SHADOW OF DEATH
Chapter 22: Exposed
Loki remained at the memorial sight cloaked in invisibility till long after Jane and Shuri disappeared from sight. He did not wish for his solitude to be interrupted, but he could not avoid it as long as the two women remained, unaware of his lingering, unseeing form among them. Their presence and their words dug under his skin as a tick burrows into the flesh of its victim. He could neither remove them nor ignore them. Jane's cutting judgments and Shuri's apt truths stung and he no more wished for their observation than he wished to stand before all Midgard unrobed and bare. Upon their departure, he could finally relax and crawl into the solace of his own mind.
He would not return to Wakanda for at least a month, he decided. Perhaps longer. Director Fury required another visit. It was time he toured each continent in turn, ensured the obedience of his allies, and oversaw rebuilding efforts so they continued unhindered. The more he considered it, the more he determined to stay away from Wakanda for a few months. He tired of the place and its people. He tired of fighting to be Loki when he could so easily accomplish all he desired as Thor. He preferred to remain alone, unseen, and with his true identity hidden from the eyes of all Midgard.
A sound of a bell called his attention away from his musings and to the orange Flerkin. Goose, completely unaffected by his invisibility spell, sprinted directly for where he sat and gave a loud hiss.
"Treacherous beast! You revealed my location to the mortals against my wishes. Be gone," Loki said with a scowl. He pushed at the Flerkin's abdomen to send it away. He expected to receive an obstinate purr followed by a warm furry head pushed into his hand. Instead, Goose lunged with an angry hiss. The powerful claws of the Flerkin sliced easily through the thick leather of his pants and deep into his leg. Loki gave a cry of surprise and jumped to his feet before Goose could manage a second swipe with its claws. Goose hissed and pushed at his leg with its head.
"How dare you attack me! I should flay the skin from your miserable body for such an offense," Loki said. Goose cocked its head, narrowed its eyes, and hissed again.
"What do you wish for, beast?" Loki asked. He rubbed at the stinging wound on his leg and allowed his magic to heal the shallow cut. The Flerkin gave Loki an imperious glare, turned its back to Loki, walked a few dainty steps, and paused to glare at him again. It cocked its orange head to one side, meowed, and took a few more steps. Then it stopped and stared at Loki as if he were communicating something that Loki should clearly be able to understand.
"You wish me to follow?" Loki asked. He took a few steps towards the Flerkin. Goose meowed and walked ahead. It turned and, when it saw Loki following, it picked up its pace and ran so quickly that Loki could barely keep pace. Goose slowed its movements a few blocks away from Mrs. Johnson's greenhouse. It hid behind a broken wall just as Loki could hear voices. Loki joined Goose behind the wall, but Goose slipped past him and disappeared into the streets behind him.
Loki's attention was drawn by the familiarity of the voices he could hear. He knew those voices, but he could not immediately remember who they belonged to.
"They are tied together," said a male voice. "Keep your weapons aimed at their heads until the target returns."
"The temperature is dropping pretty fast. Should we place them in the jet?" said a female voice.
"No. They are bait. It doesn't matter if they live or die as long as we get our target."
"We are not here with Prince Loki. He will not come for us," came a third voice. Shuri's voice.
Loki's heart beat out of his chest at the sound. He cloaked himself in invisibility again and peered into the snowy clearing where he saw what he least desired to see. Jane and Shuri stood bound together and at the point of three Midgardian weapons. Surrounding them were his four allies, his personal army of Winter Soldiers. Unbidden by him and yet they still stared over their captives with the unnaturally blue gaze of those under the mind spell.
It was not possible for them to remain under the control of the scepter and perform tasks he neither wished nor commanded them to accomplish. Something must be corrupting the mind spell. Perhaps the mind spell of their former masters gained strength during the long interludes between physical meetings with Loki.
He drew the scepter out of his storage and silently stalked towards the soldier guarding the perimeter of the clearing. He brought it to the soldier's chest and let the magic flow through the scepter. He struggled to maintain the invisibility spell around the powerful glow of the Mind Stone, but it held. He whispered a command under his breath but, instead of obeying, the soldier's eyes grew a wicked flare and a fist thrust out to grab the scepter. Loki barely managed to twist away fast enough to avoid contact. He fell to the ground and scrambled to his feet a few paces away from the boots of the Winter Soldier.
