Loki, Strange, and Wong stepped through the portal into an empty building, one cavernous room that was mostly carpeted except where tiled walkways bisected it. As Strange closed the portal behind them, Loki looked around the darkened room. There was a disassembled pile of shelving on the floor next to them. Usually they ended up in a place like this when Strange or Wong opened a portal—shuttered stores, abandoned warehouses, buildings that were empty for one reason or another. New Yorkers were inured to the sight of the two Masters popping out of thin air, but apparently it wasn't something that they wanted to force on the blissfully unaware denizens of the rest of the New York Sanctum's protection zone.
"How early do you think the food trucks show up?" Wong asked, putting a hand on his stomach.
Strange fiddled with his sling ring, standing still with his head cocked, as though he was listening for something. Or perhaps feeling for something. His forehead crinkled and then he glanced at Wong, saying, "Maybe you should just get breakfast in the skyway." Motioning to them, Strange headed for a wall and said, "Come on. There should be a hallway on the other side of this."
He held out an arm to call up another portal, but Loki said, "Oh, let me. I'm getting rusty." Smirking at the confused looks on their faces, he put a hand to the wall and pushed magic between the molecules of the material. It was flimsy stuff; he could do this in his sleep. Green light flowed from his palm over the wall and it rippled like water. Extending an arm, Loki said, "After you, gentlemen."
Wong and Strange glanced at each other and the Cloak floated off Strange's shoulder's to poke a corner at the wall. It passed through as though there was no barrier, seemed to give the sentient-article-of-clothing equivalent of a shrug, and flew back to settle itself on Strange. Wong shrugged too and stepped through the no-longer-solid wall. As Strange went to follow him, he glanced at Loki and said, "You're full of surprises, aren't you?"
"You have no idea, Strange," Loki said with a smile that could have meant any number of things.
When Loki stepped through the wall and let it solidify behind him, he found himself standing in a hallway. People were hurrying by, most of them on their phones or with headphones stuck in their ears, and though they stared a few moments longer at Strange, Wong, and Loki than was strictly polite, their eyes quickly darted away. They weren't really looking at him, Loki supposed. Wearing his glamor had become second nature by now. He was simply a third, uninteresting person with two…eccentric men.
The three of them started walking, Strange leading them through a maze of interconnected walkways between the city's buildings. It reminded Loki of a planet he'd been to once. Contraxia? No, somewhere else, some Nova planet that their mother had taken them to as children, which Loki could no longer remember. Krylor, Aakon, maybe both? It didn't matter, he supposed. Sometimes it felt unlikely that he'd ever see such places again.
As they walked, Strange circled an arm and a ring of orange magic looped around his wrist. It was some kind of detection spell that was tied to the protective magic the Masters planted at strategic locations around major cities. It alternately pulsed brighter or sputtered weakly, and in the spots that the light dimmed, Strange and Wong would strengthen their spells.
It had seemed to Loki, over the past several weeks that he'd been accompanying them, that there were more and more weak spots.
These types of excursions seemed to be taking longer and longer, too. The hushed conversations between Strange and Wong got more frequent, the mutters of, "We did this one last time," were happening more often. By the time the sun set that evening, the three of them were all mentally drained. When they stopped for dinner at a food truck, Loki leaned against the side of it, his arms crossed over his chest, gazing out over the expanse of asphalt parking lot.
After a moment, Wong joined him, eating a taco covered in kimchi. He handed Loki another basket and said, "Better eat. We're not done yet."
"So I gathered," Loki replied, picking at the tacos. He wasn't that hungry. In fact, he couldn't remember the last time he'd been hungry. He ate because he had to.
Strange paid and came over to stand with them. He looked exhausted. Loki wished he could do more to help him. His magic wasn't really of the protective variety, though. Maybe it was something he could teach himself. Invent, more like.
