The main results of the article are short time estimates and asymptotic estimates for the first two order derivatives of the logarithmic heat kernel of a complete Riemannian manifold. We remove all curvature restrictions and also develop several techniques. A basic tool developed here is intrinsic stochastic variations with prescribed second order covariant differentials, allowing to obtain a path integration representation for the second order derivatives of the heat semigroup P t on a

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... Riemannian manifold, again without any assumptions on the curvature. The novelty is the introduction of an 2 term in the variation allowing greater control. We also construct a family of cut-off stochastic processes adapted to an exhaustion by compact subsets with smooth boundaries, each process is constructed path by path and differentiable in time. Furthermore, the differentials have locally uniformly bounded moments with respect to the Brownian motion measures, allowing to bypass the lack of continuity of the exit time of the Brownian motions on its initial position.