Ensoulment
by Valerie Vancollie
valeriev84 at hotmail dot com
Notes: I'm sorry, did you think I'd give you the resolution to the last chapter's cliffhanger here? Oops.
Vormir, 965 A.D.
Sága kept her eyes open as she fell, but she felt no fear, not even when she saw Red Skull's face as he looked over the edge of the cliff after her in shock. The wind was rushing past her current body until it wasn't.
She was no longer falling now and instead stood in Soul World; the pocket dimension where the Soul Stone was kept. An orange hued watery world as far as the eye could see, but shallow, a large pool rather than an ocean and she smiled. It was perfect.
A tricky world for a tricky Stone. Ephemeral and immortal; changeable and immutable.
Water was an element of transition and a medium for visions. Her medium.
Then there was light, a bright all encompassing and oppressive light, orange in color. The Soul Stone's very essence. There was whispering all around her now as if voices on the wind, but there was not so much as a zephyr despite the gale outside this little pocket dimension world. The words slithered around her at the very edge of her hearing, never quite coalescing into anything real, but there nonetheless.
Her feet left the water as power welled up all around her and Sága felt it, the power of not just one Stone, but all six of them and she knew Eson had been right. They were all connected to each other and she knew she had been right that the Soul Stone was the heart of them; the nexus from which that connection and power sprung. Of all of them it was the only living element, the only one not bound in cold hard physicality and constancy, but rather forged in change and chaos itself.
The only one able to change and being open to true manipulation and control. It was no wonder to Sága that this one was protected beyond all others and that the Stone itself demanded a price in order to be taken from here, this special place created especially to house it, and whence it would return.
Always.
The light brightened even as it shrank until Sága could see the Soul Stone floating before her. She too had changed, her son separating from her own body here as he had not yet outside and she raised her arms to capture his floating form as he rose up to meet her.
"Hello, Little One," she whispered as she took a moment to drink him in with her eyes before she had to look up and away to why she was here. "He is my sacrifice," she declared. "Take him and be one."
For a moment nothing happened, but then the Soul Stone floated closer to her, hanging in the air before her face for one endless moment, bright and pure, before it sank down to her son's little chest, hovering there for a moment before proceeding to sink down into him.
There was an ear splitting cry, a flash of light and Sága was falling again.
Falling and-
Soul World, 2018 A.D.
When Thanos opened his eyes all he saw was orange and water and he wondered if this would be his dreamscape forevermore. There were worse ones to be had, particularly if this allowed him to see his little one as he no longer could when awake.
"Does it bother you at all, to be known as the killer of so many?"
Thanos turned to face the voice and he smiled as he saw Gamora as she had once been, back when he had first met her.
"No, for I saved the universe from Titan's fate," he replied.
His little one snorted, looking at him in distain.
"Except for the Ásgarðrians," she said.
"Ásgarðrians?" Thanos frowned.
"Yes, how are they to continue? They were already severely diminished when you attacked the Statesman," Gamora sneered.
"We let some flee."
"A fraction of those left, half of which have now been killed. A fraction of a fraction, not enough to allow for the survival of their species. They will die out because of what you did, not survive because of it."
"They had an Infinity Stone, I had to act."
"They are still a species who will no longer exist because of your actions."
The words made Thanos frown. "A small sacrifice for the survival of the rest."
"And what of the døkkálfar? Are they a sacrifice too?" his little one shot back, quick and venomous as ever.
He had always liked her fire, if not how she had chosen to direct it as she grew older.
"The døkkálfar?" Thanos questioned, not recognizing the species.
"Of Niðavellir. Those whom you personally had all but one of slaughtered and him you maimed."
"How do you know of that? Or the Ásgarðrians?"
Gamora shrugged, looking up at him with adult eyes from her little child's face and the juxtaposition unnerved Thanos more than he liked to admit. Yet he was still glad for the chance to see her again as he never would while awake.
"I was sacrificed to the Soul Stone," she said tonelessly, brown eyes drifting away from him and voice surprisingly devoid of emotion where he would have expected accusation. "It turns out that ties me to it, so I know what it knows and it knows what the others know as they are now all tied together on your mangled gauntlet."
The words made Thanos look down at his left hand involuntarily, only to find it was bare. The gauntlet and Stones had not followed him into his dreams, just like before. How interesting. Did that mean his subconscious did not yet fully see them as a part of him? Or that it still could not quite believe he had accomplished all he had set out to after the needless fall and demise of Titan?
Or was it because he would rather not have that which he had killed his little one for together with her here in his last true sanctuary?
"So?" Gamora demanded as harshly as her little child's vocal chords would allow. "Were the døkkálfar merely another sacrifice?"
Thanos sighed. "Sacrifices must be made to achieve great things," he said looking at her pointedly. "But here there was a greater purpose as I could not risk them creating great weapons to be used against me as I sought the remaining Infinity Stones."
"And how many Titans are worth it?"
Spitting as always, his little one.
"Two are hardly too many."
"Two?" Gamora laughed humorlessly, eyes cold. "Do you truly believe it was merely two? That no other species might have been like the Ásgarðrians, tethering on the brink of not having enough people to ensure the survival of their species? Planets and races suffering the exact opposite situation of Titan once upon a time?"
The question threw Thanos as it was not one he had considered before. Most species thrived and far too much so for their worlds- or the universe- to cope and sustain them, but what Gamora said was true. There would have been some that did not.
"Without even trying I can tell there were at least forty-eight," his little one continued on bluntly. "Forty-eight species on forty-two planets which would have survived had you not wiped out half their numbers with a single snap of your fingers. Forty-eight species which will now die out, slowly to be true, but die out they will, though they might suffer the consequences of inbreeding first as they try desperately to survive what you have done to them in your mad quest to reshape the universe in your chosen shape like some demented god."
The words made Thanos rear back. Surely that was not how Gamora had viewed it? Though it might explain why she had decided to betray him and lie about what she had learned of the Soul Stone's location.
"And let us not forget about all of those species whom you had already reduced by half," Gamora hissed, her eyes all but glowing with anger and hate now. "Did you even think to spare them a second reckoning? No, you just wiped out half of the survivors again, reducing your most recent victims like the Xandarians by three quarters in total, thus decimating them even further. Not all of those will survive both assaults either, generating yet more Titans in your name."
Before he could even think to reply, Thanos felt the edges of his dreamscape ripple and shift and his precious little one flickered once, twice and was gone as he woke, water and sky replaced by the angry pulsing of the Infinity Stones in his mutilated gauntlet and he could feel the wash of power from where he lay almost as if the Stones themselves were alive.
For those of you lucky enough to get Endgame tomorrow, please don't give any spoilers in the comments. Here in England we don't get it until Thursday and I can't see it until Friday!
Old Norse:
døkkálfar - "Dark Elves" who dwell within the earth and are most swarthy - when looking up dwarves I couldn't find an Old Norse word but some sources said the dwarves were sometimes called dark elves, so I took that word for them there are several names for elves (døkkálfar, ljósálfar, svartálfar, myrkálfar).