Unlike Asgardian vessels, Maw's ship was completely enclosed and had no exterior light. The corridors felt more like underground tunnels than anything, winding and irregular, and the whole place had an oppressive, sickly air to it. Thor felt the effects of battle much more strongly here than he had outside. This must be what Heimdall had meant about it not being a good place for Aesir or Jotnar to be. He was sure he was headed in the right general direction, at least, because he had punched his way through to the topmost level and was moving downhill towards the front of the ship.

"Thor!"

He turned to see Sif and Fandral jogging towards him. Good. The more they had against Maw and his soldiers, the better. They fell into step at either side of him. "Heimdall said Ebony Maw has Loki on the bridge. I think it's this way, but this ship is so strange."

"It feels as though there's a curse upon it," said Fandral.

"Have you met with any soldiers yet?" said Sif.

"No," said Thor. "They would have been awaiting deployment in the lower levels, though, so perhaps they didn't survive the crash."

"Does the tunnel seem to be getting larger to you?" said Fandral, frowning at the walls.

Thor looked at them. "No, but those veins in it are." They let off a dull, steady glow, which was the only lighting Thor had seen in the ship so far. But perhaps they were what carried power through the ship. Which meant the bigger they got, the closer they were getting to the bridge. He picked up the pace.

X

"You said Loki has been here nearly three days?" said Fandral. In terms of sheer ambiance, he couldn't remember a place he'd enjoyed being less.

"Yes, Ebony Maw captured him shortly after we arrived, before we even knew we were a target. Heimdall couldn't see clearly enough to say what he has suffered on this ship, but Maw is one of Thanos's top experts in torture."

Fandral exchanged an outraged look with Sif. Thor had explained something of the threat Thanos posed to them on Asgard, and all Aesir youth were taught of the war in which Odin had forced the Titan to permanently retreat beyond Yggdrasil's borders, but a prince they had spent their entire lives with being captured and tortured by Thanos's man made it far more personal.

Sif's glower turned to a puzzled frown. "Is it...getting colder?"

Thor immediately straightened like a hound catching a scent and broke into a run. "Loki! Loki, where are you?" he called.

Fandral and Sif ran after him. Fandral didn't know why colder air would make Thor so sure they were getting close, and he also didn't know that it was wise to announce their location in this way, but he would fight whatever foes they found regardless.

The temperature continued to drop until they could see their breath on the air. They rounded a corner and all nearly slipped on the slanted, frozen floor as they came upon a vast room like none Fandral had ever seen. Dull light from below illuminated a network of tree-like structures that were ruptured in numerous places by large, multicolored icicles.

Thor ignored the bizarre sight entirely, giving a shout and dashing forward. Fandral looked where he was running and saw something that made no sense. At the center of the room were three people. One was a gray-skinned alien who appeared to have been fatally impaled from the inside by over a dozen maroon daggers. One was a dark-skinned woman a few inches shorter than Sif, dressed in plain black leathers. The third, whom she was helping to his feet, was a Frost Giant. How had he gotten here, so far away from Jotunheim, and what was he doing wearing Loki's armor? ...Or with loose-curling black hair that came to his chin, like Loki had?

Fandral's hand went to Fimbuldraugr's hilt. Thor was unlikely to need help in this fight, but if one Jotun could freeze this entire chamber alone, he could be more dangerous than he looked. And yet, when Thor reached him, he made no move to call Mjolnir to his hand. Instead, he threw his arms around the Frost Giant in what was unmistakably one of his bear-like hugs, momentarily lifting him off his feet. Fandral stared in astonishment. It was one thing to talk of an alliance with Jotunheim, surely, and another thing to embrace one of those creatures like a dear friend.

The Frost Giant protested the hug even as he returned the gesture, and he did so in a very familiar voice. Fandral's stomach began to sink.

"Two days of torture, and now you subject me to this?"

"I was so afraid you would be in Thanos's clutches before I could stop it," said Thor, squeezing tighter. "But now I have slain Cull Obsidian and you Ebony Maw. Well done, Brother."

"Brother," Fandral repeated.

"Wha—Loki?!" said Sif, astonished.

