AN- Hi guys!
This is Chapter 1 of PART 3 of my Alva Inkerion Series.
Part 1; The Lover is Loki/OFC smut, with some backstory. Part 2; The Healer is and Age of Ultron AU where the avengers meet Alva (my OFC). Part 3; The Scholar will cover the timelines of Civil War and Dr. Strange.
Next Chapter should be up in the next few days, I hope you like it, please read and review
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Overall, Alva Inkerion found life at the Avengers compound to be enjoyable. She had been here for nearly a year now, living and working amongst this band of heroes and found them to be good companionship. The Captain, though he had been cool with her when she first joined the group in their fight against Ultron, had warmed up considerably. She found he reminded her of Thor more often than not, though without the exuberant overstatement of everything that was characteristic for the thunder god.
The Captains friend, Sam Wilson was a cheery fellow, seeming to take everyone and everything in his stride. Natasha Romanov on the other hand had been much colder in her approach to Alva, but the elf suspected this was because of Bruce Banner's absence, as she had been standoffish with everyone in the early weeks. Over the last few months she had warmed considerably however. The Colonel Rhodes was strictly professional around Alva, treating her as a foreign dignitary, which in hindsight it was true that she was.
The young Maximoff twins were friendly enough once they had gotten past their initial distrust of the Americans. Wanda was extremely grateful to Alva for saving Pietro's life when he had been wounded protecting Barton and a young child. The girl had been greatly pleased when the Captain suggested the Ljósálfar help to train the young mage. Alva found her to be an engaging student, who would one day soon far exceed her own skill.
In the early lessons she had given Wanda, all of the others had been present. Alva was unsure whether this was out of curiosity – she suspected this motive most strongly on the Man of Iron's part, who had come all the way to the compound for the lesson – or wariness about magic.
She had explained about the differences between Eidr and Seidr to them all, thinking back to a long ago discussion with Loki to fuel her lecture.
The gods eyes where bright with enthusiasm as he explained. "So Eidr is the natural force of all life. It flows through everything and everyone; from the tree by the window, to the bird sitting in its branches, to you and I. It seeps from the flow of the world tree where it resides most strongly into a being at its moment of conception, and stays almost intact until its death, when it returns to Yggdrasil."
"Eir explained that it is the cosmic flow, it travels from being to being with every breath of air or bite of food." Alva replied. "I suppose it always remains in balance?" she asked Loki curiously.
"Yes!" he replied, pleased that she had got the point he was trying to make. "It is so in balance that the populations of most realms remain ever constant. Those that house beings of long-life like you or I, have numbers that remain nearly exactly the same for millennia at a time. As one being dies, another is born. The Midgardians struggle with rising population because there world is so saturated with Eidr, as there is nothing to keep it at a controlled level."
Alva frowned, confused again. "But I thought you'd said it remains constant?"
Loki pulled out a book, showing her a complex representation of the conversion of Eidr into Seidr for magical use. "We harness the Eidr when we do workings of magic. Seidr is the synthetic version of Eidr, what we must convert it to for workings of magic, and so the Eidr in realms that have magic users cannot move beyond a certain level, which controls the population for us."
"I see." Alva smiled. And she did. Loki had such a way of explaining things, she couldn't help but think he would make a marvellous teacher one day. "I suppose the source of the Eidr does not affect the balance?" she asked. "Some magic users, like the Ljósálfar draw Seidr from ourselves, and others like the giants draw it from the elements, and Asgardians draw it from Yggdrasil's branches themselves. I suppose it doesn't make a difference if it's all in balance." She pondered.
Loki smiled. "Almost. Asgardian magic users draw the excess magic from Yggdrasil into themselves to work magic, to draw from the tree itself would probably kill the user. That much uncontained Eidr would be too much for any one being to contain. It burns me if I misstep when walking the branches between the secret paths." He explained.
Alva looked at Loki, a sly smile on her face. "Will you teach me how to walk the secret paths?" she asked.
"Darling, if I taught you that you'd never come back to me."
He had eventually taught her how to walk the paths, though it had taken her a further two centuries to persuade him to.
