21. Done and Undone

. . .

Lorelei spun, hearing the distant clatter as some of her guards returned, prepared to give new information as an offering. Their expressions told her all she needed to know, but the gestures of the one in the lead quickly told her the important detail. "Amora, they've almost breached the palace." She turned to stare at her sister's green-clad back. "Both princes have been identified on approach, as you predicted and hoped. They'll come here soon, they won't idle around while they know what the real prize is. The presence of the Chitauri alone would have told them our desire."

"But they won't come together, they're never allied enough for that. They'll split once they're in. All the better for us, when we stand together as one." Amora clenched her hand, dismissing the trace of the runes in the air with obvious dissatisfaction. She turned, regarding Lorelei and her pets. She gestured at the six golden guards that still remained technically on watch over the vault's entry hall with a shake of her head. "That won't be enough to delay them. I've a determined use for them, anyway. But while I prepare for that, pick one and send him below as a message. The tunnelers themselves won't move, of course, they think they've got something to keep. I've a squadron set aside to enter the palace proper. That ought to let the boys stay busy." Her eyes dimmed as she considered. "Make sure they go up, too, towards the All-Father's spire. If they succeed in killing that old man while they're at it, excellent."

"As a message?" Lorelei spread her hands, her confusion encompassing more than her sister's direct order. She knew what the tunnelers were, Chitauri laborers burrowing deep through the old stone for whatever resources they could use or steal. That alone would be enough to collapse swaths of land when they were done. She didn't understand her sister's dismissal of them, too.

"Choose a homely one, Lorelei. You won't get him back. They're at hungry work below, let them slave away until I'm done with it all. Then, once you've done that... I need your hand."

. . .

Eir herself barked orders to the guards still under her command. The two that held the side door were dug in well behind a toppled set of tables dragged out from the nearby post and one of her four already bore a gaping wound he tried to fight through. If they could just manage to smash at least one of them upside the skull, that would be something.

She looked down as another of her girls tugged fast at her sleeve, the healer's long green dress already hiked up and held to help her run. "They won't notice me, they're too bloodhungry," rasped the girl in a whisper, her eyes too large in her tan face. "I'll get the gate, mum. Slip right past."

Eir gripped the girl around her shoulders in a hug, keeping her eyes on the struggle. "Bless you, and may the All-Father bless you when the day's done." She held tight, using her touch as a cue, shouting towards the guard who'd stepped up to lead the press. He'd balked in the healing halls, but when she and her girls forced him to look close at his addled fellow soldier when they bodily dragged one in from the hall, he'd followed her without any further complaint. Stodgy and slow, but he had eyes worth note. "Bjarke! Charge the table! Damn their defense, break it through!"

He gave a roar of answer and lifted his spear. Eir looked down to the girl, hoping she hadn't just condemned the young man in his first beard to a quick death. When wood began to splinter, she squeezed the girl's arm. "Go!"

She fled, eventually dodging behind one of the charmed pair to throw herself at the gate controls. It took using almost all her weight as a counterbalance but she managed to jerk the primary lever and slap at the panel at the same time.

One of the still-controlled guards whirled on her as the scraping sounds and the old iron smell of the inner gate filled the corridor. She stared back, uttering a wild, frightened, furious screech worthy of any warrior ready for a last clash. Eir put out a hand, already seeing the worst of what could come of her decision.

She needn't have worried. The door flung open and the first thing to come through was a flying hammer sparking hot white with electrical light. The guard took it full in the chin and collapsed instantly.

Eir's assistant breathed a fast gasp and fled back to her side. No waiting fool, she. Eir hugged her. "Well done," she said, looking back up in time to see the rest boil through the door to overwhelm the last controlled guard. Her small squad lifted their voices in a welcoming roar at the sight of their prince and she let go to step forward with a tilt of her head. "Your Highness." The other prince slipped in behind the rest, glancing over the scene. "Highnesses," she said, smoothly correcting herself without a blink. She reached out a hand to Hogun, beckoning him over. "I've the last update I can give. The vault floor is at risk. I don't know how long till they find a method of breach. Soon, I say."

