Chapter Text
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It started as rumors. Demons began to disappear along the fringes of their lands: nests were found empty, previously defended territory was suddenly abandoned.
Young and strong and arrogant, Thor paid no attention. The outskirts were the area where the least-powerful scrabbled out their lives, a place where human summoners occasionally skulked for and snared those who were too puny to slaughter them for the insult. What occurred there didn't affect him.
The tales began to edge closer. Demons he knew of, even if they were unfit for battle against him, began to desert their land. When scavengers slunk in to search for tastier prey, more nests were found empty, their holders vanished.
Thor noted the creeping pattern but ultimately dismissed it. The weak were always routed by those greater than them, and this was merely the sign of a demon trying to claim a territory vaster than it could hold. Sooner or later it, too, would meet its better.
The news began to brush against his borders. Demons Thor knew and had defeated, but who impressed him enough he'd let them live, began to go missing. Those who'd escaped so far spoke of a sorcerer at the root of the desertions.
Thor was skeptical. No human could survive so deep into their lands, and no sorcerer was powerful enough to trap demons that had given him difficulty in a fight.
But something was out there--that was certain. Thor prowled his land more often, eager to match himself against such a strong creature.
Those who shared borders with him disappeared.
There were no stories here: one day the wind carried their scents, and the next there was only blood and ash.
They weren't allies; demons had no such thing. But they weren't prey or enemies, either. They could enter his borders freely without being attacked. When he and they were in each others' presence, they hunted other things.
Thor paced his borders with greater care, shifting traversable routes so their paths ended among the many pitfalls his land held. He inspected his borders for signs of disruption while he worked, and fed his desire for retaliation by imagining his teeth sunk in the throat of this new threat.
His territory was wide, a rugged and treacherous place of rock faces and whirlpools and storms that came without warning. An old temple sat on a mesa near its center, in ruins above but concealing an area deep below that pulsed with energy.
Over time Thor had battered his way down to the tunnel leading to it. Still later he'd unpuzzled its two outermost seals, but was left stuck when the third door's seal had too much magic in it. He'd also discovered that sleeping in the temple made his wounds heal quicker, and so had made his nest by the locked door.
His territory was an area of plentiful prey and great power, and he defended it well. He feared nothing.
Thor uncovered the interloper's tracks on a mountain near one of his borders two days after the neighboring demon had vanished. They blended into the already-beaten path until they were barely visible; but Thor knew his land. He followed them warily, uneasy that there was no scent along the trail.
It went in the direction of one of his traps. Thor abandoned the tracks and took to the high ground instead, slowing as he came near the quicksand he'd diverted the path toward. When he reached it, he paused on the ridge to study the area below.
The crevasse was empty, the quicksand still. The only disruptions to the landscape were gouges in the opposite cliff-face, where Thor had scrabbled his way to safety when he first discovered the place years ago. The tracks disappeared at the edge of the quicksand, and there was still no scent of the intruder.
But when he concentrated, Thor caught the trace of something else: the reek of magic. To escape his trap, the intruder had had to cast a spell so powerful it must have exceeded the one he was using to conceal himself, and a fraction had spilled through.
It confirmed what he'd already suspected. Thor's tail curled tightly behind him before he shifted back from the overhang and continued forward, seeking where his quarry's trail resumed.
He recalled the previous rumors of a sorcerer. Magic was a rarity among demons--Thor's deliberate use of the temple to heal his injuries was closer to wielding it than many ever came. But sometimes a demon would return from a sorcerer's bondage with a few spells memorized or some other bit of magic gleaned. When he was a whelp, one had reappeared after eating her former master's heart. She'd gained enough power from it to force her way up from the outskirts, and settle and survive in the higher lands.
Thor had assumed no demon feeble enough to be caught by a human could make it all the way into his territory, no matter how much magic they'd learned. But he could be wrong. The wind still carried a trace of ashes as it gusted over his once-shared borders; maybe some demon had eaten an entire sorcerer this time.
Thor frowned at the thought. He knew his capabilities, his strength and its limits, and he didn't like the possibility of being overridden by some muttered words and stolen power. He glared down at the crevasse, still unable to find where his quarry's trail had resumed, but unwilling to go closer and risk entrapment on the low ground.
