please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste

[laevisilaufeyson]

The tales of Asgard tell of the threads of the Norns, each a lifetime spun and carried through a tapestry of others, each cut short, the ends tucked down into the crush of other threads, woven over, and forgotten. By that rule each twining of threads, each entanglement of lives, is fated. The charming creature who speaks to the devil animatedly, who swallows his smiles like liquor, who reaches out to grasp his hand as she tells some delightful and sordid tale and recoils in concern at the chill of his flesh – she was meant for that brush with greatness. Oh, in all likelihood she'll never know, but somewhere, if the Norns speak true, her thread once sent the finest of fibres out to rest against his own.

Loki does not believe in fate. That makes her all the luckier.

Her luck makes him benevolent. He spins her a clever tale in her own tongue, of her own tongue, flatters her, brilliant, look; that magnificent animal whose head was so cruelly separated from its other sundry parts and displayed above that delightfully well-stocked bar, that is die Deutsche Sprache. How? Well, how.

It's a fine tale, Romans, Emperors, conquest, and above it, over all of it, the word for that animal: Caesar's, now. And from Caesar, the world. Greek. Old English. The tongue of the vikingr, from sunny Italy to frozen Norway, dieses einfache Wort: Elch. An elk. He spins it charmingly, spins it well. Like he knows. Like he was there.

Which, of course, he was, not that she'll ever work out that, delightful little thing or no. That is not her purpose. Her purpose is to stand and speak and attract attention, to smooth out the lines of his ego as she does his collar while he flirts – hardly an engaging task – and spins clever tales and, as the liesmith does, mislead. Her, yes, and everyone else too. She is bright enough that they will not notice if his eyes stray.

Since the fall from the Bifrost, since his banishment and subsequent arrival here on Earth, Loki has watched. He's watched them try their damnedest, these foolish humans, to tear themselves apart, tear one another apart, for reasons as inconsequential as he's ever seen. It isn't new, the sentiment, the intent. The capacity is. He's watched it all unfold and fade and die as these things always must do, and he has kept watching.

And he has thought. He has thought much, thought hard. He has seen the human willingness to tear itself to shreds, seen how little Asgard cares for its pet project. He has seen need, and he has seen opportunity. He is better. He could be better. He could make all of this his – he is, after all a god; would they not bow?

Even if they would not he could do no more harm to them than they would have done themselves without his help. Seventy million. Their lifespans dictate that there have never existed, in all of the history of their race, seventy million Asgardians. This many humans have died, at the hands of no god, and it has hardly made a dent. Still they swarm all over the surface of this little ball they call home.

Their ingenuity is astonishing. Their short-sightedness, nearly Asgardian. Only they have not the power not to listen.

Case in point: this girl, who listens and listens to the strange man with the faintly peculiar accent speak in slightly archaic dialect about words older still, oblivious no matter how intently she listens that his eyes do wander not in concentration but in a hunt.

To build an empire, one must first grind the last into a dust. One must tear from it its secrets, and then destroy what is left. To that end, there is a man here tonight with whom he would very much like to speak.

Comments

[violenthearted]

That man, currently, is paying him no attention, although he certainly would be if he knew what an ouroboros they make: here he is, a man with whom Loki would very much like to speak, and here he is about a man himself. The difference is that while Erik won't mind if they talk - sometimes he's civil beforehand - the only words he wants to pass on might as well be bullets. I want you to know who I am, and who's doing this to you. I want you to know what you've done.

When they acknowledge their parts it's always messy: sometimes sniveling, once a man spit blood at his feet before he died. As a child, Erik had seen him pick up a woman by her hair and throw her, and his blood shone like a medal on the asphalt, puddling around broken teeth.

He remembers their faces. They are mere incidentals to his mission, but as he pulls back the rocks that hide Klaus Schmidt they scurry; the good doctor, it seemed, had built a new life on contacts after the war. It ought to surprise him, how many of them he finds in bars or churches or at parties, living as as if they still had the right to lift a glass to the new year or say a prayer of thanks, that these men who murdered children, who erased the names of millions--they still live, as if breath is something to take for granted.

What he has learned, in those years of infiltrating the bars, the churches, the parties, is how to be invisible when necessary. He's tall, but not obvious; the bartender will remember that he was reserved, but not his face or the color of his eyes. By now he has marked every exit in the room, occasionally hearing the high laugh of Loki's companion, but it's all background noise. A comfortable sort of static. The man he's here for has been drinking since he arrived; ostensibly so has Erik, but he sips slowly and feels no warmth from the alcohol.

He is calling himself a new name, this ruddy-faced, black-haired gentleman; in this life he's a barber. The years and heavy diet have built up a paunch, but his arms and chest are thick and hard as barrels. He'd be a challenge, except that Erik can feel the knife in his boot. If he tries hard enough he can probably read the inscription etched on it: they wear who they were right under the surface, as close as cirrhosis. Tonight he's had too much to drink, and when he stumbles outside, Erik follows.

[laevisilaufeyson]

If one wishes to know why an empire falls, one follows the lines of power to their termination. What remains, one seeks out. This has been Loki’s occupation for some months, tracking whispers and rumours. His chagrin when he found those threads being unraveled for him, quietly and systematically, was profound. His curiosity all the more so. Still, he’s here as much for hunted as for hunter, and so when the former slips out the door he has already extricated himself from conversation and, straightening his coat, makes his way through the crowd.

All of the pieces are in place; the bishop flees, the knight follows, and Loki drifts along behind, a queen playing pawn. A monster hunting monsters.

