"What idea?" Sylvie wondered as Loki gave her a kiss.
"If I cast an astral projection of myself, I should be able to have him phase through the walls of flame, find the exit, and show us the way out!" Loki explained.
"Now we're talking!"
Loki carried out his plan, wandering through the fiery walls in search of the labyrinth's end. As he reached the outermost wall, he found a lake of lava at the edge. He walked along the edge of the wall until there was a break in the flames, where he spotted Logi in the distance.
"You know, for someone who was in such a hurry to get us through here yesterday, you're taking your sweet time getting back." Loki mocked sarcastically.
"Uh-oh!"
Loki smirked, thinking to himself, "Now I just need to find my way back to my physical body, and we'll be out of here very soon!"
As he turned back, the Fire Giant met with his sister. "Bad news, it looks like one of them actually found the exit!"
"No worries, Logi, they won't find it again!" Gnista assured him as she dove into the flames.
After a great deal of backtracking along the trail and occasionally peeking through the walls, astral Loki finally reached his friends and returned to physical form.
"Did you find the exit?" Sylvie asked.
"Yes, I did, and I've got the directions marked down!"
"Alright! We can finally get outta here!" Mobius cheered as they followed Loki's directions. Unbeknownst to them, however, Gnista made her way to the central area, placing her hand in the indentation. "Guess it's up to the brains of the team to keep them in!" She said as her fiery hand filled the gaps and moved around inside.
"And a left at this corridor…" Loki instructed his group until they reached the next turn. "And a right here…" He began to lead them around the next bend before he stopped suddenly.
"What is it?" Mobius wondered.
"A dead end?!"
"I thought you had the directions down!" Sylvie groaned.
"I did: I wrote them all down! Our good-for-nothing guide must have cast this!"
"Can you teleport us past it?"
Loki sent his astral form through the dead end and immediately returned. "Not safely: there's a lava pit extending far to the other side, but that wasn't there either!"
"Hmmm… something suspicious is going on here, and I'll bet it has something to do with that red symbol we saw!" Mobius theorized. "Sylvie, let's go back and investigate! Loki, you wanna wait here in case the maze changes again?"
"Sounds like a plan." Loki agreed as his teammates backtracked to the central area again.
"Aaand more going backwards. Back and forth and back and forth, this sucks!" Grievance complained.
Loki ignored him as his friends made their way. Sylvie reexamined the indentation. "What do you suppose fits in there?"
"It seems too wide and oddly-shaped for a key… and Logi wouldn't likely be carrying anything without clothes or pockets. Maybe…" He took a closer look at the red symbol, a fiery shape outlining it. "Maybe the key is a part of him! Sylvie, try casting fire in there!" Sylvie did so, and she felt something lock into place. She tried turning the flames like a key.
"Anything changing over there, Loki?" Sylvie contacted him telepathically.
"Not yet."
"It's not working." Sylvie told Mobius.
"Huh, can I see in there?" She cast light as the mustached analyst peeked into the indentation. "Hey, that's really something, there's a miniature labyrinth inside! Sylvie, it doesn't turn like a key, you manipulate the flames on the inside to match the real maze on the outside!"
"They won't move: they're stuck!"
"Really? Let me see again… what if you slid them against each other like a puzzle? Yeah, there it goes, now just slide that there…" She followed his advice as he instructed her, working together to manipulate the maze, checking back with Loki as they cleared a path. "Oh, maybe if you put some of this stone in there, it'll cover the lava pits! Yeah! Alright, that's perfect!" Mobius exclaimed. "Now, let's just make sure he can't change it on us again!" Rejoining his friends, Loki froze the whole symbol over with his casket, and they hurriedly made their way back, following Loki's directions until they finally reached the end.
"Finally!" Loki breathed a sigh of relief.
Mobius checked his TemPad. "TemPad's operational again; whatever was messing with it must've been another trap in the maze."
"You hear that, Grievance? We can go eat soon!"
"Awesomesauce."
"'Awesomesauce?'"
"I pick up vocabulary from each host I inhabit. My most recent host said 'awesomesauce' a lot."
"Right, the child."
