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Crossover Event Day 2
Marvel
It was only the three of them: Thor, Valkyrie, and Loki. The only people that stood between the remainder of Asgard’s citizens and the goddess of death. Their chances of surviving this, Loki estimated, were slim to none.
“Asgard is a place, not a people,” Thor said, finally sounding like the king he had grown to be. Though the insane plan he proposed after that—the one about causing Ragnarok— broke the illusion. And if Loki thought a plan was insane…well, that spoke enough volumes as is.
Thor was trusting him to cause the apocalypse.
That damn völva was right after all.
“Now where do you think you’re going, brother dearest?” Hela laughed as she approached them at a sedate pace, lips stretched into a cheshire grin. Her long, clawed fingers twisted in the air. “Stay awhile. Didn’t your mother tell you it was rude to not greet a guest?”
The Bifrost shook and shuddered behind Loki. Rumbled like an earthquake and he could see the cracks forming and widening and— “ Go, go, go!”
He pushed Thor and Valkyrie ahead of him and ran. Behind him, the rainbow bridge splintered and broke apart, giant pieces of the Bifrost falling down into the emptiness of the void. A giant blast of green energy tore through the bridge, casting a ghastly beacon into the sky.
Each step brought them further away from the gaping maw of the void.
Each step brought them closer into Hela’s grasp.
They managed to outrun the splintering Bifrost, skidding to a stop at one of the bridge’s supporting pillars. Hela, merely a stone's throw away from their position, laughed.
She cocked her hip to one side. “Come on, little king!” She called out— not to Thor, but to something behind them. Her fingers stopped twisting in the air. She curled them into a tight fist and pulled .
Though knowledge of Hela may have been scrubbed away from history (covered up like some shameless secret best left forgotten, as Odin was wont to do), myths of the Goddess of Death persisted. Tales of Helheim’s ghastly queen and her half-rotten face spilled from the mouths of parents as a warning to their misbehaving children when threats of Frost Giants in the night would not suffice.
Stories spoke of Lady Death having a general. A hulking beast. A madman. The ghost of a berserker who died in the midst of battle but refused to ascend to Valhalla. Not when there was more bloodshed to be had, more conquering to be wrought. They say that Lady Death extended a hand out to him and promised him unimaginable power if he would but take a knee and obey.
The berserker, the stories said, became the draugr king. And it was said that one day he would lead his legions of the damned to lay siege on the world of the living, conquering and pillaging in the name of his mistress.
Loki did not expect Hela’s general to be a child.
(Then again, Loki never expected Hela to even exist.)
The figure rose from the void like a specter. His skin a deathly pale and hair bone-white. His eyes were enveloped in a bright, toxic green; no sclera, no pupils, nothing but the blank stare of death. And hung around his neck was a pointed crown too big for his head.
It was the valkyrie who broke the silence. “That’s not Pariah Dark.”
Hela’s lips twisted into a wry grin. “No. This little pet of mine is much stronger.”
Ice burst from the draugr ’s hands.
Loki’s centuries of battle-honed instincts kicked into overdrive, his seidr pulling at some untapped raw power that thrummed beneath his skin. He raised his hands—frostbitten blue—and manipulated the ice’s trajectory, curving it over them like a crested wave.
Without even giving them a moment to think , the draugr flew through the ice and slammed himself into Loki’s stomach.
“Loki!” Thor bellowed.
Loki grit his teeth. With a pulse of seidr he pushed his attacker backward. “ Go!” He shouted back at them. “I’ll keep the boy busy, you lot go after Hela.”
The boy spazzed. His shoulders slumped forward, head lolled to the side like some puppet gone slack. Loki threw a dagger straight and true at the boy’s heart.
The draugr jerked up. His form faded out of existence in the blink of an eye, allowing the dagger to pass through him.
Loki bared his teeth. So the boy can fly, shoot that green energy, summon ice, and render himself intangible. Just how many other spells can he do?
There was something wrong with the boy. With the way he fought.
Sluggish was not the right word, not when the draugr had that supernatural speed on his side. It was as if he was dazed . Not all there. A marionette on the string being dragged this way and that.
The draugr king was powerful, Loki knew. Legends spoke of the previous one—Pariah Dark—being as cunning as he was strong, wily as he was ruthless. If this slip of a boy was Pariah’s successor, then Loki knew better than to assume that his opponent was a fool.