He picked up a piece of cabbage between his fingers and popped it into his mouth. Well, why couldn't he invent something? He was intelligent enough. While his mother had taught him everything she knew, there were things that she hadn't known, which he'd taught himself. He could do so again.
Looking drawn, Strange gazed into the distance while Loki surreptitiously watched him. After a second, Loki flicked his eyes towards the sunset, squinting into the light and probing at his own magic. Undepleted. He could be doing much more to help. Looking back to his companions, he asked, "Where to next, Strange?"
Strange swallowed a mouthful of taco and sighed. "More of the same."
The loop of magic at his wrist flickered, then went out. Strange froze, his taco halfway from the basket to his mouth, and said, "That's not good." He hit his wrists together, causing orange sparks to sputter, but the circle didn't reappear.
Without a word, Wong shoved his food into Loki's hands and turned, casting a spell that appeared in the air in front of him as a spinning mandala, then dissipated in lines of orange that snaked away along the ground and disappeared. A few people standing around the food truck noticed this happening and stared, not that Strange or Wong took any notice of this. Nor would they have cared if they had.
Twenty or thirty seconds passed, and then the lines of magic returned to Wong, snapping back into the mandala he'd initially summoned. Not all of them came back.
Strange and Wong exchanged a look. "We need to split up," Wong said.
"What we need is to be in five places at once," Strange said, tossing his mostly uneaten taco in the trash.
"Should we try to call in help?"
"No, there's no point. If we're dealing with this here, then they're dealing with it everywhere. Shit." He rubbed at his eyes. "We have to find out where else it's happening. I'm going to have to start using the stone to go back—"
Wong shook his head. "You know you can't."
Blowing out a hard breath of air, Strange said, "Yeah, yeah. I know. The natural order. Don't worry, I take it more seriously than you think I do."
For a moment, it looked like Wong might smile. A trick of the light, perhaps. His face as expressionless as ever, he said, "I already know you do." He glanced over his shoulder. "So we split up. Do you want the Asgardian?"
This time, Loki was sure Wong was almost smiling as he gave Loki a sidelong look. Loki just raised his eyebrows.
And it was idiotic, but when Strange looked at him and said, "Yeah, I want him," a shiver went up his spine. Wong regarded Strange, looking thoughtful, before he nodded, opened a portal with his sling ring, and said, "See you later."
"Be careful!" Strange said to his back. A hand appeared through the portal in acknowledgement, and then the circle closed.
Strange and Loki looked around. The gathered crowd was gawking and Strange sighed, then muttered, "Christ, I get tired of explaining this to people."
"So don't," Loki said.
Rubbing his thumb over his sling ring, Strange murmured, "That's terrible PR." Then, shrugging, he opened a portal, jerked his head at Loki, and said, "Let's go." As they stepped through it into a marsh, he added, "No one ever accused me of having good bedside manner, anyway."
Loki swatted at a mosquito on his neck. "I'm stunned by that revelation." As he shifted his foot, it sank several inches into the mud. Disgusting. Pulling it out with a squelch and shaking muck off his boot, he asked, "What was that spell that Wong did?"
There was silence as Strange stood there, his head cocked. Then, he nodded to himself and set off through the cattails and grass. "It pings all our pylons," Strange said. This was the magical edifice that kept all their other protective spells in any given location functional. "Those lines that didn't come back? Those pylons failed."
"All at once?" Loki said to Strange's back.
The only sound was birdsong and the whine of mosquitos. Eventually, though, Strange said, "All at once."
Soon they came to a grassy tussock poking out of the marsh by a few inches. Strange made a shape with his hands, then whirled them and cast a spell that Loki had only seen a few times. A glowing mandala appeared on the ground in front of them, looking like it was branded into the grass. It reminded Loki of the mark the Bifrost left on the ground. As he looked more closely at it, he could see that there were pieces missing from the pattern, as though someone, or something, had hacked away at it.
