When Hruothban and his sword-brothers wake in a sterile, bright Chitauri cell, they find their bonds cut and me standing in the opened cell door waiting to hand them back their weapons. Two dead Chitauri guards lay at my feet. Both guards had been slit from ear to ear. No alarms are sounding. No other Chitauri stand at my heels. I am the obvious picture of rescue.

Now. What do you expect my new friends did upon stumbling to their feet?

Hruothban noisily smashes me into the corridor wall, his fingers clawing into my throat while he yells oaths. I am a traitor, a monstrous wretch and coward, the enemy's bedfellow, a liar. Rather than feed into this idiot I tap his hands, and then his face, to get his attention. He beats me across the jaw and resumes strangling me.

"Traitor! Thrall! Shame of your fathers! I will make you wish you were never born."

The assumption inherit in this threat makes me smirk.

Hruothban lets go half his grip to backhand me, and in that instant I choke out: "We're in the dungeon. Look."

He pauses; one hand raised, the other clenches around my throat.

"Nuh," I gurgle. "Nnn—Now we know where the dungeon is. Yes? Do you see it?" Trying to breath is like trying to swallow knives. Black spots wheel before my face. My eyes want to pop. " . . . And we know where the entrance is. We can rescue our friends and escape without—nng. Uhhg. Guh. Under these foolish cowards' noses. We shall make them a laughing jest before As—Asgard."

His raised hand lowers, but he doesn't let go of my neck.

"Hruothban," Braeggvild says. The tracker appears as a woozy shadow at his leader's side. "This Elven beggar speaks true. He has slain the guards while we were frozen."

"We were frozen," Hruothban says, "because he attacked us."

"I attacked you to smuggle us into the dungeons," I growl. I don't try to pry his fingers from my jugular. This is the most important trick in surviving a beating or in staging recovery from trespass: never fight back. Never, never, never. It is important that Hruothban doesn't see me defending myself from him. If I defend myself, I am his enemy.

When Hruothban throws me down, I get up without the usual bared-teeth blustering bravado that passes for negotiation among the Aesir. He scoops up one of my salvaged Chitauri rifles, examines it with a grunt, and signals for Braeggvild and Lur to do the same. "Do not betray us again, Elf-thrall."

"-or you'll kill me?" I am not surprised. Why is this everybody's solution to my antics? Am I the only creature in Nine Realms with a mind for elegance? Elegance! Why should elegance be the sole domain of a . . . malformed, fatherless, homeless, disgraced swine birthed by a monster and reared by tyrant? I suppose I'm just special, that way.

Braeggvild pushes a hard hand into my chest. "Or we'll make you wish we'd killed you."

The corridor is clear. There are more cells opening from the left and right walls, but none are guarded. After several false starts—silenced by my magic, of course—we find Ilofn and Oddoutril in their own individual hells, one unconscious and the other in a ball that makes me hurt to look at. Hruothban instructs Braeggvild and Lur to take Oddoutril by his arms, help him stand, keep him quiet when he panics. Hruothban and I pick up Ilofn's body.

We meet two Chitauri en route to the surface. Lur blasts one before I can warn him off, and the other bolts.

Oddoutril fights free from his support. He rushes the creature with head bowed low and massive arms spread wide to ensnare. The Chitauri gropes for a weapon, but is smashed into the grimy floor instead by an enraged berserker. Od puts a hammer-like fist through its right eye. The fight is over.

What happens next hardly qualifies as a fight. What happens next is immensely entertaining.

And . . . gory.

And . . . lengthy.

Alarms blare overhead.

"Od," Braeggvild prompts a short while later. "Od. We should go."

Od says nothing. He gives the Chitauri's scattered remains a final kick and then unzips his trousers to loose a parting stream across the mess spread up the corridor and across one wall.

"We must hurry," Lur says. "These creatures swarm like the Vindren do."

If Od hears him, he gives no response.

This is going to get us nowhere fast.

