In those days the General liked to travel in Journeyman Aspect throughout the Worlds.
In those days the General liked to travel in Journeyman Aspect throughout the Worlds. His blind eye, sacrificed to the runes, saw much farther than his living one ever had, and he was obsessed with exploration and the pursuit of knowledge. He was a great traveller in Dream—that river that skirts our borders, flowing alongside Death itself, dividing this world from the next—and he would often watch our realm from the far side of the river, muttering cantrips to himself and squinting through his blind eye.
He didn’t look all that impressive back then — a tall man in his fifties, with unruly grey hair and an eye patch. But even then I sensed that he was something out of the ordinary. For a start, he had glam — that primal fire stolen from Chaos, which the Folk later came to call magic and to fear with a superstitious awe. I could see it in the colours swirling all around him and by the signature he left, as unique as a fingerprint — a broad blaze of kingfisher blue across the bleakness of rocks and snow. I’d seen that signature in dreams that were bigger and brighter than the rest, and now I could almost hear him, too, his soft and coaxing voice, his words:
Loki, son of Laufey.
Son of Farbauti — Wildfire
