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amberdreamsThe Lord of Misrule
By amberdreams
Art by adrenalineshots
Loki doesn’t know how long it is before he finally realises that the poison has stopped relentlessly dripping onto his naked flesh. Sigyn and her catching-bowl had disappeared long ago, and with her went his only relief from the burning acid.
After so many centuries of pain, its absence starts an ache like a gaping hole inside him. The hurt had defined him and now he doesn’t know who he is any more. Somewhere deep down he understands that this craving for the return of that agony is warped and wrong, but he dismisses the feeling. He stands up, stretching out his cramped limbs for the first time in an eon and stares around him.
The world is not as Loki had left it.
“Where do you think angels go when they die?”
“Gabriel was an Archangel, Dean.”
“Yeah, whatever, the question still stands.”
“I don’t know, man. Do angels even have souls? I mean, we know they have grace, right. But is that the same thing?”
Kali made a sound that was halfway between disapproval and scorn, and the Winchesters exchanged a brief glance before shelving their discussion. They drove in silence for a while, seeing nothing but the endless miles of blacktop disappearing under the Impala’s black hood, lit only by her headlights and the glittering rain. They were heading east, with no aim other than to put as many miles between them and Lucifer as possible, in as short a time as they could.
Dean wondered how long the fearsome Hindu goddess of death would deign to ride in their back seat. He sighed inwardly at this - yet another slice of weirdness in the life of the Winchester brothers. First it was giving rides to angels and demons, and now he could add a goddess to the list. You’d have thought he’d have lost the ability to be surprised by these quirks of fate, yet somehow catching Kali’s dark, angry gaze in the rear view mirror was distinctly unsettling. In spite of the frisson of fear that he felt when he looked at her, Dean recognised the pain of loss beneath her simmering anger. Kali must have loved Gabriel after all, he mused, though thinking about Gabriel’s love life made him squirm with embarrassment. He absently touched the package Gabe had given him where it lodged in his inside pocket.
Hours passed and they crossed into Massachusetts, the rain still coming down. It was the dark before dawn. Soon they would run out of road, and Dean didn’t know what they would do then.
Loki gazes around him. There is soft woollen carpet underfoot, finer than any in Odin’s halls. Warm yellow lights glow without any visible flicker of flame, and there are strange colourful pictures hanging on the smooth painted walls.
He clothes his nakedness with a thought, smooths his fingers over the nap of the fabric, sensual and soft after so long with no sensation other than cold air, acid water and hard rock against his skin.
It is only then that he notices the blood.
For a while all Sam was conscious of was Dean tapping his fingers against the steering wheel. It was irritating as hell. Dean was shifting about on the well-worn seat as if he was sitting on a pile of nettles instead of smooth leather.
His brother didn’t do well with enforced silence, and Sam could feel the restless tension building. Kali’s presence was like being near a brazier; the ancient goddess radiated heat and her seething anger was palpable. The interior of the car seemed laden with it, redolent with the scent of something spicy – cardamom, maybe, mixed with caustic notes of camphor.
Sam was surprised she was still there; he’d expected her to dematerialise as soon as they put a few miles between them and the divine carnage Lucifer had wrought at the Elysium Hotel, but for some reason, Kali had stayed in the back seat of the Impala for hours, her dark eyes filled with death.
Dean finally cracked, reached across and flipped on the radio. He shoved in a cassette and turned up the volume. Angus Young had barely launched into the first syllable when there was a bang, and sparks spat out of the cassette player.
“Hey!” Dean protested. “If you don’t like AC/DC you only had to say!”
“Dean,” Sam’s tone was full of warning at the menace that was pouring off Kali in waves. Dean hunched his shoulders and pouted, mumbling something about freaking hormonal Hindu goddesses that Sam desperately hoped Kali would ignore. He had just opened his mouth to say something (anything) to distract her attention when Dean swore loudly and slammed on the brakes so hard Sam was thrown shoulder first into the dash.
The Impala flung herself into a three sixty degree spin as she screeched to a halt, the night air filled with the sound of metal contorting, and acrid burning rubber replacing the heavy smell of Kali’s incense.
Sam straightened up, moving gingerly, rubbing his bruised shoulder.
“Fuck. You okay, Sammy?” Dean sounded breathless as his hand groped for Sam and reassurance; blood was running freely down his face where he’d whacked his head against the steering wheel.
“Yeah, I’m fine, Dean. What the hell happened?” Sam didn’t like to examine too closely how quickly he’d managed to assess the cut in his brother's forehead as negligible, or what that said about their crazy life. He glanced behind him, took in the empty back seat. “And where’s Kali?”
