"Loki is still here in Asgard." The locator spell had a very narrow margin for error, but for an inexplicable reason it could not pinpoint Stephen to Loki's exact location. It was maddeningly frustrating when the portals he opened led to the same place every time, the sprawling courtyard where the brief scuffle had occurred but no Loki. "Mordo has not taken him away."

"And yet we cannot know for certain where he is, or if he still lives." Thor said, his voice low and ominous.

Stephen had tried to reach out to Loki through their telepathic connection but received not so much as a whisper in the way of reply. Thor's fears resonated in the hollow pit of terror gnawing in his own gut.

Wong rubbed his chin, deep in thought. He had come bearing news just shortly after Loki's disappearance. Jonathan Pangborn had once again sought aid from Kamar-Taj for his previous affliction, and despite the paralysis affecting his speech, he had uttered but one name clear as day.

Karl Mordo.

"To the others he had not shown his face, his identity remaining elusive until he revealed himself to Pangborn just before Mordo extracted the binding magic from his spine, rendering him once again a cripple."

"I told you, Wong. This is personal." Stephen said softly. "Pangborn was my patient."

"And now Mordo has taken Loki." Stephen fought to keep his voice level. "I need your help."

They were gathered in the Great Meeting Hall and it had been fifteen minutes since Loki disappeared. Thor's face was carved ivory still, yet his eyes hid poorly a turbulent storm threatening to erupt. Valkyrie was pacing up and down the great room, her hand clenching the hilt of her sword, clearly itching for something to run through. Neither of them had spoken very much.

"They must be in a Mirror Dimension," Wong said seriously. "That is the only other explanation."

Stephen and Thor looked at him sharply. The only explanation other than the one that could only mean Loki was already dead, in body and in spirit.

"What is the Mirror Dimension?" The question came from Banner, whose tousled hair was the only thing still touched by the remnant of sleep; his eyes were alert and focused.

"It is a parallel world to the one we are living in now and identical in every way. The most skilled of us use it as our training ground where we practice our most dangerous spells, as it is a contained space that allows none of the magical backlash to touch and affect the real world."

"And?" The look in Thor's eyes hardened, sensing Stephen's hesitation. "What else is it for?"

"It is a prison." Wong decided to bite the bullet. "Our sling rings are the only way out."

Thor turned his steely gaze back on the Sorcerer Supreme. "Please tell me you have foreseen this coming and provisioned Loki with this ring, and the knowledge on how to use it."

Stephen's breath died in his throat. He could not answer.

A bone-rattling roar erupted from deep within Thor and with a single swipe of his hand, sent the heavy round table made of unmovable granite and marble toppling onto its side, its gilded legs narrowly missing Bruce who sidestepped just in time.

Valkyrie was by the King's side in an instant. "Majesty."

For a wild second, Stephen feared Thor would strike the Valkyrie down, but he finally covered the appeasing hand she had laid on his arm with his own in the end. Thor visibly took a few deep breaths to calm the berserker in him down.

"You will find him, and you will bring him home." Thor's low rumbling voice reverberated throughout the entire room.

Or so help me God someone is going to pay.

Stephen did not need to be a mind-reader to decipher the hidden threat in Thor's eyes.

"There's another thing we haven't tried," Wong said hesitantly. "If tracking by strands of hair failed, we can attempt to track him by something…stronger."

Thor instantly looked hopeful but the light in his eyes died as quickly as it had come when Wong gave voice to the one thing that managed to strike even more fear in his heart.

"Blood."

"Finally. A face." Loki did not turn, but he straightened his shoulders to attention as one would, had he eyes on the back of his head. "A face that I liken to a shadow and thus I call you a shadow for want of calling you by your true name."

"The name is Karl Mordo."

"And what are you, Karl Mordo?"

"Just a man. With a purpose." The man had the intense brown eyes of uncompromising conviction. "An upholder of justice."

Oh Norns. A fanatic.

Loki turned around very slowly. "Whose justice?"

Mordo did not answer.

