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CHAPTER ONE
Thor & Loki
Author's Note: Odin forgave Loki after The Dark World; Ragnarok didn't happen (yet); Thor and Loki maintain a complicated relationship.
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———
The entire galaxy was attacked. Suddenly. Simultaneously.
By blue goop.
Blue goop that came out of tiny seedlings hidden on every planet with a quantifiable ecosystem. Wherever the blue goop spread it absorbed every living organism, converted it to more blue goop. And spread it did, growing exponentially to cover acres in mere seconds, square miles in minutes.
But as suddenly and quickly as it came it was gone, shrinking back into itself, contracting, congealing into small firm lumps of blue-gray shmutz no science could identify. Everywhere it spread, every place it touched, it left lifeless. Barren. Sterile. Every life-sustaining planet in the galaxy was scarred.
Almost.
A few dozen of Ego's expansion seedlings failed to… expand… on a few dozen worlds across the galaxy. Although the living planet was no more, no one considered it wise to leave any vestige intact, especially if it might contain even the tiniest spark of celestial energy. Xandar's Nova Corps, Kree Starforce, and the Shi'Ar Imperial Guard deployed teams to very carefully uproot, desiccate, and reduce to powder any surviving plants in their territories.
Sif and the Warriors Three volunteered to eliminate the few that remained in the Nine Realms. More accurately, Sif volunteered on their behalf, and told the three about it later. Volstagg (the Valiant) grumbled; he felt a mission on a few planets friendly to Asgard hardly counted as an adventure. (Lady) Sif explained they would deliver a coup de grace to Ego's plan to overrun all life in the galaxy. Volstagg grumbled. Hogun (the Grim) reminded him billions of lives might still be in danger. Volstagg grumbled. Fandrall (the Dashing) pointed out they would likely be honored with revels on every world they visited. Volstagg grumbled no more.
That left one errant seedling on an unaligned world, a cursed planet called Tjurvarld, home to the de-evolving Bollevolk. Once a proud and promising culture on the cusp of entering the galactic community, now little more than primitives living in a civilization they could no longer sustain, scavenging technology they could no longer understand. And since any Bollevolk was a physical match for the average Asgardian warrior, Thor and Loki Odinsons would handle the matter personally.
Heimdall (Guardian of the Bifrost) gave them a stern warning before he activated the Rainbow Bridge. "I cannot put you too close to Ego's plant. We have no idea how the Bifrost's energies might affect it, and we dare not awaken the power it might hold. If you are within ninety kilometers of the demon seedling, I cannot bring you back unless your task is done." He did not wait for a response before he thrust Hofund (the Bifrost Sword) deeper into the central control column, casting the sons of Odin (the All-Father) halfway across the galaxy in a theoretical tunnel made of panchromatic quantum foam and iridescent space magic.
They found themselves on a grassy plateau at the top of an escarpment. Across the plain, just at the hazy horizon, was a city. Domes, cones, tapered cylinders, and the occasional spiral dominated the skyline, pale gray against the pale blue sky. Closer by, a semicircle of ceramic pavement surrounded a square stone arch perched on the very edge of the angled cliff.
The brothers — both trained by the same Asgardian battle masters — immediately stood back to back, walked around the edge of the Bifrost mark until both had surveyed the entire area. They were alone, it seemed.
Thor closed his eyes, lifted his face to the sun, felt its warmth on his skin for a quick minute. He enjoyed the calm moments, the quiet bits of time that never made it into the stories people told about their adventures. He looked around, taking in an alien vista few had ever seen, or ever would. The grass was waist high, a bit darker than Asgard's fields, dotted with stalks of yellow grain and blue flowers. The sky was a lighter blue and completely cloudless, but the air smelled of moisture and damp earth underneath the scents of grass pollen and flower petals.
"This is quite beautiful," Loki declared, apparently sharing his brother's mood.
"Tjurvarld should have been the jewel of the sector," Thor answered. "Lands so fertile they could have fed an entire realm." He squinted at a glint in the distance, along the escarpment's edge. "Look there." He pointed. "Do you suppose that's a temple?"
Loki looked, spotted the squat conical structure floating above the horizon. "Mm. Or a leisure center." Thor shot him an annoyed, judgmental look. Loki rolled his eyes. "Lodgings, brother, eateries. Spas and emporiums. Places. To. Relax." Thor looked properly contrite, then awkwardly led the way to the stone arch.
The arch was the top of a stone guideway for an inclined tram. A hundred and fifty meters below, it connected to a circular marble structure with a vaulted slate roof, openings on three sides. A long walled colonnade stretched through a forest of scrub trees and bramble vines to a twisting network of slot canyons and rock pillars as far as the eye could see. Somewhere in that natural maze Ego's seedling waited, nestled in a geological flat beneath a copse of ferns.
Thor pressed one of the large square buttons on either side of the arch. The stone arch rang like a bell, answered by a peal from the structure below. A white metal tram car emerged, gliding slowly up the guideway.
Loki glared while they waited.
"So what? We're visitors, not invaders." Loki glared. "No, I take that back. We're not visitors. We're saviors."
Loki rolled his eyes again, flicked them toward the bottom of the slope with a quick head bob. "You should tell them."
Thor looked. Tiny figures stood outside the larger structure beneath them. "Two guards."
"Two approaching from the side."
Thor scanned the area. "And two more on the other."
The tram car arrived, doors slid open, shut behind them. Another large square button,
another dual bell ring, and the tram began gliding down the incline.
They rode in silence. When it became awkward, Loki spoke. "This is really quite clever. Magnets in the tracks resist gravity to control our descent, and an electromagnet underneath the car propels it back to the top."
"Really? That is interesting." It clearly wasn't. Thor glanced at Loki without turning his head. "Hey, let's do 'Get Help'."
