In the banquet hall of the Golden Palace, it was magnificent.
The aroma of mead mingled with the strong smell of roasted meat, but it could not suppress the silent undercurrent.
Odin sat high on his golden throne, his gaze gliding over the rejoicing gods below.
On his face, there were no waves of joy, only the usual depth, and even a more indescribable solemnity than before.
The golden cup in his hand was never raised, but he silently rubbed the rim of the cup, as if weighing the heavy price of this 'joy'.
Loki leaned against a pillar of the porch, an undisguised mockery at the corner of his mouth.
The small dagger in his hand flew between his fingers like a living thing, its cold light flickering, reflecting the disappointment in his eyes.
Occasionally, his gaze would glide over to Frigg, the queen-goddess by the throne, who kept her head lowered and her hands unconsciously covering her lower abdomen, and it would glide over to Freyr, sitting in the seat of the Vanir envoy, as if enjoying a remarkable play he had directed.
Frigg felt the faint but real stirring of new life in her belly, and her mood was as complex as an overturned spice rack.
There was the instinct of motherhood and softness, confusion about the future, and an inexpressible sense of guilt.
She did not raise her head once during the entire banquet, simply staring at the intricate gold-thread embroidery on her skirt, as if she could find the answer within it.
As the 'father', Freyr was now sitting on pins and needles.
He pretended to be calm and went along with the congratulations of the minor gods who did not know the truth, but the wine glass in his hand trembled slightly.
He dared not meet Odin's eyes, let alone Frigg's, so he could only focus on his sister Freyja.
Freyja sat beside him, her face full of satisfaction and a slight anxiety.
She was pleased to see Ásgarðr, especially Odin, caught in this awkward and even humiliating situation.
But she also knew that once this matter was fully exposed, the storm it would unleash would be enough to shatter the fragile peace between the two pantheons, and she and Freyr, as the main figures, would bear the brunt of it.
And the crude Thor seemed completely unaware of this strange atmosphere.
He held a huge horn cup and drank merrily with his companions, his thunderous laughter echoing through the hall, adding a touch of incongruity to this superficially festive but inwardly oppressive banquet.
Beneath the cover of this cacophony of different hearts, Loki winked at his wife Sigyn nearby and secretly pointed his dagger at a place in the corner of the banquet hall where the candlelight flickered.
There, an imperceptible distortion occurred in space—that was where Hermes was hidden.
Sigyn understood, a look of slight obedience and anxiety on her face, and gently drew her two sons, Váli and Narfí, closer.
She gave a few instructions in a low voice, then took them, pretending to be playful, and slowly approached the candlelight.
The banquet gradually ended in this silent atmosphere, each with their own ghosts.
The hustle and bustle of the Golden Palace receded like a tide, leaving only icy silence.
Loki stood alone in the shadow; the dagger on his fingertips no longer flew, but was firmly gripped by him, his knuckles white.
He knew everything.
Long before the God-King of the Vanir, who called himself 'Narcissus', brought in variables, when the three Norn goddesses still sat by the Well of Urd weaving their fate, he had, with cunning and wisdom, seen the possible tributaries of the long river of fate.
He had seen the ropes, seen the poison, seen the suffering of his sons, and seen how the gods—including the so-called 'brothers'—were driven by fear and betrayal to persecute him and his kin.
But in his heart, a spark of hope still burned, one even he himself rejected.
After all, the future he saw was not an unchangeable absolute prophecy like 'Ragnarök'.
It was merely one possibility, a 'future' based on the conditions of the time.
Moreover, he had already replaced the weaver of fate—the three Norn goddesses—with outsiders.
The representative of fate had been pulled out!
Had those damned silk threads snapped?
Did he and his children have a chance to escape this dark future?
He should have been calmer.
But he knew the cruelty of his brother Odin, who was willing to sacrifice everything for the so-called 'big picture'.
In the old prophecies, it was necessary for the gods to survive the twilight to create a new world.
Would Odin still choose to submit to the inertia of the old fate, to ensure this 'survival', and push him, Loki, and his heirs into the abyss as bargaining chips, in exchange for the survival of the few who were 'qualified'?
He wasn't sure.
He had to test.
Therefore, he had carefully plotted the taboo concerning Frigg and Freyr.
He knew that Odin's perceptive eyes were watching him, just as Odin knew that behind his clumsy and fierce provocations lay fear and an unwilling struggle for survival.
This was a silent contest between brothers, and he had presented the choice to his brother the God-King in the most extreme way.
At this moment, the banquet was over, and the results were announced.
Odin's silence, Frigg's complexity, the gods' hypocritical celebration... All of this was like a cold dagger, piercing his last hope.
He was not convinced! Why?!
Why did he and his children have to face this cruelty—bound, tortured, betrayed, turned to ashes in the flames of Ragnarök, becoming a sad sacrifice for the birth of a new world!
"This is truly disappointing, in every sense of the word."
Loki whispered in his heart, anger and despair overwhelming him.
Odin had chosen to yield for the sake of an ethereal 'hope after twilight', enduring this ultimate insult to himself and the glory of Ásgarðr.
He was still the one who could be left on Odin's scales.
At the same time, Odin, sitting on the high throne, looked at the empty hall with his one eye, and the same words echoed in his heart.
"This is truly disappointing..."
He was disappointed in Loki's foolishness.
This brother, who considered himself clever, thought he could jump off the chessboard if he saw a corner of fate, not knowing that seeing fate and resisting fate itself was already marked on the web of fate!
Before fate was tangled for unknown reasons, everything Loki saw were fragments that fate wanted to show him.
He could not understand how his provocations and mischief, driven by fear and extremity, step by step pushed his relationship with Ásgarðr and Odin towards a desperate situation, and how he would eventually be led to kill Baldr the Bright and trigger an irreparable tragedy.
Loki thought that if he changed the cause, he could change the effect.
As everyone knows, the moment he decided to test in this way, he was driving himself and his children towards the finale called 'deserved by guilt' from which he desperately wanted to escape.
Odin slowly closed his one eye, weary as the cold wind of Niflheim seeping into his ancient bones.
He knew that Loki would not stop.
And he himself, for the sake of a one-in-a-billion chance, a glimmer of light after the twilight, could only continue along this trajectory, which seemed to have a fork but whose end was still grim.
In the cold silence, across the empty hall, the two brothers headed towards the long-destined and disappointing end in their own consciousness.
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P.S.: There is no confirmation that Loki saw fate in the original mythology; this is the author's own speculation.
In the series 'Loki's Quarrel', when Loki insults the gods, he repeatedly mentions scenes of future destruction, and his tone is very affirmative.
In this poem, he insults the gods one by one and accurately predicts their deaths and the tragedy of Ragnarök.
This shows that he is not ignorant of the impending catastrophe, but clearly understands it.
It can be seen that Loki possesses a certain ability to foresee.
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