12. Black Sabbath

. . .

He could hear Fitz softly clearing his throat by way of giving him an alert as he finished parking the borrowed SHIELD car in the lower bay of the Playground. Loki looked up over the steering wheel and saw Coulson idling in the doorway above, fussing with the edge of his black sling. No staring, no anger, just a man waiting for two of his agents to get back in house and give their updates.

Loki had just gotten through his third beer and was still toweling off his finally-clean hair when the Director called to draw them both back into the fold. Coulson didn't sound stressed, at least; just new things in the wind. Something changed. Apparently Strange had beaten Loki to that phone call – before Loki could contact him, the sorcerer went ahead and lit a fire under the organization with what the demigod could only assume was some new and freshly-scented vision of Hel. Very well, he'd sort that out when he was done getting himself and Fitz back to safety. So he shrugged and got driving and now he slid out of the small car and gave Coulson a thin smile of greeting. "Your financiers are going to get dinged for a handful of towels I wrecked in a motel on the cheap side of Philadelphia."

Coulson arched an eyebrow at him, then nodded a silent greeting towards Fitz as he tunneled out of the passenger side with only a little bit of awkward fumbling. "That's a hell of a hello. Define 'wrecked.'"

"I set them on fire when I was done washing demon bits off of myself. It was honestly the best solution. Doesn't really come out with bleach, those gritty little nubbles." Loki shrugged and opened the door of the back seat to get his pile of notes, the bag containing the few remaining beers, and the laptop case.

"Okay," said Coulson, his face going professionally blank while he absorbed that tidbit. His eyes went to Fitz to see that, no, Loki wasn't exaggerating or joking. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the briefing room nearby. "Doctor Strange is onsite, just beat you here with some sort of creepy magic timing. Don't worry about stowing your stuff yet, we're going to go straight into a bull session. Definitely don't leave out the bit with the demon when you write your report."

"Oh, good," said Loki with as much cheer as he could bother to muster. "Well, I suppose that works out better than using Skype. I can get a good look at his face with the news I bring to the table. It's something, I suppose." He slammed the door of the car shut with a little more extra force than necessary, making it rock on its wheels. He looked up at the Director one more time before moving to the stairs and saw another warning – the presence of Strange was probably not the only annoying news about to greet him. There was a remarkably strong temptation to bring the remaining beer into the briefing.

. . .

Doctor Strange didn't look up when Coulson, Loki, and Fitz wandered into the room. He shifted in the chair he'd commandeered, his long, gloved fingers steepling against each other as people took their places in those ways that suited them best. Coulson at the head of the meeting table, Loki leaning against a far wall to presumably tower over the proceedings, and Fitz, looking as if he felt a little out of place, taking a chair near to the demigod. The door to the small briefing room stayed open; at least one SHIELD trainee poking their head in to take a startled glance around and then leaving again in an apologetic rush at the sight of their boss.

The sorcerer supreme tapped his fingers together. "I must admit to finding a certain amount of humility in recent events." His grey-blue eyes filtered up to regard each of the SHIELD agents in turn, ending with Loki. "You were right. Something was missed on our end."

Loki didn't twitch a muscle at the surprise admission to him, save to glance warily at Coulson. The Director shrugged back. The exchange wasn't lost on Strange, who sighed. "My assistant and I assumed yet another assessment of our home after your update. Top to bottom, every spectrum of every possible art analyzed. And to my assistant's abject horror, he'd previously been right on top of one of the answers we sought and never knew. We found a trace of something underneath the case that once held the Promethium Key. A smudge of earth that had been scraped by a nail. My assistant's, of course." He looked rueful. "An honest mistake, and one he must be forgiven for. The trace was negligible. He never realized what he'd found."

Loki waved it off, thinking ruefully of Fitz's earnest reminder. Sometimes things get missed. "And the source of that material?" He didn't bother to sound like he was waiting to be surprised.

"It goes to prove that the true mistake here was mine. In my rigid belief that it could not be possible, I ignored the simplest explanation. The earth we found originates from the 'limbo' dimension that was once the key's home, naturally. Less than a fingernail's breadth of red sand pressed into the wood of my case." The thin features twisted, contorting the dark goatee into a brief sneer meant for some invisible opponent. "Belasco. He had a traveler's gifts. If he survived-"

"He did. I have heard his name spoken by a cult forged – I presume - under his hand." Loki smiled faintly at the microexpression of frustration that whispered across the man's face.

"-Then he might have had a way straight to the key. Connected to it, two lost relics of a dead world. Such things have ways of finding each other. The false portal was left to cause us to waste time with its riddles. And so, we've another sorcerer on the loose, one seemingly without cause or king..." Strange trailed off, his lips pursing.

The demigod arched his eyebrow, not particularly mollified by the doctor's lip service to humility. "Without cause? I'm afraid I must intervene. This 'Belasco' has a most specific cause, and you and I aren't the only ones who've seen its trail. You missed more than one hint, Strange, and now that's been placed at my feet instead as well." His tone earned him a look from Coulson, whose lone good hand laid flat on the table in front of him in a silent warning.

