I drew another thing! I was so happy with the design I came up with for the bridge of Maw's ship that I did a very awful scribbled sketch of it for you guys, and then I did an even worse coloring job and made it into a gif so you could see what the pulsing lights and veins are like. (I pretty much never draw settings. Just people. I spent longer on each drawing of Nat than I did on this.) It's on my tumblr if you want to see it. I wish I could just paste it here, or even just the link.

Brunnhilde glanced around for the source of the sudden chill, and a flash of color in the corner of her eye drew her gaze back to the prince. He glared at Ebony Maw with fists and teeth clenched and murder in his eyes—which had turned blood-red. Then, like ice forming over the surface of a lake, lines appeared, intersected, and deepened in his skin, and royal blue bloomed from them and spread until there wasn't a trace of fair porcelain left.

The Sakaaran soldiers didn't immediately react. Their species was colorblind, so the changes to Loki's appearance would barely be noticeable to them, but Brunnhilde was gaping at him in utter disbelief. A prince of Asgard...was a Frost Giant? How could that be?

She watched a layer of ice form and thicken around his hands. Icicles spiked outward from it, driving through the links of the chain binding him. At the same moment the metal shattered, the two soldiers holding his arms let out twin screeches of pain and recoiled. She didn't need to see their hands to know how badly frostbitten they had become. Ebony Maw and the other four guards all looked around at their yells.

Maw did a double-take at Loki's transformation before snapping at the soldiers, "Control him, you worthless fools!" It seemed he needed his hands for his telekinesis, but the left was so badly damaged that he couldn't even use it to interface with the ship and the right was still elbow-deep in the node of the weapons system. He could either subdue Loki himself or continue locking in his attack against Thor, but not both.

Loki didn't fight like any Frost Giant Brunnhilde had ever seen or battled. Frankly, he looked like someone who'd never used ice as a weapon before. The Jotnar she'd fought would be embarrassed if they could see him. He flailed his ice-encrusted hands at the two frostbitten soldiers like clubs, then held them up to shield himself from blaster fire. It sort of worked, but the plasma quickly disintegrated the ice.

She could have stood by and done nothing while one of her princes (or maybe an imposter) fought against time and at least seven-to-one odds to save the other. Whether she was on Sakaar or being carted off to Thanos didn't particularly matter to her. She was a prisoner either way, and at least with Thanos she had a chance of picking a fight that would put her out of her misery.

But when the soldier who'd been aiming a blaster at her since they were taken from the cell turned to Loki, she moved without thinking. She wrenched her arms free of the other two soldiers' grips with ease. Then, before they could react, she ducked backward, grabbed each around the head, and smashed their skulls together. She vaulted their collapsing bodies and kicked the third soldier in the face, catching his blaster on the way to the ground. He never had a chance to fire it.

Heedless of whether or not any soldiers remained (and two of his three did), Loki had turned his complete focus on Maw. Brunnhilde dealt with the soldiers herself (honestly, what did Maw take them for if he thought six would be enough?), then turned the stolen blaster on the other members of Maw's species. They all watched the fight with those eerie blue eyes, making no move to interfere.

"You think altering your form will help you, mage?" Maw hissed, but he was looking awfully sweaty for how cold the room was getting. The counter on the viewscreen showed that it would take the weapons another twenty seconds to fire.

Frost crackled over the floor with every step Loki took towards Maw. "Yes," he said simply. He appeared to take an exaggerated breath, and the temperature dropped even more, enough to raise gooseflesh on Brunnhilde's arms.

"You fool!" said Maw, "This is no victory. You only doom yourself by fighting Thanos! To fight against the Titan is to fight on the side of chaos and desolation!"

Brunnhilde looked back to Loki. He was not impressed by Maw's words. "A pity your people didn't see you for the threat you were before it was too late," he said, baring his teeth. "That was their mistake. Yours was threatening my brother."

He lunged for Maw's throat with both hands. Maw's back arched and a strangled scream came fought its way free. Brunnhilde didn't understand what was happening at first. She couldn't see frostbite spreading from the place Loki touched, and he wasn't freezing solid either. But then, slowly, Maw's long tunic began bulging out in numerous places. In another second, spikes of glistening, maroonish ice tore through the material—the same color as what had leaked out from the single cut she had managed to give him before he captured them. She noticed that their locations were very deliberate: each blood icicle protruded from a spot where he had used a crystal needle on Loki.

It didn't stop there. Loki screamed with rage or pain (or likely both) as icicles burst out of the veins running through Maw's console. The targeting screen flickered, distorted, and vanished. He didn't move, and the chill swept along the upper branches and across to where they tangled with those of the other consoles. Strange, resonant cracking sounds filled the air, and icicles punched through their surfaces too. Every viewscreen went dark. The other pilots shouted in surprise and pulled their arms free to escape the encroaching chill.

