#20

"I see so much darkness inside of you," the Soul Stone murmured warily. Since Loki was not physically present, her spellwork did not hurt in the truest sense of the word but it still felt as much like a violation as the mental torture Hela and Thanos had inflicted upon him. "I see so much rage, so much contempt for those who loved you, so much hatred for yourself and the world you grew up in, so much disgust, despair and deceit. And among all those things, I see our signatures"—she looked first at Mind, then at Reality, Power, and Space—"your signatures. He absorbed them." She glanced at Loki. "How did you manage to absorb the energy of four of us into your own magic?"

"I suppose I ended up in the right place at the right time quite a few times," Loki answered in his God-of-Mischief voice while he inexplicably yearned for the dark voice's counsel. "Or maybe it was the wrong places at the wrong times, I am not quite sure yet."

Soul glared at him. "This is no laughing matter, child."

Even though he was not present in his corporeal form in this peculiar dream, Loki shuddered. "I didn't me—"

"Be silent," the Soul Stone said before she faced the other stones with a grave expression that indicated she was the one in command. The inference triggered the memory of words Loki had read in one of the ancient books in Asgard's library many, many years past. The Soul Stone is the mightiest of all the Infinity Stones. It harbors a plane of existence within it—an idyllic but outlandish landscape called the Soul World—that is inhabited by the souls of those who died at the hands of the Infinity Stone wielders. Loki's mouth gaped open. "Why didn't—"

"It is not your turn to ask questions just yet," interrupted the Soul Stone. "First, we have to agree that you can be trusted." She glanced at the incarnation of the Power Stone. "Tell me about him."

"He welcomed the pain that was inflicted upon him with my energy. He craved it as a means to surpass his mighty brother," Power replied. "I know that Mind's manipulations amplified the darkness in his heart but the hatred was there nonetheless."

"That was a long time ago," snarled Loki, suddenly furious that his dream-self had apparently been summoned to this accursed place to answer for crimes long past. He was furious, too, that Thor had freed him from Hela's grueling but still somehow peculiarly soothing torture and thus subjected him to the wrath and suspicions of all those he had wronged in the past. Yet most of all, he was furious with himself for being so norndamned piteous that letting go of Thor's hand had presented itself as the only opportunity for action to him in that fateful moment on the Bifrost Bridge.

"That might be true but traces of this hatred still lingered when he died," Power objected.

The Space Stone nodded in response to this and before Loki could open his mouth to dissent, he conjured up a translucent projection of the Tesseract, asking, "Are you going to deny that part of you wished your brother harm when you willingly gave your own life?"

"That is not true," Loki began but the Tesseract flickered to life in bright flashes of kingfisher blue and distracted him from what he was going to say with a projection of himself, bruised and battered, standing in the debris left behind by the titan's attack, looking simultaneously terrified and determined. What should I do, he heard his own voice ask and marveled for a second how such a conversion of thoughts into spoken words was possible at all. Yet before he could even try to sort out the workings behind the Infinity Stones' magic, he heard the dark voice speak in a distorted snarl that was still so recognizably his own that its words sent an inexplicable shiver down the spine of his dream-self. Thor will survive but he will suffer. He will save Asgard's people but he will suffer. He might defeat Thanos but he will suffer. He will be safe but he will suffer. Then he saw himself squirming in the titan's golden-gloved grasp before he spoke the words that sent Thanos over the edge. Y-you will never be a God.

Space smiled grimly. "Are you truly going to deny that part of what motivated you to do this was the prospect of your brother's suffering?"

"Yes," Loki protested. "That wasn't me. I wanted him to survive. I wanted our people to survive. I—"

"You wanted him to survive because you wanted him to suffer," the Space Stone clarified. "Stop lying to us."

Loki flinched as he realized in horror that, dream or not, those beings that now stood before him in their ethereal grace were not like Thor or anyone else, who had only ever had access to the warped linguistic manifestation of a mere fraction of his thoughts. They had seen his true colors; they had seen every sparkle of envy, rage, despair, disgust, and self-hatred; however faint it might have been. They could see right through him.

"He is not lying to us," whispered the Mind Stone. "He is lying to himself."

"So you agree that he is a hazard," the Soul Stone noted.

"Yes," Loki whispered in a trembling voice that was thick with held back tears. "Yes, I am a hazard. I tried to purge my mind of this darkness but I have no way of knowing if I will ever be free of it." He gulped in an attempt to swallow his emotions but they broke out with a woeful sob. "I have no business here. I am not the person you should be talking to because I cannot help you. I am no match for this. I am no match for myself." He sniveled. "Just let me go," he whispered. "Please." He closed his eyes and tried to squirm free of their hold over his thoughts. This is just a dream. I just need to wake up. I just need to—

"Not just yet," said Mind. "There is hatred and darkness in his thoughts still, yes, but there is light as well. There is light, love, guilt and regret but most of all, there is hope; hope and longing for praise and acceptance that were promised but never received."

