One of the first things Thor had done after learning to fly with Mjolnir was to satisfy his own curiosity about what was on the underside of Asgard. He had been shown many images of it by his tutors as he sat through lesson after lesson on how King Buri had built the realm and how it differed from natural planets, but he still wanted to see it for himself. He had flown out to the edge and past it, then down and back through the curtains of falling water to the great mountains of crystal that rose many times higher than Gladsheim. Gravity was much weaker on that side, but it was strong enough for several more tenacious plant species to cling to the crevices between rocks, and he saw a few birds making their nests amid the coiled roots and branches.
While Banner, Jane, and Erik studied the Tesseract in hopes of making a device that could locate the Dokkalfar army and Loki continued his frjosleikr lessons with Gerd and Fjolnir, Thor made the trip to the underside of the world again, this time for a different reason. Instead of gazing mesmerized at the dazzling crystal formations, he looked down past Asgard into the star-speckled blackness of space.
No matter how carefully he looked, however, he could not find what he sought. The maelstrom of a portal that had brought him, Banner, and the Valkyrie to Asgard should have been easily visible from here, and yet it did not seem to be there. How could that be?
Disgruntled, he flew back topside and made for the Observatory.
"Did you enjoy the view?" said Heimdall as he stepped inside.
"Not as much as I would have if I'd found what I was looking for."
Heimdall raised an eyebrow.
"You haven't noticed a portal leading to Sakaar from Asgard, have you?" Thor asked.
"No."
"It's massive. You can't miss it if it's there."
"Then it is not."
Thor deflated.
"What business would take you to a world so far beyond Yggdrasil's branches?"
"Nothing urgent," said Thor. "Just a friend I was hoping to meet a little sooner this time around."
Heimdall inclined his head. "If a portal appears, I will be sure to inform you, but such things do not generally form on their own."
"Thank you, Heimdall." Thor left for the palace, disappointed. With his brother and many of his friends so occupied with important tasks to which he could offer no help, he had been entertaining a half-formed notion of flying through that portal, finding the Valkyrie and perhaps Korg and the other pit fighters who had so nobly died defending the Statesman during Thanos's raid, and bringing them back to Asgard. With Mjolnir in hand and knowledge of Sakaar's portals, he had imagined such a trip might take him no longer than a day or two. But if the portal he wanted to use wasn't even there… Sakaar was about as far away from Asgard as any known system—well beyond the limits of the Bifrost's reach. Traveling that far with the Tesseract would be a simple thing, but he didn't want to remove it from Asgard now that it was here.
It would be difficult to justify a trip to Sakaar if there wasn't an easy way to get there, but he supposed he would have to resign himself to waiting. Valkyrie wasn't going to drink herself to death within the next eight years, but he hated the idea of leaving her in that miserable drunken stupor any longer than he had to.
When he reached the suite of chambers that had become the laboratory of the human scientists, he found the three of them explaining what looked like a schematic to Vidar, one of Asgard's foremost engineers. He had initially been skeptical about working with mortals, but he would do whatever the security of the realm required without complaint. It likely also helped that the humans no longer looked so out of place, as they all wore Asgardian clothing and had grown less awkward in their new surroundings over the last few days.
Vidar straightened and put fist to heart at the sight of Thor, and Banner, Jane, and Erik all smiled at him. "Hey, how's it going?" said Banner.
"Very well," said Thor. "And for you?"
"I'm still not used to being free to make whatever I can think of without having to write pages of grant proposals before I can start working and making do with a limited budget when one finally gets accepted," said Erik.
"We've drawn up some designs we can start working on," said Jane. Here, she nodded at Vidar. "But...we might have a problem."
"What's that?" said Thor.
"You want us to track down something that was made with an Infinity Stone over five thousand years ago, but the only thing we have to give us an idea of the type of energy signature we're looking for is a different Infinity Stone that we've never studied," said Banner.
"We can look for anything with a matching signature," said Erik, "and Asgardian technology will make it simple to extend our search by light-years more than what we could do with Earth technology, but if the stones are different, it won't be much better than flying into space at random and hoping we happen to bump into the ships."
Thor frowned. "Is there nothing Asgard can provide to solve this problem?"
Vidar shook his head. "I can help them build whatever they design, my prince, but finding the Dokkalfar fleet is already beyond our capabilities."
"We get that it's too dangerous to do anything with the other Stone until after you deal with these Dark Elf guys," said Jane, "but maybe if we had something that was made using it?"
