Eros rose and stepped around the clutter to head for the stairs in the entryway.
“What exactly is all this rubbish?”
“It’s not rubbish.” Loki justified, “It’s my work. My collection.”
Loki took the steps two at a time with ease, while Eros had to hop and navigate around the picture frames and stacks of books, leaning hither and thither, in the stairway.
“Collection of what exactly?” Eros snarled, as he nearly fell.
Loki reached the top of the stairs. “Ancient and magickal artifacts, and relics, and books.”
“Have you considered an index system?” Eros glared up at him.
“No reason. I know where almost everything is at…” He waved a hand, which faltered as he grimaced at the blatant lie he had just told.
A smirk crept across Eros’s face as he made it safely to the second story. “Except your mouth, which runs away from you?”
“And my slippers!” His eyes scanned the hall, “I can never seem to find those sodding things. They keep running away without my feet... Anyway, my office is this way.”
Loki led Eros into a room that was an even bigger disaster than the rest of the house. It was quickly apparent that the office was the epicenter of the mess. This was mostly due to the fact that the office was enchanted to be even bigger than the townhome itself, which meant there was more room inside it for more chaos.
“Bleeding hell! This is ludicrous! Use magick to organize this shit.”
“Well, I can’t do that for two reasons, I’m afraid. One, being that it’s against my nature…” He smiled with false guilt, “I really would have no idea where to start, and secondly, these are all incredibly expensive relics and the like. Using any magick on them whatsoever, that is not of the item’s intended use, depreciates the value tenfold. Using the wrong kind of magick on a magickal artifact often destroys the object itself. It’s a failsafe, to protect them from unworthy hands.”
He was flipping up the lids to the crates in the center of the room, which looked to Eros like it was meant to be a library. Shelves lined the walls, but they were spaced to allow for more height than that of most bookshelves, and they were deeper. Perhaps, they were once meant to hold all of his collection, but Loki didn’t bother using them. He had decided to scatter his precious collection around helter-skelter, in no particular sequence.
This mode of organization might prevent thieves from finding an object if they were looking to steal a particular one, but that was the only good the bloody mess served. Loki’s only attempt at organizing his office was the heap of leather-bound books leaning in the mouth of the upstairs fireplace. The sofas, no longer usable as chairs, were instead used to cushion the most fragile items of the collection.
“No. That’s not it,” Loki mumbled to himself. “It’s around here somewhere!”
Eros tore his amazed and wandering eyes to attention, “What are you looking for? Can I help you find-”
“Here she is!” Loki dipped his hands into a box of aspen wood wool and pulled out a bowl. The ribbed bowl looked like it was made of tanned human skin and bone. In all likelihood, it probably was.
Eros did not recognize this significant, sacred object at first. It was meant to be elevated on an elaborate marble pedestal, surrounded by blinded virgin priestesses, dancing tantrically in the twisting firelight of a secret cave, hidden somewhere between Hades and Mount Olympus. It was meant to be given offerings of blood, and placenta, and tears that had been shed by nymphs. Instead, it was in this place of dust and cluttered chaos, packaged away in one of the many unmarked pine boxes.
There was a lag in Eros’s mind as he tried to place it. Compared to those times of yore, when what that mighty bowl represented was menacing and ominous, it now looked awkward and fragile in the hands of Loki Laufey.
“That’s the Bowl of Fate,” Eros cautioned forward.
“Yes,” Loki gazed upon it with the admiration of an objective historian, “it is.”
Eros blinked, appalled at the lack of reverence, and his lungs tightened. “Put that down,” he ordered the giant, who only squinted back at him. “You can’t just have that,” Eros gestured towards it, “lying around in this heap of mess! Have you no sanctity at all? Any sort of idea what kind of thing that is? And you just have it boxed up like, like cheap china or something!”
“China’s not cheap.” Loki looked mildly amused.
“Exactly! Still! That,” Eros pointed at it again, “is something you lock into a curse box, encased in iron, sealed in concrete, and dropped into a merciless ocean inside an eternal black abyss, is what that thing is!”
“And you know what it does then?” Loki set it carefully back into the crate.
“Of course I know what that insidious thing can do! It practically has the power to change…” Eros trailed off, remembering the ancient tales of that bowl. He remembered seeing it for the first time, the way it breathed like it was the mouth of the universe, ready to swallow existence up whole. But, it didn’t breathe like that now, while Loki was holding it, while it sat lifelessly in that crate.
“Yes?” Loki urged, looking less amused and more wickedly excited. “Go on, what does it have the power to do?”
Eros’s eyes were drifting across the mess, “...to change Fate.”
“To change Fate! Exactly! And you know who probably wove those tales to make the gods fear this foul punch bowl? Probably the same hags who made them fear you. It is a thing powerful enough to destroy them, so they demonized it, saying something so powerful should not exist.”
“How did you come by it?” Eros asked.
Both of them were standing over the box, looking at the cold and innocent bowl.
“The shadow market. Damn thing is useless now. Somehow they must’ve turned it off, and I can’t seem to find the on-switch.”
“I highly doubt it’s a switch,” Eros deadpanned and peered up at him.
“No.” He chewed on the side of his scarred lip. “Probably an incredibly elaborate ritual devised by the Fates that one can only ever hope to perform if one happened to be the Fates, so…”
“So… we’re still fucked.”
“Essentially. But, it’s cool, right?” Loki stuck his hands in the pockets of his trousers and stood tall. “All of my collection is that way. These old artifacts have to be paired up with proper rituals, incantations, and ingredients. They’re like puzzles, and I happen to like puzzles.”
“Again, I ask, have you considered an index system?”
Loki grimaced.
