Lords of Shadow

Promise of Hardship

The first rays of sunlight escaped the horizon, bathing the world in its promise of hardship, and to some, early morning vitamin D.

Loki didn't see it. The dense canopy of trees filtered light down to bare twinkles, and the oppressive atmosphere blended it and other nasty things to create gloom thick enough to cut through.

Loki should have been here sooner, but the worst of luck had aided him in taking an ATV. It jerked and smoked throughout, requiring constant cranking to keep active.

And yet, it still failed to carry him the whole of the way, dying at about an hour to the forest's boundaries. And on legs, that equated to almost three hours.

The journey had beaten Loki more than any beast ever could, and that just gave more fuel to the doubting voices in his head. He trudged forward nonetheless, knowing that he wasn't just doing this for ego, and was too.

His steps came across as cautious, hoping to hunt and not be hunted. The forest was the definition of all things unholy, dark and thick with the metallic smell of blood the rains had failed to wash away.

Loki still walked with a limp, but that was due to a sort of reverse placebo effect. He believed he was wounded, but didn't feel like he was.

Of course the skin and muscle hadn't sewn itself shut, but they didn't present problems for him. Without pain, he sometimes forgot.

The bee buzzed a bit harder as it followed, his ears almost making out a sound.

'Hmm... promising sign, I guess.'

It was. But his current state of thinking wasn't. Loki had always been sharp in reasoning, but since the shadow, he had found himself making stupid decisions.

He could have just gone into the city and stolen someone's car, but instead he tried to outmanoeuvre a Halo of grown men.

Now here he was, at his place of desire without a single weapon or protection. Maybe he could fashion something out; after all, this imp was a handyman.

He stuck his hand into a swamp to get the things that grew at its bottom, which could have been coral for all he knew, then tied it to a sharp rock and WA-LAA! he had a shiv.

Just as he finished, he heard the splashing of water. There was a flowing trench the military had made, then abandoned, leaving it to serve as a source of clean water to the inhabitants.

Wonders why they hadn't shut it down, but at least it would save him the trouble of having to look for these things.

Well, the thing didn't do justice to what he saw: drinking water. It was like a horse, but with the muscles of three men interwoven into a pump-action guillotine. Its skin was glistening, almost as if made with plates of silver.

Loki could bet it felt as hard.

But it didn't have a shadow, so it wasn't useful to him, but he could use it as a test, to see his odds against the real deal.

He leapt over the felled tree and out into the open, rushing for the horse while considering all his life choices.

The beast turned, neighing with a maw scarier than what a shark had. Loki's jab nailed it before it swallowed the last mouthful of water.

The sharp stone sparked its skin again, sending the creature a step back, and Loki's hand reeling in pain– for a second, though.

The horse charged at him, but with predictability in its headfirst dash.

Loki feinted to the side, kicking the horse's flank in an attempt to topple it. Five years ago, it was the same thing that was done to him when he stole and tried to escape, although then, it had worked on him beautifully.

The horse skidded, thrashing momentum in favour of a drift, and snapping at Loki. He wedged the shiv in-between the clamp, tangling his leg with it as he tried to buckle it.

The opposite happened.

It flexed its leg forward, throwing him back, and rushed for him in the same step.

Loki rolled across the floor, almost losing the shiv as his orientation bumped up and down.

A kick down his ribs forced him up and sent him stumbling backwards. The fast change of tempo left him shocked.

He stepped to the right, and then left, trying to use his nimbleness to fight instead of brute strength.

The shiv in his hand swung out, spewing sparks upon every contact with the horse. The beast kicked and snapped at him, somehow missing ninety percent of the time, and when it didn't, Loki just seemed to shrug it off.

That was the nature of shadows. Even an inexperienced noob could wrestle it out with the best of regular people.

The horse stomped down, catching Loki's legs under its own. Confirming he could not move with the evidence of Loki's fruitless wriggle, it knocked its head into his chest.

For a moment, he blanked out and had his ears ring even when the sound was dull and deep. He didn't fly back, because he needed free legs for that.

He fell, and gave himself an opening. The horse knocked him down again, but as its head descended, the energy from the previous pain rushed up Loki's hands, enabling him to catch the attack easily.

Before the strength dissipated, Loki gritted his teeth and launched the horse off him. Even the beast seemed shocked when it regained balance, although not with the semblance of a smirk it once had.

Loki grinned. "Yep, you got to fear El sin nombrē; the tribute makes you survive longer."

As if it heard– which it might have, because these creatures were... intriguing– it burst into another charge.

As the first one, it was predictable. Loki rolled, grabbed his shiv as he stood, avoided the charge, and let the horse face-plant itself into the nearest tree.

He thrust the shiv at the back hole of the horse, but two legs kicked back before the tip reached its target, dousing his jaw in a taste of hell for a while.

As hurtful as pain was, it was somehow an adrenaline trigger, something that was lacking with the shadow-induced numbness.

Another thing was the humanity. Pain made him feel grounded, and right now he wasn't a god, so where did he fall in?

That's for later; something was breathing down his neck, about to bite it. Loki turned and struck its teeth with his shiv, and unfortunately for it, its dentals didn't have skin protection.

A few teeth fell, but what good was that? These things probably didn't mate with their lips anyway, so its love life was still secure.

It galloped and shook violently, trying to catch the whizzing figure under its belly. With the pain energy, Loki was almost invincible; when it finished, he was an abused bug waiting to die from pesticide.

He wouldn't let it finish then. He wrestled the horse down and pinned it under his armpit, trying to choke it.

As it bashed its head against Loki's chest, his grip on it became tighter, but his will to continue thinned. There were some things the bee couldn't replenish.

Time passed, and for the minutes it took one candle to burn to its base, the battle remained like this.

Loki had hacked its mouth open, but even his strength was insufficient to pull it apart.

Just then, he heard another splash in the water...and something else neigh.