Taking the quinjet to Arendelle was the best flight on an airplane that Loki could remember. The seat was more comfortable than the one he'd had on the flight to Spain, and the craft did not reek or have propellers like the war-era planes. Plus it was fast, so he would have to endure it for less time. He still didn't like the the hum of the engines, whose harmonics seemed wrong to him, but at least exploding seemed less likely.
He was less anxious, but after the revelation of Erik, he grew restless, and went to stand behind Natasha's pilot's seat.
She looked up at him curiously. "You can sit there, just don't touch anything." She gestured to the co-pilot's seat.
He shook his head. "I wanted to look outside."
She examined him for a moment until rising and opening a small cabinet beneath the navigator's seat. Some clever person had left a bottle of whiskey in there. "That seems particularly unwise on a flying craft," he observed drily.
"It's meant for after-action celebrations, not the pilot." She handed it to him. "Here. You can self-medicate your phobia, if you want."
"I do not have a phobia. The plane is fine. I wanted to see sky, that's all," he objected, but took the bottle anyway. Sniffing the aroma, he decided it was good enough, and tipped the bottle back for a long swallow.
Her gaze was caught by something in the back, and she called, teasing, "Hey, looking good, Rogers."
Loki turned to see that Steve had put on his new suit. It fit more sleekly than his old suit, not hiding much of anything. Between Steve and Natasha in her Black Widow tac suit, there was no shortage of something enjoyable to look at. Loki felt under-dressed, since he hadn't shifted to armor, but Natasha seemed not to mind letting her eyes stray across the fit of his black t-shirt, so he left it.
Steve was playing with his shield, practicing releasing it from the magnets that kept it attached to his forearm and the back of his suit. Loki was happy to watch him work with it. The shield belonged with him, and he was glad it hadn't been lost or stolen.
But that paled after a while, and Loki returned to his seat to nurse the bottle and ponder the news about Erik. He had to be still alive, somewhere. He could not have lived through a terrible war and imprisonment only to die right after fathering Wanda and Pietro.
Steve shifted across the aisle to sit next to Loki. "Hey. You okay? You're being quiet."
"Am I?" Loki returned and tried a smile. "It's an airplane. You heard I have a phobia."
"Really?" Steve asked. He flicked his eyes at the thumb drive that Loki was toying with between his fingers. "You're not thinking about Erik?"
They knew him too well. Loki let the smile slip from his lips, and curled his hand around the drive. "He was a child," Loki murmured. "A child in that horror. At first in a death camp and taken by Hydra when they discovered he had a power. We went right past where he was being held on our way to the Alps base. He was freed later by Margaret and the rest of them, after we were gone."
Steve's hand closed on his knee. "But they did free him, Lukas. And we helped him, by getting rid of Zola and Schmidt."
He shook his head, but not really disagreeing. He knew Steve was right, they'd done what they could, but it wasn't enough. "I could have rescued him sooner. I could've freed him before they'd even found out he had power, if I'd attacked the camps."
"Lukas, no, stop," Steve murmured, both hands squeezing at Loki's legs. "Don't do this. It's not your fault. We could only do so much during the war. We're powerful, but we're not God. You didn't know he existed- you couldn't have helped him any differently than you did. Are you listening to me? I'm sorry we couldn't help more, too, believe me, I looked at some of the histories, so I know there were other places, other ways, we could've used our powers. But the fact is, it was a war, and two people, no matter how powerful, could never fix everything."
Loki remembered the tesseract and thought that wasn't true. With that much power to hand he could have fixed it all. But the tesseract hadn't been in reach until the very end, when he'd lost it, and now Fury had buried it in some remote laboratory. He was going to have to retrieve it, at some point; the humans shouldn't keep it, that was just asking for trouble to come to Earth. But during the war, if Loki had been able to grab it, the outcome would have been a lot swifter.
But he didn't think Steve would appreciate Loki's desire to burn the entire Reich to the ground, so he allowed with some reluctance, "Perhaps not everything. But I wish I could've done more."
A child suffering as he had. It was abhorrent, and made his soul shrivel with the wrongness of it.
"Me, too," Steve agreed, squeezed his leg once more and went back to his seat across the aisle.
After that, probably in an effort to distract him, Natasha brought up the creature for them to talk about.
Loki wondered if it were Olaf, somehow still existing, but no one would describe Olaf as a yeti. But there were those old stories about the Ice Demon where he'd been wearing a wolf pelts, so probably the new story was a confusion of the Ice Demon and a bear. Bears on their hind legs could look oddly human and yet far too big to be human, so perhaps some lost polar bear had caused all the fantastic stories to be unearthed again. The Ice Demon had returned to the people's awareness in Arendelle after the war, so it wasn't much surprise, really. Mortals so often combined and exaggerated stories and then were surprised when the truth turned out to be so mundane.