"If the Stone itself has been missing for five millennia, that might be pretty hard to find," said Banner.
"Oh, I don't know about that," said Thor. "Would an entire battlefield of downed Dokkalfar ships suffice?" They all stared at him, so he elaborated. "Svartalfheim is a dead world; the ships that fell haven't been touched since the war, and they're exactly like the ones we're looking for."
A grin broke out over Jane's face. "That—yeah, I think that would do it," she said.
"Great!" said Thor. "Anything else?"
"If we could see how an Infinity Stone interacts with a device made using its power, that might also help us refine our search," said Erik.
"I don't see why you can't have both. The Tesseract can be used to travel anywhere in the universe. Surely you can use it to create such a device. Perhaps one we might use to travel beyond the reach of the Bifrost."
"So...you want us to just casually design a transporter with unlimited range, just to use as a control group for playing intergalactic hide-and-seek?" said Banner.
"Why, is that unreasonable?" said Thor blandly. It was moments like this that he best understood Loki's love of mischief. The play of indignation, bewilderment, and defiance on all three scientists' faces was quite amusing to watch.
X
The following day, Thor, Sif, the Warriors Three, and a small company of Einherjar accompanied Jane, Erik, and Banner to Svartalfheim. Only one of the humans really needed to come and help identify the materials they needed, but they all jumped at the chance to visit another world, so Thor couldn't deny them. Thor had of course invited Loki too, but he preferred to continue his training with Gerd and Fjolnir over fetching scraps of Dokkalfar technology. As Loki had spurned many an invitation over the centuries and then seemed distant and resentful when Thor accepted it and left without him, Thor asked a few more times to make sure he really meant it, until Loki lost all patience and slammed his chamber door in Thor's face.
Thor did not particularly like having to go back to Svartalfheim, but he concealed this as best he could—a feat made easier by the knowledge that his mother and brother were both safe and well on Asgard. They flew into the Bifrost on two small longships, and emerged in the barren black wastes of the Dokkalfar's realm.
"This place used to be habitable?" said Banner, staring at the landscape.
"It was before my grandfather finished with it," said Thor grimly.
"You mean the war ruined the whole planet?"
"No more than the Dokkalfar deserved."
Banner raised his eyebrows. "They're that bad, huh? And you're looking to find what's left of them and kill them too?"
Thor noticed his tone and scowled at him. "How else would you deal with a people that wants to extinguish all life in the cosmos but themselves?" The very idea of offering mercy to those who had killed his mother, nearly killed Loki, and brought so much destruction upon Asgard made him bristle. They would do it all again if they had the chance, and he would not allow it.
Banner lifted his hands. "Hey, I'm sure you know more about it than I do, and if that's their goal, then maybe you don't have a choice. It's just that when I left Earth, I didn't think I was going to be helping you commit genocide."
Thor's own words rang in his ears. You can't kill an entire race! But the comparison was absurd. It wasn't the same as turning the Bifrost on Jotunheim. The Dokkalfar would carry out Malekith's plans. Thor had already lived through it. They were guilty. ...So why did the prospect leave him with a sick feeling in his stomach?
Moments later, they crested a hill and were suddenly overlooking the largest battlefield Thor had ever seen. The ground was littered with Dokkalfar skeletons still clad in their armor and eerie white masks, and the shattered remnants of at least a dozen ships just like Malekith's rose across the land like small mountains. There were traces here and there of Bor's army—golden weapons and pieces of broken armor scattered amongst the bodies—but Bor would have seen to it that none of Asgard's fallen remained. They had surely all been given warrior's funerals back home.
Thor saw Jane shiver slightly on the other skiff at the sight. His fellow Aesir and Hogun all regarded the battlefield with fierce eyes and clenched jaws. Undoubtedly they were imagining the battle itself, and remembering the stories of this war and how Malekith had smashed his own ships atop the fighters in his final attempt to crush Bor's forces.
The party flew to the nearest of the downed ships. The hull had been shredded when it collided with the planet's surface, so it was easy for them to make their way inside. The Aesir helped the mortals navigate the treacherous terrain, while they in turn pointed out items and bits of ruined machinery they thought could prove useful. Before two hours had passed, they declared that they had all they needed.
No one objected to heading back to Asgard. It had not been a very enjoyable trip.
