Chapter 5
Thor would never tire of watching Jane's face when she was learning something new. Barring a few exceptions, Asgardians were so long-lived that new experiences became a rarity after their first few centuries of life. Mortals could not be more opposite. For them, almost everything was new, and they seldom lived long enough for the novelty to wear thin. Jane especially revelled in learning, much like Loki. Both of them were possessed of insatiable curiosity and the drive to understand, well, everything. As Thor explained the Convergence, he could almost see the thoughts coalescing in Jane's mind, connecting things she already knew with this new information and fitting it together like pieces of a puzzle. Her face was so expressive Thor knew the exact moment the picture was fully formed in her mind.
Once it was, she peppered him with so many questions that Thor fervently wished his brother was not in such a foul mood. It wasn't so much that Thor couldn't answer, but that Loki could do it so much better. Loki had a gift for knowing how to present information so it was best understood by each listener, no matter how differently the person's mind worked compared with his own. So easy was it for him to get his point across and so persuasive was he when he did, their father's councillors took to calling him Silvertongue behind his back. Whether they meant it as a compliment or not, the All-Father loved his son's gift with words. When Loki sat in on any type of diplomatic conference, the meeting was always shortened by half.
The more often Thor's thoughts strayed to his irritable brother, the more frustrated he felt. Loki accused him of neglecting his duties but if Loki had been paying attention to something other than his books, he might have seen the political trouble brewing on Vanaheim before the rebellion broke out. Now he seemed more interested in lobbing insults at both Thor and Jane rather than make any serious effort to help.
In an effort to turn his thoughts in a more pleasant direction, Thor suggested they take a walk outside the palace after leaving the archive room. Jane readily agreed, eager to see more of this new world and probably welcoming the distraction from her situation. As they entered the marketplace outside the gates, a metal sphere bounced off the ground and rolled to a stop in front of them, where Jane picked it up. Pressing her finger into a small glowing indentation, she gasped as it flew up from her hands and hovered in the air above them, its outer panels detaching and orbiting around it. Thor knew what it was of course, but the sheer wonder on Jane's face moved him to hold his tongue.
"This is amazing," she breathed, awestruck eyes transfixed on the orb. "The magnetic propulsion alone could advance Earth's science years."
Thor smiled at her enthusiasm but managed to tear his eyes away and peer through the crowd. He saw them not far away.
"Jane," he called.
The sphere collapsed and dropped itself into her outstretched hand. "I am so taking this apart."
"Jane." She finally looked at him. "You have their ball." Thor pointed to the three sullen children he spied moments earlier.
"Oh," she said, a little abashed. She obligingly tossed the toy back to the children who ran away with their prize the moment it was in their possession.
The two of them made a slow circle through the market before returning to the palace. They hadn't been back long when Jane stumbled. Thor was at her side in an instant to steady her.
"Are you all right?" he asked. She nodded, but the giddy look in her eyes made him doubt her answer. "Are you sure?"
"Just a bit dizzy, that's all," Jane insisted, though she still leaned heavily on him. 'Maybe the air is thinner her than what I'm used to."
Thor frowned. He didn't know if the density of Asgard's atmosphere was different than Midgard's but even if it was, he suspected that wasn't the real reason. A mortal body simply could not contain the power of the Aether for long without consequence.
"Jane-"
"I'm fine."
"You're not."
She looked up to meet his eyes. "No, I'm not, but I don't want to think about that. Not when there's nothing anyone can do."
Thor cradled her face in his hands, careful to temper his strength. "We will find an answer. My father has never failed me and for all his faults, my brother is the smartest man I know."
"Oh dear," a warm voice declared. "Don't let him hear you say that. He'll be even more impossible."
Thor let his hands slide down from Jane's face to her shoulders and turned her around. "Jane Foster, please meet Frigga, Queen of Asgard. And my mother."
Startled by his announcement, Jane took a quick step away from him. Whether it was concern over any appearance of impropriety or simple anxiety over meeting Frigga, she was suddenly flustered. Her hands fluttered in front of her as though she was suddenly unsure what to do with them before she stilled them by clasping them together.
"H-hi," she stammered.
