"Can I borrow a quill? I didn't know we were supposed to bring parchment and a quill," Thor's whisper was loud enough to be heard throughout the lecture hall.

I gave Thor a pencil from my pencil case and a sheet of paper from my notepad. We were sitting in the front row, I had made sure we had arrived early enough to pick a good spot.

Thor and I had been invited by the Templars to a lecture for field agents about the waning of magic on Midgard.

Loki had not been invited but had made his way in anyway, sliding in just as the doors closed and the lecture began. He was hanging against the wall in the back, his eyebrows raised as he eyed the hall and the people in it with a belligerent attitude.

Richard was the one who was supposed to be lecturing us, but he was having technical difficulties with the projector.

I suspiciously glanced behind me at Loki. Was this his doing? I wouldn't put it past him.

Loki just shrugged, he had no idea what was happening either.

"Very well then, I will simply have to do this the old-fashioned way," Richard admitted defeat, picked up a marker and tried to write on the whiteboard. The marker wasn't working either and I started to feel sorry for him.

"Here, take mine," Thor helpfully gave his pencil to Richard. He had been using it to doodle little Mjolnirs on the sheet of paper I had given him.

"Ehm, thanks," Richard took the pencil with a puzzled look on his face. It wasn't much use on a whiteboard, but Thor couldn't know that.

Eventually, an aide brought a working marker and the lecture could start.

"Welcome to today's mandatory lecture on "The Waning of Magic on Earth," Richard said, as he wrote the words on the whiteboard.

"As most of you know, almost two years ago a bomb in Tokyo set off a chain of events which we now know was meant to awaken the Dreamers."

Richard wrote the words 'Tokyo' and 'Dreamers' on the board a drew a line between them.

I carefully copied it into my notebook, this all seemed important.

I glanced at Thor who was frowning in concentration as he used the red pen I had given him instead of the pencil he had given away. When I looked at his paper I saw he was drawing red hearts around the Mjolnirs he had drawn earlier.

Okay…

Then I saw him add a T and an S to them. Awww, 'Thor heart Sif', that was kind of cute! Not what we were here for though. I elbowed him when Richard wasn't looking.

"...trapped in the Gaia Engines, supplying us with the anima we need for magic to exist in this world," Richard continued.

I nodded, I already knew all of this because Loki had explained it to me.

"Now the engines are failing and earth's supply of anima is dwindling because of it."

I carefully wrote that down too, it made sense.

"So what we are going to talk about today…"

"If I may be so rude as to interrupt," Loki's voice was clearly heard throughout the lecture hall, "but that is the worst sort of nonsense I've ever heard in my life and I had to listen to my brother talk for centuries."

"Hey!" Thor sounded a bit wounded, but people ignored him.

Loki made his way to the whiteboard.

"Do you people even bother to give even the slightest amount of thought to anything you are saying? Are you not supposed to have scientists, researchers and academics at your disposal whom you pay large, and from what I can tell completely and utterly wasted, amounts of money to inform you this is complete and utter twaddle?"

"I beg your pardon?" Richard was looking at me as if he expected me to do something about Loki's interruption.

I just shrugged, what did he expect me to do?

Besides that, there was no bigger turnon for me than watching Loki school someone in the arrogant, cocky, condescending way only Loki could. I leaned back in my seat and got ready to enjoy the show. Whatever he was up to, this was going to be good!

"Since you all seem to be too dull-witted to put even the simplest facts together and draw a coherent conclusion, allow me to inform you of what even the most dunce-like child could see."

Loki took the marker from Richard's hand and turned the line between 'Tokyo' and 'Dreamers' into an arrow pointing at 'Tokyo' instead.

"Tokyo was obviously a symptom, not the cause of the Dreamers' awakening," Loki said in a scathing voice. "The bomb was made out of Filth which secretes from the failing Gaia Engines. Ergo, the Engines were failing first, the bomb came second."

"Cause." he tapped the word 'Dreamers' pointedly.

"Effect", a pedantic tap for 'Tokyo'.

"Simple, yes?" Loki gave Richard his biggest, most insincere smile.

"At the same time as the attack on Tokyo, multiple attempts were made freeing the Dreamers from their prisons, my own attempt being but one of many. These attempts were foiled by Gaia's Chosen, the ones you colloquially refer to as 'Bees'."

Loki wrote the word "Bees' on the whiteboard in his elegant writing.

I idly wondered how hard it would be to install a whiteboard in our bedroom, and how much effort it would be to persuade Loki to wear a tweed jacket. Oh, and some fake glasses. He'd rock that professor look! Maybe

he could use his magic to turn the bedroom into a lecture hall…

Thor elbowed me and I tried to focus more on the lecture and less on how smoking hot the new and uninvited lecturer was.