The brothers turned to face forward as one. Limned by the bright white light of the Impala’s headlights was a flash of vivid red elegance walking slowly towards the figure that had caused the emergency stop by appearing out of nowhere in front of the car.
Dean ran a hand over his face, wiping blood from his eyes.
“Well fuck me, Sam. Tell me that isn’t who I think it is.”
Loki moves slowly through the deserted building, absorbing the carnage. There is blood everywhere and it makes the bitter, lonely god feel briefly at home. The familiarity of the iron tang in the air grounds him, gives him an anchor amidst all this strangeness. He steps over the large, dark-skinned man’s entrails, avoids standing in the pool of dark blood and grey brain matter spilling from the broken skull of the thin man dressed in pale grey, a sartorial error of judgement given his fate, Loki thinks.
He turns a corner, enters another room and immediately stumbles over a fresh corpse.
He almost doesn’t register the body at first, it’s just one more to add to the growing tally, when something familiar about that grizzled form tugs at him. He pushes at the body with the toe of his boot then jumps backwards in shock.
“All Father!”
Loki is ill prepared for the wave of emotion that sweeps over him. It feels too much like sorrow and loss for him to acknowledge it. Wild eyed, Loki looks around the room, his breath suddenly short, his heart pounding. His gaze lights on another familiar, still comely face. Baldr the Beautiful. Even in death his fellow god glows with that special attraction Loki had always resented so fiercely. He cares nothing for the young god, and won’t admit, even to himself, that he is relieved there is no sign in this place of death of a red bearded, well muscled form. He tells himself that this is because he only wishes to deal the final blow to the god of thunder himself, and will never know how deep that lie is buried.
He draws himself up, wraps darkness around him like a cloak. The room stinks of the distinctive ozone-like taint that is only left behind by the servants of the so-called nameless God and his White Christ son.
Loki’s lip curls into a snarl. It is the stench of the one who imprisoned him and stole his form. Who stole Loki’s life and left him in torment for centuries.
The Archangel named Gabriel.
“Gabriel!”
“He must have got away from Lucifer somehow…,” Sam started to speculate, but Dean had already scrambled out of the car, the Colt 1911 in his hands so fast Sam never saw how it got there. He was quick to follow suit, pulling his Taurus out and holding it ready, even though he knew if it was Gabriel they were facing, bullets would be useless. At least Sam could draw comfort from what Dean would call his spidey senses, that told him whoever/whatever this was, it was not Lucifer.
He caught up with his brother, and shoulders bumping, they cautiously approached the curious tableau that was unfolding in front of them.
Gabriel (if it really was him) was gesticulating while Kali stood straight-backed and motionless, the personification of menace. Then the Hindu goddess moved. Or rather she grew, swelled, her form morphing as they watched into something alien and frightening. Her skin darkened, her outline wavered as new limbs sprouted and she assumed her natural form – the fearsome multi-armed shape of time and death. The air around her trembled.
Both Winchesters froze.
Gabriel shouted and lunged forward, grasping at the goddess. Kali said something the boys couldn’t hear, and then she pulsed. That was the only word for it. In a kind of thrumming, electric, elemental heartbeat, the air around the goddess expanded, contracted then expanded again in a silent explosion of force.
The dark night seemed to expand with her, and when all was still once more, she was gone.
It took Sam a few moments to collect his senses and pick himself up off the ground where he’d been flung, and yet another moment realise his mistake. Kali hadn’t gone anywhere – but they had.
Gabriel is here. That lying-tongued, charming, twisted fox… Loki sees no irony in applying the same epithets to the Archangel that many had applied to Loki himself, the Norse Trickster, as he searches the empty building for his foe. The servant of Jehovah is here somewhere, Loki can taste him, and nothing is going to prevent him from having his revenge.
Except someone had got there before him.
Loki screams with rage and frustration as he stares at the marks of scorched black wings framing the pathetic corpse spread-eagled on the ground. Glass shatters and the framed paintings on the walls burst into flames with the power of that scream.
Gabriel is dead.
Odin is dead, and yet there is no sign of Ragnarok. Baldr is dead, and not by Loki’s doing.
Loki falls to his knees, exhausted, wondering at his own weakness. No longer distracted by seeking out Gabriel, Loki at last realises there is something very wrong with this world he has woken into. In fact, and more importantly, there is something very wrong with him.
He has never felt this weak, this impotent before, not even while he was bound and chained and suffering. What in Hel is happening to him?