The soldier turned in a circle and opened his mouth into an expression Loki recognized. It was a sadistic grin he had only seen on one other-and it did not belong on the face of the soldier.
"Asgardian," he hissed. The voice, while belonging to the soldier, took on an other-worldly cadence that dripped with dominance and bred despair. "You cannot hide from us, princeling."
Loki pulled himself from his momentary terror and gave a quick surveillance of the situation. Four genetically-enhanced, brainwashed, and military trained mortals guarded two bound mortals. While he did not doubt he could remove the four soldiers himself, he did doubt his ability to do so without endangering Shuri and Jane. Upon contemplation of the situation, he found he preferred his mortal companions to remain uninjured, but to maintain them so, he would need to tread carefully. He needed to keep the soldier talking.
Loki cast a double of himself wearing his full armor into the center of the clearing, scepter directed toward the soldier. The soldier's eyes glowed with a furious blue rage and his teeth glistened in the moonlight reflected off the snow. The other three soldiers kept their weapons on their prey, but turned their attention to his double with dispassionate stares.
"For what purpose do you seek the King of Midgard?" he asked.
Their spokesman gave a rasping laugh and bowed in a mock show of respect.
"The king? All bow before the king of Earth! The self-declared protector of the human insects! You failed, Asgardian. As you have always failed, and now all of Earth will pay the price for your sentimental desire to preserve their pitiful existence."
"Failed? Have you not heard? I am the sole ruler of this realm. I have proven myself the victor and accomplished what none of my predecessors have accomplished: the unification of all Midgard."
"All hail the would-be savior of Midgard! Tell us, who chose to kill their own citizens in droves rather than accept your protection? The realm you pledged your life to protect would rather burn than accept you as their benefactor, oh Mighty King! All hail the would-be savior of Asgard! Tell us, who cast you from the bifrost and into the void?" the soldier said as he motioned towards his audience with all the flourish of a royal herald. " Who are you then? The bastard runt of a Jotun king, destined for death even at your birth. The despised second prince, the disgraced king, the hated son. You are a tool. You are only worth preserving as long as you are being used and you have long since ceased to be useful to anyone except for him.
"You know of what we speak. You had your war, Asgardian. You were given a glorious purpose. You were given a place to belong, a chance to fulfill your true destiny, to know true power. Instead, you chose to play the martyr. You kept the Tesseract from us. You thought you could wield the scepter- who gave it into your hands? You thought you were strong enough to go against his commands? The scepter obeys the voice of Thanos alone, as you should have done," the soldier said, his voice falling ever deeper into the gritty cadence of the Other, his face twisting into a cruel grimace. The soldier paced around the clearing, his boots forming muddy pathways through the snow. He motioned with his hands toward the two bound women and the weapons moved closer to their heads.
"You have failed -both to end your life and to preserve it. You have failed at the very task you betrayed your master to accomplish. Instead of protecting Midgard and Asgard, you have ensured their total destruction. Instead of allowing half to live, as he originally intended, Thanos will use your own hands to slaughter both planets until their very memories become a curse. You will revel in the screams of those you once called your own -until the scepter removes its power and you are left to bask in the memories of the feel of their lifeless bodies upon your hands over and over again until the end of time.
"No, death is too much a balm for one such as you. Your life will be preserved long past its natural ending point. You will watch as one realm after another falls under the power of the Titan and you will revel knowing their ends will be the more painful simply to reward you for your diligent obedience."
Loki had heard quite enough and all was in place. He pulled the Ice Casket from his storage and turned it towards the center of the clearing, blasting all within with the full power of a winter's blizzard. He heard the sound of gunshots at the same time pure ice exploded like a hundred thousand frigid knives through the Winter Soldiers and encased them in a shell of ice. He gave a hurried prayer to the All-Ruler that his spell of protection within had maintained its full strength.
As the winds and bitter cold subsided, he inhaled deeply and saw the world around him through the strange eyes he knew were caused by his true parentage. He was exposed now in the blue skin and red eyes of a Jotun monster. He gave a shudder not caused by the cold. Then he plunged the pointed edge of his scepter through each of the frozen Winter Soldiers, releasing a blast of energy that forced each to explode into minuscule shards of irreparable ice.