"Oh, right," said Thor. Seemingly unwilling to let go of Loki, he kept one hand at the back of his neck and the other at his shoulder as he turned to face them. "Loki's adopted."

X

Loki was having a hard time focusing on his surroundings now. It was like peering through a heat haze. The heat flooding through the rest of him was getting particularly nasty at all the spots where Maw had used his needles, and an odd pressure was building under his skin. Under any other circumstances, he would have cared a lot more that his two oldest friends on Asgard had just found out about his true heritage by accident, but it was hard enough work staying coherent and bearing his ailments with dignity, and he simply didn't have the energy to spare.

"What did Maw do to you?" said Thor, holding Loki at arm's length. He sounded relieved, proud, and worried all at once. "You look terrible."

Thor's face swam before him, but Loki could make out the blue lines painted on it. While they were smeared here and there and marred with blood on one cheek, the intended pattern was clear. "You're one to talk," he muttered. Was it the fever making his voice sound so hoarse all of a sudden or was it something else? "What've you done to your face?"

"What's wrong with my face?"

Loki raised his eyebrows and dragged his gaze pointedly around the blue lines. Sif and Fandral had drifted closer. They looked confused and uncomfortable. He ignored them.

"Oh, this?" said Thor, wiping his temple. Some of the paint came off onto his fingertips. "I needed a disguise, and this was the first thing I thought of."

Thor noticed Brunnhilde standing near him, and he beamed at her. "Hello," he said. He let go of Loki, who barely managed not to topple over, and reached for the buckle of a bandolier. "I borrowed this during the battle." He slid it free and held it out to her. On it was the sword Loki had barely stopped Maw from killing her with. She took it, frowning.

"Also my friends and I have been using your quarters as our hideout ever since you were captured," Thor added.

"You what?"

"Is that a Dragonfang?!" said Sif, staring at the sword. Then she looked at the Valkyrie. The shock of Loki's heritage was clearly nothing to what she had just realized. Loki was a little worried Sif might actually burst from excitement. If he and Thor had grown up hero-worshipping the Valkyrior, they'd been nothing compared to Sif. She had carried around a toy winged horse everywhere as a little girl, dressed up her dolls in their armor and used them to play out imaginary battles, hung the walls of her chambers with tapestries depicting all the Valkyrior's greatest victories, had often been caught concealing books about them inside the books they'd been assigned by their tutors, visited their memorialized aeries roughly once a year, lamented with tiresome frequency that the corps hadn't been reformed, and taught herself as much as she could of their fighting style from archived battle records. "By the Norns, you're...you're Commander Brunnhilde Sigursdottir of the Second Wing!"

"Wait, you're that Valkyrie?" Thor blurted. His total shock amused Loki. Apparently however much time he'd spent with her the first time around hadn't been enough for him to learn that she was one of the most legendary leaders of the already legendary force.

Their surprise was enough to catch Fandral's attention too. He gave Brunnhilde the sort of look that had marked the beginning of the end of more than one of Loki's rare infatuations.

"I'm not the commander of anything anymore," said Brunnhilde, looking at the three of them like they were irritating children. (Well, considering their comparative ages, that was fairly accurate.)

X

While Sif struggled to maintain her dignity in the presence of one of her greatest lifelong sources of inspiration and said source of inspiration scowled and muttered that she needed a drink, Thor's attention turned to the huddle of aliens by one of the consoles. "Who are they?"

"The other pilots," said Loki. "I don't believe they were helping Maw willingly."

"Of course we weren't!" said the youngest-looking of them. One of the older ones put a hand on his shoulder, clearly unsure they should be drawing attention to themselves.

"Maw brought Thanos to their planet," said Loki. "He sought him out."

"What?!" said Thor, outraged. He thought of the destruction of the refugee ship. He couldn't even imagine deliberately bringing that down upon his own people. He turned to face the bedraggled little group. "Any enemy of Thanos is a friend of Asgard. You are welcome to come with us if you have nowhere else to go."

"You think you can fight Thanos?" said one of them in a hushed voice. "Are you insane?"

"I just defeated Cull Obsidian in single combat, and my brother defeated Ebony Maw even after days of torture and privation. I think we can end Thanos," said Thor. "And the more people who stand with us against him, the easier it will be."