The night air is chill, though pleasantly warm to icy skin, the streets wet and glistening in the glow of the incandescent lights. Asgard’s nights were lit by fire and magic, not ingenuity, not the brilliance needed to take the world and learn to reshape it with only one’s hands and the careful application of thought. It’s inelegant, imprecise, but Loki appreciates it all the more for that, finds it fitting that it lights the wet pathway to his throne instead of uncanny flames. Before his fall from the Bifrost, he’s not convinced he’d have chosen this, but now he’s here, he sees the appeal.

It doesn’t slow his step any, not for a moment. Humanity is the bright culmination of a billion brilliant things; humans are merely cogs, replacable parts, each only superficially distinct from the rest. Some, though, are faultier than others. This one is broken; its retirement he does not for a moment regret. Still, he would like to examine it before it’s tossed onto the scrap heap, as it were.

No doubt the hunter is aware of him now. A curious creature; Loki has sensed something in him which isn’t wholly surprising, but which is intriguing. Earth has always had its sorcerors, clever men with clever magics. This, he knows, is another matter. Now they’re alone, nearly alone, he can read more in the lightning strikes of his neurons than before. That pattern is underlying. How it manifests, beautiful. Power always is.

So Loki plays at catspaw, spins a spell to dampen the sound of his shoes on the pavement and trails the chase. He knows how it’ll go; never could resist an entrance, but until it does, he waits for the inevitable alleyway – entranceway, middle of the street; it hardly matters. Regardless, the evening is a fine one, bound only to improve, regardless of the ultimate outcome.

[violenthearted]

Aware, yes, but unchecked. Erik came here for a purpose; once he's set foot on a path he doesn't stray. There have been witnesses before, and he deals with each accordingly; the steps he follows lead from one to the next as clearly as a vein to the heart. Collateral damage is both unacceptable and messy, and humans are all too easy to intimidate.

Thus it is, in fact, an alleyway into which his quarry stumbles, for the not uncommon repercussions of the speed alcohol leaves the body--it's inelegant, Erik feels, but it will do. He requires consciousness in the lives he takes (this is not psychosis; he doesn't see these men as anything but what they are--human), not sobriety. A why, and for what. For whom.

The alley itself is unremarkable, stained brick, a fire escape shimmying here and there along walls, the inevitable scatter of strewn paper and debris. That's the beauty of what Erik does, though: through his eyes and by the loose, tossing gesture his hands frame as he stands in the alley's mouth where it falls away from the streets's light, a simple fire escape can become a bludgeoning weapon. Black metal lurches down like lightning and strikes the barber (he had been Oberarzt, in the war; Erik remembers rusty puddles in wells of blinding polished steel) on the back of the neck; he sways in place, struck stupid and mind failing to process what has happened at the same sluggish rate as his body. The body that doesn't quite understand this is the part where it falls down.

He's built like bricks, and so goes the resounding thud as he crashes down among the littered refuse; Erik, by contrast, more flows than walks to the back of the alley. Mumbled gurgles bubble from numb lips; he's asking for help. More than a reasonable request, until Erik reaches down to pick him up by the collar. He had shed his jacket at the edge of the alley for a reason, for that look, the terror and understanding (and disgust, underneath; they never stop thinking that way) at the string of numbers etched crudely into his forearm. Age has warped them; it's easy to tell he was a child when they were carved in.

He murmurs, as he lifts the man off the ground, pushes him dazed and reeling toward the closest wall, movements almost gentle. Whatever he said produced a quiet shock of horror, a fumble once he's free--Erik knows he is reaching for the knife and tsks, just before it rises up of its own accord and slashes a clean line from one ear to the other.

To know where to step in order to avoid the spurt of arterial spray takes practice. Erik has that; his clothes stay neat as a pin, not a hair out of place, though he's flushed with exhilaration when he turns around.

"Was willst du?"

It's ...an interesting question to pose, as a man dies at his feet.

[laevisilaufeyson]

"Antworten," comes the easy response, tone mild and accent odd, archaic. Loki's flair for dramatism has brought a cigarette to his lips – so simple to craft a human disguise with the aid of human vices. A flick of his fingers raises a lick of greenish flame to set the end of the thing alight. Distasteful. Unpleasant. Far too hot, but Loki reminds himself that cold steel must be tempered by heat, a mantra to beat back the heat of the Earth's sun – or the thick heat of tobacco smoke, more vanity than austerity.

"Antworten Sie mir gestohlen haben." He inclines his head at the fresh corpse. "And others you haven't."

The language shift is merely one of practicality; Loki's English lies better than his German. In it he almost sounds an Englishman, not a ghost. He takes a drag of the cigarette. Smoke should wreathe the devil's face; is that not of the utmost appropriateness? He comes in fire and brimstone to offer water to a man in the desert dying of thirst.

"Would it be remiss of me to express my admiration for your methods? You are astonishingly efficient; a thorn in my side for some now but one which I am perhaps not overly keen to pluck out." He grimaces and douses the cigarette against the damp brick wall; filthy thing, of a sudden distasteful. The point has been made, anyway. They are two of a kind. Loki with his little lights, and plenty more hidden beneath the surface, and this fellow, with his... magnetism. Not the same beast; not even of the same species, but perhaps in some way kindred all the same.

"I have come," he begins as though preparing to launch into a speech, a proposal, inclining his head... "Well, I have come to watch, and to express my admiration – that was beautifully done. Elegant. I have been watching, and you have never yet failed to impress."

Loki admires elegance, shifting and fluid things, and most of all he admires power. This fellow has both. Not quite as much as himself, perhaps, but more than enough to intrigue him. "I come also to offer an alliance. A coordination of efforts, perhaps. A partnership of opportunity. I have questions to which I would like answers. It is possible I am also in possession of a name and a location which may interest you."