It got him a sharp stare from Strange, as well. "He cannot be so mad as to resume his old plans! Further, I did not intend-"

Loki cut him off. "I know quite well what you intended, Strange, and in your insistence to focus your concerns on my place in the eternal balance, you neglected not only the evidence in your home but the words of those few who might have been your ally." He kept going as the sorcerer began to pull himself to his feet, the aquiline face lined in anger. He leveled his own voice back down, attempting to maintain control of the emotions rising in the room. He didn't look at Coulson; if he had not bothered to intervene openly yet then he would simply have to trust to Loki's admittedly irritable judgment. "Drumm, Strange. Your old contemporary, the master of his family's loa. He came to you with a vital clue, a warning. If you'd just taken the time to look."

The change in the sorcerer supreme's face was immediate and telling. The man looked struck, lowering himself back into his seat without a word. A gloved hand went to his forehead, a single finger pressing at the place between his brows as if a third eye had betrayed him. "His missing. I thought it a small matter when I had so many more pressing duties, though I tried to not simply brush him away. You found them?"

There was nothing to read in Strange's tone. It was a dead, inert question. Loki decided he preferred that. "First they found us – myself and Fitz here. And then I went to find them, discovering that their patron's chosen to give them some fairly horrible gifts for their use." He smiled down at the human's black hair, no mirth on his lips. "The door is preparing to open, apparently. They wish to bring through some entity I do not know of. What is Shuma-Gorath?"

Stephen Strange jerked in his seat, the lean face coming up again in plain horror.

. . .

This is not what the sorcerer tells them, but it is what must be understood.

This is Shuma-Gorath:

In the nothing between the realities are Its endless tentacles, filling all the little places it can reach with madness and despair. It is everything and nothing, Its mind forever full of screams and desire. It is the God of Contagion; to share Its vision is to warp your own into a sympathetic mirror reflecting only Its one staring, awful eye that glares into the depths of eternity – your madness, Its hunger. It is the slithering echo of a dying breath, It is the shadow that follows behind the light of day. It exists in superposition, Its greater morphic self forming the cold, invisible web between countless universes, Its physical incarnation squirming and loathsome to behold with its tentacles and lone squirming eye and its iris made up of all the colors of pain.

Shuma-Gorath sees through that one eye alone in both its incarnations, for that is all It needed to behold the forever night. There It sees the end of that era; It sees the hem of Death's own robe drawn like a veil over Its fate.

And Shuma-Gorath HATES that endless incarnation; hates Her on her throne above the ultimate nexus of all things. Shuma-Gorath has scratched at the door of Death Herself as a would-be conquerer and been sent away mewling before. Shuma-Gorath believes in slow revenge, and the patience of a long knife stowed well away in blackened minds throughout the ages. Throughout universes.

In every level of the multiverse that It has squirmed Its way through, It has become an infection in the balance, striving to rewrite the rules anew and proclaiming the multiverse itself to be the cause. In the ultimate heresy against nature, It does not seek the eternal nothing – It seeks eternal life to shape into worship. The cancer of the universe made flesh, for It to bind and hold fast.

Shuma-Gorath is bound only by rules and doors; It must be ASKED to come into the light. It must be brought through, like a welcomed guest. On the other side of one scarred, blood-black door, It hears the sibilant whisper of the mad mage – Belasco. Belasco has the Key to this door between them, a matter that took a decade to plan and still nearly fell apart countless times. Sweet Belasco, who sacrificed himself and the last light of his limbo kingdom to that eternal night for an earlier and failed chance to free Shuma-Gorath from the places between, where it is always cold and the only sound is an unceasing wail. Sweet Belasco, who screamed beautifully for decades until he landed in a pile of his own bones, kept screaming until he reformed. Oh Belasco, child of rage.

Shuma-Gorath is not capable of love. It could crave – and It craved something broken in the old sorcerer. It gave him dreams to goad him, gave him gifts so that he could find his way to what they both needed.

Shuma-Gorath lives in the darkest part of the universes, and in between the ticking seconds of terror granted by sleep hypnosis. It is the cold spot in the Eridanus sector that lurks beyond mankind's eyes, where realities press together as thinly as Its own outer membrane of skin. It is the void zone millions of miles away from the Milky Way. And It hears Its cultists screaming Its name at night, in their barrows and chapterhouses, waiting for the day It boils Its horrible flesh through the door that separates them. It will come, and these lost will thank It when they fall to their knees before It, swept into Its tentacles and then consumed by Its anathema grace.

Shuma-Gorath is not alone. There are worse yet than It filling the hollow between the all the worlds of the dreaming and the real – but It is the one that knocks at the door.

. . .

In the ticking silence between Strange's words, Loki thought of this maddened Belasco and something cold wormed its way through his bones.

That could have been me.

In another place and time, it may have been meant to be me.

He flexed his clenched fist, hidden under one arm. He let no one else see.