In the center of the morbid ice sculpture, a warm bubble of magic swirled, safely protecting the delicate mortals from both the blast of the ice casket, the Midgardian weapons, and the shards of ice thrown off by the soldiers' corpses. He sighed in relief when he knew Shuri and Jane were unharmed. He placed an illusion of his Aesir form over himself before he released the shield. Then both women turned to him, whole and hale, though rightly terrified.
"You have my apologies, my ladies," he began with a bow. Before he could continue, Loki felt an unsettling rush of power pulsing through the scepter held in his hand. It began to glow again, though he did not call it to.
He knew that feeling. He had felt the ravishing effects of the Mind Stone upon his person more times than he ever wished to recollect. He stared in horror at the scepter as he found he could not release it from his hand. He could feel his illusion disintegrate from around him, leaving him bare and exposed. The scepter flashed again and all his senses were filled with a pair of bright, blue eyes that flashed with a mystical fire that spanned galaxies. Loki now stared into the ancient gaze of the Mad Titan himself.
"Foolish child. Why do you fight me? You were made to be ruled. You crave subjugation. In the end, you will always kneel. I am inevitable."
Loki fell to his knees despite the war he fought against every cell of his body to remain standing. His stomach gave a deathly lurch. The blood pounded in his ears as if a thousand Mjolnirs struck his temples at once and he could not breathe. He fell to the ground and clawed at the snow and hissed and pulled at his throat. It felt like his brain would burst and the thrum of the Mind Stone reverberated through his very soul. He was drowning and his mind was going to explode and he could not fix it. He let out a strangled gasp and looked down to find he was no longer lying on the ground but was walking.
He was walking, unbidden, towards Jane and Shuri. With two conjured knives in his hand. He could not stop. He could not move away. He could not let go of the knives.
He tried to shout to them, to tell them to run, to hide, to flee, to smite him before he could reach them, but he could not open his mouth. He was a horrified observer, held captive within his own cursed flesh, and he was going to kill Jane and Shuri.
oooooooooo
Between being taken captive, held at gunpoint, and then rescued by an alien prince through what she assumed was a combination of a magic bubble and a portable freezer, Shuri thought she and Jane handled themselves admirably. She could still hear Jane's short, panicked breaths behind her and Shuri struggled to regain her own senses enough to know what to do next. As soon as the golden haze around them disintegrated and the cold hit them like a runaway rhinoceros, she could see they remained in the same clearing. However, the clearing was now littered with fragments of ice that resembled broken glass bottles tossed from a moving car. The cold bit into her skin even through her layers of jackets and she knew they needed to get off the ground as soon as they could.
Loki came towards them, giving them a pristine apology and bow before he stopped moving and turned colors like a frightened chameleon. Loki, now all blue skin and glowing blue eyes, looked more inhuman and otherworldly than she had ever seen him to be. He walked towards him with two knives drawn and an eerily delighted grin on his face.
"Children, your deaths are worth more than your lives ever would be," Loki said to them in a voice strangely accented in a way he did not normally use when he spoke. "Nightmares of this moment will taunt the bastard princeling for a millennia to come. His dreams from this time onward will be full of memories of your blood rolling from his hands. You have my thanks for your gracious sacrifice towards fulfilling your glorious purpose," he said with an inelegant bow.
He bent back his arms to aim his knives. Shuri threw all her weight against Jane and knocked them both onto the snow as a knife flew over their heads.
"Loki! What are you doing?" Shuri shouted. "Stop this!"
She struggled to roll herself over, but her bindings to Jane made them both as useless as grounded fish. She clumsily flopped and she gave a panicked cry as she heard boots crunching towards her in the cold snow. She managed to pull Jane up to their knees and covered her with her own body. As another knife flashed in the moonlight, an orange streak ran across the clearing with a loud caterwaul. Goose stopped in front of Loki and opened its mouth wide. Ten-foot tentacles exploded from its mouth and swallowed up the knife before it could land.
One tentacle struck Loki and he fell to the ground. Loki's eyes remained glazed and he convulsed against the pavement. He did not look at them but his mouth twisted into a wicked, evil grin. He rose to his knees and his back bent back at an awkward angle and he stared at the sky, his eyes glowing an even brighter, unnatural blue. A subtle hiss began to emanate from his chest.