Loki glanced at Strange, who swiped at the hair falling over his forehead. "I don't know what did this," the sorcerer muttered. He cast another spell, but it didn't seem to do anything. There was a worried look on his face. "It's like…" he began, trailing off.
When he didn't continue, Loki prompted, "Like what?"
Strange shook his head. "Like…it fell apart." He let out a slow breath and the trepidation in his eyes grew darker. "Shit. I wonder…" Closing his eyes, he let out a huff of air, then cast another spell. Even though Loki had only seen him do it once, he recognized it right away. The amulet on Strange's chest opened, bathing his hands in green light, and a loop of green magic twined around his arm. His eyes narrowed in concentration, he held out his hands and turned one of them counter-clockwise.
Around them, time moved backwards. Loki understood suddenly that that was what the Eye of Agamotto was. It controlled time.
He watched insects fly backwards, a heron stilt past in reverse, an otter slip hindquarters first into the water. Then, the symbol on the ground in front of them flickered and became whole. Strange slowed the backwards wind of time, then stopped it and turned his hand clockwise. The world snapped back to normal, everything happening the way it was supposed to. Loki understood that Strange had just rewound time to before the pylon had been damaged, so he could see what had done it.
Loki tensed, summoning his knives to his hands. Just in case.
Nothing happened. The marsh was full only of the sound of insects, frogs and toads, and the wind in the grass. No threat appeared.
Then, there was—something. The air seemed to press around Loki, and he had to struggle to take a breath, even though nothing had changed.
No, that wasn't true. The marsh had gone completely quiet.
Loki looked around, then let his gaze return to the hillock in front of them. There was a flicker, and then something…happened. It was like someone had slipped a piece of glass between him and what he was looking at, a piece of glass shot through with cracks and a tint of color that he couldn't identify. He squinted as ghostly shapes appeared in front of him. A deer which he hadn't seen walk past, a bird that swooped out of nowhere and then vanished. A plane in the sky, which flew into his field of vision, but reached a certain point and then disappeared.
He looked down at the mandala on the ground. Pieces of it were flickering in and out of existence. And then, suddenly, what was happening stopped, leaving the pylon broken.
Strange put a hand to his chin, rubbing at his beard with a thumb and looking troubled. Then, he held out his arms again, speeding time forward until they returned to the moment they'd left. Loki watched, vanishing his knives. He didn't think he was going to need them. Yet.
Neither of them spoke. Then, Loki said, "Forgive me for saying so, but that, whatever it was, seems like something you don't know how to fix." He didn't know what had just happened, and it wasn't clear that Strange did either.
"I can't really blame you for pointing out the obvious," Strange said, still staring at the pylon.
In a different situation, Loki might have smiled and said that a penchant for bluntness was something Strange possessed in abundance. It would have been, Loki realized, flirty. Gods, he'd been flirting with the man for weeks, hadn't he?
Not the time. Of course, the universe was falling apart, so there might not ever be a good time to deal with this. Maybe that was for the best. In fact, Loki was sure it was for the best. Pushing down his desires wasn't exactly what he'd call fun, but he was experienced with it. Among other unrequited passions, he'd spent decades wishing the Lady Sif would see him as more than Thor's weedy, not-quite-trustworthy little brother.
Sif. Fandral, Hogun, Volstagg. Heimdall. Everyone he'd ever known, gone. If there were still Asgardians out there somewhere, Loki would never see them. Standing there in that marsh, swatting at mosquitos, it suddenly hit him, with a clarion, ringing certainty, that he would never leave Earth again.
Loki looked at Strange, standing there with his trembling hands and his unwavering attempt to do what was right and to fix everything. For someone whose moral compass had badly malfunctioned in the past decade, he certainly had a tendency to grow attached to people whose desire to do good was steadfast to an absurd degree. Still, if his time on Earth was spent in the company of this man, he couldn't complain.
