Chapter 7
Time ticked by slowly as the brothers continued down the damp and rocky passageway. It seemed to stretch on forever, but they knew they were making progress as they watched their path begin to narrow the deeper they traveled. It was not the first time Loki had ventured down this particular path, but Thor did not question how he had discovered it in the first place. Instead, the thunder god seemed distracted and fascinated by the faint glow that the cavern walls emitted.
“Where is this light coming from?” Thor asked.
“I haven’t the slightest clue,” Loki stated, his own fingers tracing over the worn runes that were etched into the walls. “It’s probably as old as Yggdrasil itself.”
Thor paused, his gaze shifting carefully to the trickster. “Yggdrasil?”
Loki smiled. “Surely you’ve figured out that we have been traversing through part of it.”
The Asgardian gaped momentarily, before his lips pursed into a thin line. He slowly pulled his gaze away from the trickster and back up their path. He did not seem interested in delving into the subject. “How much further do we have then?”
“Not much,” Loki muttered, before brushing past the thunder god to continue walking. He did not need to let him know right now that their journey was just beginning. This was just one of the paths they’d need to take. Loki knew a number of them, but he had yet to explore all of them. In fact, this was the only path he knew that winded into Jötunheim itself, however, he at least knew another existed past the capital of Utgard. The trickster had sensed the familiar magic when he had come to bargain with Laufey long ago.
However, circumstances back then prevented him from looking further into it. All he knew was that it lay past their stronghold beyond the snowy and jagged mountain. It would not be easy, but all these secret paths were a challenge to find. All of them were hidden very well behind illusions, blending into the atmosphere around them. His first discovery had been purely accidental—but after he found that one, searching for more had become a favorite pastime of his.
He threw a brief glance over his shoulder to peek at Thor. It had been his fault.
When they were young, their mother made a habit of taking them to the capital of Vanaheim to visit the king, her father. Their grandfather, Frey, was always happy to see his grandsons and delighted at the sight of them sparring with each other, much to Loki’s dismay. The trickster always lost, but he had been close to earning himself a victory that one day.
Frey had been distracted by his conversation with the other adults and had turned his attention away from them, giving Loki an opportunity to use magic. The younger prince had finally pinned down Thor using his own cape, but the thunder god refused to relent. Instead, he repeatedly cussed at Loki for cheating as he continued to struggle against his cape.
Loki had been laughing, waiting for Frey to finally look back their way so he could show his grandfather that he had won. But instead of a victory, Loki tumbled down the steep side of the arena and fell into the dense woods below. He had underestimated Thor, who had ceased struggling against his binds and chosen to throw the entirety of his weight at him instead.
He rubbed his wrists, remembering how badly his bones had ached from that fall. Loki had broken his arm, but that was a mercy compared to what could have happened. He could have died had the cluster of branches and leaves not slowed the fall. His arm had only broken because he had landed on it when he finally crashed onto the ground. It had been absolutely agonizing, and the immediate pain made him black out.
But the next thing he remembered was waking up and finding himself in a cavern made from a hollowed-out tree. At the time he did not know where he was, but all he knew was that he no longer was in the woods he had fallen into.
The area he lay in was cool, damp, and it smelled of dirt and timber. The cavern walls were lined in bark that was snarled and etched with ancient runes that seemed to stretch on for miles. That had been peculiar, but his thoughts jumped elsewhere. For a fleeting moment, he believed that someone had found and taken him in. However, as he slowly got to his feet and saw the broken branches and fallen leaves around him, he realized he had not been moved.
He limped about, seeing all the components of a tree but without the forest itself. He ran a shaky hand through his hair, fearing that he suffered brain damage from the fall as well. However, his panic was put on hold when he caught movement from the corner of his eye—there were still leaves falling from the sky.
But, there was no sky.
He paused, tilting his head to glance up at the ceiling. He stilled, eyes widening when he realized the ceiling was flickering.
It had been very brief, but it was enough for him to recognize an illusion. It had been the one form of magic that he had picked up on quite fast, much to the dismay of those around him that he winded up pranking. But why was the ceiling false?
Loki closed his eyes, trying to sense where the source of this magic was coming from. His brows knitted together as he slowly realized that the signature of this particular sorcery was old. Very old.
And it was all around him now that he was fully aware of it.
It was the same even now. All these passages had the one thing in common and he had learned to recognize the signature the more and more he explored them. While he had been trapped in that one particular cavern years ago, he had found the path out eventually and crawled out into a spring in the enchanted forest of Alfheim.