Loki exhaled quietly. "What am I supposed to say to that," he mumbled more to himself than to the incarnate gathering of the Infinity Stones that still felt, to say the least, unreal. Of course, they feel unreal, a voice from deep inside his mind snarled. Was that really … could it be that … This is a dream, dullard. It does not matter. Just focus.

"There is love, yes," Reality said, facing the Soul Stone. "He was created with love and it makes him strong in a way. He should—"

"Created with love?" Loki chuckled. "I am sure you have confused—"

"He should never have lived," Reality spoke over him as if his interjection was not worthy of being heard, "but he has proven himself to be quite resilient."

Loki gulped. "What do you mean by that?"

Reality reached for the projected Tesseract, changing its colors from blue to crimson. "Let me tell you a story."

"We don't have time for stories," the Time Stone pointed out.

"There must be time for this one," Reality objected and the Tesseract glimmered to life once more, showing a much younger version of Odin, his hair still mostly brown, who was purposefully striding through the weapon's vault of Asgard with the Casket of Ancient Winters in his possession. Frigga was following him, cradling a tiny blue-skinned baby in her arms. Loki's heart plummeted into his stomach. "The man you grew up calling father used my powers to make you a God," said Reality.

"I guessed as much," Loki said in a toneless whisper as he watched with a lump in his throat how the projection of Odin gently placed his war trophy on a stone pillar to retrieve a golden scepter with a redly glowing tip from the gilded weapon cabinet by the end of the wall. Wasting away in the dungeons with nothing but books to keep him company after his fall from grace, Loki had often wondered, unwillingly, how his metamorphosis from Jotun to Aesir had transpired. His mind had often begun to wander, conjuring up different scenarios, but he had never expected the scene of his transformation to have been the cold, stonewalled weapon's vault. No more than another stolen relic indeed. A blue-skinned living breathing war souvenir that was not supposed to see the light of day until his monstrous origin was safely concealed. Loki averted his gaze.

"Harnessing our power requires purity of intent," Reality continued. "Not in the sense that the stone wielders' intentions have to be pure as in virtuous," she elaborated when she saw Loki's confusion, "but in the sense that it weakens our powers if a stone wielder tries to keep his true intent from us."

"I'm not sure I understand," Loki whispered, his attention drawn to the projection once again.

"You cannot lie to us," Time clarified. "If your true intent is to use us to do harm but you try to disguise that intent by pretending your motives are altruistic, you betray us and our magic; and we pay the price."

"There was a shadow of darkness in Odin's heart when he made you," said Reality as she gestured towards the projection where the allfather was bringing the tip of the scepter to Loki's blue face, gently tapping his forehead. "It was a mere shadow—obscure, yes, but there nonetheless—and I sensed that he and you were going to inflict pain and destruction upon a great many of your people." Loki stood transfixed as he watched ruby red sparkles sizzle into life around the scepter's tip.

"Which is why I tried to intercept and ensure that whatever he was trying to achieve with making you a God would be nullified by you not surviving your transformation," Reality went on as the blue color on the projection of Loki's face began to fade into a pale white. As soon as the transition appeared to be complete, the baby began to cry heart-splittingly.

"You attempted to kill me?" Loki asked softly as he recalled what the man he had grown up calling father had said to him after he had tried to subjugate their precious Midgard. Your birthright was to die, as a child, cast out onto a frozen rock. Apparently, Odin was not the only one who thought so. Loki watched Frigga cradle the crying baby against her chest. "Tell me," he whispered, "what has this baby ever done to anyone to deserve such treatment?"

"Do not impeach me, child!" Reality told him with fiercely glowing eyes. "This baby had done no harm yet, of course, but now, a few hundred years later, that looks quite different, doesn't it? I tried to protect Asgard from great plight."

"You knew this was going to happen?" Loki asked petulantly, gesturing vaguely towards the cabin. "All of this? You knew I was going to fall from grace, attack Midgard, bring my parents great sorrow, disappoint my brother and eventually destroy Asgard?"