After another minute of silence, he snorted and turned around. Thor began to retrace his path closer to the ridge, searching for some hint of the intruder's tracks he'd previously missed.
He passed beside a boulder and felt the cold slickness of magic snake up and over his skin.
Thor threw himself backwards, but the spell was already in place: he slammed against an invisible barrier. A few strides forward and to the side soon revealed he was trapped.
"So you're the great demon the others whisper about," a voice said above him.
Thor jerked his head up and glared at the sorcerer now visible atop the boulder. The man sat wrapped in a cloak with only his face in view. A tiny smirk played on his lips as he drawled, "The mighty Thor."
Thor's blood boiled as he realized he'd been caught by a human.
None of their kind should ever have made it this deep into the demons' lands. They shouldn't have lasted past the outskirts, let alone torn their way up the heights and through those as strong as his neighbors had been. None should have ever dared to set foot in his territory, or to speak his name with such mockery.
He crouched and threw himself at the boulder, striking near the base where it curved downward. The sorcerer startled and shouted as Thor shouldered it over.
The man leapt aside as the boulder crashed down. Thor grabbed a fistful of his cloak, knocking him off-balance and dragging him closer. As the sorcerer scrabbled to regain his footing, Thor lashed out, punching him hard in the ribs and sending him sprawling to the ground. He wrapped his tail around the human's leg and wrenched him closer.
As Thor pulled him into reach, the sorcerer twisted around and drove a dagger into his shoulder.
It jarred against bone, and the man flinched and let go reflexively. Thor roared with pain and struck him in the face.
His cheekbone cracked beneath Thor's fist and the human collapsed, head jarring against the rocks. Thor gripped his forehead and twisted it to the side before driving his teeth into the man's neck. The sorcerer choked on a scream.
Thor bit in deeper until the sound ceased and then wrenched his teeth to the side, ripping out most of the man's throat.
It was a messy and brutal kill. He was angry--at being caught, at the human's presumption, for the missing scents along his borders. Thor spat the flesh out, rejecting it as meat to be wasted, but he swallowed the blood without paying attention as he glared down at the sorcerer. Thor watched death glaze over his eyes and waited for the barrier to disappear.
Only it didn't, and a muffled curse came from the side.
Thor jerked around and found the man mostly upright and whole.
He was leaning against a staff and blood seeped from a shallow wound along his shoulder and throat; but he remained alive. He stood a few paces past the spot where Thor had turned around.
"Mighty indeed," the sorcerer muttered with a touch of appreciation, rubbing his cheek. "You have been worth the effort."
"Come closer, human, and I'll show you what becomes of one who tries to bind down Thor," he growled.
"Oh, no," the sorcerer murmured, straightening carefully before unfastening one of his vambraces. "I'd rather see what becomes of one who succeeds. Give it to me."
The decoy reached up and wrenched the dagger from Thor's shoulder. He jerked back in pain and shock--the thing was dead--but then caught himself. Thor snarled and grabbed its leg as it fumbled out of the barrier, wrapping his tail around its ankle as well to drag it back.
The sorcerer rested his staff in the crook of his elbow and made a sundering motion with his hands. The decoy's leg separated from its hip.
Thor flung the limb aside in disgust as the thing pulled beyond the barrier and crawled toward the sorcerer, using its elbows to keep the dagger off the ground.
The glamour that had bound it together and changed its appearance unraveled as it went, peeling out from the gaping wound in its neck and the wider one at its hip. The flesh beneath drooped to reveal the bones working it, and it began to snag on the rocks.
The sorcerer sighed and made a halting motion. When the decoy sank inanimate to the ground, he went over and picked up the dagger.
The spell wrapped between the two dissipated, and Thor caught the scent of blood and meat and marrow at last. The stink of the corpse made him wrinkle his nose. It was dried and wrong-smelling--the bones and the flesh didn't all match--and all the blood in and on it was the sorcerer's own.
The smell of the sorcerer made his lips pull back from his teeth.