I drop Ilofn's limp legs to join them. "Od," I murmur. Od is staring at the purple carnage, hypnotized. "Let's go kill some more."

He doesn't respond to this, either, but he lets Lur and Braeggvild take his shoulders and direct him toward the path leading up. We reach the oozing access tunnel as the walls begin vibrating to life. The hanger, I think. They are coming for us. The screeching alarms rattle my teeth. I can't feel my body.

We make the bifrost site in a sprint, crashing to a halt in the Pattern's center as the swarm closes in around us Hruothban shouts for Heimdall. I stoop to set Ilofn on the ground so I can clear out—The Chitauri cannot find my invisible bag.

Braeggvild points his plasma rifle in my face. "You are coming with us."

"I—"

"Move from here and you die."

Rainbow light explodes around us. When I look up, Heimdall and half of Odin's elite Einherjar are pointing swords at our throats.

"Peace, friends," Hruothban says. His big happy grin is back.

I'm still shaking.

"This is Oddoutrial," Braeggvild explains, introducing our warband. "Son and heir to Lord Noin. Hruothban son of Adarr, Lur son of Lur, and I, Braeggvild son of Siggvild, recovered him and the other from our captors. He is Ilofn son of Anja the Sorceress of Vanaheim."

Hruothban sets Ilofn's upper half on the observatory's shining floor, leaving me to follow suit. Between the swords and the lingering reptilian stink in my clothing and hair, I almost drop his legs. My muscles aren't working right. Hrothban, Braeggvild, and Lur surrender their weapons to the Einherjars' self-worthy feet.

Hruothban adds, with a sharp gesture at my ribs, "This creature is Vyir the Enchanter, a thrall in service to Alfheim."

"He shot us with an alien weapon," Lur blurts.

Irritation rears its lovely head above whatever blind, black ooze has replaced my limbs with stone. "That's hardly fair," I say. "Who was it that got us into the dungeon so we could rescue Lord Noin's heir?"

"You could have warned us," Hruothban says.

"While you were all 'Huzzah death by battle'?"

"Quiet." Lord Urdur, the Einherjar leader, signals his men to move out. "You will need your tongues when you make your report before Chieftain Tyr."

We are escorted from the bifrost by the city's premier guards, whom Hruothban and his friends have forgotten to warn that I am a magic-user. Un-bound, un-silenced, I conjure an Odin-King illusion to meet us before we're halfway across the Bridge.

Odin is looking a little wobbly round the edges. I am running out of magic.

Lord Urdur and our brave escort salutes the illusion—as do Hruothban, Braeggvild, and Lur. Only Od remains standing. Od looms with his arms locked at his sides and his dull eyes vacant. I make the Allfather spare not a glance at the rescue before nodding in my direction.

"Chieftain Urdur," it says.

"Your Majesty."

"This one is known to me. You will release him into my custody. I must speak with him in private about our treaty with the Elves."

Urdur salutes a second time. My legs still aren't working right, but Odin-King and I walk away to find a nice private hiding spot in the city. In a hollow between a tannery and a smithy, I banish the illusion and recast an Odin-mask upon myself just to be safe.

I'm shaking again.

Another invisibility spell and I am set to return—no thanks to that paranoid fool. My insides feel like a wrung-out towel. Going back to Vorsgard makes me want to dig my eyes out. I should rest before risking another teleportation.

I can't rest.

I don't have time.

Manic, depthless heat squeezes my chest at the thought of the Chitauri stealing my prizes. The heat explodes into scalding pressure. I would rather die than lose my treasures. I've got nothing left; I'm damn well going to have my reward. I steady my hands, master my reserves, and peel back the gate between worlds.

Vorsgard's clinging mud slicks up my shins, splatters my knees, gushes wet and acrid across my hands. My strength gives out. I slip forward into the muck. Hot sand cooks my nose and throat.

The invisibility spell is a bright spot in my mind, flickering as my reserves stretch to breaking point. I grip the magic over my weakening body as an unspoken plea to the cosmos.

