LOKI, AGAIN
He had been arrogant because he had understood. The purpose of the universe, his father Odin's divine rule, his brother's simple-minded might. He saw unrelenting change, a speedy chariot to nowhere, and he had reacted against it. But no games this. His godhood was no more, it meant less than one of those little wrist-pads that could send you anywhere in time. A bureaucracy where the flip of a sheet of paper was more powerful than an Infinity Stone.
He looked at it. Sure, it may not have come in handy before. But if he was going to dip his toes in Time again, it might help to be prepared. In this battle of the Multiverse, he might need all the help he could get.
Loki, with a mostly useless Infinity Gauntlet, against… he didn't even know what. What could possibility throw at him? What would be enough? Who could he ask? Who could he turn to for help? If Mobius no longer remembered him, then who did? Sylvie? Where was she? For all he knew, she was never coming back.
How did Kang win the first time? Alioth? That massive beast that he and Sylvie had enchanted. It was truly a unique creature, even in the realm of multiversal possibility. It alone, ignored the flow of time and space, devouring all. Uncontrollable except by he who had become God. Or the Devil, as he said. It had been the first, and the only, tamed by the Kang that conquered all other Kangs – wiping untold infinite possibilities from existence. How terrifying. No wonder he had been insane. Quivering on the edge of a maelstrom, defying it only by instinct and will. Loki respected him even as he feared him. Even Thanos had been just a creature, if massive in his appetite and desire and will. But even Thanos was just a pin-prick of light in the dark, waved away as a moment in time. Kang had seen the end of forever, so many times he had forgotten anything else.
Loki felt a moment of pang and sorrow for everything lost. His own alternate selves, those that had sacrificed themselves just so he and Sylvie could finally end the torment for them all. And yet, they had failed.
Loki stopped a moment, shock of realisation going through him. Alioth. Yes. Perhaps there was a chance after all.
But how? How did he really know? How did he know this much but no more? Of all the questions, that's the one Loki was stopped by, as he stood, invisible, lost in a maze that started in the library around here, and stretched into a labyrinth throughout infinity.
If you collected it altogether, like water, he would standing in the centre of an infinite maze. One that never ended. He had seen it begin himself. Faster than light. Faster than time. As fast as probability itself.
The whole universe, ended by some idiot with a black-board. Loki supposed if he dug deep enough he'd find out that Kang was secretly controlled by a bureaucracy of dogs. Where did it really end?
It turns out, that person came in two.
Where did Kang get this nonsense? Loki shook his head. Not nonsense. It could be lies, it could be insanity, but the man had beheld all of eternity with a human mind. A brilliant, unique mind, capable of things no man had done before – a destroyer and protector of entire realities, the rest of them just so much sticks caught in the tornado of his interpersonal "domestic dispute", to put a fine point of irony upon it.
Just layers upon layers of time trickery. They were outside time, but you could manipulate time. He was free of the timeline, and the first of his kind, but Kang had seen it all before. Loki was already ticking through the possibilities with his mind. But even a god had his foibles. Loki could not see that which had never happened. Yet Kang had.
Did he just know them so well? Is that what he meant?
If he and Sylvie had stayed together, could they have changed things? One Kang or an infinite amount, he said. No alternative. But Loki had been told similar things at the beginning of this little adventure, and it had been so much wind in the end.
Kangs that had frightened Kang? The omnipotent, omniscient human man who had conquered all of existence from a rancid, leather seat on the outside of the universe. So to speak. Actually he seemed to be quite conscientious and fastidious. Loki supposed that made sense.
I'm trying to be different, Sylvie.
He needed a team. And after quickly scanning the archives he had become so familiar yet unfamiliar with, he found what he was looking for. The first place to go.
I'll remember what you taught me.
He hoped to see her again.