"As I said, it was a mere shadow," Reality replied curtly. "I put the allfather on trial. I ensured that only true love, which I suspected was lost among the Asgardians, would complete the transformation. You were caught between your Jotun and your Aesir form for days. You did not eat. You did not sleep." The Tesseract showed an image of Frigga picking up a wailing baby from its crib and cradling it to her chest to no avail. "You were on the brink of death, my child, but the woman you called mother would not give up and after a few weeks of suffering, you were free. Her love broke the spell and thus you were born as an Aesir. Her love saved you, Loki, and we have to have faith that some of that love survived within you."

Loki did not even try to hold his tears back this time. Reality turned towards the Soul Stone with a sad smile. "Can you see it in his colors?"

"I see it," Soul confirmed. "Love, sadness, guilt, longing. There is hatred still, but mostly, I see love."

"What was that shadow?" Loki whispered. "What did Odin want with me?"

"It was obscure," Reality repeated. "I am not entirely sure. It involved a prophecy and something he was thinking of in terms of a tangler."

"Ragnarok," said the Soul Stone with a wan smile upon her lips. "The lie that bent the entirety of the Nine Worlds to Odin's will."

Loki felt a nagging suspicion that quickly evolved into alert. "But Asgard was destroyed." He once more thought of his home, however much of a prison it might have felt at times, erupting into the flames unleashed by the wrath of Surtur. He once more felt the pain of loss as he reminisced about the golden pillars, the flourishing gardens, the soothing warmth of the royal library; everything now reduced to ashes floating through space. "That is not a lie. The Realm Eternal is gone."

"Yes, but it was not destroyed because of some mythical twilight that descended upon it," Soul said softly. "It was not destroyed because the wolves stole sun and moon from the sky and plunged the Nine Worlds into darkness. It was not destroyed during the war of winter that came to pass after sun and moon were gone. Think about the prophecy again and then think about what actually transpired. Asgard was destroyed because of your actions and your decisions. Yours and your brother's. Prophecies are just words, child. They only obtain power if you act upon them."

Loki narrowed his eyes. "How come you know so much about Asgard?" He took a step towards the ethereal being. "Why did you keep your eyes on us?"

"I kept part of my eyes on Asgard," answered Soul, her eyes a gleaming orange, "and on ten trillion souls in the Nine Realms because—"

"Heimdall," Loki blurted out as he suddenly remembered the orange glint in the guardian's eyes that was eerily similar to the glint in the Soul Stone's eyes he could see before him at this very moment. And suddenly, the voice spoke again. He could see souls, you imbecile. What did you think that means? "He owed his foresight to your powers?"

"The Odinforce? Gungnir? The Bifrost? Norn magic?" Soul gave a silvery laugh. "You owe everything that made Asgard so mighty to our powers. I have been in Odin's possession for an unthinkably long time when the universe was still young."

"We all have," added the Power Stone.

Loki remembered another line from the ancient book he had read as a young prince. To ensure that whoever wants to possess the Soul Stone understands its true power, it will demand a sacrifice. In order to take the mightiest of stones, you must lose that which you love. You must sacrifice a soul for a Soul. "Who did he sacrifice?"

"His brother," said the Soul Stone almost nonchalantly.

Before Loki could process the meaning behind those words, the dreamscape tremored slightly before his very eyes.

"I told you there was no time for stories," admonished the Time Stone. "Be quick now. He will be here in a few minutes."

Loki felt a jolt of fear but he forced himself to focus. It is just a dream. You will wake up before He ever reaches you. "What about the seventh stone? Your creator? How—"

"Child, we have no creator," interrupted the Reality Stone. "We are the origin of creation."

Before creation itself, there were six singularities, Loki recited the lines of the ancient book in his head. Then the universe exploded into existence, and the remnants of these systems were forged into the Infinity Stones. Each stone represents a different aspect of our universe. Loki frowned as he rapidly sifted through what he knew for certain. He only had Thor's word that there was a seventh stone at all and the Norns knew Thor could be wrong. His brother had lived for one and a half millennia and still seemed to have the intellectual capacity of a mealworm where certain matters where concerned. But come to think of it—There is no time!—how could there not be a Death Stone? Wasn't it ridiculous that nobody should have wondered—

Stop thinking, you uru-brained nitwit! That voice again. That familiar … Of course! Loki glanced at the scarecrow wearing the titan's armor and, suddenly, he understood. They did not want Him to know. With them still being bound to the Gauntlet, Thanos would still have control over them and although Loki could not be sure, he still suspected that control over them meant that Thanos might have access to their thoughts. Access to this conversation. There was no time to lose.

Time.

Loki remembered what the Time Stone had said earlier. You cannot lie to us. If your true intent is to use us to do harm but you try to disguise that intent by pretending your motives are altruistic, you betray us; and we pay the price. He glanced at the scarecrow again and took a deep breath. "You said that everything was going to come apart and the universe was going to unravel," Loki began quietly. "That you were going to destroy yourselves. Is that why? Because He misused you by trying to conceal that his real objective was to inflict pain while he tried to convince you it was, well, something else?"

