900 years ago.

“So, what should I call you?” Angerboda murmured as she inched closer, looming in the small confines of the tent.

Loki backed away from the jötunn. Her skin was blue like a calm sea and body twice the height of any man, more so thanks to the horns jutting from her head. There were ten in all, each pitch-black spike a finger-with a part and arranged like a crown, a clear sign this jötunn had her fill of man-flesh. Not an uncommon practice for her kind. Their kind in truth despite the shape Loki held at the moment.

“As if you could possibly not know,” Loki said. Angerboda remained excited, gesturing with her hands as if to pull the name from him. “I go by Logi in jötunn lands,” he finally offered.

Angerboda giggled, the sound like a girl of ten winters and not the Queen she was. Her hands came to her face, a single eye poking through as if to hide a blush. “Now I know which one we’re in. This line of time-”

“Timeline you mean,” Loki corrected.

“I’ll call it what I want, Loki, Lofi, Nanci, Fire Bringing,” she chortled, rocking back and forth in excitement. “So many names as if you have none. But to use the one you used, that tells me so much!”

“Names mean little in the grand scheme of things,” Loki said.

“But a name means more in the grander scheme of the web old One Eye cast.”

Loki quirked an eyebrow. “One Eye?”

Angarboda’s hand went to her lips. “Not yet,” she teased. “But you spoke that name so One Eye it will be. Not the others, or-or.”

Groaning, Loki leaned back, finding a comfortable position on the furs he rested on. Angerboda held a lost expression, her mind jumping from one future to the next. The madness had her for sure after piercing too far into the unknown.

Could have been he actually was speaking to a child, a young version of the jötunn Queen speaking through her older self. Such an unbound sight, one greater than any oracle Loki had known, left her mind jumping back and forth and between possibilities. No wonder she seemed lost at times. But through the haze of confusion, the woman seemed to always gleam the truth, as if madness was the price to know all.

“You always make the wrong choice,” Angerboda spat like venom.

“And what choice is that?” Loki inquired.

“Not you, One Eye.”

Loki nodded, relinquishing all hope of understanding. Thankfully, Odin hadn’t fallen so deep into his machinations. Not yet at least.

Seizing Angerboda’s moment of clarity, Loki reached into his satchel freeing a wrapped bundle. “As agreed- “

Angerboda snatched the bundle with speed faster than her size would engender. “Peace for power,” she quipped. “For immortality.”

Angerboda unfurled the bundle revealing a golden apple. It filled the tent with the faint light of its glow, reflecting all on its almost metallic surface.

“But,” Angerboda said tossing the apple from hand to hand and up her forearm, playing with tangible immortality like a fucking game. "There will be no peace."

Loki fought to control his expression while the flame in his chest mirrored his anger, growing in intensity, threatening to burst free and consume this jötunn. He would have, but Angerboda took no action to eat the fruit of Yggdrasil.

"Not my fault," she went on, ignoring the increasing blaze in the brazier or the heat filling this place. "You killed Thiazi, you and your Aesir. Had the jötunn god build your Midgard Wall then killed him deader than dead." Angerboda palmed the apple, bringing it close to her lips, goading him. "And you think word from a queen would be enough?"

"I think war with mankind would devastate us both," Loki said.

"Us you say, Iike you're one of them. But you need not worry. This string of fate has no peace, not yet, but there will be no war. Still need the apple though. "

Loki rose, embers falling as flame caught all around him. "Enough of your games witch!"

“I’m not playing!” Angerboda exclaimed. “You… y-you just can’t see it! My storm will keep my people in our lands, but she needs to be born! Our child is the key”

“What storm? And what child?”

“Our child!” she exclaimed then placed a hand to her ear, listening. Again, her mind wondered not present long enough to even berate.

"Can't you hear that?" She asked. "The thundering."

"I," Loki paused.

He had met a storm on his journey to this land, one that nearly took his life and felt fel in nature, conjured. Its winds had torn the shirt from his back. Its waves were like rolling hills, forming great valleys before crashing down. Worse was the lightning that fell like rain, tearing Loki’s ship asunder and forcing him to swim beneath the waves. And even now he could hear it so many miles inland, still growing worse but not moving as any storm should.

"My storm will last for centuries keeping my people to our lands long enough for our child to be born," Angerboda continued. "The one that will bring the peace you seek. Better than peace. She will be an ally."

Madness, or that's what he would have thought if it were anyone else. Loki only saw the truth in Angerboda's eyes and not one hint of doubt. Without the site, there was only one path he could take, the one she had already seen him choose. The conclusion of this argument had already happened for her, culminating in a child. Angerboda now just waited for him to catch up to the reality she already knew for herself. But a child born from him seemed impossible.

"I’m an immortal,” Loki said. “It would take centuries to give you a child, and how can any child bring peace?”

Angerboda had that far way expression again, as if seeing passed Loki. “Your seed will take root this day but the child.” Her eyes darted about, searching. “I’m not there… Um, hard to see. Too many Völva I think. Hymir will be there though!” She spat the last words with such venom Loki recoiled. “Not born yet but necessary. Would slit his mother’s throat if he wasn’t. But his son,” She sighed. “A hard life for that one, but necessary.”

Loki rubbed the bridge of his nose while still gazing at the golden apple. Odin had given him that apple, a prize worth more than all the silver in Midgard to bargain for peace. And Loki’s goal had always been to keep his kind and mankind from warring. Angerboda’s storm did just that.

A wrongness washed over Loki as he grew. The dark brown of his skin faded, replaced by an ash-like gray. His eyes changed to a bright red by the time he was face to face with Angerboda as she smiled and in mere moments, he towered over her as an eld-jötunn born from flame.

“What would be the name of our child?” Loki asked, not recognizing his own voice in the shape.

Angerboda muttered the name with reverence, one that Loki approved. “Hel.”