"The Order of the Masters of the Mystic Arts has never been this interested in me." Loki worded the question casually in a flippant remark. "Until you."

"I am not here in that capacity." Loki detected a hint of bitterness in the human sorcerer's voice, birthed from the pain of betrayal and – what was it – disappointment? "Not anymore."

"I see." Loki smiled in conspiratorial understanding. He raised his hand and his seiðr rebounded almost immediately, as if bounced off a surface. A reflective surface. Of mirrors. Thousands upon thousands of mirrors.

"Is this the cage in which you seek to imprison me?"

"Yes. From which I intend to release you once my duties have been duly fulfilled."

"One wonders of the charges pressed upon him to deserve such…punishment, as one must." Loki's eyes saw no physical barriers yet, he could sense the invisible walls closing him in. Containing him.

"The bill comes due."

"And you're what, its Collector?"

"If you must call it something, then yes, I accept the name." Mordo straightened visibly. "For no one but I had the sense enough to right the wrongs committed by so many. Not even the great Doctor Stephen Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme, for his namesake was just as heinous and self-serving, so why would he be any different."

"And yet your eyes tell me a different story. The story of a betrayal paid upon betrayal given." Loki came closer. "If only the Ancient One knew of your part in this mutiny, she would turn in her cold, dark grave."

"You knew of her."

"Oh, Mr. Mordo."

"Master Mordo."

"Surely not. A renegade calls not himself what he seeks to break away from." Loki shook his head in mock disbelief, marvelling at the cheek of him.

And yet there was something in him that Loki recognised of his old self, from his least lucid days in the past. Something that told him this was no ordinary man. "You come from nobility."

Mordo did not speak, his eyes blazing with the burning question of before still unanswered.

"Seiðr calls out to seiðr alike, Mr. Mordo. I chanced upon your former master when she was but a girl, fleeing the Massacre of Glencoe in the midst of the Jacobite uprising, was it in…1690? 1692?" Loki waved a hand. "My memory escapes me. Her entire clan was murdered you see. Warm in their beds, slaughtered. But blood is blood, and blood will be cold when it drains like so."

Loki slashed his dagger across the palm of his hand and blood dripped onto the grass…and yet the blood seeped not into the ground, only hovering on the crystalline floor. "Fascinating." Loki grinned, all teeth bared. "It is truly the perfect prison."

"What we do here does not affect the outside world." Mordo twirled his Staff in his hand. "You could have just asked, there was no need for drama. Your tall tales shall hear no more of you when I strip you of your powers, for what are you if not a mere mortal like me?"

"Mr. Mordo. It heartens me that you should seek the pleasure of my company and to share your…delusions of grandeur, for really, if circumstances were different-" Loki's voice turned sharp as razor, "You and I could have been friends."

Mordo only gazed at him steadily.

"Why me?"

"It is not you personally, Prince."

Loki raised an eyebrow coolly. "Forgive me if I am not convinced."

"Stephen Strange needs to be stopped. His crimes against the natural order of the universe do not befit his station as the Sorcerer Supreme, Protector of the Earth."

"Pray tell, Mordo. What unforgiveable deeds has he committed that you would resort to…" Loki looked around his glass prison, "This?"

"I assume you are acquainted with a former friend of mine, the Master Wong?" Mordo threw the name casually to the wind. "When I said 'former' I did not mean that we had a fall-out, simply that he is not supposed to be alive."

"He was utterly and truly dead when Stephen Strange invoked the power of the Eye of Agamotto to unimpale him and thus return his breath and to all life."

Loki was silent. When he spoke it was without malice. "I have died not once, not twice, but three times returned. What is one death but a speck of dust in the universe and should the Norns see fit to return him, who are we to judge?"

Loki could see the conflict warring in Mordo's eyes. "We do not get to judge, no, but we also do not get to choose."

Choose who to kill. Choose who to save. Choose who to bring back from the dead.