The adolescent shot to his feet. One by one, the rest joined him. They still looked afraid, but their jaws were set. The eldest of them stepped forward. "I am Neris," he said. He pointed around at the others. "These are Tidra, Osri, Salke, Rijal, and Halu. I do not know if you can do what you say, but I will help if I can."

Thor gave him a grave, approving nod. "Let's go, then."

They had barely gone five paces when Loki swayed on his feet. Thor rushed back to his side. The Valkyrie—Brunnhilde—did the same on his other side, and they caught him before he could hit the floor. Loki sagged against their supporting arms, his head down and his chest heaving.

"Loki!" said Thor. "What's wrong?"

"Frjosleikr fever," Loki grunted. "I was reckless."

A wave of dread crashed over Thor. "But Gerd said those—!"

"Yes, and now I know why," said Loki. His voice was getting shriller. He groaned and convulsed. Thor looked at his brother's face and saw that something odd was happening to the ancestral lines in it. They had taken on a silvery texture. After staring at them in confusion for a moment, he realized that the silver substance was thin trails of steam drifting up from under Loki's skin. He wasn't the only one who noticed.

"Loki...why is your face boiling?" said Brunnhilde.

"It's not just my face," said Loki, gritting his teeth. "Allfathers," he whimpered, "I think I'm dying." Loki was not the sort to exaggerate his condition—in fact, growing up, he'd had a bad habit of using illusions to make himself look perfectly healthy until, like now, he was at the point of physical collapse.

"The Hel you are!" said Thor. "Come on!" They tripled their pace. Thor remained on watch for any sign of Sakaaran soldiers, as did Sif and Fandral, but they met no one all the way back to the hole he'd made in the hull.

X

Korg looked over the arena, very pleased with the revolution's beginning. His strange new friends had gotten the people on board, overwhelmed the army of soldiers until they surrendered, and even dropped a giant spaceship on the Grandmaster's box and palace. Now the fighters were rounding up the surviving soldiers and grouping them together, anyone with medical knowledge was roving around tending to wounds, and the overall atmosphere was one of nervous excitement and possibility. They'd been a little worried about the big green angry guy at first, but a minute or so after the soldiers surrendered, he'd turned into a much smaller pink guy who just looked really harmless and confused. That made sense, considering that he couldn't understand anything anyone but Thor's friends said to him.

Thor reappeared at the top of the arena at the tail end of the crashed ship after about a half an hour. One or two at a time, he used his magic flying hammer to bring the people with him—several raggedy people who looked like that Wrinkles guy and a black-haired man who looked like a blue popsicle that had been dropped on hot pavement—back down to the arena floor. A particularly notorious scrapper who was somehow also in the group and Thor's two armored friends simply jumped down on their own.

Korg waved and went to join Thor, since it would be rude to make him carry the blue popsicle man across the arena to him. (For some reason, the two guys in armor who had stayed in the arena seemed very surprised and upset by the sight of the blue popsicle man.) "Hey, Thor," said Korg. "Thanks for all the help."

"I'm glad we could rid Sakaar of its tyrant, but my brother is ill and we must return to Asgard immediately," said Thor. "Will you be alright here? Our transporters don't have room to bring everyone, but perhaps you could come by ship or we could come back for you."

"You're very generous," said Korg apologetically, "but from what you've said, it sounds like this Asgard place is a hereditary monarchy, and becoming royal subjects who probably have fewer rights than native citizens would be more of a lateral move than a positive one. Sure, things might be tough on Sakaar for a while. There'll be a power vacuum without the Grandmaster in charge, but with quick enough action, we can get a working anarcho-syndicalist commune together, grounded in the shared experience of our past oppression and our victory here. It might need a few tweaks as we get settled in, but I'm confident we can give it a good go, at least."

"As long as you're sure," said Thor. It could be hard to read the expressions of fleshy people sometimes, but Korg suspected he was trying not to laugh at him. He didn't mind. It'd be a waste of breath to try and explain the problems with monarchies to a prince, anyway. Hopefully all of Thor's descendents would defy probability and be lovely, competent people, and their citizens would never have to live under an imperialist despot.