"What is happening now?" Jane said.
"Sijui," Shuri said. "But I do not like it."
Loki reached for his scepter and let out a cackle that sounded like the caw of angry ravens. He pointed it towards the two captives and the stone glowed to match the same shade of bright blue as his eyes.
"Goose," Shuri whispered. "Goose, what do we do?"
Goose hissed and its ears flattened against its head. The Flerkin opened its mouth and a burst of tentacles exploded with such force that they knocked Loki back onto the hard, icy pavement with a crash. Shuri and Jane screamed. The spear clattered to the ground a few meters away. Loki twisted around and tried to get up. Before he could rise, a tentacle wrapped around his middle and pounded him headfirst into a concrete wall. His head met the wall again and again until a navy-blue liquid poured out of his nose, ears, mouth, and from gashes on his forehead.
When Loki's body slumped into the limpness of unconsciousness, the Flerkin released him. He fell to the ground like a limp noodle and lay in a motionless heap. The tentacles retracted back into the Flerkin. Goose sat down on its haunches, bathed its paws with its delicate pink tongue, and gingerly walked up to Loki. It licked his face and began to purr.
"Oh my stars! What just happened?" Jane exclaimed. She let out a strangled sob and leaned further into Shuri's back.
"I do not know," Shuri said. She struggled to calm her heart and slow her breaths enough to be able to think again.
"Is he going to be ok?" Jane asked and looked worriedly towards the bloodied, motionless body of the prince.
"I do not know," Shuri said. "He does not look so good. And after seeing all that, I do not feel so good."
"Shuri, if you are gonna hurl, please face the other direction."
"No! I thought you would prefer it if I aimed for your shoes!"
Jane let out a strangled noise halfway between a laugh and a cry. "Shuri, how can you make jokes after what just happened?"
"Would you rather that I cry or panic?"
"Ugh! Fine. What do we do? "
"I think we may need to create an encyclopedia of aliens… we could become the leading world experts. What do you think?" Shuri said. She began to draft the first few chapters in her head before she felt Jane nudge her shoulder again.
"I think we can plan our future careers after we get untied," Jane said.
"Sawa, sawa," Shuri answered. Both women fought against their bonds, the ropes digging into their flesh tighter the more they fought.
"This isn't working, Jane. Maybe Goose can help?"
"You really want that thing near you?" Jane hissed.
"That thing just saved our lives….and it has never tried to hurt any of us."
"It just tried to kill Loki."
"Because he was trying to kill us… and it didn't kill him, simply decommissioned him temporarily… I hope."
"Ok. You have a point."
"I know, this will sting a bit to admit, but Prince Loki was correct. That is not a cat," Shuri said.
"Ugh! Don't say that out loud. I don't think we will ever get that smug look off his face if he hears you."
"I would much prefer that 'smug look' to the look he currently has on his face. I hope he will be ok."
"Me too. I am not feeling too well now either."
"Do not go into shock yet. We need to get out of here before anything else happens- and before we freeze. It is too too cold," Shuri said. Then she dropped her voice to call to the Flerkin. "Goose, kuja hapa. Come here."
Goose looked at both women and twitched its tail and let out a wide, lazy yawn. It stood up and walked around them, dragging its tail across their legs. It batted at the ropes on their legs with its paws and then left. It walked to where the spear lay on the ground. It pawed at the spear with its claws a few times before it bent its head, pushed at it with a loud, scraping sound, and moved it across the icy pavement to where the women stood. Goose looked at them expectantly and flicked its ears.
"Goose wants us to use the scepter."
"I don't want to touch that thing," Jane said.
"Maybe it will help," Shuri answered with a shrug.
"Or maybe it will explode."
"Says the scientist who wants to traverse the galaxy."
"That sounds like a challenge."
"Maybe," Shuri said. "Goose thinks it will help and I do not think we will see any other help until dawn."
"Fine, fine," Jane answered. "I can't believe I'm taking instructions from an alien cat."
With a bit of uncomfortable maneuvering, they managed to arrange their limbs so that Jane could reach down and pick up the spear. She lifted it and as she did, the bindings around her and Shuri released and fluttered to the ground.
"What the…?" Jane exclaimed.
Shuri grinned at her and massaged at her wrists and ankles. Then she knelt beside where Loki lay unconscious. She listened to his chest for a moment and sought for a pulse.