"You fatalistic bastards, all of you lot." Loki's voice rose in anger. "You have no understanding of the multiverse, the millions upon millions of realities wherein the entirety of space and time is so intertwined and so compressed that you could not accept a world in which your friend could both live and be dead at the same time?"

"Not when we are the ones burdened with the task to keep it separate! And pure! Untainted!"

"Listen to yourself! You are lost in a lie. The biggest lie in the universe. Nothing is set in stone."

"No, you are the one lost, not I. For all you claim to know, you have not sought to understand the kind of man you have consorted with, have you? Or was his dark magic the only thing you desired from him?" Mordo sneered.

"What?"

"The lie you are still trying to hide from me right now." Mordo dared call his bluff with an air of authoritative austerity that made Loki seeth.

"I smelled it then, I can smell it now. Your glamour is nothing but decoration."

"What is it you want?"

"That babe in your womb."

Loki's heart seized.

"It is an impossible child." His blood chilled to ice in his veins at Mordo's words.

"It cannot be born."

Loki began to laugh.

Loki laughed. He could not for the life of him, stop laughing. He laughed till tears ran down his face in rivulets and his chest clamoured for release in desperate attempts for breath and the peculiar sensation devoured any capacity for real thought and he realised he could forgo breathing if he could just laugh and laugh and never stop-

How one could laugh so much yet harbour so much pain, so much wretched bitterness in his heart that if it were not for his unborn son kicking wildly in his belly, he would think naught of reaching inside his chest and ripping his heart out while it was still beating.

"Of all the things-" Loki cupped a hand to his eyes to halt the flow of tears, but to no avail. "Of all the things, all the reasons the universe could conjure to wish my death upon me and curse my existence into eternal damnation – " He choked on a sob of laughter. "You brought me this?"

"You seek to kill me because I dared to be with child?"

"You are an abomination of nature."

"I have been called many things in my lifetime, Mr. Mordo, but never that."

"Do not take it personal." Mordo repeated, almost kindly. "You cannot help being what you are."

"And what exactly am I?"

"A man carrying another man's child. A life conceived by dark sorcery is a life forfeit."

"Oh Sorcerer…" Loki leaned his head back as far as it would go, the slant of his jawline just angles shy off a straight stairway to the heavens, his neck so stretched in his effort not to break into peals of laughter. "I have never pitied a man as do I pity you here and now, for in no one's face but yours have I seen clearest the true blessings of ignorance. To think you know everything, when you know absolutely nothing."

"No man has the right to interfere with the natural order. Not without consequences. That I know."

"Shall I convince you otherwise?"

And Loki dropped his Aesir form, his true Jotunn skin as blue as the sky, his eyes as red as blood. "I am no more and no less a man nor a woman than you, Mr. Mordo. We are a people different from you yet pure. We procreate, we sire and we bear children but without the inconvenience of gender for we have none; I am the mother and I am the father, all in one and all in name."

Loki allowed his icy countenance to settle in a cloud of steam as he gazed at Mordo through red-filmed eyes.

"Will this save us the spilling of blood today, Sorcerer?"

Mordo did not let his surprise show. When he spoke, his voice was steady, almost respectful.

"You are mistaken, Loki the Undying. My intention was never to kill. All I strive to do is to restore the balance and re-establish the natural order so beings like you cease to harness the power of the cosmos for your own selfish purposes and pursuits."

Loki's voice was cut steel and iron, sharp and hard. "You will not kill me, yet you will take my child."

"Just you and me and the skewed balance of the universe."

"Why?" Loki's voice was contemplative, quiet. "Why still do you seek to harm me when I have shown you my true nature?"

"The Ancient One derived her powers and her long, albeit short, bout of immortality from the Dark Dimension. You claim to have lived even longer." Mordo pointed the Staff of the Living Tribunal in Loki's direction. "What matter of knowledge does one derive from that other than your explicit intimacy with the ways of the darkest magic and necromancy?"

Loki closed his eyes, resisting the crazy urge to roll them behind his eyelids. "This is madness."

