Chapter 8: The Magician is found in shadow

Charles and Wanda looked up from the breakfast table when Mystique strode into the room already carrying a black leather utilty belt marked with the same metal, circled X that marked every X-suit.

"Good morning!" Donny, the electro-sensitive little boy on Charles' left greeted enthusiastically. The contemporary version of Charles' sister flashed the children a fleeting smile while Charles tried not to be disturbed by her nudity. Her yellow eyes flickered up to meet his.

"Were you going somewhere?" Charles prompted with a trace of amusement creeping into his tone. He didn't need his telepathy to know that she was feeling overeager about something.

"You've got a call. It's supposedly urgent," Mystique responded and Charles carefully masked his surprise upon hearing her chorus-like, unaugmented voice. Even with the great improvements that his Raven had made in the year before his time-jump, she had not become quite so comfortable with her natural state.

"Supposedly? It's six am," Charles pointed out, backing his chair away from the table.

"It's Tony," Raven elaborated, sounding unimpressed with whoever this 'Tony' was.

"Stark is up at six am," Wanda remarked, cutting Donny's second waffle into smaller pieces for him. (He wasn't allowed to use metal implements anymore after the 'Sparkle Monster' Incident). "So either he's in serious trouble, or he pulled another inspired all-nighter," Wanda theorized lightly.

Ah, Tony Stark as in 'Stark Tower', Charles thought to himself. He must be one of Pietro's Avenger friends, then.

"What are the odds?" Mystique said.

"All-nighter is vastly in th- Janey!" Wanda interrupted herself, batting the twelve-year-old's gummy, extended tongue away from the last blueberry pancake. "You have been warned! ...Mystique, please, don't leave me alone out here."

Mystique smirked and waved at the younger woman before she slipped gracefully out into the hall behind Charles.

"Poor thing, she should have one of the teachers with her by now," Charles thought aloud. "Where is everyone?"

"Hank's in the lab, Ororo probably just overslept. I don't know why you're so worried about it; the twins both agreed to chip in until the danger cleared," Mystique noted, striding around him to fetch the phone off of the nearby sidetable and put it to her ear. "Are you still there, Tony?" Mystique looked up and stepped out of the way when a scruffy, unshaven Sean Cassidy hurried past them towards the dining area. Mystique looked smug. "Here he is." She passed the phone to Charles.

"Hello?" Charles answered distractedly, rubbing at his forehead. His migraine was returning in full force. It must've been caused by that last session in cerebro. He hoped that was all that it was. It would explain his memory loss... Charles squeezed his eyes shut, his forehead scrunching together while he forced himself to focus on the phone call. "Sorry. What was that?"

The more he tried to focus, the worse the pain got. The energetic chatter coming from the phone wasn't helping. Merely adding more sparks of pain to the fire building in his head without communicating any clear meaning. Yes, Charles decided, I'm definitely going to have to ask Hank to take a look over... When is there going to be time for that?

"Professor?" Mystique questioned, becoming more alert.

Charles drew in a deep, shaky breath and rubbed a little harder at his temple, straining to focus. It was becoming harder fo him to remain lucid.

"Charles!" the shapeshifter snapped as loud as she dared. It would do them no good to frighten the children. When he still didn't respond, she snatched the phone away from him and stated, "He'll have to call you back," in clipped tones before snapping it down on the cradle. She knelt down in front of Charles and her yellow eyes scanned over his face in an almost clinical manner.

"Hey. What's going on?" a sleepy teenager asked, stopping short on her way to the breakfast table. That one must be Hank's T.A.

"Go get Dr. McCoy," Mystique ordered, blurring in and out of focus. Charles thought that she probably could have phrased that more politely, but it didn't matter. The girl had already run off towards the labs.

Loki was drawn out of his mental recitation of the Universal Constituents by the sound of feet padding toward him through the crisp snow. He opened his eyes to find Jane leaning over him.

"Oh, good. You're back," Loki drawled, resisting the passing temptation to bat at the long golden-brown locks that dangled over his face.

"Why are you upside-down?"

"I wanted to be," he replied, batting at Jane's hair in retaliation for her pointless question.

She stepped back out of range, and Loki sat up, swinging his legs down from their counterintuitive placement against the tree trunk. Jane ran her eyes over him, looking like he was a new sample she was testing, or he supposed, in her case a pulsar might be more apt.

"And, good evening to you, too," he concluded, brushing a bit of melting snow off of his legging-clad knee. Where and when did he possibly get new clothes?

"It's actually mid-morning..." Jane informed him absently. The flurry of snow that slumped out of the tree behind her echoed Loki's opinion of that statement.

"If you've only come here to be contrary, Dr. Foster, I shall return to what I was doing before."

"No. I just... This is weird, " Jane rambled. She paused and did a gradual turn, taking in all 360° of their surroundings, and beginning to shiver. "Where are we?"