He could fly, he could become intangible, and he had a multitude of ranged attacks at his disposal. If he truly wanted to, he could simply exhaust Loki from afar— but no. The boy took every opportunity to attack at close-ranged, allowing Loki’s daggers to be within reach. There are moments when the glow of his eyes would flicker. Precious seconds where he would suddenly freeze and leave himself wide open for attack.
As if he wanted to be attacked.
A theory formed in Loki’s head.
The whispers of a spell surrounded them. Loki’s seidr coiled around them like a serpent; searching, seeking, found .
There you are .
There, wrapped around the boy’s neck was a heavy chain made of a dark and twisted kind of seidr.
The crown was no symbol of power; it was a slave’s collar. And the one holding the end of the chain…
Loki’s eyes flickered towards the battle near them. Hela parried Valkyrie’s blow just in time to whirl around and shove the pummel of her sword in Thor’s gut. There, Loki could see the faint glimmer of a dark chain twisting around her right hand.
“If you can hear me in there—” Loki was a man of words before he was a warrior. His silver tongue was sharper than any weapon in Asgard’s treasury. He grunted, holding his bruised ribs. “If you still have a mind of your own, then I suggest using it right about now.”
The boy flew at him, ice blade forming between his hands that Loki quickly disarmed with his own dagger and threw over the bridge. For a split second, Loki could see those blank green eyes flicker into something else. Something more mortal .
“I can help you.” Loki punched the boy’s face and sent a bolt of fire at his chest.
“Tell me how to free you!” The boy phased through it and retaliated with beams of green energy. Loki narrowly missed the first three shots, but a misstep, a bad twist of the ankle made him stagger. Loki braced for the pain—
The boy seized, suddenly angling his attack elsewhere Enough time for Loki to recover and send a flurry of daggers at the boy’s feet.
This enchantment, whatever it was, did not operate under the same rules as the mind stone. A hard knock to the head would do no good. What Loki needed to find was the spell’s anchor.
His eyes were immediately drawn to the crown. The collar.
The boy lunged at him, fists glowing a bright green. Loki rolled with it, taking the opportunity to hook his dagger into the pointed crown and slam the boy into the ground with a sickening crack. With his other hand, Loki summoned another dagger and stabbed it into the boy’s side.
The draugr screamed.
Pain, Loki learned, was an effective distraction.
Loki pressed the flat of the blade against the boy’s throat drawing a thin line of not-blood. The boy thrashed in his hold. Loki twisted the blade deeper into the not-flesh.
He let go of his daggers and wrapped his hands around the car, hissing in pain as the fires licked his skin but did not burn it. He could feel it, the whispers of this ancient seidr, dark and heavy and full of promise if only its wearer bowed in obedience. If he wasn’t fighting for his life and home, he would have liked to study it. Liked to delicately unravel each enchantment embedded into this wretched crown and learn of its secrets.
But, well, we can’t all have what we want.
He screamed as he pushed his exhausted seidr to the limits, channeling every bit of energy he had into overwhelming the enchantments. Cracks had begun to form at the base of the crown.
In the distance, Loki could hear Hela shout “What are you doing?”
The enchantments still held but Loki’s Asgardian seidr was slowly fizzling out.
If he persisted in this endeavor then—
Norns damn it all!
He pushed past his weakening seidr and latched onto the tendrils of jotunn magic buried deep within him. He could see his fingers turn into that hateful shade of blue, feel the winter settling into his skin like something familiar.
Ice clawed its way in between the cracks of the crown. The cold extinguished the bright green flame and corroded the metal.
Loki screamed.
The boy screamed back. White gloved hands reached up to take hold of the crown. Glowing green eyes flickering into something more solid, more there . The boy screamed as he tried to wrench the crown away from his neck, and Loki was more than happy to oblige.
The crown splintered into a thousand pieces. Loki could see the faint glimmer of the chain disintegrate, Hela’s hold now gone.
The boy slumped to the ground, heaving. Arms thrown over his face to hide the sobs wracking through his body. “Thank you,” the boy rasped. “ Thank you .”
Loki staggered to his feet with a grunt. “No time to waste, boy. I didn’t free you out of the goodness of my own heart.”
“Phantom.”
“What?”
The boy rubbed his face and slowly sat up. “My name is Phantom. Not ‘little king’ or ‘pet’ or ‘boy.’
Loki held out a hand and helped him to his feet. “Well then, Phantom, now that your mind belongs to yourself, how would you like to cause the end of the world?”