I can't hear the Chitauri chariots.

They were right behind us.

My boots skid out from under me as I try righting myself. Orange mud soaks my nice black and silver biosuit, but I don't dare expend any more magic to help me stand.

I'll need what magic I have left to grab my bag and get back to Asgard.

The Chitauri should still be airborne, not so far from where I've fallen.

I slosh to a nearby outlook, tasting dead planet in the back of my throat. Vorsgard's massive white star burns my twitching neck and hands above the cooling orange paste. The Chitauri won't be able to see me and can't scan me, but my right hand is spasming as if I'm already hooked up to an electrode. My chest hurts. I'm breathing too fast. When I reach the edge a cold rush pins me motionless. The brown sky is shot with distant smoke, but there are no chariots. No swarm.

The Chitauri are gone.

I don't understand. They were closing in on us. They were a dozen kilometers out but coming fast—

From the overlook's slimy edge I see fried skeleton cities and barren landscape. No shadows dart between the ruins, or over congealed mud.

Vorsgard is empty.

I am alone.

Where did the Chitauri go, in five minutes?

The sandbanks in my mind itch, soaking me with nebulous doubt. The tide shifts. Am I mad? Did I imagine them? Did I imagine everything?

Could I have just arrived to Vorsgard for the first time? Have I not yet found the outpost?

I push those thoughts aside.

The ruins swallow me again without a sound. Old buildings cloak the sky in shrunken metal teeth. I trace my remembered path to the wall where I've buried my possessions, ignoring the prickly wave of panic that sniffs up my spine. When I slink around a blackened gate at the foot of an ex-palisade, the cluttered ground opens in a deadly, welcoming alley. My bag is at the alley's far end.

I head for the entrance and jolt motionless, eyes wide. Cold sweeps up my arms.

A cloaked figure is standing at the alley's narrow mouth, facing inward.

Scrambling behind the gate I press my back to the porous stone, twitchy right hand clamped over my mouth, and peer through the pylons at the alley.

The figure is real—I'm sure he's real. Look, he's not a shadow. But who—what—is this? Does he sense the death ward mere centimeters farther ahead?

The cloaked figure turns. I sink farther into the dirty shadows under the gate. The intruder's hood rotates in a lazy arc: left, then right. Looking for me.

I crush myself flat to the wall until the stone gouges my back. Bad things happen if I am found.

"You hide from me, little creature," the figure says. My blood freezes. My breath dies. I know that voice.

The Other's chilling stare drifts up the palisade, two meters left from where I'm crouched with my fist in my mouth. "Come forth. You could be of use, with your magics. Have I found your nest?"

Agonized need pushes up my throat. I am Compelled to answer, and bite my tongue to keep myself silent. If I speak, I am lost.

The Other bares its sharp teeth in a ghoulish smile. "I smell power and illusion. What are you hiding away in here? Trinkets? Treasure? Gold and Jotnar magic. You are a friend of the Asgardians, is that so?"

No. Not really. Not at all.

"The Witch of the Void tells me you tried to trick my Chitauri," it says. Pain splits my lower jaw. The Compulsion drives my mouth open. I grip my throat in a fist and squeeze. "You wanted to rescue two Asgardians from them. So very loyal." The Other waits for my reply. When I do not speak, it tilts its head as if listening to a distant sound. I can see greasy white flesh behind a golden veil—the Other's neck and throat are runny scars. My pulse batters my teeth. I bear down on my tongue until blood fills my mouth.

The Other says, "The Witch of the Void tells me you are hiding under that rusting gate."

My heart stops.

The Other looks right at me.

Real real real.

It draws a scarred hand up, palm outward; a gesture to sooth a spooked animal. "You should not fear me, little creature. I can offer you much more than your Asgardian friends. They have left you bones to eat on this world, but I will give you a a home, a purpose, riches, whatever it is a thing such as you desires. Build a new nest in service to a far greater power." The Other releases its Compulsion spell. I cover my mouth with both hands, preventing any perverse residual itch that would give away my location.

