Chapter 11
Volstagg swung his axe in a wide arc, catching an elf in the midsection. The miscreant went down but two more took his place to continue the assault. He couldn't understand where they kept coming from. The dark elves were said to have perished entirely five millennia ago, yet now it seemed not just Malekith but a whole battalion of his warriors survived. It was bad enough the Asgardians were so vastly outnumbered, but they were also missing one of their own.
"Where is he?" he shouted, hearing the clang of Fandral's rapier behind him.
"The beast sent him off in that direction."
Volstagg risked a glance to see where his companion was pointing but there was no sign of either Thor or the monster that went after him. A bolt of energy from a dark elf weapon shot past his face, close enough to singe his beard. The acrid smell of burnt hair wafted into his nostrils, a forceful reminder not to allow himself to be distracted again.
"We need his help," he said, deflecting a second bolt off the edge of his axe.
"What if he needs ours?" Sif replied before smashing her shield into the masked face of an elf and driving her glaive through its chest.
"Thor needing help?" Fandral quipped, ducking just in time to avoid the swath of a dark elf blade through the space where his head had just been. "Our Thor?"
Despite the light-hearted words, Volstagg knew his friend worried. They all did. Thor's strength may be unparalleled but he was no more invincible than the rest of them. And they all knew tales of the Kursed, of their power and viciousness. That Thor had not yet returned to their sides was proof of the challenge posed by even one of the famed monsters.
Volstagg rammed the handle of his axe into the belly of another elf. The elf doubled over, putting him in perfect position for Volstagg to bring his blade down onto its neck. "Even if he does, we cannot leave this fight."
Sif blocked another sword blow with her shield but the force of it knocked her back a few paces. She grunted against the strain and returned with a lethal strike of her own. "Then we best win it."
~~~|~~~
Loki paced in his chamber, eaten up with restlessness. The Convergence was close, he could feel it. His very skin seemed to crawl with its energy as though thousands of tiny insects had burrowed beneath it and were scurrying around under the surface.
A painful twinge in his chest made his gait falter for a moment. He halted and pressed his hand over the scar, hissing a curse through clenched teeth. Damn that foul elf for doing this to him. Damn his own carelessness for not minding his surroundings. If not for that, he would not be here now. He would be where he should be, on Midgard fighting shoulder to shoulder with his brother instead of hiding away in his rooms.
For good measure, he also cursed Thor for making him vow to stay behind. At the very least, he should have insisted on making the journey to Midgard, even if Thor refused to let him fight once there. That way, he could have been of some use, however limited. After all, strategizing and coordinating their efforts was not so strenuous it would jeopardize his recovery. At most, it would tire him out. Hardly a major concern. He could even have helped direct the battle while sitting down if he had to. But such a thing hadn't even occurred to him until long after Thor left and now here he was, alive and well, and utterly useless. Norns, what had he been thinking?
Something like thunder rumbled outside and Loki went to his terrace. Gazing upward, he saw a hole opening in the sky. Through it could be seen hints of a green landscape. Vanaheim. The appearance of the portal meant the peak was mere minutes away. Soon other windows would appear in the sky and if his friends were unsuccessful, darkness would pour through them one after the other until all was consumed.
Loki turned and crossed the room to a set of shelves near his desk. They held all manner of artifacts, tools, and compounds he used in his study of seiðr. He retrieved a round silver basin inscribed with ancient runes and set it down. He filled it half-full with water and spoke the words of a scrying rite before the surface of the water calmed. Once it was completely still, the water turned opaque and his own reflection vanished, replaced by a vision of what has happening on Midgard. He watched Malekith's ship set down on a river bank, leaving a wide trench of ruined earth behind it. Malekith and his forces emerged. A moment later, Thor landed in front of him and Loki winced. Why did his brother always insist on charging their enemies head-on?
His dismay only worsened as Malekith used the Aether to drive Thor back. Sif, Fandral and Volstagg emerged to join the fray. At least Thor had enough tactical foresight to conceal their presence until the last possible moment.
The Kursed one stalked toward his brother and struck him with a brutal blow. Thor tumbled through the air like a doll, landing hard. Loki's breath froze in his lungs and his heart skipped beat after beat until his brother rose. Damn him, he thought again. Thor wanted him to stay behind for fear of losing him. Whether he realized it or not, by doing so he only ensured Loki would be the one to feel that terror instead. Watching the Kursed descend on his brother again, Loki felt the same aching helplessness of watching the attack on his mother. His brother was outmatched, and not even Mjolnir was enough to bolster his chances. If he should fall...
No, he wouldn't let it happen. He would make sure it didn't. But he couldn't do that from here.