Of course, the others would find him eventually. Heimdall made sure of that and it had been interesting to explain how he had winded up in the elven realm, to begin with. Even he was confused, but he knew better than to give away his discovery. Instead, the trickster played on his injuries and claimed that he had been lost in the woods before being taken by outlaws.
It worked. Their displeasure for the bandits and his physical state helped sell the story, as absurd as it actually was. They were only glad to have found him in one piece. He feared Heimdall would sell him out, but the sentinel remained quiet on the matter. Of course, Loki would eventually learn how to hide fully from Heimdall’s gaze.
The trickster stopped, feeling the frigid air that whipped at his hair. They were very close to the end of this path. He knew once they stepped out, they would be met with miles of ice and snow and he was in no way ready to face any of that in his current condition. His attention shifted to his abdomen. He needed to mend his inflictions before they worsened. He may have managed to stop the bleeding earlier, but he knew that wound was still infected with dark elven magic. It was messing with his seidr and he needed his magic if they were to survive the wintery conditions of Jötunheim.
While Loki knew that he would fare better against the cold, the same could not be said of Thor. The Asgardian warrior would freeze to his death within hours if they dared go on now as they were. His armor would do nothing to keep him warm. Loki knew he would have to conjure up something for them to wear, but he could not afford to do so right now—that required more magic than he currently had to spend. He had already burned through enough of it to get to this point and it was clear the parasitic effects of the foreign magic in his system was affecting his seidr. If he did not stop and fix this now, all their efforts to escape Asgard would turn to naught.
“We need to rest,” Loki stated, as he carefully sank to the ground.
“I will rest when I reach Midgard,” Thor confirmed, ready to continue forth.
“Unless you wish to freeze to your death, you will do as I say,” Loki curtly informed him, before shoving his vest off his shoulders. He was in no mood to squabble with Thor.
“And are you not able to use your magic to keep us warm?” Thor challenged, as he eyed his brother. Loki did not answer him and instead yanked his shirt up to get a good look at the festering wound. The thunder god visibly grimaced, finally seeing just what the Kurse had done to him.
The area had begun to corrode with pus and something black. His forehead creased with concern. “Are you in pain?”
“I’ve felt worse,” Loki grimly mused, his fingers brushing carefully around the laceration. It was bad. He had allowed the foreign substance to linger far too long and it had begun to seep into his own seidr. He would need to remove the dark magic before it quite possibly killed him. He brows knitted together, as his fingers continued to graze cautiously across the infected flesh. He should have detected this sooner, but he had been too occupied with other things to notice. He could definitely feel the veins of dark energy beginning to flare out from it now. It had been unwise of him to use up so much magic thus far.
He barred his teeth, forcing his forefingers into the wound and reopening the injury. He watched it begin to ooze blood and something else entirely. It was too late to make things easier for himself when it had already progressed to this level. He carefully pulled them out and let the palm of his hand hover over the area.
Thor watched with morbid fascination as black strings of energy began to slowly pour from it. “Perhaps it was unwise to leave Asgard in your condition.”
“It is not like anything would have been done about this,” Loki bit back sourly, shifting his focus back to the task at hand. If they had wanted to care for him, they would not have been so quick to lock him up. There was no kindness for criminals. He certainly deserved it, but nonetheless, he wished a healer had treated him. His remedial magic was not very strong, and he knew he would have to bear through more pain than necessary to make any progress.
He frowned. It had not been this bad before and if he knew it would have worsened to such a degree, he would have done something about it earlier. He supposed he was fortunate enough to catch it now before the dark elven matter became impossible to expunge from his body.
The ice crunched under Thor’s footsteps as the god of thunder settled down across from his brother. He would have to wait, which did not anger him but left him feeling anxious. He had broken his word to Jane. The more time he spent away, the more he knew he would hurt her and he hated it.
He crossed his arms in a feeble attempt to keep warm as he watched Loki work. It was unfortunate that their path was through Jötunheim. It was a terrible realm, made of ice and stone—he may be cold now, but he would be colder out there. He wished he could make the situation better, but there was nothing he could use to make a fire.
Thor frowned. It did not help that he was also growing hungry, but now was not the time to complain. He knew things would only worsen the further they progressed.
He would bear through these conditions for now.
“Are we expecting anyone?” Darcy asked as she craned her neck at the sound of the doorbell. It had only been a few minutes since they had dinner and she had finally settled down to watch TV.