"The guards?" The question came from Loki where he knelt to study both unconscious gatekeepers, his expression clinical and focused.

"Charmed, by some magical method." She studied the unsurprised look that crossed his face, noting the way Thor glanced at him. "Yes, I've identified possible vectors. Apparently as have you, my lords. We've appropriate healing prepared, but those methods require proximity and control. Aftercare, not an in-fight solution."

"Hurrah for the ever reliable concussion," Loki muttered, sounding dour.

"Not preferable... but needs must, I suppose. We'll be prepared for injured." She inclined her head politely, stepping back once as he nodded in understanding. Her assistants followed her lead, knowing by her posture that they would be returning to the healerie to gather what they could for field work. Each bobbed their head, lining up neatly behind her.

Thor looked down the hall, towards the inner keep. "Our king?"

"Still above, I believe. I've not seen him since his last dining, and that after eve's court last." Eir flicked her hand to gesture at a distant set of broad, elegant stairs.

Thor turned to regard Loki. "We're staying on plan, then."

"For now, it's all we can do." Loki looked up to regard Eir. "If the vault is breached – and you'll know, surely, as will we all – evacuate. Lady Sif has some options being prepared."

"No," said Eir. She smiled, folding her hands together in front of her in a posture of easy serenity. "We will not give in. We will remain until there is no longer life in Asgard, and when that last gasp of breath enters the void, so, too, will we."

Loki glanced at Thor, then towards the small cadre of healers as a couple of them began to drift towards the other staircases to the deeper sanctums. None of them looked fearful, either. "Then spare some of that life adrift on this land a little wish for luck."

His answer was a continuation and deepening of that small, calm smile.

. . .

Odin heard the new threat before he saw it, the low, guttural chittering noise that filled the darkened hall that led directly below and then towards the reinforced floor and the reinforced doors that forged the space set aside for his great vault. One of a king's many shortcuts through a sprawling palace, a simple set of long corridors and private stairs once bordered by capable guards that would salute as he strode by. Now there was only himself and his last pair of Einherjar, men so bound to long service that the years were nigh visible and grey upon both the faces under heavy golden helms.

He remembered how to step silently in his great armor, and how to hold the line against all odds. Thousands of years, countless battles. He was old, but was it not but mere years hence when he could still bark a frost giant lord into submission? His horse still bore his weight and his aching hands still held his great spear, Gungnir, high and ready. He could be, and was, still a king. And in Asgard, kings fought. To the end, if they must face that black hour when hope is thin and fragile.

These too were things he had let himself forget, in his weakness and grief. The sight of his sons – both his sons – in Munin's gleaming and strange mind's eye, collaborating not against him but against the evil come form within, had been a stark and painful reminder of what he'd lost – and what he had, in charmed foolishness and own arrogance both, thrown away. What Munin saw was forever a kind of truth, and this time he looked carefully, forced himself to regard each glimpse of the scout's new memories to scour the boundaries of what he truly saw at work in his realm. Now Munin was away again at his own brother's side, aloft to monitor Asgard's new war for his master's eye.

Broad fingers tightened around the golden spear, his lone eye narrowing as the shadows ahead began to shimmer and then form into new shapes. Awful, angular shapes, those agamid features and insect-like calls. At his side, his guards tensed into well-trained readiness. He forgot his aches and remembered the scent of bloody plains.

When the handful of shrieking grey horrors began to skitter towards him, weapons preparing their boiling purple fire, he remembered how to roar.

. . .

Amora's grip tightened on her hand and Lorelei dropped to her knees with a cry, feeling the energy rip out of her and into the array of quick but destructive ley-work ahead of her. Amora's face was white fire, ignoring everything except the destructive channel of power she roughly shaped around herself and then flung forward.