"It is very unlikely the timing of these simultaneous attacks and the bomb was a coincidence, from which we can deduce it was an orchestrated attack. In other words, there was a person, or persons, behind this all. From the scale of the operation, most likely an organisation."

Loki wrote the word 'organisation' on the board with a question mark behind it.

I realised I was sitting with my elbows leaning on the desk, my chin cupped in my hands, swooning like a schoolgirl. I quickly sat up straight before Loki could turn around again, a blush creeping on over my face.

"Someone's got a crush on the teacher!" Thor teased in a whisper that was loud enough to hear throughout the whole hall. I viciously kicked him in the shins underneath the desk.

Loki's eyes twinkled at me for a second and winked as he turned around, but he said nothing.

"May I remind you that you, according to your own words right now, played a part in that concentrated attack? If there is anything you know that we don't…" Richard seized his chance to interrupt Loki.

"I know a lot of things you don't," Loki snapped. "I've forgotten more than you will ever know and I rarely forget a thing!

The things I know, the things I've seen, your tiny brain could not even begin to comprehend!

I am a thousand-year-old god, you dull creature!"

Loki took a deep breath, regaining control of his temper.

"I played my part because I seized an opportunity, not out of any willing involvement with an organisation. It is not likely the other attempts to free the Dreamers were merely acts of opportunity as well."

I carefully studied Loki's face. Was he lying? I thought I could tell he was hiding something, but then again he was almost always hiding something. Did he know more about who was behind these attacks?

He had studied the Dreamers and the Filth for years after leaving Solomon Island for the first time, at least according to Odin's ravens.

Could it truly be a coincidence he was on the island at the same time as everything else happened?

Then again, the only reason he had been able to damage the Gaia engine was because he had Excalibur, which the fishermen on the trawler brought back to the island after getting lost at sea. There would have been no way for him to orchestrate that, it was pure chance the sword came back to the island after all those centuries, right?

Loki was clever and insightful, he knew how to spot an opportunity, seize it and take advantage of the situation.

So why did I have this shiver crawling down my spine and this sinking sensation that I could feel in the pit of my stomach?

"None of this is important, however, or pertinent to the question at hand," Loki continued as he wiped the whiteboard clean.

"The Gaia Engines' failure would lead to the release of the Dreamers, and if that had already happened we would know. Or more to the point, we wouldn't know because we all would have seized to exist. Reality, as it is right now, would have seized to exist."

Loki paced up and down in front of the whiteboard.

"May I ask you a question?" he looked into the hall. "When is the last time you encountered the Filth?"

That was a good question. I couldn't really remember the last time I had to deal with Filth or creatures affected by it. The time Loki redid the wards on the island, I thought. That was months ago, we hadn't even started dating.

I looked around me and saw the other agents were trying to think back as well.

"The Dreamers haven't escaped, and we aren't seeing any Filth in the realm," Loki continued when no one had a satisfying answer.

"Filth is merely corrupted anima, twisted into an abhorrent physical manifestation of pure chaos."

"I thought you liked chaos, thrived on it?" Richard sniped, a bit petty I thought. Loki had well and truly taken over his lecture, which was annoying, but Loki was not wrong.

"I enjoy sowing chaos, yes. It is immensely entertaining when you are at the centre of it, causing it. Not so much when you are the one getting caught up in it.

And you are missing the point." Loki was condescending.

"If the Gaia Engines haven't failed yet, and the anima they produce isn't being turned into Filth, then why are we seeing a lessening in magic?"

"The people behind the attempts to free the Dreamers failed, mainly because they hadn't counted on us Bees to stop them. Perhaps this is a new tactic?" Matt suggested.

"Possibly, but not likely," Loki admitted. "Bees create their own surplus of anima, this isn't weakening you, nor anyone else who has innate magic.

My first course of action would be to try and remove you Bees from the playing field if I were in their shoes, or at least weaken you a bit.

Besides that, the Filth serves those people who serve the Dreamers, as it served me.

This weakens them too while not affecting you.

My guess is that they are licking their wounds and recovering from their big loss. Their grand scheme failed, a lot of their number are either dead or defeated, and they need time to lick their wounds and formulate a new plan. This new development is as disagreeable to them as it is to us."

"A new player perhaps?" Richard suggested. "Someone who has an innate source of magic so isn't weakened themselves, and who isn't too concerned about the Bees?"

"That is my guess," Loki nodded. "Someone who is taking advantage of the chaos left behind by the attack on Tokyo and the Gaia Engines, who seized an opportunity as you were all scrambling to try and get control back of The Secret World."