“Not that I know of,” Erik answered without prying his eyes from the computer screen. The older scientist had perched himself at the desk as soon as he had finished his meal. He was busy trying to jot down all the data he had collected these past few days now that he was no longer stuck in a mental ward. He had spent the entirety of dinner discussing his findings with Jane, as Darcy tried her best to shift her mind away from work.
Darcy looked visibly confused. She doubted that Jane would run off to shower if she was expecting company. She would have told her.
“Should I get it?” Ian asked, pulling the dishwashing gloves off his hands. He had been stuck with cleaning duty for the evening after his boss had snaked her way out of it.
“Please,” Darcy added sweetly as she peered over the couch and watched her intern head downstairs to see who was at the front door. It only took two minutes for him to return with a bespectacled bald man in a black suit.
“Agent Sitwell?” Erik is the first to ask, his attention no longer on the computer. It took Darcy a moment to recall the agent, but she remembered he had been one of the agents that tagged alongside Coulson back in New Mexico. What had they done now? It had been months since she’d seen any of these men in black and she wasn’t particularly thrilled at seeing SHIELD again so soon. The last time she had to deal with them, they had swooped Jane and her into a safe house in Norway during the whole fiasco with Loki and the alien invasion.
The old scientist turned in his seat. “Is everything alright?”
“Is Miss Foster around?” Sitwell asked, his eyes glazing over the furniture of the room.
“I’ll go get her,” Darcy offers, springing to her feet. She had no idea what they could possibly want with Jane, but she figured she should be the one to give her a heads up. The young intern scampered down the hall and straight for Jane’s quarters.
“I’m coming in!” she announced, before entering the scientist’s room. She found Jane standing over the desk, drying her hair. She had already gotten dressed in her pajamas, but that did not stop her from eyeing the open journal lying on her desk.
However, her attention turned to her the younger woman the moment Darcy stumbled in.
“There is a SHIELD agent standing in your mom’s living room,” Darcy chimed in before Jane could say anything.
The scientist gawked. “What?”
“Yeah. And he wants to speak with you.”
Jane scowled, her mood quickly turning sour. She tossed the towel angrily at her bed. “What the hell do they want now?”
They may have returned the research they took from her, but Jane still held a strong grudge against them. It had not gotten any better when they had forced her to Tromsø for safekeeping—as if she was a damsel in distress.
“I’m not sure,” Darcy muttered, stepping aside as Jane brushed past her. She was just as lost as to why a SHIELD agent would show up at their doorstep, but the record thus far had not been for anything good.
The two women stepped into the living room, but the they quickly saw that Sitwell had stepped outside onto the veranda. He stood with his back to them, cellphone against his ear.
“He said he needed to make a call,” Ian clarified, eyebrows raised at the animosity Dr. Foster was exhibiting. The older woman looked clearly pissed off.
“Did he tell you anything?” Jane asked Erik as she shuffled her recent paperwork into a folder and shoved them into the desk drawer. There was no way she would let them run off with her data again. They would have to fight her.
Dr. Selvig shook his head as he got up. He figured it would be best to actually put on some pants, now that they had company over. The moment Erik stepped away from the desk, Darcy made a beeline for the vacant computer. She stood over the keyboard and turned to look at Ian. “What about you? Did he say anything to you?”
“He just asked for my name and then said he needed to make a call.”
Darcy supposed that made sense. This was the first time SHIELD had met Ian. However, she still could not understand why an agent showed up out of the blue. She grumbled under her breath and began copying data onto a flash drive.
“There is no need to look so disturbed,” Sitwell stated. They froze, attention snapping onto him. They had failed to hear him step back inside.
“I’m here with an offer.”
Jane straightened her posture and stared at the agent. “Offer?”
She is not sure if she even wants to hear what anyone from SHIELD has to say. Her history with them was far from great. They had done nothing but cause her grief. It was their fault that Erik had turned into such a headcase and they had done nothing to help him.
“I’m certain you’re all aware of what has happened here these past few hours,” Sitwell declared and began cleaning his glasses, “we saw you helping Thor stop the attack at Greenwich.”
“And? Get to your point,” Darcy huffed. She was just as done with them as Jane was.
“I’m getting there, Miss Lewis,” he calmly said, reaching a hand into his inside pocket and drawing out a manila envelope. He passed it to Jane as Dr. Selvig returned fully dressed. “That contains all the information you need, but to get to the point,” he threw Darcy a glance, before looking back at Jane, “SHIELD is requesting your services.”