Alva had explained as best she could to the avengers, and Wanda had seemed to grasp it.
"So my magic is like that of a giant, it is fuelled from the elements?" Wanda asked.
"Not quite," Alva replied, "I believe you draw Eidr from the excess emotions of yourself and others around you. hat is why your magic become more volatile – and also more powerful – when you are in a more dangerous situation."
The others looked more than a little confused, though Tony had been tapping away on a tablet taking notes and muttering to himself about unravelling the secrets of magic.
Over the course of her stay on Midgard Alva had continued in her task to discover the whereabouts for the other infinity gems. Before she sensed the mind stone being awakened on Earth and came to help Thor to secure it, she had been looking into a few other leads on the location of the time stone. A scroll she had acquired from the Vanir library had led her to believe it had been left on Midgard several thousands of years before the war with the Jotun.
Every week Alva left the compound to search another area of the vast lands of Earth to scan for magical residue left behind by use of the stone. The residue could be detected for thousands of years after the use, so once she found a trail it should lead her too the stones location.
Before Thor had left to look into the appearance of so many Infinity Stones over the course of a few short years, he and Alva had sat down with Tony Stark, Natasha Romanov and Steve Rogers to explain as much as they could about the threat the gems may pose.
"So these stones are dangerous?" Steve asked.
"Inherently so." Alva replied. "Each has the potential power to wipe out all of Yggdrasil if harnessed correctly. They each cover one of the six singularities. Space, Time, Soul, Mind, Power and Reality. They give the wielder complete control over that area. But to wield any one of them is to be ruled in turn. The stones are almost – conscious. They are aware, they crave certain things. Their motives cannot be trusted."
Tony looked interested, but Romanov jumped in before he could start a discussion. "Why is this relevant of us?" she asked. "I understand the warning to stay away from them, but after New York and now Sokovia, I doubt any of us planning on looking for more."
Alva dipped her head in agreement. "It is relevant because of where that sceptre came from." She stated.
Steve clarified. "Loki's sceptre? I thought he… made it or something?"
"My brother was skilled at crafting weapons, his dagger's and such, but the sceptre is a working beyond his stills."
"That is not the salient point, Thor." Alva commented. "Loki disappeared for nearly a year in a void of space, a trip that should have killed him. He returned with an army, and the mind stone. Crafted into a sceptre to contain the stones power, to allow one to wield it, but also a deadly weapon."
"So where did he get it then?" Tony asked, getting straight to the point.
"That stone was last said to be held by a being of your worst nightmares. An abomination that once succeeded in making himself immortal and then went completely mad. A being who would not gift someone an army and his crowning jewel so they might do whatever they wished with it. Gifts like that come at a high price, and with a tight leash."
Natasha spoke up, looking sceptical. "You want us to believe Loki was being controlled too? I don't think that's going to be believed by any of us" she stated coldly.
Alva felt a surge of anger. She leant forward, wings mantling up behind her in a threat, a growl crossing her lips as she lost control of her emotions. "I do not want to make you believe anything. You think this is some weak display of sentiment over Loki? You are wrong, mortal. I of all beings know exactly what Loki is capable of! Others have underestimated him, and see where it lead them! I have never doubted his ability to cause as much chaos as possible. That is not the point!"
She leant back, trying to calm herself. The humans looked startled at her outburst.
"I am telling you that there was another involved with your invasion. A being most foul who is still sitting and stewing over the embarrassing defeat he was dealt at your hands and the loss of his prized possession. He will come for it. This day, the next, perhaps a century, but he will come. For the sake of all the realms and all life, my task is to ensure that he does not find more than one stone on this planet when he does."
Steve tried to bring the conversation back. "So can you tell us more about this guy?"
Alva sighed, her wings settling back into a more relaxed hold. "I cannot speak his name for risk of drawing his attention, but I can give you books on his history, as long as you promise not to speak it either." The captain nodded.