"My mind."

Jane spun back around to stare at him, refusing to shiver anymore. It isn't even real!

"I assume," Loki added, then looked past her into the darkness of the starlit forest. "It isn't exactly how I left it, but what else is new?"

"What do you mean?" Jane inquired, her brows beginning to creep together in contemplation. Loki studied her for a moment, as though searching for something. He opened his mouth to answer, but his expression closed off at the last second. He had caught himself.

"Have you not heard? I lost it long ago," Loki quipped with one of his obnoxiously familiar, false smiles. It was going to be a lot harder to figure this out with him being so characteristically distrustful.

Jane took in a deep breath and blew out a rather dishearteningly visible puff of white, pacing around the outside of Loki's naturally-formed dais. "Okay. Do you have any idea why we're here?"

"I was hit by an explosion, only to find myself here, unable to wake," Loki recalled, balancing on a narrower root, unhindered by the frost coating its surface. "I assumed that I must have been injured. Was I not correct?"

Jane shook her head. "You've got no injuries that would explain this. Whatever this is..." she said, crossing to one side of Loki's root formation. Then she spun around and started towards the other. "Then again, it's not as though we've seen anything like this before. Humans usually lose awareness when they sustain a shock to their system like you did. They don't gain more."

"It is much the same on Asgard," Loki assured her. Jane reached the other side of the root formation and spun on one sneakered foot to face him.

"What about on Jötunheim?" she asked, pointing at him with one sleeve-covered hand.

"I wouldn't know."

"Really? Not a clue?" Jane prodded, finally giving in to the false sensory impulses and hugging herself. Loki somehow managed to shrug regally, which made her feel crappier by comparison. She thought maybe she should have bundled up before she did this. Her jeans and old worn out flannel shirt were just not doing the trick.

"Mother sent a text on the subject to my cell."

Jane couldn't help but smile slightly at Loki's wording.

"But I did not care to read it." His eyes narrowed as he scrutinized her. "Are you cold?"

"Freezing," Jane admitted. "But it's your mind..."

Loki rolled his eyes at her, then walked down the root that he was balanced on. He unclasped the elbow-length, fur-lined cloak around his shoulders and handed it to her.

"Thanks," Jane shuddered out and hastily wrapped herself in the offered garment, pulling the hood up with one raw, pink hand before burying it in the fur lining. Then she noticed Loki frowning at her. "What?"

Loki looked down at his clothes. "You didn't say anything..."

"I thought you'd noticed, " Jane laughed out, realizing that he was talking about his wardrobe change. "I mean, it's cold out." She sobered, seeing the seriousness in his face. "What's wrong?"

"These are not the clothes of a prince," Loki said, trailing his fingertips down one of the seams over his ribs. They were just barely reminiscent of the contour lines of a corset.

"Oh, well. I didn't know that. I mean they're really nice. It's not like anyone else can see you," Jane commented. They honestly did look nice. They also appeared to be tailored to fit him perfectly, which was sort of weird if they weren't his...

"You misunderstand my meaning," Loki corrected, reaching up to grab the edge of her hood. "They are not meant for a prince, but yes, they are fit for a royal. Look at the design, the embroidery around the clasp. Could you honestly see Thor in something like this?" His last sentence was tinged with a trace of humour. Jane had to admit, Loki had a point. She ran a finger over the ornate green Celtic knots stitched into the leather around the silver clasps. The same fine detail had been put into the lighter more streamlined leathers that Loki wore. The small amount of metal on them looked far more ornamental than functional. Now that she thought about it the whole thing was downright pretty. She couldn't imagine any of the rough, warlike Aesir men that she had encountered on Asgard wearing anything like it. Even Fandral.

"I have not donned such attire since I was a..." Loki paused, shooting her a sidelong glance, "...since I was young."

"What was that pause?" Jane asked, arching her brows. Loki averted his eyes.

"A matter of translation. It is of no consequence."

"When you were..." Jane did a circular hand gesture.

"I don't know your word for it."

Jane was openly unimpressed by that response. "I don't think that was just a trans- Wait. When were you not a prince?"

"It's mostly a language issue," Loki explained. "But gender does affect one's status in Asgard. I was not officially a prince until I claimed that place by the Allfather's blessing."

"You're not a man?"

"Is that any of your concern?" Loki shot back, becoming defensive. "I am a prince! As far as it matters I am a man."

"Okay," Jane reassured the volatile jötun, holding her hands up in a placating gesture. "Fine! That's fine. I was just curious... A couple of things are maybe making a little more sense now."

Loki continued to watch her; he appeared to be expecting a fight. Jane didn't want to know why. She honestly had only been curious about the cultural difference. She certainly wasn't going to hassle him about who or what he was.