But all in all it was a pleasant and quick flight, and Natasha was soon setting the quinjet down amid the northern mountains, near the last 'sighting'.
He was first outside, heading down the ramp in his ordinary casual clothes to take a look. It would've been warmer if the sun were out, but the sky was low and covered by heavy, winter-like grey clouds. It had already snowed once, but he wouldn't be surprised if it snowed again, since it was cold enough.
Natasha followed him out, bundled up in a parka with a fur-lined hood and he liked the way it framed her face.
On the ground, he called his armor and a fur-lined short cape mostly for appearance, than utility, but it was good to feel himself again.
Natasha's face was a study in absolute unwillingness to be astonished, but he could see it anyway, especially as Steve openly stared. "Dear Lord, what is that?"
"My Asgardian battle armor. Protective but flexible for combat."
Steve slowly shook his head. "I thought I was hallucinating when you were wearing that on the flying wing."
"It looks like leather. We have better materials," Natasha said coolly.
He smirked at her. "Natalya, mortals have achieved much, I will allow that, but there is no better material than pegasus hide laid with a thousand years of protective spells." He paused, wondering if either of them would question 'pegasus hide' but they didn't. He'd have to try it on Barton instead.
Moving away from the quinjet, he cast a basic search spell. Just because he thought "the monster" was a polar bear didn't mean it was. Arendelle was saturated with power after Elsa had used the tesseract, and it might have lured entities through cracks in the dimensional wall.
Closing his eyes, he sent his awareness outward, searching. There was something. It was faint, echoing through the ground. It was definitely something magical. Or at least touched by magic.
He pushed, trying to get nearer to it and understand what he was sensing, when a different awareness abruptly surrounded him. A 'voice' called his name across the gulf of the void.
"Loki?" A familiar presence returned, a feeling of desperation giving it power to break the shield he'd made. "Loki!"
It was Frigga, again, pleading, "Loki, please, no, don't shut me out-"
He tied the threads long enough to give her a taste of his pain and betrayal and abandonment, but mostly anger. "I told you to leave me alone. I want nothing to do with you or with Odin. Get out of my head and be gone."
He shut her out again and stumbled as he opened his eyes.
"Lukas?" Natasha asked.
He cast his eyes upward, glowering at the interruption, and inhaled a deep breath, settling himself. "I found something. I think. Probably just a polar bear, but it's the only thing nearby that seems anomalous." He turned in place to get a fix on the direction. "This way."
Natasha followed, curious what Lukas was sensing. The area of thin pine woods was very quiet, snow barely touched by any other tracks it was so new. Luckily it was only a few inches deep, thought the sky remained overcast and threatening.
They headed toward a rocky hillside, and the trees petered out right in front of a narrow vertical gap in the rock as if someone had pulled apart a seam.
"Are we going in there?" Natasha asked, knowing they were. "What if there's a bear?" Or on second thought, since a bear couldn't fit through the crack, she added, "Or wolves?"
Lukas shook his head. "I sense no animals. This is something else. This is some very old magic here."
"Like our friends, the rocks?" she asked.
"No, much older. And stronger." He shook his head, frowning in puzzlement. "I should have known this place was here. This much power… how could I have missed it? And yet, the ancient strength of it..."
"Are you sure we should go in?" Steve asked.
"I am quite sure we should not, but I think we have little choice." He headed for the opening, slipping through. Steve followed, a tighter fit, and Natasha followed, wary of a trap or ambush.
It was dark within, especially with her body blocking most of the faint outside light, but as Steve fumbled for his flashlight, Lukas said, "No need. I have it."
His voice echoed and soon she could see why, as a soft golden light formed in his palms and drifted upward to illuminate the cavern. She watched the glowing ball that looked as if it were made of glowing honey, and thought that she probably ought to be more surprised, but this seemed rather trivial to what she'd already seen him do.
The cavern was empty of bears or any other animal thankfully – strangely so, when it should have been used for animal nests, but the ground was barren. The walls and ceiling were smooth granite, almost perfectly rounded and about ten feet across.
"This doesn't feel natural," she murmured, and turned in place, hand on her sidearm and ready to charge the widow's bite. Except for the opening to the outside and the short tunnel, there was no break in the stone.
"No, it doesn't," Steve agreed. "Is this magical? Lukas?"