Frigga's smile was pure warmth. "It is a pleasure, my dear, though I am a little dismayed that my son did not see fit to inform me of your arrival."
That last was accompanied with a rather pointed look over Jane's shoulder to him. Thor ducked his head. "I'm sorry, Mother. Things have been a little chaotic."
"So I hear. Odin told me the Aether is found." Frigga turned her gaze back to Jane. "How do you fare, child?"
"Good. Well, not exactly good. I mean, I've been better, I guess."
Frigga took her by the hand and led her to a stone bench beneath a great window overlooking the palace courtyard. "Tell me."
They had only just begun conversing when a klaxon sounded. Thor was on his feet again in an instant. His mother too recognized the alarm.
"The prison," she said. "Go. I'll look after her."
With a brief nod, Thor took off running. Leaping off the balcony, he called Mjolnir to hand and let her carry him all the way to the dungeon entrance. He raced inside and was greeted by chaos. Everywhere he looked, prisoners were locked in combat with the guards. The heavy footfalls of the Einherjar grew near behind Thor, drawing the attention of the rioting prisoners his way. He held Mjolnir aloft.
"Return to your cells and no further harm will come to you. You have my word."
He scarcely finished speaking when a fist collided with his chin. One swing of his hammer and the insolent bastard went flying.
"Very well, then. You do not have my word."
Both prisoners and guards took his words as a signal and the melee resumed, just as fierce as before. Thor dove into the fray and in short order found himself between Fandral and Volstagg.
"It's almost as if they resent being in prison," Fandral somehow found time to quip in between driving several of the rioters away with his rapier.
"There's just no pleasing some," Volstagg returned, jamming the head of his great axe into the belly of another prisoner.
"Where is my brother?" Thor shouted over the din.
Fandral ducked the swing of a stolen mace wielded by a prisoner. "You expect your brother to attend a simple prison riot after ignoring weeks of trouble in Vanaheim?"
Thor swung his hammer and struck in the head the prisoner who attacked his friend. "And Sif?"
"Was with the royal guard at the palace," Volstagg explained, his axe cleaving one of the rioters nearly in two. "I expect she'll be along. She loves a skirmish."
Thor almost laughed. This pathetic excuse for a battle could not even be called that. In all likelihood it would be over before their friend even arrived. She would be most disappointed to have missed it. His smile fell when he felt the ground shake.
~~~|~~~
In a corner of Asgard far away from the palace there stood an ancient building. Referred to simply as the old archive, it held some of the most ancient and obscure texts in Asgard's collection. Most of them were kept for posterity only, with the palace housing more up-to-date and comprehensive volumes. Few people in Asgard even remembered the archive was there, fewer still ever visited. However, if one was looking for a means to manipulate an ancient source of dark energy not seen for five thousand years, it was best to start with information of the same age.
Loki pulled a tome at least twice as old as his father off the shelf and set it down on the table with great care. Not a single text in the archive was replaceable, even if their value was largely aesthetic now. As such, Loki made sure to handle them gently so as not to cause damage. Even though the simmering rage burning through his veins was such that he'd rather tear the crumbling volume to pieces and burn the building to the ground.
An entire year's worth of effort made worthless by a single mortal who didn't even realize what she'd found. By accident. How many hours had he spent scouring every text from Bor's reign for even the barest hint of where he hid the Aether? How many sleepless nights spent combing through grimoire after grimoire for anything that might help him detect the infinity stone through seiðr? And in the end, apparently all one had to do was wait for the Convergence to grow near and stumble through the nearest portal to find the Aether's precise location.
Though he would prefer to take at least a little time to reconcile himself to his year of wasted efforts, Loki had to keep working. Furious and exhausted he may be, but his sense of duty wouldn't allow him to sit by while the Aether slowly tore Jane apart. So there he sat, fuming in silence as he looked for an answer.
