Hey guys, so here is the next chapter. As promised, it is a lot longer than the last chapter. Enjoy!

Also I should probably mention that in this story Hela is NOT Loki's daughter. Sorry.

Disclaimer: I only own Nyx.

Sparks. Memories from some faraway place.

I'm sitting with Tyr at our wooden living room table, both of us illuminated by the unsteady light of three candles. I'm ten. Tyr has an array of knives laid out on the table before him. His eyebrows are scrunched together in concentration. He strikes the stone against the sword, sharpening it to a wicked point, then patiently moves on to the next one.

"Dad, It's late." I say. "Why do I have to be here for this?"

"We'll finish this stack," He murmurs, only half listening. "Unless you need to go to bed."

That makes me sit up straighter. "I'm not tired." I insist.

He hunches over the knife again, me watching his every move. "Every warrior should know how to sharpen their own knives, as blacksmiths are not available on the battlefield."

"I know." I say, having heard this hundreds of times before.

"You cannot kill many beasts with a blunt blade, my daughter." He pauses and glances at me for a few seconds, then shakes his head and sighs.

"Father?" I ask.

Tyr frowns down at the knife he was holding. "I want you to take this." He says, handing me a small dagger with a black hilt decorated by a single emerald. "It has been in our family for generations. A good luck charm, if you will." I take the knife in my hand and run my finger along the edge of the blade. It draws blood. Tyr leans back in his chair and rubs at his eyes. "You're right, Nyx. Maybe I should go to bed."

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing. You're growing up so fast, you already are an extraordinary fighter. Now you have your first personal weapon. Next, you'll be coming of age!" He stops and sighs. "Don't waste your life, Nyx. For a warrior it goes over too fast, and you are so special." I sit there, confused as to what he's saying. "Go to bed."

I nod and walk up the stairs, confused and clutching the dagger to my chest.

Everything goes black.

A jolt of pain runs through me. Now I'm twelve. I'm standing in the Palace training grounds, throwing daggers at a bullseye. Most of them hit the yellow centre, not quite in the dead centre but close. Just as I'm throwing my last knife, a body shoves into me, throwing off my aim and embedding the dagger in the wall inches from the target. I look down in anger to see Fandral, sprawled on the floor and laughing hysterically. I look around, but no one else is in the room.

"Fandral?"

He looks up at me through dazed, unfocused eyes. He's still grinning, and swaying slightly on the floor. He mutters something inaudible.

I roll my eyes. He's drunk. "Did you break into the kitchens again? None of us are allowed alcohol yet, and I do not understand why you are so insistent on dulling your senses and sanity so."

He just lies back onto the floor and starts laughing again.

I sigh and start walking out of the room. I'm not helping his sorry ass. I can leave him there.

I'm almost out of the door when I hear a crash and a yelp, and I spin back around to find that Fandral had somehow fell and cut his arm with a dagger. Blood dripped from his arm, but he still stood there, swaying and giggling. I groan, maybe I can't leave him here.

I do the first thing that comes to mind: "LOKI!" I yell at the top of my voice. As always when called, he pops into existence next to me.

"What?" He looks irritated. I gesture towards Fandral, who is now dancing around, leaving a trail of blood behind him. He simply raises his eyebrows and smirks. "Oh no, you're on your own with this one." Then he poofs away back to wherever the hell he came from.

I groan and hit my head off the wall. Damn you Loki. I glance back at Fandral for a second, then yell out another name: "THOR." Unlike Loki, he does not appear. I wait a moment to see if he shows up, but when he doesn't I storm over to Fandral and grab him by his good arm. He doesn't resist, but leans his full weight into me and continues to giggle idiotically.

I drag him to the healers room, dump him on the nearest person, then walk away. I'm not getting myself mixed up in that again.

As I walk down the hallway, Loki appears and falls into step beside me. We don't speak, but we make a silent decision to head to the library and practise our magic. That way we will be out of the way when Odin finds out Fandral had been drinking.

Before we get to the library, I'm plunged into blackness again.

I come to slowly, very slowly, out of the darkness. The back of my neck pulses the way it does when I'm recovering from one of my headaches. I know I've been dreaming, but all I remember is a lingering feeling of dread, of something horrible lurking behind a locked door. I'm lying on hard uneven ground. My dagger is digging into my thigh. Everything's out of focus. I struggle to sharpen my vision, and almost black out again as everything snaps into perspective, with an almost audible crack.