"War is coming." The Other's ghoulish runny mouth warps into a grotesque smile. "You may tell your Asgardian friends this. I will leave you now to consider my offer. I must join my master in speaking with another in our service, who will be rewarded. What he desires is holy war . . . and we will give it to him."

When the Chitauri's master fades into the red shadows then—only then—do I gasp for breath. My insides are jelly. My hands are coated in wet, cooling spittle. I've gnawed my fingers bloody.

You think you know pain? The last time we spoke. My soul projected into the shattered asteroid belt where the Hive lived for a time. The Other, ethereal against a spangling of midnight stars. It called me, and I came.

You don't have the Tesseract yet, I said.

Do not fail us. There will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice where he can not find you. He will make you long for something as sweet as pain.

I wipe snot and tears from my cheeks. Pathetic whining noises fill my ears. I feel sick from swallowing blood.

I am weak, and therefor unworthy of love.

A thing such as you. Riches. Little creature. War is coming.

Another grubby swipe and I've mopped my face clean.

Od and Ilofn are good men. Both of them. Good, worthy. Handsome, to their mothers at least. Fine people.

The circling chariots must have given up once the bifrost touched down. They understood they had lost us and returned to prepare their invasion. I don't know if in my captivity I ever told the Other about the bifrost, but—

Never mind that now.

Asgard has been alerted. The War Council will be preparing for attack, securing our perimeter, escorting civilians to safety. Lord Urdur will see that the palace shield is raised well before an enemy fleet is upon us. Asgard will be looking for Odin-King to command them, but in his absence Tyr will step up to take charge. That will be all right. Frigga will—

Frigga will remember me for a coward if I do not return.

I grind my teeth together.

Let me be a coward. Let me be a liar. Let me be hated.

I want to live.

You tried to trick my Chitauri, the Other said. You tried?

That is what it said. You tried to trick my Chitauri. You wanted to rescue two Asgardians from them.

You tried.

Tried is not a good word.

Fizzing sharp alertness flares hot and green inside my skull, forcing the smothering darkness into retreat. I crawl to my feet. The alley is not so far. I can make it.

Keeping my back straight and tall, I lurch from shadow to shadow into my deathward's sturdy protection. The bag is where I left it: a leather bundle I can only see with my fingertips. Real. It's real, too. I loop the strap over a shoulder, and grope through the contents to verify that my things are still here.

Yes.

My fists glues itself to the Casket's handle. Convulsive need for firepower means the accompanying transformation is hardly noticeable this time around. I could have gone for the Gauntlet, I suppose, but I know how the Casket works and an untried weapon is more dangerous than none at all. I crouch in place until the magic's run its course. Another cooling spell, a check that my Allfather mask is intact, and I lope from the rubble back to the city streets.

The Sight rune is useless to a Jotun. I can see heat radiating from the habrium wreckage as a four-dimensional map that gives me no shadows and lingering smudges where the Other conjured its own world-gate.

Tried to trick. You tried.

A black hole opens under my feet. My soul inverts.

Did they chase us for show?

If they knew I had planted Hruothban, Lur, and Braeggvild for capture, they would have realized we were planning a dungeon-break. If they knew we were planning a dungeon-break and sent minimal interference, minimal guards—just enough to make the rescue look convincing—just enough to follow us at a distance without stopping us—

I race up the ruined habrium pathways, up the hill to where the bifrost scar . . . draws infrared ghost-patterns three meters high as a surreal Jotnar-only afterimage . . . and collapse in a heap at the nauseating center. Trembling from exertion, I scrabble for enough magic to conjure a third world-gate. My veins surge with acid. Blue sparks crackle up my palms.

Blue?

I can't remember what green is supposed to look like.

The sparks flare, and die. I conjure another spell. Pain cracks from my fingertips. I am tired. The world-gate explodes un-cast, sending concussive shocks through my bones.