With a hiss of air, Strange put his hands out again, this time making a different series of motions. His eyes slitted and the mandala that formed in front of him seemed to fight him, each sequence of the spell grinding into place agonizingly slowly. Finally, though, it spun, complete, and was drawn into the mandala burned onto the ground, which knit itself back together.
Strange dropped his arms with a gasp. Sweat beaded his forehead. Loki took a step forward and gripped his shoulder. "Are you alright?" he asked.
Reaching up, Strange grabbed Loki's arm, like he needed to steady himself. "Yeah," he finally said, breathing heavily. "I'm fine. Or I will be, at least."
Loki's fingers tightened on Stephen's shoulder. "Teach me how to do that spell," he said. When Strange looked at him in surprise, he said, "You said five pylons failed. What if they're all as taxing as this one?" His brow furrowed. "I don't think this planet—or the universe, for that matter—can afford for you to kill yourself doing this."
"Aw, and here I thought you were just worried about me," Strange said sardonically, still holding onto Loki's arm.
He just gave Strange a thin smile.
After another minute, Strange released his hold on Loki and straightened up. "I appreciate the concern—and the offer—but it's not a simple spell. I'd need time to teach you, and we don't have it."
"Then draw on my magic," Loki said. When Strange gave him a surprised look, he said, "I used to do it with—" Something sharp stabbed through his heart and he stopped, then tried again, "I can channel my magic to you."
Strange still looked speechless, but finally he asked, "What makes you think your magic is even compatible with mine?"
With a shrug, Loki said, "Just a feeling."
There was another silence. Suddenly, it seemed that the trill of toads was deafening. Loki hadn't even noticed it until now. The light was fading fast, too. It was the end of a long day and Strange was visibly spent. Wong probably wasn't feeling any better. "Let me help you," Loki said, more urgently.
Smiling wryly, Strange said, "Okay, okay." He held Loki's eyes. "Thanks." Loki belatedly removed his hand from Stephen's shoulder and Strange's eyes flicked to it. Then, he rolled his shoulders back, adjusted his sling ring, and opened a portal. "Next pylon," he said, motioning to Loki to step through.
Darkness fell while they were repairing the next pylon, located along the side of a freeway. With traffic whooshing by, Loki wove a net of magic to siphon his power through. There was no way to tell each other what needed to be done, so they had to rely on vague descriptions and the feel of magic thrumming through the air. The next one, in a mall parking ramp, went faster, and at the end of it, Strange didn't look quite so exhausted. He cast the spell to test the strength of each pylon, and each line of magic came back.
Strange leaned against the wall, painted powdery purple, in the parking ramp. "I guess that means Wong managed to fix the other two," he said. He ran a hand through his hair and turned to Loki. "Listen—"
Then, he stiffened. No need to ask him why, because Loki could feel it too. Quickly, Strange pulled a phone out and sent a text. A portal opened and Wong appeared. At the bemused look Loki was giving them, Wong pocketed his own phone and said, "What? Did you think we communicated via telepathy?"
Loki snorted and replied, "Clearly I need to adjust my expectations for your mysticism."
The three of them turned to face the disturbance they all could feel. A fluorescent light buzzed overhead, flickering. The air in front of them rippled and both Wong and Strange pulled up mandalas. This was Loki's forte though. A soft spot was opening, and he was the one that could close it.
Holding up a hand to wave them back, Loki said, "I've got this."
He planted his feet on the concrete and called up a spell, green magic flowing from his fingertips. This soft spot was already bigger than any of the others he'd closed and a tendril of trepidation coiled through him. Narrowing his eyes, he ignored the feeling and began weaving the soft spot closed.
It expanded.
Loki's eyes widened and he froze, then doubled down on his spell, strengthening the bands of green with iron and looping them across the soft spot. But it didn't do any good, and the air rippled again as it grew larger.
"Loki…?" Wong said.
The soft spot was—it was fighting him. Loki grit his teeth and set his will, shifting onto the balls of his feet and digging them into the ground. This wasn't right. This was different.