"You said that you hadn't worn these in a while... When was the-" Jane and Loki both whirled around to look when the sharp snap of a twig interrupted their awkward conversation.

"Someone's here," Jane whispered. Then Loki was off like a shot, chasing after the phantom. "Hey!" Jane scrambled after him, nearly slipping (twice) on the dais of roots. "Loki! Wait!"

While she ran through the forest after Loki's disappearing silhouette, Jane began to hear voices in the distance. Yes. They were definitely voices, but they didn't quite fit together.

There was a girl's voice calling out, sounding like she couldn't be far past her mid-teens. "Loki! Loki! Where are you? This isn't funny! Loki?" The girl sounded worried.

There was a rougher voice, of a man, easily heard despite the volume of the girl. "Come Little One. Enough tricks! It's time to learn your part in this," he sounded jolly, welcoming. "Now go on, pick up that flencing knife!" Okay. So Jane wasn't so enchanted with him anymore. She tried to catch sight of her quarry but he kept disappearing between trees.

"You wish to please Father? You will do as I tell you. Now eat your dinner and be silent!" It took Jane a second to register whose the latest voice must be. He sounded so young. Not much older than the girl, but she knew that it had to be Thor.

Jane flinched. She thought she'd seen something else moving between the trees. It seemed as if the inhuman phantom was popping in and out of existence from one shaft of moonlight to the other. Jane searched the forest ahead of her. Loki was almost completely out of sight now. What an asshole! And Jane was mainly just following his footprints in the snow.

"I know that I should not feel so, but..." the young Thor's voice again, a whisper on the wind. "I have lost my brother. He left us without reason, and now I must lead little Loki about wherever we go? On hunts? I am to look after hir now, but- Loki does not belong with us..."

There was a clap almost like a whip. Loki's form dropped out of sight on the other side of a massive black and green tree and did not reappear. Jane bolted towards it, trying to outrun the massive form flitting from moonbeam to moonbeam just behind her.

Fandral's voice, barely any different from the way it was now, shouted "No! Wait! Stop!"

Jane slipped on a patch of ice and fell forward onto the solid forest floor. When she pushed herself up off of the ground she found herself face to face with a massive, snow-white wolf. Jane stared at it, her heart hammering in her chest. "Just let go. That's it. All that I have to do is let go of his wrist and you can't hurt me," she told both the impossibly large canine and herself.

The wolf leaned down to look her in the eye, letting out a soft growl. Jane swallowed. The wolf licked it's chops and blew a puff of air out through its snout, then trotted away to lie on top of a mound of roots.

"Well, that was close. I almo- oh, my god!" Jane stared at the figure curled up under the tangle of roots. A wolf's paw half the size of Jane's head hung down over the center of the opening, blocking the familiar cloak wrapped chest.

Erik gazed out through the wall-length window at the snowy wonderland outside. The mansion grounds had changed to suit the new writing in Erik's book. Or perhaps it was the other way around. Erik didn't know, but he was fairly sure that he was being fucked with. The sky above was as blue as a cartoon background, dispite the big fluffy snowflakes drifting down from the scattering of clouds overhead. The edge of the forest had come a lot closer and the trees no longer looked like any real trees that Erik had ever seen. Their trunks were too dark, and their size too imposing for this world.

Erik turned away from the window to fetch his updated reading material from Charles' desk. There was a manic squeak from the corner and a rustling sound, then Erik's socked feet were being attacked by a grey furball's needle-like claws.

"Ah! Verdämmt!" Erik tried to pull away but the mad little creature had already wrapped itself around one of his ankles. It looked up at him, mouth agape with madness evident in it's wide, feline pupils. "Get off of me you little monster!"

The kitten continued to stare blankly up at him. Erik tried to shake it off but it dug its claws into his pants and bit the top of his foot. Erik briefly debated the pros and cons of kicking an imaginary kitten. "Get off!" Erik demanded, reaching down to clap menacingly over its head.

"Meowrrr!" the feline objected, darting away to hide under the couch. Erik solemnly regarded the kitten's hiding place for a beat, then returned his attention to the book. He decided to read in his seat by the fireplace instead. He opened up to the first chapter and began to read.

Chapter One: The child is lost in the woods

The little child ran and ran into the shadows of the Dark Forest. Ze ignored the calls of hir big brother's best friend or hir other brother's shout as he gave chase. Ze had heard the truth; there was no place for hir anymore. After a while the boys had to stop to catch their breath. The young huntress in their group marched up to them, demanding to know the meaning of their racket.

"I thought ze was asleep, but Loki overheard us speaking of Baldur. I did not mean for hir to hear me..." Thor's next mumbled words were barely discernable, but Sif caught enough of it to slap him for his foolishness.

"I hate to say it, but we will see nothing in this darkness."