"Heimdall! Heimdall!" I dispel my invisibility.

The bifrost pounds my eyes with more shimmering heat-colors.

Our guardian appears upon his dais, greatsword shining like starlight. My legs go out from under me. Odin Allfather smacks his knees on the Observatory's astrium-plate floor.

Heimdall does not disgrace His Majesty by offering a hand up or asking after my health; he pretends he does not see me as I haul my sick trembling self upright. My joints are fused together. There is ice spreading across my forehead, never mind the cooling spell. I am gripping the Casket one-handed with the invisible bag twisted behind my back, afraid that if I let go I will die.

Mustn't let go.

"Where—" I sound broken, ragged, used up. "Is the party from Vorsgard?"

"One quarter of an hour ago a second, smaller—" Heimdall starts.

I fly past him to the Observatory stables.

The city gate peels back before I've even reached the Bridge's end. Six guards detach from their watch to flank my arrival.

"Summon Chieftain Tyr," I command. "A party returned with Lord Noin's son and another valiant warrior." Valiant is polite-speak for injured. "Find them. Now. Bring them in heavy guard to the Royal Hall."

Tried to trick. Wanted to rescue.

I seat myself in Odin's throne. Heat makes the whole of Asgard into a nauseating spectral soup. The True Spear, Gungnir, is presented to me by a dutiful attendant. My invisible bag is caught between me and the throne's managull backrest. Nothing but merciless logic makes me remove my hand from the Casket. If an enemy comes at me and Odin-King blasts him with ice, I am slated for execution. Never mind the Chitauri.

Never mind that I look like Odin-King.

I blow out a breath while acid turns me Aesir again. The Hall rights itself in a normal spectrum.

An alarm screeches. The sound hits me like an ax. What have I done?

The Einherjar guardsman on my left glances to me—

Suspicion?

—"The vault!" he says.

Vault. Vault?

I surge to my feet. "Go!"

"Your Majesty!" Chieftain Tyr and his war leader, Lord Aumdyn, burst through the engraved golden doors. I'm halfway down the steps with the bag over my shoulder again before they reach my side—and then we're pounding through Odin-King's lovely pristine palace, past frightened silk-clad attendants and oh-so-mighty lords.

Vault.

Of course.

If they wanted us to escape, they wanted us to reach Asgard.

I am criminal and judge at the same time, racing to the city's defense with Odin's cheer squad keeping pace beside me. We gain the weapons vault with a garrison falling into place behind us. The checkpoint guards scream orders to secure this and lock down that and Tyr screams back at them to stand the living blood of Buri aside.

He, Aumdyn, and I push through into the vault's silent depths.

A red path meets us beyond the gates. Two gold-cloaked guards dead, dragged aside and left lying in a heap. No. Three guards dead. There is another crumpled on his side around a bend just outside the inner chamber.

Four dead—the last gold-caped guard is smashed across the floor much as Od's Chitauri had been, abandoned in a sickening mirror image with his innards spilled up the wall above him.

I navigate the red maze on silent feet, gripping Gungnir's haft as a lifeline. Smoke and blood fill the passages with an acrid taint that wraps mealy grime over my mouth. I clench my jaw to keep from breathing in.

The Trophy Room is as a charred, broken ruin. Odin's treasures lie crushed into glittering shards, scattered across the stone where the Destroyer has left smoldering craters. The Warlock's Eye, the Orb of Agamotto, are no more. The Tablet is in irreparable pieces. The Eternal Flame is extinguished. The Destroyer itself lays at the vault's far end, hacked apart.

Lord Aumdyn jerks to point at the empty stand. "The Casket!"

"Jotunheim," Tyr snarls. It's a curse. A promise of revenge.

In the room's center are more silent bodies: two Einherjar—and Lur, Braeggvild, and Hruothban. My warrior friend is child-like in death, his brows stricken in pain and confusion. I kneel above him to close his eyes. He is still warm.

Od and Ilofn have vanished.

And with them, the Tesseract.