So there was to be no peaceful ceasefire today as he had hoped for. That much was evident.

"The world is madness. There is too much chaos, and no order. Too much magic."

Mordo spread his hands and the Staff expanded to the length of his entire arm span, sinister and forbidding, "Too many sorcerers."

"Oh I agree." Loki whispered, the look in his eyes pure venom. "One too many."

He conjured a longsword of ice, frost and snow. Though he would prefer his daggers to any other weapon anytime of the day, close hand-to-hand combat would only place him in more peril than he already was.

"Let's overcome this impasse, shall we? You lay claim to the life of my unborn son as if his death is yours to reap. What is that vulgar saying you humans always say? Oh yes."

"Over my dead body." Loki's blade gleamed as he pointed it straight out.

"Come."

Stephen lifted his hand in the air as if reaching out for something, his confirmatory nod indicating to Wong that they had indeed found the right place.

They were now standing on the edge of the cliff and Thor felt a sense of jamais vu descend over him; this was where he and Loki had said their goodbye to Odin, a place of peace and calm and of deep sorrow…yet the familiarity of it had been replaced by something tingling, just hovering in the air like petrichor – a sinister ambience that rendered all the bittersweet memories of his Father's passing stale and diluted.

"Are you telling us Loki is right here, and that he can see us but we cannot see him?"

"Yes."

He and Wong had repetitively attempted to enter the Mirror Dimension but felt their physical bodies repelled every time. The fact that they could see neither Loki nor Mordo confirmed Stephen's suspicions. "The powers Mordo has siphoned off the others have heightened his own greatly. He has fortified the Mirror Dimension, barring all entry and exit save for which he chooses to allow."

"Did your spell tell us how much blood has been spilled?" Thor asked lightly. The question in his eyes was evident. Was Loki still alive? "Does he yet live?"

"I do not know." Stephen always told the truth. For all his photographic memory, he had never been very good at remembering lies so he stayed well away from telling them.

"Guys, guys, I know it's all doom and gloom right now, but-" Bruce did that thing with his hand again where he looked like he wanted to pet everyone, "Let's just stay positive, alright? Loki is strong, he will not go down without a fight."

Valkyrie uncrossed her arms and her bosom swelled as the weight of Bruce's words strengthened her resolve. "I have faith in Loki."

"But from what we can tell from the blood, it is indeed Loki's, except we really don't know how much there is of it, yes?" Bruce looked expectantly at Wong, who nodded in affirmation. "Thor, I think I'd better check out the healing halls, wake everyone up, make everything ready – this is an all-hands-on deck situation." He looked around at everyone. "When you have freed Loki, I will be waiting."

Thor's eyes were misty when he gripped the physicist's arms in gratitude. "Thank you, Bruce."

"Don't thank me yet." And Bruce broke into a jog back toward the royal compound.

Thor looked out beyond the coastline. In the inky blackness of the night, the horizon was a mash of blacks and greys, the moonlight being the only source of light; it shone bright and ever observing, never interfering.

"He is trapped in here and there is nothing we can do to help him."

Strange's mind was racing. Too much time had elapsed and not knowing the fate of Loki and their unborn baby was driving him insane with pure, unadulterated fear.

"Kaecilius drew on Dormammu's strength to fold time and space in the real world when we last fought in the Mirror Dimension." Stephen's heart picked up pace, and his face grew hot, his tongue thick and dry.

"Strange," Wong said warningly. He shook his head. Do not go down that road.

"You are doing that again, that exchange of knowing looks." Thor demanded, "Tell me what you know and what you intend to do."

"The Book of Cagliostro contains a spell that opens a pathway to the Dark Dimension where an entity called Dormammu resides. It is Dormammu's power that allowed a former enemy to manipulate the Mirror Dimension and bend it to his will, breaking down the barriers between the world within and our reality."

"Strange, you need to think this through. Dabbling in the Dark Dimension was what started all this mess in the first place! Think of what happened to the Ancient One," Wong growled.

"This dark power you wish to summon. Will it save my brother?"