. . .

"Did I miss the boring bit? Mystic backstories and whatever. Snore." Tony Stark jammed his head through the doorway of the briefing room, a bag of shelled pistachios crinkling in his hand. His abrupt half-entrance startled a tense Fitz into jumping upright next to Loki, the clatter of his chair breaking the rest of the silence that had fallen over the trio of men as Strange finished explaining a fraction of the mythology behind an endlessly powerful eldritch God. His head pulled back into the hall, asking someone else basically the same question. Coulson looked up when he heard Skye mumbling back and forth with the Avenger. "Oh, cool," came the muffled final response. Then he strode back in, followed by a young woman who looked like she'd just faced a whirlwind of her own.

Skye got some of her wind back when Stark dropped lazily into another chair next to the doctor. "Awesome, we can finally start the natty goatee club. I'll call Mack down, it'll be a trio. Phil, we're gonna need to paste some mirror universe facial hair on you." She smirked when Tony Stark snapped his fingers at her in what was probably some form of approval.

Loki, for his part, stared first at Stark and then at Coulson. His arm lifted slightly to gesture vaguely at the new arrival, his face holding the much clearer message of are you being serious with me right now?

He got a pained smile in response, but before Phil could say anything Stark cut in through a mouthful of snacky bits. "Shocks all around lately. Phil's alive, won't tell me how, never called, never wrote. We've been talking that out. Well, I keep talking at him while he walks away all busy and awkward looking with his one hand. Won't talk about that either. Hi again, Phil!" He waggled his fingers at the Director, followed by a wide, insincere grin.

"He let himself in. Stark, would you believe I'm a life model decoy? Just waiting on the spare parts kit." The pained expression seemed etched on Coulson's face.

"Suuuuuuure. First you tried the Holodeck excuse. I'd almost buy 'clone,' since I'm still figuring out how I saw two of that Koenig guy upstairs. Usually I'm good at spotting twins. Don't ask why. It's tacky." Stark coughed around an inhaled husk of a nut, reaching out for the pitcher on the desk. "Is this water? It's water." He glanced up at Loki. "Okay, not your theological gig, but can you do that transformation thingie? Water into Absolut? Be a pal?"

His response was a blunt, vaguely aghast stare from several faces around the room. Curiously, it was Strange that looked the most stunned by the flippant request.

"It is kinda heretical to ask." Stark shrugged it off and settled for the water. "Sooooo, Fitz? Your name's Fitz, right?" He glanced up at the young man, still fidgeting next to Loki. Fitz managed a nod. "We gotta rig that scan expansion. Figured I'd step in and help, get that up and running within a day or so. Stark controls systems are currently operating more than half the airport luggage scanners across the country, and a bunch across the world. I got the hook-up." He set down the pitcher and tapped at his wrist where he wasn't actually wearing a watch. "Tick tock, we've got a timetable apparently. Nice job reworking what I did. Really smooth. You want a job with Stark Industries? We pay better."

The words started as a half-strangled jumble of surprise. "I-I-I like my job. My friends are here."

Tony glanced quickly up at him. "You know who you're standing next to while you're saying that, right?"

"...My friends are here." It came out much firmer this time, followed by arms crossed steadily across himself. He didn't look up to see the blank expression that crawled across Loki's face and then stayed there to burrow into a creasing brow.

"Wow." Tony blinked rapidly at Coulson. He pointed his bag of snacks at the young scientist. "That is some genuine A-list loyalty, Phil."

"It's the dental plan," deadpanned the Director. "Skye, Fitz, can you work with Stark on that?"

"Yeah," Skye said, while Fitz nodded. She pointed a tablet stylus at Loki, who seemed mostly mentally elsewhere. "While you're here, I finished combing that forum six different ways. I can map out a bunch of their little regional headquarters and whatnot, but the big thing? There's not a word about Drumm or you. For certain. So I dunno how they got a jump on you."

"The scanner," blurted Fitz. His eyes went wide with realization, looking up at Loki's still-blank expression. "The- all it ever picked up was us, right? And they sniffed you out at the meeting, and they walked right up to our hotel? So... okay, maybe its stronger than we know on some level."

Loki seemed to rejoin reality, blinking once. "They smelled promethium on us, you mean."

"Beats Axe body spra-"

"Not everything is a damned joke, Stark!" The room went dead silent at the demigod's abrupt snarl. He held up a hand to indicate his own silence, inclining his head towards Coulson in a private apology. "I'll arrange a written report on what's been done thus far." In an attempt to cut some of the tension he'd made, he glanced down at Fitz. His voice was wry. "I'll be certain to use a tablet, to avoid any further incidents." It got him a faltering smile as he excused himself.

"Ooooookay," said Stark, looking around the room and catching the eye of the quiet sorcerer still remaining. He didn't look particularly ruffled. "Maybe I should have stuck around for the backstory bit. Kinda missed the tone of the group there."

Strange did nothing but arch an eyebrow in a knowing, unhappy response.