No one attempted to follow me. Perhaps Loki really had thought the wall was infested with mice and rats. If life on Urt reflected that on Asgard, if the ‘Heaven above Earth below’ philosophy was a core maxim for the Asgardian Pantheon, then it was reasonable to assume that mice and rat godlings existed. And if they did, why shouldn’t they infest an Earth Mother’s hearth?

We waited just outside the ward, leaving the disrupter but allowing the ward to solidify. We spent time hidden, watching for any sign of pursuit. I was hoping our presence had been dismissed. At the same time, we were waiting for Loki to leave. Mothi had already ordered the draught that would let him sleep to be prepared. I didn’t think he would leave the potion and wait for another four to six weeks for a new one.

Balfour hadn’t been able to find out what the potion was made out of, but he did learn that one of the ingredients was rare. So rare that it could only be harvested when certain conditions were met. A confluence of events that took at least four weeks to align.

We were lucky in that Loki didn’t remain long. It was easy to note his passing. We felt the oppressive presence of his [Aura] retreating not long after we had settled in to wait. Without Thor there to confront him, there was no point in him staying. I waited another hour before sending Balfour in to explore.

I wasn’t going to send the Azi-Fey in with him, but he gave a few orders that seemed reasonable. “Tian, take your group and make a run through the halls to make sure nothing out of the ordinary is happening. Check for new wards or traps that Teigh might need to circumvent.

“Juju, you, and your group need to find where the Asgardians are and what they are doing.

“Once your teams are certain it is as safe to enter as it was before Loki’s arrival, send messengers to report. I will scour out Mothi’s room and check to see if he drank the potion he ordered.”

“Balfour, send a text with your M-AI once you know the situation in Mothi’s room. Ag and I will wait for Tian and Juju to give the all-clear before entering [Shadow] and joining you if he drank the potion and is sleeping,” I said, adding my own input to Balfour’s plan.

I wish I had thought to stock more M-AI. Their adaptability for use as communication devices made them worth carrying even if there was no information nexus for them to tie into. That I had been able to add a program that allowed them to link using scry, was only one of the features that made them handy.

“If he hasn’t or isn’t in his room, come back. We’ll try this again at a different time. Without letting Thrym or Krampus know of our plans.”

I was still seething that one of the two men had decided to mettle. Betrayal or not, sharing the information of Utgard-Loki’s kidnapping with Loki was untenable. I should have known not to trust the Jotunn. They had gained their reputation as monsters for a reason.

I had hoped that my ideas would have kept their duplicative nature constrained until after they had tested my plans and the feasibility of my idea. It wasn’t hard to figure out that the kidnapping of Utgard-Loki was enough proof.

The next few hours seemed to crawl as neither Tian nor Juju was willing to overlook even the slightest change. Their reconnoiter of the building was as thorough as it had been the first time they entered. I appreciated their skills even as my impatience grew.

Finally, Juju then Tian returned to give me the all-clear. Balfour had sent a message long ago letting me know that Mothi had consumed the potion and was asleep. Ag barely listened to their report before he was lost to [Shadow], offering a tendril of darkness for me to follow. “Keep your teams inside, for now. Balfour will contact you when we are finished.

“Be prepared. I have decided on a small change in plans. If Loki is angry at Thor for kidnapping his son, then it only seems fair that Thor believes Loki has kidnapped Mothi.”

I had originally planned to squirrel Mothi out without anyone being aware of when he had gone missing, but Thrym and Krampus’ decision to meddle gave me the idea to use [Illusion and Glamour] to make it seem the same thing that had happened in Utgard happened here.

I would have Balfour scout a way out so that the seeming of Loki I would create encountered the servants of the house. It would mean knocking them out with enough Elfshot tranquilizer that they would [Sleep] a few hours, but it would be worth it to confuse both Asgardians and Jotunn.

I would report my failure to Thrym, and when they heard that Loki had kidnapped Mothi, they would be as confused as the Asgardians. Let them worry about retaliation. I would find out where they had placed Utgard-Loki while I hid the body of Mothi in a cave system I had kept for myself.

Once I had that location, I would make sure that Loki and Thor found their children.

The plan to take Mothi went well. He was already deep in sleep when Ag and I arrived, and it was easy enough to drug him with enough Elfshot that he would [Sleep] for centuries.

The only problem we encountered was finding a way to introduce the Elfshot to his body. His skin was much more resilient than Utgard-Loki’s had been. The darts and needles we’d coated in Elfshot bounced off of his skin harmlessly.

I was able to get him to swallow a small amount, but that placed him in [Sleep], and body functions like swallowing no longer occurred. The solution was simple enough. I needed to inject the majority of Elfshot into an area of the body that wasn’t as well protected as his skin.

I chose the eye. Other orifices might have worked, but pumping as much Elfshot into the eye as I could, it would mean the brain would be targeted first.

I felt no guilt as the needle I was using popped his eyeball like a grape. I knew that whatever damage I might do, his body had the recuperative properties of a God. His eye would heal. It might take time, and it certainly wouldn’t heal while he was in [Sleep], but it would be only a matter of seconds, once the Elfshot wore off, before he was hearty and whole.

My [Illusion] of Loki was more advanced than what I’d made for Thor. I’d only seen Thor in passing, so I had created an image based on holographic pictures I’d come across. Loki’s image was built upon the eidetic memory I had evolved and contained more detail. Because of those memories, I was able to create an exact duplicate of his [Aura], his voice, and even his smell to enhance the visual image I had crafted.

The plan to be discovered went well. Thialfi had already entered the servants’ quarters to rest for the night, but Roskya was still in the kitchen cleaning and prepping loaves of bread for the next day. I gave her enough time to take in the vignette of Loki carrying the body of Mothi before shooting her eyes with enough Elfshot to see her [Sleep] for a night or two.

As I watched her slump to the ground, I wasn’t concerned that I might have given her a larger injection of Elfshot than a night or two of [Sleep] would merit. The longer she took to wake, the longer the mystery of Mothi’s disappearance would last.