Mobius gave Loki a puzzled look. "Hey Lokes, shouldn't you have turned Asgardian again, since you're not touching the casket?" Loki glanced at hands, also wondering why he was still blue.
"We were getting too hot, so I cooled our body down some more. You're welcome!"
"You can activate my Frost Giant biology at will?"
"I can now!"
"Must be your body reacting to the heat, cooling you down." Mobius assumed.
"Oh look, there's the welcoming committee." Sylvie remarked towards the Muspel duo waiting for them.
"But how?!" Gnista was floored. "No one's ever made it out of my brilliant labyrinth alive!"
"Yeah, I figured it out, navigated us out of your crazy little death trap, now let's get some answers! Who's causing the house fires across the galaxy?"
The two Fire Giants whispered back and forth.
"You must be a very clever human to be able to solve my puzzle, and very powerful to be able to move the flames! I am Gnista Surturdottir; you already know my older brother Logi. The Fire Giant you're looking for is our older sister, Fiamma."
"Surtur's children, I might have known!" Loki remarked.
"He passed on a while ago, and later most of our siblings. Now it's just the three of us."
"And where do we find your third sibling?"
"Hold on!" Logi spoke up. "We'll tell you where she is and how to find her… if you can earn it! You may have outsmarted my annoying, know-it-all sister, but now you'll have to beat me in my own contest!"
"I hope it's an eating contest!" Loki and Grievance thought together.
"An eating contest!" Logi clarified, as if he read their minds.
"I accept your challenge!" Loki hastily volunteered. "Of all the myths mortals have written about me, one that holds true is my ability to eat lots of food very quickly, and being as famished as I am currently, you don't stand a chance!"
"Hey, we're hungry too." Mobius reminded him.
"And you have to feed my friends too." Loki told him.
"If you win…" Logi stated.
"Before we win!" Mobius corrected. "We're not about to sit here and watch you two stuff yourselves while we're starving here!"
"And you're the jerk responsible for us going hungry in the first place!" Sylvie reminded him. "You owe us!"
"I told you it was payment for my services-" Logi started before Loki handed Sylvie the Casket of Ancient Winters and froze his head mid-sentence.
"You left us inside there to die and booby-trapped our only escape route! The only payment you're getting from us is payback!"
"…f-f-fine." Logi eventually muttered after Gnista thawed him.
"Sorry about my brother, he can be a real pain in the ash!"
After Mobius and Sylvie were fed, pile after pile of meat was heaped onto a large table. The two competitors sat at opposite ends of the table.
"Alrighty giants, the first round is about to begin! Whoever clears their side of the table first wins the round, best two out of three rounds wins!" Gnista announced.
"And no eating things that aren't food, like the table or anything made of fire." Mobius added.
Logi made a confused face. "Eat the table?! What kind of sicko do you think I am?"
"Does it really matter 'what kind?' Come on, let's get this over with!"
"Ready, set… begin!"
The competitors immediately dug into their feast, gobbling down the meat at breakneck speed! In addition to his aforementioned prowess at speed eating, Loki was so hungry and determined that he didn't notice the appetite boost his new bodymate gave him or that he was even eating the bones! Logi did the same, happily stuffing his mouth.
"Logi, Logi, can't be beat! Logi, Logi, eat that meat!" Gnista cheered him on!
"Wow, look at 'em go!" Mobius gaped. "It's just like that scene from Valhalla!"
"What?" Sylvie turned to him, confused.
"Oh, the Danish movie Valhalla, not the actual place! Røskva introduced me after one of her therapy sessions; she said she was named after the girl in it." Mobius clarified. "In the movie, Logi ate the feeding trough afterwards, though!" He glimpsed back at the scene. "And in the movie, Loki spit out the bones."
The ravenous giants began to grab from the center of the table as the food had almost disappeared. As Logi reached for his last three hunks of meat, Loki quickly snatched them away, shoving them into his mouth as his side was already long cleared.
"We have a winner! Round one goes to the time-traveling son of Laufey!" His friends clapped as Loki rubbed his belly, ready for more.
"Stop rubbing our tummy: we are digesting."
"I'll do what I want!"