"You really are quick," the Space Stone said by way of an answer. "How did you figure it out?"

Loki sighed. "He made it quite clear to me that he thought pain to be the very fabric of the universe, which is, I suppose, why he wiped out half of it but from what I have seen, he also believed himself to be some sort of deliverer, so he might have been delusional when he snapped his fingers."

"Then you know what you are up against?" Soul asked Loki, her eyes afire with determination. "Are you ready to fight him? Ready to fight yourself?"

Loki exhaled a heavy sigh. Prophecies are just words, child. They only obtain power if you act upon them. It was time to write his own destiny."I am," he said. Well, not entirely, but who was ever entirely ready for such a monumental task? "So, where are we?"

"We don't know," said the Power Stone.

Loki pulled a grimace in the face of the seeming intractability of the Infinity Stones' predicament. "How do you plan to overpower him if he still has you bound to the Gauntlet?"

"That is, ultimately, why you are here," said the Mind Stone, finally revealing the reason for this peculiar encounter. "You have absorbed our signatures into your own magic in a way not even the mightiest of stone wielders has accomplished. You a—"

"Just to be sure," Loki interjected, "you are you talking about Odin, aren't you?"

Mind blew out an annoyed breath that commanded him to focus. "Yes."

The affirmation sent a gleeful smile flitting across Loki's face and made him feel genuinely powerful and in control for the first time since he had learned that was not of Asgardian blood.

"Millions of beings carry traces of Infinity Stone magic inside them and yet you are the only one whose mind has been susceptible enough to hear our cries," continued Mind. "Which is why it is you who has to release us."

"Me?" Loki felt his features slip. "How?"

"You need to take us with you. You need to take us out of this dream," Mind explained. "You need to absorb our energy and restore it in the waking world, one stone at a time."

Loki huffed a desperate laugh as he silently cursed the susceptibility of his own mind. "That is impossible. How could my mind possibly contain the full power of an Infinity Stone? How could I possibly survive that much power surging through me?"

"Your companions have created a vessel for me," said Mind softly and was suddenly recognizably female. "I saw it in the Iron Man's eyes."

"They aren't my companions," Loki snapped, almost reflexively.

"Oh, Loki," Mind sighed. "Do you still not understand? I have traveled to the core of your mind. I know of your deepest desires, your deepest fears. You cannot possibly hide anything from me." She placed a translucent hand on his cheek and a warmth spread through his body. "I know that, more than anything else, you want to belong. You fear to be alone and rejected, and yet you continue to do your best that this is exactly what happens. Stop being your own worst enemy. Embrace this chance."

"Embrace this chance to … die?" Loki giggled. "Again?"

The incarnation of the Mind Stone smiled. "The mortals have created a vessel for us, which they could not use," she repeated, "but they cherish a small hope that you might. Search for it and then call for me."

The dreamscape shook once more, violently this time, and the illusion of the forested mountains surrounding the cabin began to crumble away, revealing nothing but the hollow blackness of a dreamless sleep behind them. Loki could feel rather than hear what the Reality Stone was saying. He picked up the Gauntlet. "Just one last question," he shouted over the noise of the imploding dream. "Where did the souls go?"

"To me, of course," said the Soul with a smile.

"Are they lost?" asked Loki but before any of them could answer, the titan's voice—raw and deep and terrifyingly familiar—thundered through his head. "Why are you glowing?"

"You must go now," ordered the Mind Stone. "But hold yourself ready and make haste!"

The urgency in her voice catapulted Loki out of the dream and his eyes snapped open.

Author's Note:

~ Hi, folks! I can't believe it again took me this long to edit this chapter because, as I said, much of it had already been written at the time I published the last chapter. But I went on a weekend trip from the 21st to the 24th and also published another story, so yeah, time is the enemy of all of us, I guess.
~ If you're interested in some sort of background story to this chapter, you can read my one-shot 'No harm shall home to you' which tells the story of Loki's transformation from Frigga's perspective. If you already read it, you now know why the transformation didn't work at first and why baby Loki had to suffer for so long. The poor creature.
~ I'm not sure what else to say because any questions that you may have will probably be dealt with in the subsequent chapters. Loki too will have a few questions of his own when he awakes.
~ Ah, yes. Uru-brained nitwit. Loki said that to Thor in one of the first issues of the Thor 2018 run by Jason Aaron and the insult just got stuck in my brain, so I had to use it at some point.
~ Stay tuned!