Further adding to his irritation were the distant rumbles of thunder he could hear. No doubt his brother was trying to impress his mortal with that damned hammer of his. One of them was so close it made the archive's walls shudder. Loki looked up just in time to be showered with dust, gritty particles stinging his eyes. It angered him so that he tore the page in front of him neatly in two when he tried to turn it. Loki swore under his breath and followed the invective with a quick incantation to knit the two pieces together again. Even if no one else ever picked up this tome again, which was likely if the thick layer of dust it bore was any indication of how long it sat undisturbed before that day, he refused to leave it in a vandalized state. He only realized once the page was again intact how foolish it was what he did. Using seiðr on a book of seiðr was tricky, dangerous even if the magicks therein interacted poorly with his own.
After cursing his own folly and his brother's distractions, Loki uttered a second spell. The air around him shimmered and bent before clearing again. He waited a few moments to make sure the dampening field raised by the spell was enough to block out the noise of Thor's idiotic displays of power. Satisfied with the silence he heard, he returned to his original purpose.
Mere seconds later, something made the ground shake with such violence that several shelves in the archive collapsed, sending the ancient texts they held tumbling onto the floor.
That was no thunder, nor was it his brother. Thor was not so careless as to cause such damage in the city. Something else was happening. Something much worse.
Loki shoved back from the table so hard and rose so fast he tipped over his chair and nearly tripped on it in his haste to make for the door. Not two steps outside, he saw what made the archive quake. A trail of smoke ran across the sky and descended into the city streets not far from where he stood. The smoke nearest the ground had an orange hue, a sure sign of a raging fire from a crashed ship.
A few more steps into the street and Loki could see the palace. He looked on in horrified disbelief as enemy ships swarmed his home. Asgardian skiffs were close on their tails but it seemed the damage was already done. Only when one of the enemy ships taking fire blew up in total silence did Loki realized his dampening field was still up. He dispelled it with a word and was instantly assaulted by the sounds of the battle. The roar of enemy airships and the returning fire of Asgard's rail guns filled his ears but it was the screaming that left him stunned. The screams of people fleeing the streets into their homes for safety or running from the site of the downed airship, their once safe city turned into a field of battle.
Dragging his eyes back up, he noticed something else. The shield wasn't up. The palace shield that was all but impregnable was not raised, leaving it exposed to enemy fire. Loki turned the direction of the observatory where Heimdall had control of the shield and he saw it. His greatest fear come to life. A ship with a very distinctive cross shape hovered at the horizon just beyond the golden dome. Only one race ever built a ship with that design. One race under one particular leader.
"Malekith," Loki breathed in horror.
This was it, exactly what he feared from the moment he deduced the Aether was not destroyed and the dark elves may not be as extinct as everyone believed. He knew he needed to act, to join the fight, but shock kept him rooted where he stood until another impact from another downed ship shook the ground. It didn't knock him off his feet but a pair of terrified adolescents running from the blast did.
The collision snapped him out of his stupor. Loki scrambled to his feet and closed his eyes to concentrate. Malekith could have but one target—Jane. She must be protected above all else. Straining to focus amidst the battle and his own chaotic emotions, Loki reached out to the palace with seiðr, but he couldn't find her through the many distractions. Gritting his teeth, he tried again, feeling every part of himself strain with the effort to set aside the confusion and frenzy, both within and without, and concentrate. But he still found nothing. Panic flared in his chest, ruining his focus again. He should have been able to see her, sense her, but she was gone. Had Malekith succeeded already?
Gathering what little concentration he could muster, Loki tried again, desperate for a sign that not all was lost. That was when he felt it. Not Jane, something else. Something rather similar to the dampening field he used before. And it was his mother's handiwork.
Loki huffed out a relieved breath. Jane hadn't been taken by Malekith. Frigga was hiding her. Now that he knew what he was looking for, Loki pinpointed the source of the spell and transported himself straight to it, expecting to find his mother and Jane safe and concealed. His relief vanished the moment he materialized within the palace. He found his mother, so powerful she could mask even the presence of an infinity stone, helpless and at the mercy of a dark elf and a monstrous creature who held a sword to her back.
Gripped by panic, he lashed out with seiðr, but he was too slow. The monster had already started to move. As if time slowed, Loki saw everything with brutal clarity. He saw the monster's arm tense as it began to thrust and a glint of light from the blade as it shifted into motion. Despite the noise of the still raging battle, he heard a pained rush of breath leave his mother's mouth. And he saw his own strike land too late, knocking the beast back and making him drop his weapon, but not before it already pierced Frigga's back. She fell to the ground, unmoving.