"You will… wait, this is pleasant and helpful. Never mind."
"So, what are we having for round two?" Loki wondered aloud.
"I hope it's brains."
"Loser decides: what's on the menu for round two, slow-Bro?" Gnista asked Logi.
"I can't believe he ate faster than me, that's crazy! Hm, I'll just have to make sure he won't do it again… I know! Muspepppers: a muspepper-eating contest!"
"You and your muspeppers, you sneak. I have to warn you, the peppers from Muspelheim are by far the hottest in the nine realms! If you want to forfeit the contest and save your taste buds, now's your chance."
"That doesn't sound appetizing in the least, but no thank you. I'm all in." Loki told Gnista.
"Wait, all the heat might be harmful to you, being a Frost Giant and all!" Mobius interjected. "I came from a very hot place on Earth; can I substitute for Loki in this round?"
"Negative, if you eat for him, he loses the contest! Now, one little matter before we resume." Gnista pulled out a heatproof paper and pen from a smaller table, handing it to Sylvie and Mobius. "I'm gonna need you two to sign this waiver that if your friend dies, you won't start a war with our realm."
They looked at each other nervously. "And just how many challengers have died from these peppers!?" Sylvie questioned.
"None yet, but Logi hasn't had a Jotun challenge him before: most of them are local."
"Well, he's already refused to back out, and if any Jotun can survive this, it's Loki!" Mobius reluctantly signed the waiver.
"Loki, do not eat those peppers!" Grievance warned.
"Oh, what now!? You're the one who's been complaining of starvation all day!"
"I told you I hate heat: that includes hot food!"
"Then it's fortuitous that you turned on my Frost Giant cooling system." Loki sassed him.
Loki and Logi each had piping-hot peppers piled on a plate before them.
"Alright, same rules as with meat, except if you drink any kind of beverage or throw up, you lose!" Gnista explained. "Ready, set, eat!"
The Muspel Prince proceeded popping peppers in his piehole like previously, but Loki grimaced on his first bite. The Jotun prince painfully swallowed his bite and forced a few more peppers into his mouth. As time passed, Loki grew closer to catching up to his rival, while his Symbiote had to work harder to help his body stay cool.
"How is he still conscious?!" Logi silently wondered. "He's ingested enough capsaicin to knock out a real Asgardian!"
"I can handle spicy food; I got in a lot of stupid dares with my brother when I was younger." Loki thought as his eyes watered. "But this is something else entirely! With each bite, I can feel the lava pools of Muspelheim themselves pouring down my throat!"
"Loki, we need to stop this now! I have been the only thing keeping this red-hot poison from killing us, but if you keep ingesting these volcano pukes, I will not be able to keep up, and we will lose consciousness, at the very least!"
Loki wiped his eyes and the sweat pouring from his forehead, hesitating before his next bite. He glanced over at Logi, his vision blurring and becoming tunneled, who was nearing the bottom of his plate, while Loki's was still at least a third of the way full. Loki instinctively gulped, yet his mouth was so hot and dry, he had nothing to swallow. "Grievance, for once, I agree with you." He stared at the rest of his peppers disdainfully. "Finishing these won't accomplish anything at this point: he's almost done, I can't beat him trying to choke down the rest of these, and I need to save room for round three." He pushed his plate toward Logi, who had just finished his own plate.
"And round two goes to the bottomless pit from the home team, Logi Surturson! That means round three will be our tiebreaker!"
"Hey! I see, one of the main reasons you ate so many disgustingly hot peppers was to try and get rid of me, wasn't it?!" Loki answered with only a sly smile, despite the searing pain inside him. "I hate you."
"Then I suppose this makes us even for you threatening Mobius and me."
"Rrrrrrr, I suppose…"
"Any requests for round three's menu, Loki?" Gnista asked. "The choice is yours, as long as it's not water or liquid!"
"I know exactly what I'd like to have: ice cream!"
The fire siblings blinked, looking at each other and back. "What's ice cream?"
"Oh, I'd love to show you!" Loki opened a door to a cooler world that contained his favorite dessert. "Any flavor requests, Grievance?"
"Death by Chocolate!"
"Sounds glorious!"