Even though Maw had gone as limp as he could while propped up by the console and so much of his own frozen blood and was clearly dead, the frost continued to spread, now sweeping across the ceiling and floor. Loki was still screaming, and his skin had become strangely luminous, his hair floating up as though caught in a wind. Brunnhilde had never seen that happen to a Jotun before, but she was willing to bet it wasn't a good thing. "Loki!" she shouted. "It's over! You have to stop!" She moved towards him, casting half a glance at Maw's kinsmen in case they harbored their own thoughts of revenge. Most were clutching their heads and groaning, but two were hugging each other tightly and weeping. They were not a threat. Loki, however, didn't seem to have heard her at all.

She was trying to decide whether it was worth the risk of frostbite to attempt to shake him out of it when there was a loud grinding sound and the floor lurched beneath their feet.

X

All at once, the dozens of remaining deployment beams winked out. The hundred or more soldiers who had been en route to the ground were left to plummet towards it in a deadly free fall. Thor looked up at the ship and saw that it was no longer hovering stationary over the arena. It had begun to fall, the nose tipping down, giving it a slight northward trajectory. The arena floor wasn't the best place from which to judge its path, but it was high enough up that he didn't think the rebelling civilians were in danger. The fates of the people aboard, on the other hand, were less certain.

Trusting in his friends to manage the battle without him, Thor spun Mjolnir and took to the air, flying as fast as he could to reach the ship. He didn't want to waste any time scouring it for Loki, so, based on the arrivals of his friends from Asgard, he tested a hunch. "Heimdall?" he called, the turbulent air whistling past him. "Can you hear me?"

"Your days have appeared to me as moments, my prince, but I hear you," came the Gatekeeper's voice.

"Thank the Norns," Thor laughed. "Do you see my brother?"

"It is difficult to be certain that what little I can see of Sakaar is the present moment, but Maw has him on the bridge. It is located at the fore of the uppermost level, above the power core."

"He won't have him for long," Thor growled.

"Be cautious. Prince Loki has not fared well aboard that ship. It is not a hospitable place for any Aesir or Jotun to be. I regret that I did not perceive this before you set out on your quest."

"Your information was invaluable, Heimdall. We could not have known Thanos would buy this army otherwise."

"Still, I have no desire to inform my king that one of his sons was captured following a path I laid, let alone both."

"Tell Loki I'm coming for him."

Landing on the hull was difficult with the ship gathering speed in its descent, but Thor caught hold of one of the fins and swung Mjolnir. The hammer crunched against the black outer material. The texture was unpleasantly reminiscent of a beetle's carapace. It took three more blows to punch through. A yellowish substance oozed around the hole as Thor worked at widening it. Finally, it was large enough for him to leap inside.

X

Sif watched the ship crash through a box at the top level of the stands with a grinding screech even louder than the thunder of the storm. Rubble rained down on the rows below, but it could have been far worse.

Fandral had paused too, and she knew he shared her concern. Whether or not Loki was an easy person to be friends with, he was their prince and an important part of their lives, and they, like all warriors of Asgard, had sworn to defend him. They could not leave Thor to do it alone. Who knew how many soldiers remained on that ship?

"Go!" cried Volstagg from her left. "Hogun and I and our fine green friend should have no trouble cleaning this up without you."

An instant's survey of the battlefield showed that he was correct. Hogun stood with Hridgandr in the midst of a circle of corpses around the transporter, and Volstagg had cut a swath through a large cluster that tried to gang up on him. Banner had done easily the most damage to the enemy army, clearing half of the arena on his own, undaunted no matter how many blasters fired in his direction. Meanwhile, the rabble of all sorts of aliens led by the mortal spies had largely moved up into the stands to flush more soldiers away from the vulnerable civilians and towards the arena floor. She would not have thought that they would be so eager to join an honest battle, but they were doing a great credit to their realm. Thor's high opinion of them was plainly well deserved.

"What's the quickest way we can get there?" she asked Fandral.

"Perhaps with some assistance," he said. "Banner!" he shouted jovially, turning to face the rampaging green creature. "Be a good chap and help us up to the ship, won't you?" He pointed up at it with Fimbuldraugr.

Sif wasn't at all sure this was wise. For all that Banner had contributed to the battle, it was difficult to tell whether he recognized friend from foe. There was no time to debate the point, however. Banner changed direction and barrelled towards them, roaring unintelligibly. She resisted the urge to raise her sword and buckler with difficulty and braced herself. Enormous green hands shot out and seized her and Fandral about their waists, and then they were hurtling through the air towards the ship.

