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He'll have memories, iridescent shadowy memories interspersed by a long, dark tumble through Heimdall only knows where. A crash that takes him out of the revelry of the Svartalfjar court into a place decidedly different from a certain cratered city. Loki Odinson, the Prince of Asgard, ends up flung away from Nithavallir, the Dark Field, into a place suspiciously more… cheerful. Colourful and noisy, there most definitely is that.
Call it an intergalatic casino. It's not far off the mark, a place of neon glows on glossy walls and organic shapes. The lamps burn merrily overhead, oscillating on wireless tracks. The air smells heavily of spiced meats, fresh bread is delivered by alien women in glitzy, short wraps that broadcast illusions of birds and gods around them. People of all genders — he can see at least six — mingle freely on a triple-layer floor set up like a teetering wedding cake, all of them focused around a stage where a green-skinned woman enveloped in thin chains tethered to the ground twists in time to a technicolour performance full of sonic thrills and projected illusions.
Here, even a man in a white mask might fade away. Gone is his particolored tunic and leggings, replaced by a long belted coat and leather pants. Because all good dark elves wear leather pants. "Come on. You need a drink for all this. I need a drink for all this," Malekith calls over the music and the frivolity and the fanfare. "There's but one man in the Nine Realms I'd bother with and you, friend, are it!"
Loki staggers and shifts to the right, reaching out to grab hold of a bar. He displaces a cavorting dancer with the motion, but she forgives him when he moves away a moment later. Dark hair sifts across his shoulders as he moves through the casino, watching creatures criss-cross his path a dozen times blocking out the vision of the elf, only to reveal it again a moment later. Still he presses on in a straight line, rather than weaving. "There are things you must know, Malekith!"
The bar behaves in a fashion vaguely familiar to Asgardians, the rotating walls flashing with various concoctions meant to appeal to the masses. The dark elf doesn't give the aliens clinging to their floating moors next to the bar a second look, gesturing with his hang authoritatively. Being tall as Loki himself, if not more, Malekith is little hard to pick out. "Imagine what I might know!" he shouts back, laughter acid-etched into every word. Following him means taking a path through a curtain of static energy into a series of podlike niches outfitted in bright tangerine couches and rarefied illicit activities. Gambling is just the half of it. "Of course, you'll have to commit to having a little fun instead of shuffling around Midgard doing whatever it is you do. Living as miserably as that brother of yours." He shrugs. Pressing his hand to a pad opens one of the nooks and he gestures. "Inside. Order a drink. Then I'll tell you the grand ideas for the night. And you… you do whatever you do."
Loki shutters his eyes and frowns when he passes through the electric shield, his mind feeling dimmed, like he's /clinging/ to his reasons for being here so that they don't just slip away from him entirely. Its a feeling akin to being drunk…something that happens so rarely for the Asgardian Prince. A few more times, he holds something nearby, and when Malekith gestures him inwards, he does go, but only after a long look up and down the dark elf, searching for clues in his behavior to all those things that Malekith might know. "Are you /jealous/? Is this not the behavior of a jilted lover, /Malekith/?"
Swirling colours and hues burn in unnatural fashions around them. The domed ceiling outside their pod reveals the vastness of space, a bunch of superluminous gases painted prettily in the background. Malekith jabs three buttons on the ovoid screen and the object 'prints' out a drink in an overly long flute. It smokes and smells of melancholy and fire. Narrowed eyes behind the mask tilt up, and laughter breaks out a moment later. "Nothing further from the truth!" He raises his glass and doesn't wait for Loki to pour his own, partly because the glass is sublimating. Whisking the mask askew, he takes a long, hard sip. It burns on the lips, all the way down, and smoke escapes his nose in faint hues. "I mean it. It's my last night of freedom. That's where you are involved."
He keeps the Asgardian in suspense for maybe fifteen, thirty, forty-five seconds. Then says, "There is a paramour. A proper gift's needed. Delivered. An honest man made of me."
Loki frowns, uncertain, definitely still uneasy. He watches as Malekith gulps down his own drink, before pouring his own, something less…fancy, more earthy. While he does so, he tries to calm himself, to gain a sense of smooth operating, before Malekith decides he's not worth all this trouble and just stabs him. He does, quietly, make his weapons disappear, since they are next to useless at the moment. A wave of the hand is all that it takes. "And I am the gift? Who is it that you are trying to impress, elf?" His voice rings with superiority. "I did not think anyone so blind as to fall for that face of yours." He grins crookedly.
"You?" Lip curling, Malekith reveals alarmingly white teeth in a sooty face. His breath still carries the effervescence of cinnabar. Leaning over, he says, "I like you many ways, prince, but you're… well, let's say your dowry is a bit dented, ever since the unmentionable business. Taking you home would possibly set tongues wagging." He holds up a hand to forestall any interruption. The drink vanishes into a gush of wax and smoke. "Your help getting the gift, Loki." He explains it patiently, as to a particularly bright golden lab. "I'd like to surprise my intended. She surely knows I intend to go to the bank to fetch it. Family trinket, promised for my intended, you know the drill. Fucking sentimentality." A spin of his fingers banishes the last of the smoke. "That, a ring, and the girl. All I need. Of course, you're welcome to be a … oh, what do they call it? A witness?"