"Jane. I don't know if he has a heart or a pulse. How do I know if he is ok or not?"
"What? Can't you hear anything?"
"Of course, I can hear something, but I do not know what I am supposed to hear!"
"Where is your scanner?"
"That won't help me identify a problem if I do not know what the absence of a problem looks like. We don't even know if he has tentacles or dimensional pockets in him."
"He doesn't look like an alien cat."
"I beg to differ. Have you seen him when he gets his hands dirty? Oh, thank the ancestors, he is still breathing," Shuri said. "I can feel air coming from his nose. He looks like he is turning colors. Look, he is not so blue anymore."
"He looks grey now. He really looks bad."
"Jane, can you check the jet to make sure no one is inside?" Shuri asked.
"By myself?"
Shuri rolled her eyes. "You have an alien spear of death in your hand. You will be fine."
Jane grumbled under her breath and walked up into the jet. Shuri steeled herself for what she knew she had to do next and pressed her kimoyo beads. It only took a few moments before her father, brother, and Okoye all frowned back at her.
"Umefanya nini, dada?" came T'Challa's decidedly angry voice. "What have you done?'
"Where are you?" came her father's, much calmer, but graver voice.
Shuri dropped her eyes. There was no way to explain this in a way that would not lead to a very severe and (possibly well-deserved) punishment.
"Jane and I followed the mgeni and the paka to New York."
Okoye groaned. "Princess, you should never leave our borders without informing your parents and myself. We have been searching for you all morning. Why would you travel without the protection of the Dora Milaje? Anything could have happened!"
"Dada," her brother interjected. "You took a jet, placed the jet on invisibility so we could not track you or find you, and left without telling us where you were going or that you were even leaving Wakanda. You knew you were not doing what you ought."
"Sawa sawa. You can punish me when we return home. What I called for is not a lecture on what rules I am to follow. You would not have even known I left if my plans had gone as they should have."
"What happened?" her father asked.
"First off, Jane and I are fine now. So is Goose. The mgeni I hope will be fine once he regains consciousness."
"Sister…that is not a promising beginning," T'Challa said and gave her a stern look.
Shuri's following words tumbled out in a rush. "We might have run into hostile forces who took Jane and I captive and tried to use us as leverage to capture the mgeni except the mgeni froze them all and made them explode. Then something happened to the mgeni and the paka really isn't a paka at all but a giant alien octopus who saved us all but now the mgeni is unconscious."
Three sets of voices warred with their questions and Shuri only hung her head.
"Poleni sana," she whispered. "I am very sorry. We are safe now, yes? Jane?"
Jane exited the jet and made her way to where the recipients of the transmission could see her. "We are safe," she said.
"Bwana asifiwe," Okoye said with a rush of relief on her taut face.
"Sister, come home. Now," T'Challa said, in a tone which would not allow opposition. "You will need to explain all that to me again, I think."
"We will, we will."
"I am changing all the security codes on every single vehicle once you land that plane," T'Challa warned.
Shuri nodded her head. "I promise I will not try to hack them for at least a week."
"Binti, be safe," her father said. "Rudi nyumbani. Come home."
"Tunakuja, baba," she said. "I am coming." She turned off the projection and looked over at Jane. "Brilliant astrophysicist with multiple degrees - how do we get an unconscious alien up the ramp of that jet?"
"I'm hoping he is lighter than he looks?" Jane said with a shrug.
"I would not count on it."
"Don't you have some vibranium hover craft or something?"
"Not on the jet. I left mine at home."
"Of course you would have one of those."
"I made it when I was eight."
Jane shook her head and smiled. "Brilliant inventor princess who made a hovercraft when she was eight - how do we get an unconscious alien up the ramp of that jet?"
Shuri furrowed her brow while she considered the height of the ramp and estimated the weight of the prone man on the ground. She frowned. "Do you think he would survive if Goose ate him and spit him out in one piece in Wakanda?"
Ooooooooooooooooo
Translations:
Sijui: I don't know
Paka: cat
Mgeni: foreigner, stranger, outsider
Sawa sawa: ok
Umefanya nini: what have you done?
Poleni sana: I'm very sorry.
Dada: sister
Binti: daughter
Rudi nyumbani: come home
Tunakuja: we are coming