Time's flow returned to normal right as a bolt of lightning arced over Loki's shoulder and straight at Malekith's face. The elf flew backward, slamming into the balcony parapet. The beast, already recovered from Loki's attack, gathered up his master and leaped the two of them over the edge. Loki hardly noticed his brother rush past him, flinging Mjolnir at the two fiends. All he could look at was his mother's lifeless body, collapsed on the ground where that vile creature dropped her.
Thor turned back his direction, Mjolnir once again in hand. He knelt beside their mother and grasped her wrist.
"Is... is she..." Loki hesitated, forcefully swallowing down what felt like a stone lodged in his throat. "Thor, is she-"
"She lives," he said. "But she isn't breathing. Go and tell Eir we're coming."
Loki didn't move. He couldn't. Not until he saw her move.
"Loki, go!"
"We'll go," came a reply from behind him. Though he couldn't tear his eyes from Frigga, Loki spied Jane and Sif at the corner of his vision.
Thor got to his feet, Frigga limp in his arms. "Thank you, Jane."
The patter of her soft shoes and the louder clank of Sif's boots swiftly disappeared down the corridor. Loki still could not force himself to move, not even as Thor pushed past him. How could this happen? How had he not foreseen this exact thing? How could he have been so foolish to ignore obvious signs of trouble and stay safe in his seiðr bubble in the archive when he was the one saying for a year that Malekith would make his return? If that ship hadn't crashed nearby he might still be there and Frigga-
Loki gasped, his mind playing back the sight of the blade driving into her again and again. He pressed his hands to his head as hard as he could, as though that alone would force the images out.
"Loki?"
He turned and saw his father approaching, Gungnir held ready in his hands. "It's Mother. She..."
His voice caught in his throat and he couldn't speak. Odin drew closer, and asked, "Where is she?"
"...The healing room. Thor took her."
Odin's eye widened and he turned and left without a word. Forcing himself into action, Loki uprooted his feet from the floor and followed, step by lumbering step, feeling as though a weight as heavy as Mjolnir was attached to each limb. By the time he reached the healing room, his mother was already in the soul forge. Eir stood beside it, examining its readings with a grim expression on her face. Thor and Jane stood at the foot of the forge, holding hands with fingers interlaced. Odin passed them and stood across from Eir. Loki stopped at the entrance, his reluctant body carrying him no further.
"There was an enchantment on the blade, my king," Eir explained gravely. "It prevents the wound from healing. We can lift it but it will take time, perhaps hours. There is a chance it may not be fast enough."
Odin nodded, solemnly taking his wife's hand. Loki's mind began to spin, twisting and turning at frantic speeds. There had to be something, some way to...
"Her situation is not without hope," Eir continued. "For the size of the weapon, the wound is shallow. Had the blade pierced her heart, she would have already succumbed to the injury. We have a chance to restore her, but we must begin right away."
Thor looked over at Loki, a weak smile on his face. "It seems you gave her a fighting chance, brother."
Loki shook his head, mind still racing. "No, she died."
His brother's smile vanished. "What?"
Loki descended into the healing room and walked to the soul forge, scrambling to put his thoughts in order. "Let word be spread she died. We can use-"
He was cut off by a hand striking him across the face, hard enough that he stumbled sideways. Loki straightened up, pressing a hand to the side of his face where he felt a thin trickle of blood from a small cut across his cheekbone. In front of him stood Odin, hand still clenched in a fist. The blazing fire in his eye stopped Loki's heart for several beats.
"How dare you," Odin bellowed. "Your mother may yet die and your only thought is how to use the situation for gain?"
Loki stepped back, hands raised in surrender. "No, that's not-"
"So you merely tempt the Norns to make her death certain by declaring it so."
"Father, please. I-"
The All-Father silenced him with a wordless roar. Before he was aware of his own movement, Loki was running. He fled as fast as he could, not even hesitating when he heard Thor calling after him.