X
For an entire fortnight now, Loki had continued to lose snowball fights against Fjolnir every morning. The only progress he was making in frjosleikr (as Gerd refused to volunteer any further instruction until he cleared this absurd hurdle, and he wasn't going to ask) was that he was now much better at controlling the shape of the pieces of ice he made. Nothing he had tried so far made the slightest impact on its actual consistency, though, and he would never land a snowball strike on the boy if he couldn't make snow in the first place. However, each defeat only made him more single-minded. He was sure there was plenty going on with the mortals' efforts to locate Malekith's army and other preparations based on Thor's information, but his focus was entirely on mastering these abilities.
"Fjolnir won again?" said Thor as Loki stalked past him in the corridor on the way back to his chambers.
Loki glared at him, which didn't stop him from falling into step at his side. "Choose your words with care, Brother. You missed out on being the target of a thousand years of ice-themed tricks, and I am perfectly willing to make up for them all in one go."
Thor grinned. "I'm sure you would, but don't you need to work out how to do it first?"
Loki raised an eyebrow. "I know enough already to freeze you in your bathwater, put ice beneath your foot on the training grounds, or turn your ale solid." Being able to do those things when they were children would have been perfectly just repayment for the many times Thor's uncontrolled static discharge had left Loki's hair a frizzy mess.
Thor raised his hands in surrender, though he was still grinning.
They walked in silence for a few seconds, before Loki burst out, "I can't work out what I'm doing wrong! I've tried everything I can think of, and I've read all the books Asgard has about the Jotnar, but none of them has anything useful to say about frjosleikr. The closest was a series of diagrams of different fetils svell and discussions on which were most effective in different combat styles, but nothing at all about making snow." He'd attempted it numerous times in the privacy of his chambers, hoping to take advantage of the absence of snowballs flying at him every other second, but to no effect.
"Perhaps you're overthinking it," said Thor with a shrug.
"You would say that," said Loki with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. "Overthinking things and seidr are what I do best. They tend to go together, which is precisely why you never made much headway studying it."
"This isn't seidr, though," said Thor, not doing Loki the satisfaction of rising to his insults. "Maybe being so good at that is making this harder, because you automatically approach it like a fully trained seidmann."
Loki grimaced. The last two weeks had been humiliating enough; he didn't want Thor to be right on top of that. But if he was being fair, Loki had to admit that Thor's elemental abilities were certainly closer to being like frjosleikr than the subtle ways he used his own seidr. He might have a point. "How do you control storms?"
"I don't always," said Thor. "Sometimes they just react to me. Strong emotions feed them. Mjolnir acts as a focus."
Before Loki could reply, Munin came flapping towards them with a low croak.
"A summons?" said Thor. "Now?"
"Something must have happened," said Loki. They exchanged a tense glance and jogged after the raven, who led them to the council chambers. Odin was there, conversing with the golden image of Heimdall. Odin spared them a glance and gestured them closer.
"Repeat your news, Gatekeeper," he said.
"I have found the Mad Titan," said Heimdall. Thor went rigid at Loki's side, and he could feel the electricity crackling within him. "He lurks near the very edge of my sight. I have been watching him for the last few days. All is as Thor described. He has the Mind Stone, a number of powerful lieutenants, and vast armies at his command. An hour ago, he dispatched two of those lieutenants with one of his largest ships."
"What is their destination?" said Odin. "Asgard?"
"Nidavellir?" said Loki.
"Midgard?" said Thor.
"No. Yggdrasil's defenses must still be enough to deter them, for they pursue other goals. The ship can hold an army, but it is empty."
"Then they are not bound for war?" said Odin.
"For the moment, they only seek to prepare for it," said Heimdall. "They mean to return with yet another army for their master, and they have set their course for Sakaar."
So last summer when I did my post-Infinity War rewatch marathon (I am currently on my pre-Endgame rewatch marathon), when I was watching Guardians of the Galaxy, I noticed that Ronan's creepy grayish, nightmare-faced troops are referred to as Sakaarans. And yet we never saw any of those guys actually on Sakaar. Perhaps because they'd already been recruited. :D
This chapter was a beast. So much technical stuff to figure out. My breakthrough came when I realized that having pieces of Dark Elf technology that was made using the Aether would be really useful, and then I was finally able to write the rest of it.
Now it's time for the arc I was so excited to get to. Hopefully Endgame is awesome and satisfying and doesn't leave me a despondent wreck with no will to write.