The vault's door was two feet thick, made of dwarven steels and reinforced with rare minerals as pretty as gold but vastly more durable. The hinges were solid cores of iron and mystic weave tied to the internal gear-locks, those ancient alf-works that tasted the bloodline of kings and would only answer the call of those bound and permitted by that line. Atop it all was the secondary layer of invisible, tamed magic – elementals bound to watch and sound alarms into the shell of that king's ear, the air itself locking itself tight in all the nooks and crannies of the door. A common burglar cagey enough to manage the door's more mundane tricks would find his throat gasping for life and his mind deprived of oxygen. It was made for all of this and more, much of it strengthened after Loki, with the full permissions of title and name, had let jotun in through other now-sealed ways.

It toppled against the weight of the enchantress who stood before it, four guards fallen dead where they stood, their life drained from them and turned into trapped power to feed her. The fifth was pressed against the wall, a soldier's trained face lined with raw horror. Her charm was at a breaking point, stressed against the man's pure fear. Lorelei felt how it was all done, the channel still open and tearing through to her very soul. "Amora!" she screamed, afraid it wouldn't be heard as the golden metal smashed apart in weird, contorted fragments. In her soul-self, where the sorcerer's focus was forever seeking balance, she felt the edge of the black all around her. "I can give no more! You'll end me, too!"

Amora let go, ignoring the way her sister finished her collapse to the cold stone floor, her eyes narrowed and fixed on the entry as she sought her prize. Now there was only the calm. She glanced back as the last guard gave in and fled. "You were right, sweet sister. You're always right. We needed to work together."

Still gasping, Lorelei lifted her head bare inches to look at the corpses strewn behind her. Her pets, tossed aside for Amora's need. She tried to rise, clasping her hand and its invisible inferno to her chest. "What was this atrocity? Where did you learn a discipline like that? Our teachers knew nor taught any such thing, not even the exiles!" She realized her voice came out like a keening wail only after she was done.

Nothing of this was what she'd expected. Especially not this, the insensate selfishness of how Amora took from the very core of herself. More than Lorelei would have ever given freely, even to her sibling.

"There are new things to learn out there in the dark, Amora, and gifts I was given for my service. I'll take them things freely given, and serve Thanos in the way he likes, so I may have what I deserve. And look, for the sake of your worry!" The tinkling, bell-like laugh returned, youthful delight. "But for the final little riddle, I have my prize. And me prepared to receive it!" Amora looked down to her, eyes bright. "Oh, do rise, little sister. We've still so much work to finish!"

"Let's just take the damnable thing and go," said Lorelei, too weary to put much fang in her words. Her defiance painted a fleeting moue on her sister's face. "This is our goal realized and vengeance wreaked, what more is there to desire?"

Another dazzling laugh. Amora stepped away from her, moving across the ruined threshold of the door into the vault proper. The side of her face was lit with the treasures ensconced along the walls, but her eyes were only on the thing that lay on a cushioned pedestal at the far end, its power contained within a clear lattice-work field conjured by the vault's protections. Once a Casket rested in that place of honor, the stolen relic of the jotun. Now another blue box waited in its place, this one with all the stars of the universe mirrored deep within. "Well, if Asgard was never to let us take and shape it, then let it be a sacrifice to show the rest of my intent."

The crawling chill returned to Lorelei's belly. "Amora."

"Ragnarok's legend is plain." A toss of her hair as she continued to step forward. "The world must drown in earth and in water. I can think of a fine way to arrange that. And you, my dear. I need you. My beloved sister. The guards are gone. Do what you can to delay whichever prince dares to step this way first." She looked over her shoulder at where Lorelei yet lay, that small, pretty smile still on her face. "Do it, and we'll stand together at the end of this universe. Sisters to the last, and queens in the next one Thanos forges from the bones of the old."

What else could she do? Lorelei struggled to her feet, pulling what scraps of energy she could back into herself. She had to, for Amora watched every step she took.