, Loki said, “Look, I’m innocent, I like your castle, and I’m also a liar, so can we just get on to the bit where you promise safety while I’m here among your kind, I pull what may be literal wool over your eyes and betray the trust you never gave me, merry mischief is created, I make off with Thor, he makes off with his hammer, and everyone’s happy?”

A stunning level of incomprehension was all that greeted Loki’s more than sarcastic line of questioning. Loki, who was on the verge of literally throwing his hands into the air in frustration, decided that enough was enough. This whole diplomacy thing was obviously futile, and while Odin had been insistent  that this situation be handled with poise, grace, and charm, or some other trifecta of courtly manners that Loki had been born with a seemingly innate knowledge of, this was really too much. When a species couldn’t even comprehend his (admittedly half-hearted) attempts at a relatively diplomatic settlement before he turned everything on its head and made off with their prisoner, he might as well just get on to the turning-things-on-their-head part.

“Well, then,” Loki said, businesslike and crisp, and more to himself than anyone else. He stood and brushed he had no desire to know what off the knees of his trousers. The Troll King made a decidedly angry grunting noise, and in response, one of the guards swung his spear at Loki. With a casual ease born of years and years of practice with people who assumed that just because he was slender, he was also weak, Loki caught the spear, whipped it out of the guard’s hands, and snapped it neatly in two over the guard’s head.

From that point on, the appropriate word to describe the troll throne room would be pandemonium. Lovely word, that. Synonyms include mayhem, bedlam, and chaos. Loki happened to excel in those particular areas. In fact, he may or may not have been the God of Chaos, in addition to being the God of Lies.

As he began to whistle in manner that was far too cheery, Loki hurled both ends of the spear at a troll who was charging him. The head of the spear lodged in the creature’s arm, and the butt of the spear caught in his legs, which sent the troll stumbling into another troll, who in turn bumped into another troll, who caused another troll to accidentally stick his neighbor with his own spear. It was kind of like watching a highly complex and incredibly vocal game of dominos reach its final moments. Loki found it fabulously entertaining.

The trolls were doing a marvelous job of ensconcing themselves in their own mess, so Loki pushed a few of them out of his way and wove his way between them with all the balance and grace of a skilled dancer. Which, now that it comes up, he was one of those as well. Let it never be said that Loki is not a man, or god, as the case may be, of many talents.

The Troll King was howling something unintelligible from the middle of the room, though it may potentially have had something to do with gouging Loki’s eyes out with a dull egg spoon. Honestly, Loki hadn’t been aware that there was an option other than dull for egg spoons, but, regardless, he wasn’t too worried about the Troll King. So the trickster carefully made his way through the room, and out a little side door into a hallway. The heavy oak door at the end of the hall, the one which shook as it was pummeled by blows from the inside of the room, was exactly for what Loki was searching.

As soon as he was in front of the door, Loki made quick work of it. The wood was enchanted, of course, but that was absolute child’s play for a master of magics like him, and once the enchantments were out of the way, it was easier done than said to light the wood on fire with barely a twitch of his fingers.

Oh, he’s also the God of Fire. That should probably be mentioned.

The last of the door exploded outward in an impressive display of strength and heat, courtesy of one Thor, God of Thunder. Said God of Thunder immediately roared out, “I’ll smash to bits whatever foul beast locked me in that chamber!”

“You’ll need your hammer for that,” Loki responded in a bored tone as he dropped the magical barrier he’d used to shield himself from the majority of the exploding door. His words caused Thor, who hadn’t even realized he was there, to swing around with a perplexed expression on his face. Loki, casually leaning against the wall, arms cross and eyebrows raised, lifted one finger and pointed back in the direction of the throne room. “And if I’m right, and I always am, of course, Mjolnir is waiting for you just in there, hooked to the belt of that idiotic creature that calls himself a king.”

Thor’s expression darkened, and he gave one brief nod of thanks before he was off, a gleam in his eyes almost as manic as the one Loki got when a bit of mischief played out to perfection. Huh. Loki almost felt badly for the trolls. They would be lucky if any of them made it out of that room with even a single bone intact.

With a quiet little hum of satisfaction, Loki pushed himself off the wall and laced his fingers in front of him. Thor would be able to deal with the trolls well enough, especially given that the diplomacy of the situation was no longer an issue. That meant that Loki’s work was done, so he let out a breath and reached out with his magic. As a result, the smoking hallway around him swam, briefly becoming black before it reshaped itself into his own bedroom. Ah, the wonders of teleportation.

Loki gave a sigh of relief, and had just begun to inspect his tunic for any remnants of the exploded door when he heard a voice call out, “Fun day with the trolls?”

“By the Norns,” Loki responded in what he’d never admit was halfway to a whine, “All I can really say is that there’s a reason they’re called trolls.”

That got a laugh in response, and, a moment later, Loki’s wife, Sigyn, walked through the door, a book in her hands. She took a look at his sooty tunic and raised an eyebrow in a silent question. Loki just smiled at her, his real smile, the one that was crooked rather than dazzling, and said, “Pyrotechnics, dear. Someone has to make use of them.”

Sigyn just smiled and shook her head, and Loki immediately went to her. He took the book from her and set it aside as he grabbed her hands and pulled her to the bed, where he sat her down and said, “Do let me tell you all about it.” Sigyn settled in, bright eyes on him, and Loki began his story.

“You see, it all would have been so much easier if they had just believed me when I lied….”