Making up his mind to act, Loki strode toward his chamber door, but he paused before he reached it. While he was almost at his full strength, world-walking would sap too much of his power for him to be of any use once he reached Midgard. The weak spots between realms caused by the Convergence were too unpredictable for him to rely on. That left the bifrost as his only option, but Heimdall would surely never open it for him at such a perilous time and there was no time to convince the All-Father to overrule him. To use the bifrost, Loki needed a way around the gatekeeper. If only he could keep him out of the way, somehow.
An idea occurred to him and before it was even fully formed in his mind, Loki had teleported to the weapons vault. He leaped down the steps as fast as he dared and ran across the gangway to the pedestal at the far end. Upon reaching the Casket of Ancient Winters, he took it into his hands. As his fingers closed around its handles, he was struck by the vivid memory of the first time he held it. He felt the surge of anguish that consumed him the day he tried to end his life. It staggered him but only briefly, for along with it came the memory of his father's arms enfolding him, holding him close, and making him believe that his true heritage had no bearing on his family's love for him.
Loki twisted his hands and sent the Casket into his interdimensional pocket. He wondered if the gatekeeper would ever forgive him for what he was about to do, if any of them would. He was well, at least well enough that he was not breaking his vow to Thor. But what of his parents? It was only a short while ago he nearly died rushing off to save Asgard, and he despite what he told them, he was about to do it again. Not for the same reasons, but would that matter when all was said and done?
Loki did his best to banish those thoughts. His family loved him, he knew they did. They may not love what he was going to do, but they would love him. He just needed to trust in that love, not the doubts of his own foolish heart. He turned around to go back the way he came and froze when he saw who was at the other end of the room.
"What are you doing with that?" his father demanded.
~~~|~~~
From a perch high up in the corner of one of the campus buildings, Jane watched as Darcy and Ian tried to avoid the dark elves long enough to plant the last of the gravometric rods. In the clouds above them another portal appeared. She felt a fleeting sense of regret that she wouldn't get the chance to observe the phenomenon as an ordinary scientist. The information gleaned from the Convergence could be invaluable to her own research, but she'd never get to find out. Maybe the Asgardians could wait another five thousand yeas for the next one, but she couldn't. Not that saving the universe instead wasn't a good trade-off. It was only that her inner scientist was hard to ignore.
"We're almost at the peak," Erik said, interrupting her thoughts. "Seven minutes."
"Then we'll just have to keep Malekith busy for eight," she replied without looking at him. Her eyes were busy going back and forth from her scanner's display to her cell phone resting on the ledge beside her as she waited to hear confirmation from Darcy.
"Are you sure this is going to work? These devices were meant to detect the anomalies, not cause them."
Jane nodded at him. The gravitational field emitted by the spikes would interact with the weak spots between the realms. Anyone close enough to be caught in the field would find themselves yanked through to another world. With her scanner, Jane could dial the field up or down, growing or shrinking it to suit her needs. At least, that was what was supposed to happen. She'd gone over the data and done the math. It should work, in theory. But there were always unforeseen variables and the Convergence wasn't exactly predictable.
She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and looked across the grounds, mentally urging Darcy and Ian to finish. As if hearing her, Darcy turned her direction and gave an emphatic thumbs up. She and Ian ran for cover while Jane focused the scanner on one of the rods in the middle of the melee below. The air around it bent like a heat shimmer before the rod sent out a pulse through the air like a ripple on a pond. Three dark elves who were about to gang up on Fandral were caught in the wave and disappeared.
"It worked," she said, the words heavy with relief.
"That's awesome," came Darcy's tinny voice over Jane's cell phone speaker. "Ooh, get the guy with the sword!"
One of Malekith's soldiers had seen the two interns hide and was heading their way. Jane refocused the controls and sent out another wave but it went the wrong direction and disappeared Darcy and Ian instead.
"Oops," Jane muttered.
She triggered the rod again and was relieved to see their energy signatures pop up on her display around the corner from the spot where they vanished.
"What the hell just happened?" Darcy shouted over the phone.
Before Jane could explain, she heard a crash on the other end of the phone, followed by a scream.
"Move!" Darcy yelled.
There was another crash and some scuffling over the speakers, followed by silence. Hoping what she heard was just Darcy dropping the phone, Jane leaned out to try and spot them, just catching a glimpse of her and Ian running alongside the road while being chased by a pair of elves.
"Jane," Erik said, drawing her attention back to the main event.