Loki did not wait to hear the rest of Fandral's advice, taking hir chance to slip away and find hir way to shelter...

"So... I don't think you're planning to eat me. Are you?" Jane verified. The wolf opened its mouth in a gaping canine smile. "Oh, good." She resisted the urge to say 'good dog' having a strange suspicion that he might find that insulting, and shifted her attention to the skinny child curled up underneath. His hood had been pulled up, and his wavy, raven locks had fallen to cover one side of his pale face but it was still unmistakably Loki. The kid Loki appeared to be crying quietly. Jane's heart melted and she began to move closer, "Hey, Honey..." she froze in place at a low warning growl from the wolf. "Whoa! Easy. I'm just trying to help."

"Loki?" Jane heard the girl calling again. She sounded like she was getting closer. "Loki? Loki, damn you! Answer me before you catch your death of cold!"

Jane and the wolf exchanged a conspiratorial look.

"Is that Sif?"

The wolf yawned and laid its head back down on its front paws.

"Loki?" Another voice called from farther off.

Kid Loki sniffed and fidgetted a little in his hiding place.

"You should answer. They're probably really worried about you." Jane studied him for a minute while Sif and the others wandered closer. "You can't even see me. Then, what am I even doing here?"

Sif slid gracefully down a small hill behind Jane, and the kid tried to squeeze himself further under the knarl of roots. It was too late though. "Loki!" Sif shouted in surprise, her hand going to her sword as she locked eyes with the wolf.

"No," Loki replied petulantly.

"I found hir! Over here!" Sif shouted to the others, keeping her eyes on the patently unconcerned predator. "Loki, this is no time to argue."

"Why not? He isn't doing anything."

Jane had to admit, the kid had a point there.

"Where there is one wolf there are always others," Sif corrected tensely.

Equally valid, Jane noted.

"Then you should retreat," Loki advised. Jane and Sif both regarded him with incredulity. Although Jane was probably more amused by it than Sif was.

"I plan to take you with me," the warrior countered as Fandral skidded into view behind her.

Loki huffed and looked away.

"Oh dear," the older warrior observed but to Jane's surprise, his hand didn't even twitch towards the crossbow hooked to his belt.

"Listen,"Fandral appealed, resting a hand over Sif's swordweilding hand as he stepped closer. "I know that you're upset. Your brother did not mean what he said. He just wants you safe."

"I don't belong anymore."

"And where will you go?" Fandral asked kindly. Now almost within biting range of the wolf, he still looked only at Loki.

"I don't know. The wolf seems fond of me," Loki said, reaching out to pat the wolf's massive paw and nearly giving poor Sif a heart attack.

"Though I am sure that sounds fun to you now, do you not think that you may miss home?" Fandral persisted. The wolf had finally perked up and ralsed its head to regard him nose to nose. It's seagreen eyes locked with his indigo in a silent battle of wills. Only now did the warrior almost-casually rest his hand on the handle of his crossbow. "I do not envy the task of informing Queen Frigga that yet another of her children has left us behind."

Thor appeared out of the trees with an axe in his hand but Sif waved frantically for him to keep back. He barely complied, looking like he would charge forward at the first possible opening.

Loki eyed Thor, then Fandral then visibly deflated. Fandral made a subtle hand gesture behind his back and Sif gave the slightest nod. She locked gazes with Thor.

"It's time to head home," Thor stated. The wolf snapped at Fandral as if in reply. Its jaws clamped down on his chain mail wrapped forearm and he and Thor teamed up to wrestle it away while Sif dove forward to pull Loki out from under the roots. The boys were lucky. The wolf backed off without much resistance and Thor ran over to scoop his younger sibling up in a tight embrace. "You will never run off like that again! Do you hear me?"

Loki let out a breathless sound that may or may not have been an affirmative. It was all very touching but something else had caught Jane's interest. While the other three were caught up in their reunion, Fandral had drawn away from the group. He pulled a velvet-wrapped parcel out of the folds of his dark green cloak and slipped out of sight behind a rocky outcropping.

Jane took note of the golden symbol stitched into the fabric before standing to follow him. When she rounded the light grey boulder, however, she was met with a wall of utter blackness. Jane eyed the nothingness for a moment then let go of Loki's hand, returning to the waking world. She had been shown that scene for a reason. Something that Loki's subconscious was trying to share with them, and she'd bet her favorite telescope that that package had something to do with it.

A/N: Ok, so Loki definitely ended up dominating this chapter. I hope that isn't a bad thing. Honestly, I'm still just happy to finally start touching on the conspiracy story-arc. I imagine that those of you who've already read the first two volumes might have a head start on figuring out Charles' bit too, but I guess that's for the best. Anyway, thanks for reading. Special thanks to icanhearthedrums, janieceal, and 1noel11 for reviewing. You know I always love to hear from you, Dear Readers!