They crested their arc a good fifty feet above it and came down with somewhat jarring force. She was going to give Fandral a great number of bruises in their next bout at the training yard, but it certainly had been faster than climbing to the top of the stadium on foot.

The ship had done far more damage to the building behind the arena than to the arena itself, and it angled downward into the wreckage. What they could see of it appeared mostly intact, though the bottom half may have been less fortunate. There was no sign of Thor on the outside, so they would just have to make their own way to the princes.

X

Loki couldn't remember deciding to freeze the entire bridge instead of stopping once the weapons system had shut down. All the heat rushing into him was like an inferno that only fed his rage until he seemed to be made of nothing else. Even when it went from invigorating to agonizing, it didn't occur to him to stop.

When he came to his senses, his body was mostly numb, which was an improvement. The glow from the floor was dull enough to be almost tolerable to his Jotun eyes, and it slanted strangely. He lifted his head a little. The entire bridge was askew. How odd. Maw's lightning-burned, skewered, and frozen corpse was in front of him. It looked like it would've toppled over if it hadn't still been attached to to the weapons console.

"My prince, can you hear me?"

"Heimdall?" Loki mumbled. "I tried...to reach you before."

"My apologies. The flow of time can be treacherous. Prince Thor wished me to tell you that he's coming for you."

Loki giggled feebly, and he could feel tears on his face. "It worked, then."

"Norns, I thought you were dead."

Loki turned towards the voice and found Brunnhilde approaching him, a blaster in hand. She wasn't pointing it at him, though. Behind her, Maw's kinsmen sat in a huddle on the slanted floor near one of the consoles. The blue was gone from their eyes, which followed Brunnhilde anxiously. They all had long, thin limbs, but one had proportions so gawky that Loki thought he must be an adolescent. Scattered nearby were the corpses of the six soldiers. She must have been the one who killed them.

"Apparently not," he said. He watched her warily. "You don't seem keen to change that."

"Why would I?" she said, crouching down beside him.

He stared at her. Was she mad? "I've deceived you," he said. Surely that was obvious. "I let you think I was Aesir."

She snorted. "Yeah, and if we'd already shagged, I'd have kicked your ass over it. What's your point?"

His cheeks burned at the implications of "already." "So there are advantages to being rubbish at flirting. Who could have known?"

Her expression was very odd, like she was torn between her curiosity and her desire to maintain a cool veneer of unruffled apathy. Curiosity won. "Does Odin know?"

"Of course he does," said Loki. The heat wasn't leaving his face. On the contrary, it felt like it was spreading and getting worse, and he was starting to think it had nothing to do with embarrassment. "I'm the one who didn't, until about a fortnight ago."

She rolled her eyes. "That sounds about right. Can you stand? I'd give you a hand up, but I'd rather keep the skin on it."

By the Nine, but she was wonderful, even if she was mad to still be here at his side. "I won't burn you, Brunnhilde."

Her brow furrowed. "But…"

He smirked. "Haven't met many Jotnar outside of a battle, have you?" It was really getting quite bad now. The numbness was being swept aside by that burning heat. It wasn't the temperature of the ship—the bridge itself was still covered in ice. It was him. He'd forgotten Gerd's warnings not to push himself too hard.

Brunnhilde reached for his hand. She was tentative at first, just one fingertip brushing against the side of his thumb. When there proved to be no danger, she slid her fingers through his and held them. Her eyes locked with his. If he was about to experience his first frjosleikr fever, which he strongly suspected he was and which might well kill him, then he wanted to do something very stupid first. Miraculously, he was fairly certain she would let him. He mustered his strength to sit up and close the distance between them.

"Loki! Loki, where are you?"

She jumped and looked around, dropping his hand. Loki swore in a resigned sort of way and fell back to the floor. He loved his brother dearly and in no way regretted what saving his life could cost him (not even a little bit), but sometimes the oaf had the worst timing.

I decided you guys deserved a break from cliffhangers and ended this one on a funny note. :) No Loki/Valkyrie kisses yet. (And probably not for a while. Sorry, Loki.)

Protective Loki is just as awesome to write as protective Thor, but the logistics of Loki using his frost powers and how Brunnhilde would participate in the fight were kind of a nightmare to sort out. That's why I had to go back and properly design the ship first. It helped immensely.

I can't remember exactly when it occurred to me to send everyone to Sakaar, but this chapter has been in my head ever since I worked out the Jotun biology stuff. I wanted to put Loki in a position where he needed to use frjosleikr and trigger a frjosleikr fever. This was perfect on pretty much every level.

Brodinsons reunion coming up next!