"What's wrong?" Strange asked.
But Loki just shook his head and slitted his eyes, bracing himself mentally against the force pushing against him. Energy pulsed back at him and he beat at it, green sparks sputtering off his fingers. The soft spot widened further, blackening around the edges. Loki had never seen that. It expanded, clawing at the air around it, snapping off Loki's magical bindings one by one. He snarled, baring his teeth, and threw more around it, trying to thread it closed.
Energy crackled out of the soft spot and Loki felt it pulse again, then bulge at the space around it. His magic stretched taut and hit its limit, and Loki felt something behind the soft spot, an explosive pressure that suddenly he knew he couldn't contain.
His eyes widened and he whirled, throwing a swathe of magic out behind him as he yelled, "Get down!"
The spell he'd cast knocked Strange and Wong off their feet just as power exploded out of the soft spot.
Loki dove for the ground, throwing himself out of range. A wave of black, gut-churning energy passed over him, ripping at his nerves and sending serrated spikes of pain through his jaw and teeth and straight into his brain. Without thinking, he cast a shielding spell over Strange and Wong. He was a god, he could take this. The humans couldn't.
Scrambling to his feet, Loki took several steps back, holding his hands out and casting a complicated series of spells. He barely knew what he was doing, stringing magic together, looping enchantments in chains to bind and protect and put a stop to whatever was happening. Green light flared out from his palms and hit the soft spot. Or—whatever it had become.
It was black now, practically ultraviolet, and oozing something. Loki twisted a hand and his shielding spell closed over it. This wasn't a solution, but it would do until they found one.
He took another step back and offered a hand to Strange, who took it. Loki closed his fingers around Strange's wrist to make up for the weakness of his grip.
"Thanks," Strange said, meeting his eyes and giving Loki one swift nod.
Behind them, Wong said, "Don't worry about me, I'm fine." As he joined them, brushing off his robe, he added, "Now what?"
The soft spot shimmered and Loki took a step forward, staring hard at it. If he squinted, he almost thought he could see something on the other side of it. A city? It almost looked like…like Asgard.
He stepped forward, passing his hand through his own shielding spell, and reached for the soft spot.
"Don't," Strange said sharply, grabbing Loki's arm and pulling him back. They touched along the full length of their bodies and a frisson of searing heat went through Loki. When Strange let go of his arm and shifted away, it wasn't the sight in front of Loki that kept him rooted to the spot. His arm was tingling where Strange had wrapped his fingers around it, and he was acutely aware of Strange at his back, though there was now enough space between them that any body heat he thought he could feel was just his imagination.
This was fine. This was tremendous. The world was burning and he was more concerned with the fact that a mortal wizard had touched him and it had made him feel…things. With Strange standing there, inches behind him, it was impossible not to remember what he'd looked like wearing nothing but that towel.
He needed to concentrate. Looking back to the soft spot, he asked, "Can you two see that?"
"I see a problem," Wong said.
Strange stepped forward. "This is new," he said, and Loki glanced at him, raising an eyebrow. After a pause, he asked, "What do you see?"
Looking back to the soft spot, shining with an uncanny pearlescent black, Loki said, "I thought I saw…" Home. "…never mind. Just a trick of the—er, light."
"There's a city," Wong said in a low tone.
"Not just a city," Strange said, crossing his wrists to call up two orange shields, which he held out in front of him.
There was a figure coming towards them, shimmering through the portal's black sheen. Orange discs appeared on Wong's hands as well, and Loki summoned his knives, holding them ready.
The figure came closer, robed and hooded, and stepped through the portal. At Loki's side, Stephen stiffened, and Wong murmured, "No…"
For their sake, Loki hoped they were wrong about who they thought this was. But then the figure reached up and pushed its hood back. Strange made a noise and dropped his arms to his sides, his shields dropping with them.
"Mordo," he said.