"What?" Not this again…
"'Get Help'."
"No."
"Come on. You love it!"
Seriously? "I hate it."
"It's great! It works every time."
"It's humiliating."
"Not for me it's not. Do you have a better plan?"
"No..."
"We're doing it."
"We are not doing 'Get Help'." Dammit!
"All right," Thor humored his brother. "But we are."
Loki sighed. "Fine. But if we're doing it, we're doing it my way."
———
———
Inside the grand stone chamber at the bottom of the inclined magnetic tramway, six Bollevolk stood ready in standard (on Tjurvarld, anyway) three-two-one positions, magnetically propelled projectile carbines trained on the tram doors. There was no friendly signal from above, no greeting shout, no prayer horn, no honor flag. After months of drudgery, they looked forward to a bit of violence. Perhaps some bloodshed. Maybe even a fatality or two…
The tram doors opened to reveal two strange intruders, plainly not Bollevolk, oddly wrapped in green cloth and blue leather. One — painfully thin, with magnificent but clearly artificial horns ridiculously misaligned — knelt over the other — larger, its bare arms hairless but otherwise healthily muscled — where it lay still on the tram floor. A stonemason's hammer, garishly decorated, lay near the back of the tram, well out of either intruder's reach. The green one pressed its hands on the blue one's chest, perhaps holding it down, turned its small round head to speak, fluid draining from its tiny eyes.
"Get help! Please, my brother is dying! Help h—!"
Three guards in the center of the chamber opened fire immediately. Under a withering hail of bullets, the brothers vanished in a golden haze of light. Thor's face reflected dismay at the guards' callous disregard for a wounded stranger; Loki's, low expectations fulfilled.
Mjolnir leapt from the tram floor, drove straight through the three trigger-happy guards clustered just a bit too close to each other. The Bollevolk in the middle was carried away down the long passage leading to the slot canyon labyrinth, the other two knocked off their hooves to either side, their weapons clattering away.
Thor himself — not an illusion — appeared behind a fourth guard who covered the tram doors from one side. He had the decency to grab the Bollevolk by a hair covered bicep, spin him around before delivering a mighty uppercut to a chin only slightly less mighty. A few fast cross punches and a roundhouse finished the job.
The second and third guards scrambled to their hooves, lowered their heads and charged. Thor stopped the one on his left with an open hand on its forehead. The other he grasped overhand by one curled horn, then swept that hand up, over, back down in a smooth arc; the Bollevolk rolled in the air to fall heavily on its back for the second time in several seconds. The second guard bellowed as if demanding Thor's full attention so he twisted him around and threw a chokehold on him, barely able to get his thickly muscled arms around the thickly muscled neck. The Bollevolk bucked and tossed to break the hold, but his lungs began to burn, his strength began to wane, his vision began to fade.
Before Thor was finished with the fourth guard, the fifth and sixth guards, side by side across the chamber from the god of thunder, heard derisive laughter from the arched entryway behind them. They spun to see dozens of green-clad, golden-horned intruders suddenly run at them en masse. They shot at the front runners to break the charge, but the charge did not break. They continued shooting to thin the ranks, but the ranks did not thin. Loki after running Loki vanished in a golden haze, some as they ran, some staggering dramatically before falling, some stopping to perform greatly exaggerated death throes. Loki after running Loki appeared behind the illusory mob, joined the stampede, each inviting more fire from the Bollevolk guards, wasting more and more ammunition until their weapons clicked and the shooting stopped.
Loki himself — not an illusion — appeared between them, a dagger in each hand, as one shook his suddenly quiet weapon and the other searched his belt for another clip. The god of mischief struck quickly and repeatedly, stitching over a dozen minor wounds up and down their ribs before they even realized they were beset. The Bollevolk to the left, already reeling, brought his useless firearm to bear, then stumbled and fell. The Bollevolk to the right simply dropped to his knees, then on his face, breath clouding the highly polished gold on blue marble floor.
Just as Loki turned around to see how the rest of the battle progressed, his elder brother landed another haymaker punch in the third guard's stomach for the fifth time. The wind finally knocked out of him to the point of unconsciousness, the last Bollevolk sank to the floor defeated. Thor reached out to catch Mjolnir as it finally returned to his hand, accompanied by faint echoes of a tremendous crash in the distance; a Bollevolk guard smashed through heavy doors at the distant end of the needlessly long hallway.
Loki clapped. Slowly. "Took you long enough."
"Well, I did take down four, to your two," Thor scoffed.
Loki shook his head. "Ah-ah-ahh… You took down three. That one," he cocked a finger down the hall, "doesn't count. Mjolnir did all the work."
"Ugh!" Eyes rolled. Mightily. "Fine, three." He gestured with his hammer (and ally). "Your two fell easily."
Loki turned, strode into the long passage to the Bollevolk maze with purpose. "Because I tipped my daggers with ymirseitr."
Thor jogged a few paces to catch up. "That's cheating!" The brothers, quite unaware, fell in step with each other.
"Fight smarter, not harder."
Thor had to concede the point, if not the method. "Ymirseitr, eh? Potent stuff."
"Three drops is lethal."
"And how much did you use?"
"Two drops," Loki confessed. Thor grinned, pushed Loki's shoulder firmly enough that he stumbled to the side for a step or two. "Wha-at?" he demanded, confused.
"I knew you'd changed."
Sarcasm dripped from the very walls. "Oh, I can't hide anything from you."
They walked a bit before something dawned on Thor. "It's too expensive to waste, isn't it?"
Loki grinned. "Each drop, dearer than six ounces of uru."
Thor was taken aback. "Surtur's HAIRY... eyebrows! Truly?"
Loki grinned wider. "Would I lie?"
Their laughter echoed up and down the hall and back again.