X

It looked like Brunnhilde was going to remain stuck on Sakaar. Thor was acting like it was a given that she would leave with them. She hadn't bothered to correct him. Any deliberate attempt she made to leave this planet would have consequences. Whether the Grandmaster was in power or not, it didn't matter. A little thing like a ship falling on top of him would only be a brief inconvenience. He'd get out eventually, and he'd look for her.

But she could at least make sure Loki made it onto their transport alright. She ought to give Thor a good hard smack around the head with the pommel of her sword for showing up ten seconds too early, not to mention making himself at home at her flat.

Where was their transport, anyway?

X

Natasha had never been in a full-blown battle before, but this one seemed to have gone pretty well. They had achieved their original objectives of taking out Thanos's lieutenants and their army, and they'd also pulled off a one-day revolution to unseat a global dictator, rescued Loki (who was apparently an entirely different species from Thor, a fact that seemed to be making Thor's other friends very uncomfortable), and acquired several valuable intelligence assets for future campaigns against Thanos. And she and Clint would bring back quite a haul of alien technology for Fitzsimmons to play with over in R&D, assuming they could keep it out of Hydra's hands. Not bad for three days' work.

"Right, Korg says Sakaar will be fine," said Thor. "We shouldn't waste any more time. Loki?"

Loki gritted his teeth and flailed one blue, lined hand. There was a green-gold glimmer and the transporter materialized. Between the two of them, they had enough handles to take fourteen back to Asgard. Thor, Hogun, Volstagg, and four of the aliens like Maw gathered around one, while Natasha, Clint, Dr. Banner, Fandral, Sif, Loki, and the Valkyrie surrounded the other. The two remaining aliens had volunteered to stay on Sakaar. They wanted to take Maw's ship apart and properly honor those whose bodies had been used to make it.

Sif took it upon herself to set the dials to bring them back to the palace on Asgard. The Valkyrie paid her and the device no attention. She was still holding Loki on his feet, but her eyes had found Natasha. "You're one of the mortals running around with the princes," she said, looking Natasha over with a distinctly appreciative eye. "Staying at my place and wearing my armor? I don't usually let a girl get away with either of those things before she's at least bought me a few drinks, let alone both."

Natasha heard Clint cough next to her. She smirked without acknowledging him. It looked like Loki's competitive field might be a little broader than she'd thought. "Yeah, sorry...crashing at your place was Thor's idea."

"How did he know where it was?"

"That's a long story."

"And the armor?"

"I used it to get into the palace to blow up the mainframe."

"Not bad."

"Alright, is everyone ready?" Thor called from his group around the other transporter.

"We're ready," said Clint.

"Ready for what?" said the Valkyrie.

Natasha's gaze was caught by a movement on the other side of the transporter. She thought she'd seen Fandral move his hand towards the rings that set the destination, but by the time she was looking properly, he was merely clutching the handle.

Loki heaved and slapped the Valkyrie's hand onto a handle before seizing one himself.

"Now!" Thor shouted. They all turned their handles, a gold field shot out to blanket them, and Sakaar spun out from under their feet.

When new surroundings materialized a moment later (complete with blessedly clean-smelling air), there was no sign of the other transporter and they were not inside the palace. It was definitely still Asgard, but they were standing in the middle of a bustling square.

Several people shouted in alarm and a horse about to walk where they had appeared gave a shrill whinny and reared onto its hind legs.

The Valkyrie dropped the handle like it had burned her and stared around in horror. "No, no, no," she said. "What did you do?" But her reaction was soon drowned by screams and cries of alarm from the Asgardian people.

"Frost Giant!"

"How did it get here?"

"There's a Frost Giant on Asgard!"

Welp, the cat's out of the bag. Getting to this point was another reason I was so happy about the Sakaar arc. Now there are consequences! Whee!

No one can convince me that Sif was anything but the BIGGEST, most embarrassing Valkyrie superfan growing up. That's going to be fun.

Not 100% happy with this chapter, but that's mostly because there were too many characters in each scene, and a lot of them were having interesting reactions to things that I couldn't write because it would get repetitive or way too long. Going to Korg's PoV helped a lot, because he is very silly and isn't bothered by things anyone else is bothered by.

There is something more than meets the eye to Brunnhilde's reluctance to leave Sakaar. Looking forward to getting into that stuff.