Sitting on the stained carpet, next to the twisted remains of his biggest enemy, Loki reaches out, seeking for the foundation of his strength, the worship of his followers, and finds…nothing. Or as near to nothing as made no difference, anyway. Here and there he finds a faint spark that indicates a semblance of belief, though even those seem tangled up in something strange and different, images of himself and the others in his pantheon that are so distorted as to be almost unrecognisable.
He breathes deeply, trying to calm himself. If the people of this world – this time – are so devoid of the respect he requires, he will just have to find another source of power to feed on. He reaches out again, this time searching along the trace elements of energy that hang in the air of the building he’s in. The remnants of the struggles that have taken place here and left so much destruction are still alive and easy to find. He sticks his pointed tongue out, tasting the flavours with relish.
The first thread he follows burns him like the poison he’s just escaped from and he recoils faster than a snake, not only from the pain, but from the unbearable angelic stink. He is left with a name – Lucifer - and a feeling of deep revulsion. This creature is kin to Gabriel, though much sharper and more dangerous, if Loki isn’t mistaken. Casting about again, he finds another darker, smokier thread. He follows a trail seasoned with hints of oriental spices, reaches its origin and smiles. Yes, this is the one. She is ancient and very powerful, and the anger that consumes her will leave her open to his wiles.
And with her is something else, something (or rather someone) whose flavour Loki recognises. This ancient goddess is keeping poor company, Loki thinks. Travelling with mortals would be bad enough, but association with angels also taints these two humans he senses. He can feel the mark of the servants of Jehovah on them, and not just the mark. They have also been in the company of Gabriel, and carry his enemy’s gifts.
Loki may have been denied his vengeance but he can still have some fun with Gabriel’s friends before he is done here.
The Trickster god gathers his remaining energy and twists the air, folding space to haul himself along Kali’s tendrils of power into her physical presence. He finds himself standing on a smooth black surface in the rain, facing twin white lights like glaring eyes, roaring towards him at impossible speed. Startled, Loki uses a little more of his failing strength to stop the beast’s advance then stands firm to await Kali’s approach from out of the maw of her metal dragon.
Loki takes a moment to appreciate the angular beauty of this strange Eastern goddess as she halts merely an arm’s length away, her fathomless dark eyes glinting in the reflected light from her silenced monster.
“You are not Gabriel. Why are you wearing his form?” She asks without ceremony.
“You have that about face, my lady. Your Gabriel stole my body when he bound me to rocks with the entrails of my own child, and left me to eternal torment.” Loki’s own rage has risen to match Kali’s, and around them Loki can feel the energies surging and crackling with a vitality that is making his gut ache with hunger. He steps closer.
“Really?” Kali raises one perfect eyebrow. “It would appear that your torment was less than eternal then, as here you stand.”
Loki feels his lips draw up in a semblance of a grin. “I can thank another cursed angel for that, I think. Gabriel’s death freed me, but my imprisonment has left me weak, and this…” he makes a sweeping, scornful gesture with both arms outstretched, “This world is a feeble place, containing little worthwhile sustenance.”
If he is hoping for sympathy from the goddess, he fails to find it. Kali’s expression remains impassive. It is clear Loki will just have to take what he wants. He steps forward, both hands outstretched to grasp Kali’s slim brown arms. But instead of the warm feminine flesh he is anticipating, his hands clutch at something black and burning, a devastating power that is all consuming and unlike anything the Norse god has ever touched before. Evidently this strange Indian deity is not suffering from a lack of followers who believe in her. Loki doesn’t even have time to scream a protest as Kali speaks.
“If this world is not to your liking, perhaps you would be happier revisiting your glory days. Think of it as an opportunity for redemption, you petty little anachronism.”
Bitterness and bile fill Loki’s mouth at the ease with which Kali turns his world inside out; how she smoothly begins twisting the powerless Norse god’s sense of time and place.
It is entirely coincidental, though Kali thinks that Loki will probably count it as a gift, that her actions scoop up the Winchester brothers alongside the Trickster god and deposit them all several hundred miles north and several hundred years into the past.
For a moment Kali considers bringing the humans back immediately, then she shrugs. The two men will be safer there. The world in the here and now will be safer with them absent from it. Their bodies are warded from detection by the angels, and any demon will have difficulty locating them so many years in the past – and without their true vessels, both Lucifer and Michael will have to work much harder to make their Judeo-Christian apocalypse work.
Perhaps this was fortuitous. Baldr’s plan to thwart the Light-bearer might yet come to fruition simply via happenstance.
People forget she is not only a power of destruction and death, but of time and change, and above all, empowerment. The Winchesters were very fortunate the latter aspect is ascendant at the moment. Kali smiles, her face and form restored to its most benign aspect.
Continued in Part 2