Lukas shook his head, but not to deny it was magic. "Nay, Steven. In this place Lukas does not exist. Here I must be only Loki." He was looking at the wall, but as if he saw something. "I think I must accept their invitation," he murmured.
"Whose invitation?" Natasha asked. "What are you looking at?"
"The door," he answered. "There's a way in."
"There's no door," Steve said and exchanged a glance with her to make sure she wasn't seeing it either. "Lukas, there's nothing there."
"Then you're not invited," Lukas said. "It must be for me alone. Do not follow. If I don't return soon, leave without me."
"I'm not leaving you here!" Steve protested.
Lukas turned to him. "Steven, the Norns do as they will."
"The Norns?" Steve questioned. "Who, or what is that?"
"The guardians of fate. The watchers of destiny. Neither you nor I can do anything against them. But it appears they want me to enter, so I must." He removed a slim-hilted dagger from his inner vambrace and handed it to Natasha. "Keep this for me, I should not go armed."
She grabbed his wrist to keep him from leaving. "I don't like this."
He gave a wry smile. "I'm not overly fond of it myself. But nor am I fool enough to ignore them. Wait for me, but no more than one day. That long, and they want something more than giving me a message, and there is nothing you can do against that either."
He disengaged from her grip and headed for the blank stone face. It was as if the stone itself seemed to become soft like tar, but he didn't seem to notice it curling and flowing around him, as he walked through as if there was nothing there at all. When she tried to follow, her hand found only cold granite.
Letting out a breath, she turned to Steve. "I guess we wait."
Steve shook his head. "Magic. I don't get it. And I don't think I like it."
She thought of Lukas disappearing at the bidding of beings who so far outclassed Loki in power she was nothing more than an ant to them. Her grip tightened on the hilt of his dagger, seeking some comfort from its solidity. "No. I don't either."
Loki walked the tunnel, rather irritated that he was being pulled away from his friends. Especially when he suspected he already knew what the message would be: Your fate is a monster and a villain, and you are not following the path laid out for you.
"I will not," he said aloud. "I know the prophecy, I know the stories. Do you think I have not felt your hand behind what I have endured, trying to force me to drink your poison? I know what you want of me."
There was no response, of course. But they heard, he was sure of that, given how heavy the feeling of ancient magic lay on each step.
"Is it not enough to turn me against Asgard?" he demanded, addressing the presence that lingered on the edge of his awareness, his voice rising with irrepressible fury. "Is it not enough that I lose my family, again and again, or that I learn pain and fear and face death? There is nothing more to take from me!"
As his voice echoed against the stone, the way abruptly opened up into a larger cavern with a ceiling so high his small magelight didn't touch its upper reaches, only shone on delicate towers and lattices of colored crystal that began to glow on their own.
Further in, there was a pool that should have smelled of metallic salts that had created the crystals, but instead the scent was sweet and inviting, like Frigga's lilacs in her garden.
"Oh, of course, I should have known there would be a sacred pool," he muttered, and started taking off his clothes. "Nothing can be simple."
Folding his undertunic on top of the pile next to his boots, he stood at the edge of the pool and looked down. Inside the rim of stone, the water looked dark and depthless, the light at the surface not penetrating far. Either there was a bottom or there was not, and they didn't bring him here to kill him, so what other choice did he have?
He walked off the edge and plunged into the water. It was chill but not intolerably so. The water closed over his head, and with that the light was extinguished.
The sudden darkness made his heart pound and when he tried to push himself up toward the surface, he had no sense of movement. When he tried to cast his own light, nothing happened. He reached outward, trying to find the wall of the pool, but touched nothing.
He swam more urgently, looking for something, anything, but there was only dark water all around. He was losing his breath, and panic clawed for attention in his chest, rising in his throat like something alive.
Then abruptly he was elsewhere.
… dark stone beneath his feet, strange night sky above his head, a creature wearing a cowl and a long clawed hand beckoned…
… jewels scattered against the black, red and violet and yellow and green and orange and the one he knew well that was glowing blue…
… a small cottage in the middle of a field, silvery moonlight shining on new snow, as on the edges all around white wolves crept closer, thinking themselves unseen…
… the blade drove through his abdomen, pain and pressure making him gasp, and he looked up into the triumphant demonic visage of Johann Schmidt...
He recoiled from the sight, shoving back.
NO. No, I won't I won't do this I won't see this no no no….
There was a block behind him, some wall trying to force him to stay there, but he rejected it, using the bright blade of his will to cut an exit and escape the vision.
But on the other side there was only a void of dark water and struggling to find a way out. But there was nothing else, only trying to scream and water filling his lungs as the night closed in.
tbc...