“My services? With what?” Jane asked, pulling the documents out of the envelope. Both Darcy and Erik glanced over her shoulder, as Ian parked himself on a nearby couch. He was confused about what was happening, but it did not seem like the opportune time to ask questions.
“We are aware that you have been working on and off on a device to reach Asgard. We are simply requesting that you take that idea, and expand on it,” Sitwell continued, “It has become a rising concern and security issue that Earth is invaded by these other worlds, and yet, we lack the same technology to return the favor.”
Jane made a face at him, before looking through the documents in her hands. Her eyes skimmed over the text disinterestedly until she spotted the list of equipment they would provide her. She flipped to the next paper and her eyes lit up when she saw the funds they would provide for the project. Darcy had to do a double-take when she saw the amount herself. She had never seen so many zeroes.
But, where would that leave her?
Sitwell seemed to have read her mind. “We are aware of your working relationship with Dr. Foster and are willing to give you a job as her lab assistant. The only setback is that you’ll be unable to return to Culver if you do take the position.”
Darcy paused, mulling over the offer for a moment. “You know, I’m fine with that.”
This was actually perfect. She knew she could finish off what she had left with some online courses and then she would finally graduate. While the job may not be related to political science, it certainly paid well. She would have to reassess her obligations later.
“And just so you are aware, you both will be transferred to New York,” Sitwell added as he held out a pen for them. “I just need you to sign those documents as confirmation. Feel free to keep the copies.”
“What do you mean ‘both’?” Erik is the one to ask, as he pushed his reading glasses up.
“I’m sorry Dr. Selvig, but it would be best for you to continue getting some rest. Might I suggest a vacation? We will still remain in touch, but do not expect us to contact you for any services at this time,” the agent revealed. He glanced over at Ian. “And unfortunately, Mr. Boothby, your services are not needed either. We do, however, appreciate everything you have done to keep London safe.”
Ian’s face flushed with embarrassment before he nodded his head slowly. “That’s understandable.”
But Darcy couldn’t help but feel bad that she was going to have to let her intern go. However, it was probably for the best. He didn’t seem cut out for this line of work in the long run, but she did give him props for tagging along, saving her life, and giving her space after she nearly sucked his face off. That was something. She had feared he would act upon it, but he hadn’t. She was glad the spur of the moment decision had not affected his sensibilities.
Jane looked to Erik, ready to argue with Sitwell on the older scientist’s behalf, but he was already nodding his head in agreement as he placed a hand on his colleague’s shoulder. “I seriously do need to take a vacation, Jane. I know you came all this way because I asked you to, but now you have a chance for something better.”
Darcy agreed. This was the first time that SHIELD had turned to Jane for help, instead of scooping her like a maiden in need of aid. She was more than just Thor’s girl. In fact, Erik knew just how resourceful and smart she was. He had been the one to reach out to Jane to help him chase down an anomaly he had been tracking for weeks. Darcy had been fortunate enough that Culver let her start her second internship in time to accompany Jane to London.
But now, there was such a big opportunity for both the women to seize.
“So, when are we leaving?” Darcy is the first one to ask, as Jane moved to the dining table to look over the documents more carefully. She could not blame her for being so suspicious.
“We can have you two flying to New York tomorrow night. However, we can always arrange it for a little earlier or later if you’d like. We just need you guys in the city by Tuesday morning.”
“That still doesn’t leave me much time to sort everything out,” Jane claimed, perking her head up. “That’s two days! My mother is not coming back from Spain until the end of the week. She’ll kill me if I leave without saying goodbye.”
“Oh, Margaret will get over it,” Erik reasoned. “Your parents may have divorced over your father’s workaholic tendencies, but she has always been more forgiving when it comes to you.”
Jane frowned. “That doesn’t help.”
Erik shrugged, before watching Agent Sitwell slide into the adjacent seat. He handed Jane a pen and pointed to the document that needed signing. The scientist seemed hesitant but ended up signing anyway before they began discussing traveling plans.
Meanwhile, Darcy sank down next to Ian on the couch. She knew she would eventually need to sign something herself, but for now, she watched the others huddle around the dining room table. She sighed and rested her head against her intern’s shoulder and patted his knee affectionately. “I’m sorry, but that means I’m going to have to let you go, bud.”
“You’re implying that I even agreed to be your intern in the first place,” Ian coyly muttered, glancing at her hand on his knee. The corner of his lip twitched, before he gave half-hearted smiled. “But, I am going to miss you, Darcy.”
“I know,” she playfully stated, giving him a one-armed hug. “I suppose I’ll miss you too.”