"Loki does not possess the sling ring he requires to escape. I need to break him free."

"Will it unleash devastation and bring nothing but strife and misery?" Thor gripped Stormbreaker tighter. "Will it consume you?"

For a heartbeat, Stephen thought he could glimpse the wavering uncertainty and concern in the Thunderer's eyes. When Stephen did not answer, Thor took that as answer enough.

"Then I will not have it," Thor said adamantly. "I know Loki and I know I speak his mind in this matter. I assure you, as certain as the love I hold for my brother, that he will not have it as well."

Thor lifted his chin, his handsome face determined and his stance unfaltering. "This I speak true from the very core of my being."

Stephen felt panic clench his heart. "Loki is in mortal danger, Thor. I cannot sta-"

Thor shook his head and lifted a hand.

"Can't you feel it, Stephen?" Thor's nose was upturned, his head cocked to one side as if sniffing the air, his single blue eye shining with heightening excitement. "Can't you feel Loki's magic?"

The tip of Loki's sword had left a deep graze along Mordo's cheekbone and the frostbite had begun to set in, the blackened wound gaping and wet with ichor.

Mordo charged again, his Staff flickering brilliantly in the dark and Loki's lightning reflexes guided his movements as they had a thousand times before, fluid and agile and one with the wind –

This was the dance, the intoxicating dance of determination and adrenaline and survival instincts and the desire of holding on to the one thing that was most precious to Loki right now that he simply could not lose and must protect –

Loki sidestepped what would have been a devastating front kick to the belly and darted to Mordo's right side, his one eye now blinded by the black ice of frostbite, and swung the ice sword in a broad arc, narrowly missing Mordo's hip had it not been for the Staff. Pushed back by the erupting backlash of magic from the collision, Loki crouched to one knee and gracefully slid across the grass.

"Can you feel that, Sorcerer?" Loki felt the vibration all around him, his senses alighting to the familiar tingling of static electricity.

Loki could not see worth a damn thing in the pitch blackness of the night, save for the moonlight glinting off his blade and his armour. But he could sense his brother's presence, he could feel it in his bones and every fibre of his being.

He purred, "Have you met my brother, Thor?"

He could not see him, but Loki knew he was here.

Thor was here. Thor had come.

"There is no escaping the Mirror Dimension."

"Oh no, I have heard. It is inescapable, certainly not without your…" Loki wriggled his fingers, "Ring things."

If he could feel Thor's powers shudder against the walls of this prison, that only meant one thing. It had walls. And walls could be taken down.

And magic walls? Well.

Loki slowly climbed to his feet. "I have no need for your trinkets."

He sheathed his icy sword. Now his hands were free. He opened them, palms wide toward Mordo, the tips of his blue fingers shining black like onyx -

"For I am Loki, Son of Odin, Brother of Thor, Prince of Asgard."

Loki reached deep inside him for the one true weapon that belonged to him by right of blood, heritage -

"The Rightful King of Jotunheim."

And by law of nature

"I am no man."

The Casket of Ancient Winters roared to life in his hands, a brilliant blue light bathing the night sky in a glittering shower of slate, ice and fog, and Loki could feel the ancient magic flow through him like a conduit as it worked to devour everything in its icy maw in a hail of frost and shards of crystal -

"I am a God."

"Get back!"

Stephen lurched forward and conjured the biggest shields he had ever invoked, and the gigantic Mandala loomed over them, its heat enveloping them all and protecting them from the sudden biting, freezing cold –

No, cold did not quite sufficiently describe it.

It was a glacial and frigid blast of raw power that was eating away at his own magic, his Mandala shields eroding by the second and flickering dangerously into oblivion.

"Loki!" Thor hollered from somewhere behind him.

"He's going to kill us all!" Valkyrie yelled, holding her arms over her head in the attempt to ride out the blizzard.

"Loki!" Thor roared again, but his voice was immediately lost to the howling icy wind, "You're free! Close the Casket!"

