Loki swiped the blood of a fallen enemy from his {green, green} eyes with one hand while with the other he pulled his sword from his now-dead opponent’s body with a rough jerk. The sword’s blade was coated in in blood and gore but the Trickster did not bother to clean it. No time for it, in the middle of a battle. No time for it, later, probably, but he didn’t bother thinking of that. No, when one was fighting {fighting for their life, for vengeance, for family, for reasons they didn’t even understand}, one merely fought. He had no time to shift his old-fashioned armor back into a more comfortable position as another enemy fighter rushed him, determined to be rid of one of the evil Jotnar forever. This one hadn’t had much time to train in Valhalla, or had perhaps spent more time carousing than fighting and Loki left him lying in the {bloody} muddy, dark earth, eyes still staring in shock at his own, true death.
He didn’t care about these warriors, these pitiful minions of Odin. His only care was to get to Odin, break the prophecy, change and end this. He’d always hated being predictable, after all. Getting to Odin before Fenris found the Allfather was, however, proving difficult. “ODIN!” Loki shouted across the battlefield, his voice swallowed up by the din of a million fights all around him, the clash of steel on steel, the screams of fighters dying, the shouts of those triumphant. Odin didn’t hear him.
But someone else did. Loki heard the Watchman before he saw him. “Aren’t you supposed to be looking for me, Lie-smith?”
With barely enough time to parry the first attack, Loki turned to his left to see Heimdall there as their swords met, clanging against one another. Loki pushed his fated nemesis away, a sardonic smile twisting his lips as he did so, “I really don’t want to fight you, Heimdall.” That wasn’t, precisely, a lie. Loki did, of course, want to kill the Watchman of the Gods, he had ever since he’d come to Asgard. But fighting Heimdall wasn’t in Loki’s gameplan.
Heimdall merely snarled and raised his sword to attack once more, “you may not wish it, Loki,” Heimdall had always managed to make Loki’s name sound like a curse or something particularly distasteful he’d picked up on the bottom of his shoe, “but you have it. Fight me!”
Obviously, Loki was going to have to revise his gameplan. Of course, this was a battle, the battle, there was, as has been said, no time for thought. Only action. He acted. He joined Heimdall in combat, those two foes evenly matched as they danced Death around one another. There was no honor in this fight, no, only raw hatred, anger, bloodlust, and a sort of wild fury bent on mutual destruction. Loki forgot the gameplan. Forgot Odin. Forgot his family and Ragnarok. Here and now, there was only Heimdall before him, Heimdall who the Trickster so longed to kill.
Heimdall was not like the others, he was not the god of justice, not the fabled hero who slew giants and protected Asgard, not the pure and innocent one loved by all. No, he was the watchman who saw and heard more of that which happened on the earth and below it than any else. He did not care about an honorable fight for he knew people were hardly honorable when their lives were on the line. He was just as nasty in his fighting as Loki, both only looking for the edge to be found, the upper hand to be gained, exploiting any and every weakness they saw in their enemy. In each other.
Their battle raged and the blood sang in their veins and streamed from their numerous wounds each had granted the other and yet neither faltered for even a moment for in that moment each knew the other would cut him down without a second, or even first, thought.
But even the Gods couldn’t fight forever, and even the Gods grow weary and make mistakes, or perhaps they simply get lucky. No matter how it happened, it did come to pass that Heimdall’s sword pierced Loki’s breast {just where a flying dart of mistletoe pierced another’s}. Knowing he was lost but refusing to die until he had at least repaid the favor, Loki grabbed Heimdall’s sword with one hand and much of the strength he had left and pulled the sword further in and a shocked Heimdall ever closer. One last time, Loki’s lips curved up into a scarred smile and with his other hand, he plunged a dagger into one of Heimdall’s eyes and twisted it, killing the Watcher instantly. At the same moment, all of his strength now fled from him, poured out onto the dark earth like so many other’s, Loki fell to that earth, Heimdall’s sword still sheathed in his chest.
And when the fire came to envelope the Earth, Loki felt it not at all.
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