"Do you have any suggestions as to who might be causing this?" Richard and Loki seemed to have forgotten about the hall full of agents in front of them.

"I could rattle off a reamful of names, but that would merely be conjecture," Loki admitted. "And 'who?' isn't the only question we should be asking, it is perhaps not even the most important one.

'How?' and 'Why?' are the questions that keep me awake at night. How do you siphon the magic out of a whole realm without being noticed? And what are they planning to do with all that power? Is that power simply vanishing, or have they found a way to collect and store it instead?"

That was a chilling thought. So far I had just assumed, we all had just assumed, magic was fading. But what if someone was gathering it somehow, using it to build a massive weapon or power an army?

I suddenly realised Loki had been worried about this for quite some time, had worked this all out ages ago. Was this why it had been so important to him to get Laufey's staff? To get more power for ourselves, because we had to stop this?

Why hadn't he discussed this with me, or with anyone else?

"Does Asgard know anything about this that might help?" Richard asked Thor. "after all, isn't Heimdall able to see everything?"

Thor shrugged.

"If the Allfather knows, he hasn't shared his thoughts with me," he admitted. "But I can ask. While I am unable to return, I can communicate with my father if I have to. This seems an important enough matter to do so."

"What can we do in the meantime?" Matt asked, practically and to the point.

Everyone looked at Loki. My heart swelled with pride, I love it when others see his potential as much as I do.

"Well, I am not in charge of this operation," Loki said humbly.

"If I were, you all be wearing far better-looking uniforms to start with." Okay, not so humble. Not untrue though!

Richard frowned and Loki hastily continued before letting him get a word in.

"I would start with finding out where anima is disappearing from, and if it is disappearing evenly. If there are places that are affected more or less it might give us a point of origin, a radius in which to search."

Loki rubbed his chin for a moment, a frown on his face.

"Who is familiar with the phrase 'Places of Power'?" Loki asked.

"Me! Me!" Thor raised his hand high.

"Of course you are, you big oaf! I'm talking about them!" Loki snapped at his brother.

I had no idea what he meant, however, and neither did any of the other agents.

"Very well," Loki sighed. "It's only been a few centuries and you mortals have forgotten everything we taught you. It is embarrassing, you should all be ashamed."

Thor nodded in agreement.

"There are places in this realm where magic is so thick it is almost tangible, you can almost see it, hear it, taste it. You can most certainly feel it.

These places were traditionally used to practice magic and worship the gods. Until Christianity put an end to all of that, in most places.

We all had our own Places of Power, our own refuges where we could draw upon as much anima as we needed.

Some Places of Power weren't claimed by any of us and belonged to the Fae and other creatures of the magic world. And some Places of Power belonged to the mortals that did practice magic, like the Wakanabi Holy Cave you visited on Solomon Island," Loki nodded at me.

Suddenly I understood what he meant. I had known about these places, I just didn't know they were called that.

I saw other agents nod as well, they too had visited places like that.

"Because these places have such a surplus of magic, it should be easy to detect any changes in the anima levels," Loki suggested.

"That is not a bad idea," Richard admitted. "But there is a problem. We have no records of what their anima levels were like before magic started fading."

"What? WHAT?!"

Loki closed his eyes for a second, and took a deep breath, visibly clenching his balled fists.

"Why have you not kept any records of measurements?" Thor asked quickly before his brother blew a gasket.

"To be honest," Richard admitted, "I'm not even sure if we ever took measurements to begin with."

"Can't we at least start measuring now, and see how fast magic is draining? Maybe we can see if anima drains faster in some places than others?"

I suggested quickly before Loki got a word in. I could see the danger signs Thor saw too.

"That is something we can start doing," Richard acknowledged.

"We could ask the Fae folk that are friendly, and those humans who still retain their links to those Places of Power if they have noticed changes as well. It may not be precise, but it might give us a rough idea of how long ago this all started and how rapid it is progressing," Calinda said.

"If most gods have their own Places of Power, don't you two have any?" Matt asked Thor and Loki. "Wouldn't you know how much had changed since you last visited?"

"It has been centuries ago since I visited mine, I forgot where half of them are, to be honest," Thor admitted. "But we could check. I could try and ask the AllFather for some locations that belonged to our family too."

"Didn't you have two, three of them at most?" Loki asked Thor incredulously.

"Yes, but I forgot half!"

"How about you, Loki?" I tried to preempt the bickering that was sure to follow.

"I have a few," Loki answered evasively, "none that I have visited in a while. But I could check them."

Richard's lecture had not gone as planned, but at least now we were able to take some action, to do something besides sit and wait for the magic in Midgard to fully disappear.