"In regards to Loki, I will not dismiss his actions against you, which were despicable, I can only wonder at what he hoped to achieve. I was not trained at birth in strategy, nor raised in a realm of war and conquering, but I can think of two or three better invasion plans than the one he chose. Perhaps he was foolishly overconfident but I doubt it. Whatever his plan in coming to your realm I doubt very much I was to conquer it."
"That was the plan…" muttered Tony to himself.
"What?" Steve asked, confused.
Tony turned to him. "I told him he didn't have a chance that there was 'no version of this where you come out on top' and he said 'that was the plan'."
"You think he was trying to fail?" Natasha asked, looking as though she thought it unlikely.
"I'm not sure," Tony replied. "I'll look into it."
Alva cleared her throat, looking at Natasha. "I apologise for my outburst, it was in poor taste. I want to be clear that I do not give any allowance for Loki's actions. The Scholars of Nornheim work for the good of all life, and I do not condone mass killing. I want there to be another reason for Loki's behaviour, as I am sure Thor does. I want to find out that the man I knew for centuries was not entirely based on a lie, but I do not hold out much hope."
Natasha nodded slowly. "I can understand false hope." She said quietly.
From then on Natasha had never once questioned her motives the few times Loki's name came up in conversation. Alva found that the mortals were surprisingly accepting of the fact she and Loki had been lovers. There was the usual shock when Rhodes and Wilson found out, but neither had seemed to think it particularly important that she was the 'ex' (as they called it) of one of their now dead past-villain's.
Perhaps the most bizarre occurrence during her time living amongst the avengers was when the one year after the Sokovia attack came around. They had watched, bemused, as Alva prepared a great meal for to celebrate the dead – an Asgardian custom she had adopted after several centuries living in the realm – and then proceeded to pluck out 37 of the short tertiary feathers at her back and wrap them together in a lock of her red-brown hair. She then conjured green flames in the palm of her hand to burn this bundle, before using the black ash to daub a rune on her forehead.
"Are you, err, gonna explain that?" Sam Wilson asked, looking bewildered as she indicated they may start eating.
"I killed 37 of Ultron's puppets. You may not see them as 'living' but they did contain Eidr, and so I took 37 lives. I must cleanse my soul of that mar by sacrificing 37 feathers to the True Norns." Alva explained.
Sam looked no less confused. Steve nodded. "I think I remember hearing about an old tradition where soldiers used to cut out a lock of hair for every man they killed. Said that by acknowledging it, it wouldn't fester and make them crave killing others." He said.
"Why your feathers?" Pietro asked, staring almost longingly at the great red wings that stretched out from the Ljósálfar's shoulders.
Alva flexed her wings in response to the attention. "The wings of the light elves are sacred." She explained. "To lose a feather has great meaning. We may gift one for those we care for; family and friends. It is a tradition for lovers trusted enough to touch our wings to steal themselves one or two." Or six or seven, if you where the god of mischief, she thought with a smile.
She continued "To give one in sacrifice makes it meaningful, it shows we admit that taking another's life is inherently wrong even if necessary. It is a mark of the scars it will leave upon our soul. For new feathers will replace the ones taken, but they never grow back in the same places. You can see where feathers have been taken.
"Those who kill to often will leave huge patches of their wings featherless, for if the feathers are not sacrificed willingly, our own Eidr takes recompense and we will lose the feathers, but they will never grow back. Some are called 'the flightless' for obvious reasons and are seen as outcasts until they repent, and the feathers grow back."
"My research has shown that many of the practices of the Ljósálfar you have mentioned seem to work along similar principles to Buddhism." Vision stated. He was sitting with the team while they ate, even though he did not. "It is interesting to see how culturally different the people of Álfheim are from those of Earth." Alva smiled at him. She found Vision to be intriguing.
If she had known how soon things at the compound would turn sour she would have savoured this last meal. It was the last time that all the team, Tony included, gathered together before the events that would crack them in two.
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Please leave a review, let me know what you thought; they inspire me to write faster!
Also, check out my other story The Enlightening of Thor Odinson, which is Loki/Sigyn and features norse mythology references, adorable Uncle Thor and Odin being a dick.
Thanks for taking the time to read, I hope you enjoyed it C.A. xx