Loki blinks slowly, though, he does feel like he's just about caught himself up with what's happening here. "Fine. And then my elf and I are free to go? He is unharmed?"
No drink. Might as well wave a hand in front of the drink-printer again. It spits out a shotglass full of something that actually makes a disturbing crackle, more broken bones and crushed oyster shells than fire. Malekith shoves it to Loki. "Drink to our health and let's go. It won't take you but an hour, I'm certain, and then you're back to that little elf of yours."
Loki takes the new drink and then upends it into his grim mouth, certain that the man will have to be indulged a little bit, before he gets to start manipulating things from his end.
"See!" Malekith slides the mask back into place. "Things go this smoothly and I'll chalk it up to the gods being focused elsewhere." He jumps up from the table, both hands balanced on it, and then considers. Looking about at the other pods, he points at the door. "Simple enough. We'll start with the bit about the heirloom. For some reason it's in a /bank/. Well, technically a vault. There's a gentleman here with a pile of pretty little pink girls." Rolling his shoulder, he grits out a sigh. "Conniving bastard, completely. All you need to do is go cash out the account and fetch the item in storage. Can't help you there, old man." He waggles a finger. "Mustn't give up the surprise. Luckily the banker's in residence. You could probably wager a game with him. Gamble much? Oh, not like your brother. I wouldn't. Try the sly smile bit. Bring it to me and we're almost done, right?"
Loki tosses the glass as he looks sideways, listening to the madman go on about what he wants Loki to do. "Because you are too high, and not equipped, to get it yourself? Whose account is it? I have to know who I am pretending to be…" The dark-haired godling insists, daring to pace in the small, podlike apartment. He reaches out to run a hand up the wall, curious over the make-up of this magical place. "You are mad, you know."
Malekith flicks his fingers. "High off /that/? I've had worse from the swamps as a boy." He leans against the door. "Mad is relative, Odinson. I didn't break the Bifrost. I didn't try to slay its guardian. And I certainly never take pointy weapons from women with poisoned lips." The grin is back, brief and startling as lightning. White hair is tossed from his face. "Why woudl you talk to him? Od's blood, just walk in and look for Silver South Twelve Forty-Three. It's not going to be big, a box about this large." Hands sketch out a shape that's somewhat oblong, about the width and height of a paperback book. "My account, of course. Oh, just say the Black Bile Clan as absolutely necessary. I'm not swimming by to get it and let my darling bride's surprise be ruined."
Loki knows its some sort of trap, because Malekith could have sent any turd to do that if its so simple as that! He pushes off the wall and nears the elf rogue, then folds his arms across his chest. He clears his throat, the liquid's taste still lingering there. "I meant…you are mad to get married. That's when they leave you…" He pauses, rather near to Malekith, enough to smell him. "I guess I'm off then, to the bank and the vault and the…small trinket for your lover, unless there is some other detail you need to share? And…her weapon is sturdy enough…even if her lips ARE poison."
"Family trinket. Again. It's something that means something." The mad Malekith may be, and definitely the accursed, but those two things are all the worse for love. He shrugs his shoulders. "When were you last married? Cheer up, man, you can officiate the damn ceremony and bless us all with your wit and grace after. She'll not mind, I know /that/." He then knocks open the door, and gestures. "Second floor, blue plasma… thing. Pool. I'll see you there in an hour or presume you're dead and go to claim the spoils of the news."
|ROLL| Loki +rolls 1d20 for: 15
Loki can tolerate this adventure if it means that Kai is returned to him, and honestly, there's more than a little part of him that finds it…fun. Like his issues with Mephisto, it'll be his turn, later, to get back at Malekith and send him on some goose chase to save his first born son, or something, like a twisted, fucked-up friendship, and nearly the only sort he knows, or has known, without Thor being involved. He really does make the worst friends. Frenemies. He glides out the door, long legs carrying him upwards, cycling up the steps until he can see the blue plasma. He only ever slows his walk, rather than stopping.
The Casino
Space age, without doubt this casino is nowhere near any outpost of Midgard or Asgard. In fact, it probably doesn't exist inside the Milky Way galaxy. Not that it entirely matters. Creatures humanoid in nature and many definitely not gather on the lower levels, shuttled about by telekinetic lifts and the odd puff of teleportation. Colour and sound clash in their glory on the second floor. Here wagers are spun on tables, using games as varied as they come. Some spin tales and others throw dice, and some bid on the acts of mortal creatures worlds away witnessed through scrying portals and diviners balls. In the middle of it all is the Well. Really, it's part bar (well), and part reflection pool (well) and part hot people dancing and undulating on a narrow beam suspended over the dancing waters that form amorphous surges. A rather unimpressive white-haired man sits on a thickly padded chair fancing the dancers. They're ridiculously hot. They are all pink-skinned, flaming pink at that, and a nice distraction. No one else goes near the fellow, not really.