The sky above me is pitch dark, with the occasional star dotted here and there. There are no buildings obscuring my vision, so I can see that the empty sky goes further down than the horizon, it seems to surround me on all angles. Pushing myself up onto my elbows, I realise instantly where I am.

The ground is covered in black, jagged stone slabs, occasionally split by molten lava running through the cracks. There are low mountains filled with dark caves that no doubt inhabit the monsters of this world. A line of blood red torches lead to a lone tower a few yards away from where I lie, and a huge and strangely canine shape stands guard at the entrance.

I'm in Helheim. I guess Hela called for me.

I stood up, relieved to feel that my headache had vanished, and begin following the torches towards the building. As I near, I recognise Gaum, the seven foot hellhound with fur as black as the Void and blood red eyes. Great. How do I get past him? I stop in front of him, regarding him warily.

Just as I'm about to open my mouth and spurt some lie about me knowing exactly why I'm here, Gaum interrupts. "Nyx, Wanderer of the Void, my Queen expects you." He eyes me as if he wants to eat me, but is under strict instructions not to do so. "You may pass." He says reluctantly.

I nod and make my way through the bone archway, and into the dark hallway beyond.

The hallways of the Palace of Helheim are plain and dark. Black stone lines the walls, the ceilings and the floors. It is lit only by the occasional torch, which illuminate the lava seeping through some of the cracks in the walls. Luckily it is a straight passageway, with no turnoffs, so I reach the Throne room without much bother. The room is empty, save for a large ornamental Throne in the centre of the room, made entirely of skulls and bones and ribcages. On the Throne reclines a woman with hair as black as my own, eyes as dark as the Void, and a smirk as cruel as Loki's. I bow before the Throne.

"My Queen, you called for me?"

"Sister, you have no need to bow to me. We are equals. Rise."

I do so, but i am seriously confused. "You need my aid with something." It's more of a statement than a question. "Will it always be so painful when you call on me?"

She smiles. "Yes. And when you call on me, it will cause me the same pain. It is unavoidable." Great. I foresee many head splitting migraines in my future. "And yes, I do desire your aid."

I raise an eyebrow, waiting.

"I desire Midgard. I have seen that the Liesmith is alive and on Midgard, and that the team of mortals known as the Avengers protect that world. Both you and Loki are under their care, so you can strike them from within. Call me to you when they are weakened, and I will bring my armies down on their world and conquer it. Loki will help you, if you ask him. You are bound by the oaths you made to him, just as you are bound by the oaths you made to me. Of course, both he and I are now bound to you also."

"So you want me to kill the Avengers and then call you to me so you can destroy Midgard with your armies." It didn't seem like a bad idea, I was planning on killing the Avengers anyway.

"Yes, and you will join the fight. We will fight as Sisters."

"Why Midgard?" It seemed such a small and petty world to conquer.

Hela sighed. "I am having trouble with the Titan named Thanos. He seems to think that if he causes enough death to please me, I will allow him to court me. His infatuation is an annoyance and I plan to get rid of it. Thanos wanted Midgard for his own, so I will conquer it. Then, once we have Loki on our side also, the three of us and my armies will conquer his Chitauri homelands and kill him. He will be no match for three of the most powerful magic wielders in this universe, and my armies will greatly outweigh his."

"You plan to kill Thanos?" I blinked. "Why do we need Loki for this? Couldn't our combined power be enough to take out Thanos? What need is there to involve him in this?" I didn't want Loki running into a full fledged war, not after I had just gotten him back.

Hela's smile was about as friendly as a pissed off dragon. "Because Loki is the one thing that Thanos wants. After Loki's failed attempt at an invasion, Thanos planned for the Chitauri to kill him. But since all those who were on that mothership were killed, Thanos had to rebuild his forces before he returned for Loki. His forces are back, and he is scouring the universe for him. He wants blood and revenge. Loki is the one person he would go out of his way to kill, the one person he would trade for anything. We will use this to our advantage."

It took a while for me to figure out exactly what she meant by that.

"You want to sacrifice Loki so you can kill Thanos."

There you go! I hope that wasn't anticlimactic. I finally figured out exactly where this story is going, so updates should be a lot faster.

Please review, let me know what you think.

Oh, and before I forget. Me and my friend have been arguing for months over something, so I figured I could ask you guys who you think is right. IS CHOCOLATE MILK OR BANANA MILK BETTER? Thanks guys! :D