Malekith seemed to have grown tired of waiting for his people to beat the Asgardians and was using the Aether to attack them. He sent missiles of red energy at Sif, who barely dodged them with a low roll. Another blast slammed into Fandral from behind and sent him into a face plant. He got up with his sword still in hand, but he staggered a bit on unsteady feet, dazed from the impact. Volstagg abandoned the elves in front of him in favour of charging at Malekith at a speed Jane would never have expected from him. He swung his axe over his head, unleashing a lion-like roar. Miracle of miracles, he managed to connect before Malekith blocked him. Malekith flew backwards and vanished through a portal. Volstagg kept charging as if he knew where the elf would reappear. He turned out to be right but Malekith was ready this time. Using the Aether's strength, he punched Volstagg in the center of his chest and sent him flying the same way he had Thor.
Thor! Jane suddenly thought. She hadn't seen him since that Kurse thing went after him. Their whole plane was counting on him and his hammer but he was nowhere in sight. Her pulse quickened into an anxious thudding in her chest. Thor wouldn't willingly leave his friends to fight alone. Something was keeping him away, the same something that had nearly killed Frigga. If the attack on Asgard proved anything, it was that for all their strength, the Aesir were not invulnerable. Not even Thor.
She scanned across the campus grounds, weighing their chance of success. Sure, she could improve their odds by getting rid of as many elves as she could but that would be meaningless if they couldn't also take out Malekith. Thor was their best shot at that. Without him, they may have already lost.
"Come on, Thor," she pleaded under her breath. But wherever he was, he didn't seem to hear.
~~~|~~~
Loki began crossing the floor of the vault. "They need my help, Father."
At the top of the stairs, Gungnir in hand, Odin sighed. "Loki-"
"I heard what you and Mother said to me," he interrupted, coming to a stop at the bottom step. "I heard it, and I swear this is not another sacrifice play. But the mortals are outmatched and so is Thor. I'm going to help them."
"Loki-"
"It's not recklessness," he insisted. "I know I am not fully fit to fight but the Casket will make up for it. I can do this, Father."
"I know, Loki."
The remark caught Loki flat-footed and his remaining arguments dissolved in his mind, emerging from his mouth in a brief, wordless sound. Odin began descending the stairs.
"Thus the Silvertongue is rendered speechless. I never thought I'd live to see it. Tell me, how did you plan to persuade Heimdall to allow you passage?" He glanced past Loki to the empty pedestal that usually held the Casket. "Or was persuasion even part of the plan?"
Loki held his gaze but said nothing, knowing that using the Casket on Heimdall was the least defensible part of his plan. From his knowing tone and pointed look, the All-Father knew it too.
"The Casket won't be enough," his father said. He held up his hand when Loki began to protest. "Perhaps I should have said the Casket alone won't be enough."
Loki looked around the vault, in part just to hide his relief that Odin wasn't there to stop him from going to Midgard. There were other weapons but he couldn't see how any of them would be a help in this particular fight. "I don't know what else to take."
The All-Father smiled. "I do."
~~~|~~~
It didn't matter how many times he blinked, Thor's vision refused to clear. The indistinct but unmistakable shape of the Kursed grew closer. Thor made one more attempt to reach out for Mjolnir but his sluggish arm was too slow. The beast kicked it out of reach and leaned over him with a satisfied growl.
Blow after brutal blow hammered down on Thor's face and body. His armor saved his torso from the worst of it but he had no such protection for his head. With each strike his vision filled with a flash of white. It wasn't long before the flashes were all he saw.
Then there was another flash, brighter than the rest. Through his muddled thoughts, Thor realized that was strange. He saw a flash but felt no blow. Was he truly so far gone that he no longer felt the pain of his certain demise?
Above him, the Kursed roared. Thor closed his eyes, ready for the final blow. It didn't come. Instead, he heard a voice.
"Go to Hel, monster."
Through the ringing in his ears from the blows to his head, he could just make out the crack of weapons fire. A very specific kind of weapons fire, one that he recognized, but could not quite place.
The Kursed roared again after the blast but now Thor thought he could hear pain in the sound. Another blast followed, and another, and another, until Thor lost track of how many there were. The monster struggled against the onslaught but didn't prevail. It fell to its knees, smoke rising from its charred and ruined body. With one final blast, it was dead.
Footsteps approached and a greenish form took shape in front of Thor. At first, it passed him and came to stop beside the corpse of the Kursed. The same voice he heard earlier spat a vicious oath over the body, each word dripping with acid. Thor's vision was still not clear as the green shape turned toward him but he could see enough to leave him stunned. At first, he thought it was a vision, a dream. Something unreal. Not because of who he saw, but what the person had with him.
"Well, brother," Loki said, twirling Gungnir—the All-Father's Gungnir—in his hands before slamming the butt of the spear into the ground. "Always getting into trouble without me, aren't you?"