The man toed the decoy aside and settled on a rock. He leaned the staff against his shoulder before beginning to carefully wipe Thor's blood onto his fingertips.
Thor tensed as he realized just what the sorcerer intended. The barrier wasn't the entrapment spell--it was only there to hold him back during the real one. He spat the remaining blood in his mouth on the ground and scrubbed at his lips and chin violently.
"Too late," the sorcerer smirked. "You already swallowed."
Thor spat out more bloody saliva anyway, a growl building in his throat as he watched the sorcerer carefully suck the blood off his fingers.
He left what was on his thumb. The man switched the dagger between his hands, taking care not to smear the remaining blood on the handle or let it drip to the ground, and then nicked each fingertip until a dot of blood welled up. Thor bashed and scraped and felt along the barrier, hunting for a weak point, as the sorcerer mixed Thor's blood into his cuts.
The man rubbed his fingertips together briefly once he was finished, and then pushed the edge of his sleeve back. Thor slammed a fist on the barrier, growling relentlessly, as the sorcerer pressed the dagger's tip into the center of his wrist and rubbed the last dribble of blood along the nick.
The sorcerer licked away the stray blood on his fingertips and then caught his gaze.
"Thor," he said, in a voice different from before. It curled over Thor's skin, and then slipped into the wound in his shoulder and crawled beneath it. Thor shuddered despite himself. "My name is Loki, and you will answer my summons from this day forth."
"I will kill you and leave you for the scavengers," Thor snarled.
Loki smirked. "Not with this spell standing."
A moment later he shifted and touched the skin below his throat with a grimace. "I require water," he said, picking up his vambrace and staff with his uninjured hand. "Take me to the nearest clean source."
The barrier beneath his fist dispersed, releasing him. Thor surged forward.
He grabbed the sorcerer's neck and hauled him off the ground as the man choked, dropping the vambrace and barely keeping a hold on his staff. Thor tightened his grip, intending to snap Loki's spine before he could work any more magic.
His legs nearly buckled under a sudden, violent strain, as if something had struck him from behind. Thor locked his knees and struggled to tighten his fist further, and abruptly gagged when his throat burned as though he'd swallowed a molten stone. It was all he could do to keep from collapsing to the ground and choking for air; he couldn't help dropping his arm enough that the sorcerer's feet returned to solid rock.
Loki smiled at him with closed lips, his mouth stained with Thor's blood.
"Not," he managed slowly, voice hoarse, "with this spell standing."
Thor bared his teeth again and kept his grip on the sorcerer's neck, trying to ignore how the pain made his arm shake.
"Half-breed," he spat. Loki's cowl had fallen back, his exposed ears making plain what the stink of his blood had already revealed. "You think yourself better than me?"
The sorcerer narrowed his eyes contemptuously.
He whacked Thor's wrist with his staff. Thor jerked and released his throat, and the half-breed shoved his arm away.
It was easier for him to do than Thor could stomach. But the pain finally began to subside as Loki stepped back.
"I'd hoped you would think of a better insult than the rest of your kind," the sorcerer croaked, before coughing and rubbing his neck gingerly. "More the fool I," he muttered, and ordered, "Water, demon. Lead me to it."
When he only glared, Loki gave him another patronizing smirk. "Lead me to it," he repeated, "unless you'd rather I compelled you?
"Thor," he finished. Thor tensed as magic began to slither through his blood.
He grit his jaw, but at last jerked his head to the side. "That way, over the rise," Thor bit off. "There's a stream."
The slow, superior smile that crossed the sorcerer's lips made Thor want to slash the mouth from his face.
The half-breed turned and started toward the rise, either expecting him to follow or not caring if he didn't. It wouldn't matter either way--Thor knew he could be summoned into his presence at any time he chose now. Distance would be no deterrent if the sorcerer was skilled enough to have made it this far in the first place.
And yet.
Thor's territory was not like that of the lesser demons Loki had tricked and killed his way through to reach here.
Thor didn't warn him of the sudden drop into the crevasse on three-fourths of the other side of the rise, and felt fractionally gratified when stones clattered a few moments later and he heard Loki curse as he caught himself.