Stephen looked around wildly, the entire landscape was fast turning into an icy wasteland –

Is this Loki's magic?

With renewed resolve, Stephen pumped more magic into his shield; he knew his teeth were chattering, he could not feel it but he could hear them gnash against each other. He could not feel his fingers.

"Loki."

He tried to concentrate, his vision blurring from the gale and whiteout.

"Loki!"

"Stephen?"

Loki's voice came across the connection, weak and thready.

Stephen's heart leapt to his throat.

"Loki. You're safe now. You're free."

What had Thor said?

"Loki. Close the Casket."

And slowly, yet surely, the storm of ice and hail began to subside and when Stephen could finally see without tearing, he looked up into the sky-

A mere twenty feet away, Loki was afloat a shimmering mist of eternal winter, his feet not quite touching the ground. He was clad in his Asgardian battle armour yet once again he was in his Jotunn form, long hair flowing behind him like black seaweed floating down water, and revealing his pale face, tinged with blue and lined with the marks of the Royal House of Laufey.

The Casket closed entirely and disappeared with a sleight of Loki's hands.

And Loki started to fall.

Stephen reached out a hand to conjure a Shield to catch the falling prince, but Stephen was too far, far too far.

The Cloak of Levitation shot out from behind him to try to break Loki's fall but it too, was too slow.

Loki hit the ground hard, landing on his back.

"Loki!" Thor thundered and ran toward his brother.

"Don't touch me." Out of breath from the fall and over-exerting his seiðr, Loki was at least conscious. He held out his hands, still blue and coated with thin ice. "Not yet. Give me – give me a minute."

"Loki." Thor dropped to his knees and for a second, looked determined to gather his brother in his arms, frostbite or no. He waited for a few long seconds and when Loki's blue skin finally receded, giving way to his familiar Aesir skin, Thor buried his face onto Loki's chest and fiercely embraced him with arms shaking from sheer relief.

"Thor," Loki breathed out, breaking into an exhausted smile. "It's nice to see you too."

"Are you hurt? Strange said you were bleeding, that was how we found you, show me where-"

"Thor, stop fussing." Loki pounded Thor's back to get him to ease his grip around him, "Help me up."

When Loki was finally steady on his feet, he looked around the icy tundra which stretched as far out as the eyes can see, and Loki faltered. "Thor. Is Asgard – did I hurt anyone?"

"No, Brother. You didn't." Thor held a steadying arm around his waist.

"Loki." Loki looked behind him and his eyes brightened, his smile softening.

"Stephen."

The Sorcerer Supreme rushed toward him and engulfed him in an embrace, before pulling back only to grab the sides of Loki's face and in full view of everyone, kissed him long and deep.

"God, Loki." Stephen's forehead was warm against Loki's cold skin. "You scared me."

"Mordo?" He whispered. "Did I kill him?"

The Cloak of Levitation lifted off Stephen's shoulders and flew toward Valkyrie who was standing guard over a crouched figure about thirty yards away. Loki felt a little stab of pain in his side at the sight of the figure lying prone and unmoving on the ground. Wong's hands were hovering over his former colleague and fellow Master, as he worked the spells to melt the ice and frost coating Mordo from head to toe. "He is still alive. But barely. He's dangerously hypothermic."

"Good," Loki breathed out shakily. One less thing to feel guilty about.

The shard of pain lanced through his abdomen again and this time it did not recede; in a matter of heartbeats, agony of the deepest, sharpest kind sank its talons into him, showing no signs of letting go no matter how he struggled to rein it in and control his breath -

"Stephen." Loki's face had gone as white as a sheet.

"Something's-" Loki grunted and dropped to his knees.

"Loki!"

The world tilted, faces swam, his desperate hands clawing at the invisible knives tearing through his stomach and at the same grabbing at everything he could reach for purchase, someone's arms - Thor? – his clumsy fingers too many yet too few – he fisted the front of someone's clothes to keep from sinking but he was falling and falling

"Loki!"

Loki would have spoken but for the pain

And everything went black.