Chapter 15.
It had been fortunate that Thor had been such a diligent student under Sif's tutelage, but Loki would have preferred traveling alone. At least Stark's suit protected the wearer from the wind cutting the skin like a knife.
But Loki's concern about his brother's landing disappeared as soon as they saw a crashed helicopter, and Stark carrying an unconscious pilot to take him away from the flames. Fury supported a battered Agent Hill, who bled from a wound on her leg, and the two limped away from the burning vehicle.
"It's gonna explode!" Fury yelled as Thor and Loki landed near them. "Get away."
But Thor had already taken Agent Hill in his arms and ran away as fast as they could. Loki conjured a magic shield instants before the helicopter exploded to cover the humans. The agents were still recovering while Stark called for medical attention, after making sure the pilot was still alive; then he confronted Fury.
"Very well, Director," he said. "You had the Tesseract all along and were experimenting with it. What happened?"
"That's none of your business," Fury answered, but something in his voice struck an odd note on Loki. "SHIELD will take care of it."
"And they have done a wonderful job so far," said Stark. "Why aren't you a good host and return that thing to their owners?"
Fury pursed his lips and said nothing.
"They took it from you, isn't it?" Loki asked.
Still SHIELD's Director said nothing.
"So much for protecting our world," Stark remarked. "As soon as no one was watching, you start tinkering with the supernatural. The Tesseract would have been your power source for that shield, right?"
"We had no other choice."
"You knew the risks," Loki said. "And yet you put your entire planet in danger. You know the Tesseract can open a portal to who knows where. Anything could have slipped through."
Fury's gaze was as cold and detached as Odin's, that much Loki realized at the moment, and understood why he hated this man he barely knew.
"The assailants ran away. North East," Fury confessed. "They have the Tesseract and several of my best men with them."
Loki didn't have to see Stark's face to know he was scowling under his metal mask. As soon as Fury gave them the direction, Iron Man took off, leaving them alone.
"What got through?" Loki kept asking. He had a gut feeling that he didn't like.
An anchor for something ancient and terrible.
"Brother," Thor, still supporting Hill, urged him. "We need to make haste and follow Stark."
"It's no use plunging into danger without first knowing what we will find," said Loki, still holding Fury's gaze. "Well?"
"Nothing we can't handle for ourselves, but feel free to get your asses blown up."
Loki took a step towards Fury. There was a fumbling noise and a grunt: Agent Hill had drawn her gun, forcing Thor to twist her hand so she would drop it.
"Your guns won't harm us," Loki said, slowly advancing towards the Director. "No more than a wooden sword would. I'm not used to repeat myself. You awoke the Tesseract and something slipped through. What was it?"
"What are you going to do?" Fury sneered. "Kill us?"
Hill tried wrestling her way out of Thor's grasp, but it was as good as if she had tried breaking an iron chain with her bare hands.
"No," Loki said, his lips parting in a wide grin. "Oh, no. You won't die, and if whatever has come through that portal is what I think it is, I will see that you live long enough to witness your precious Earth burning. I swear the screams of the innocent will echo in your ears so strongly, I'll have you begging for me to end your wretched existence."
"Brother, what are you talking about?"
"Remember the stories about the horrors that live in the outskirts of the Universe? About the creatures whose mere existence defies every natural law?" Loki asked Thor still without tearing his eyes from Fury, who seemed unfazed. "The Tesseract has enough power to reach those places."
Thor cursed under his breath.
"The guys who slipped through didn't look like cosmic horrors to me, though it was hard to tell with the robes and the masks," Fury commented. "No one died of madness when looking at them, that or I might have been reading too much Lovecraft. The leader turned one of my most intelligent men into his flying monkey, though."
"Flying monkey?" asked Thor. "Is that some sort of personal slave?"
"Something like that," Loki explained. Most of his tension had gone away with Fury's words. Astray scouts from possible invaders was an acceptable option. "How many people did the intruders take?"
"Six agents and Dr. Selvig," Fury said. "One of those agents is the best sharpshooter on Earth."
"Stark is in danger, then!" Thor exclaimed, leaving Hill carefully on the ground; and without another word he took Loki again and launched Mjolnir in the direction Stark had flown away, leaving the other humans behind.
It didn't take long to find the fugitives. The flashes of light from Iron Man's weapons and the invaders' lasers marked the way for them. They landed at some distance, flanking the fugitives from their right.
The first thing they saw was that they were using an overturned pick-up as a parapet. Luckily for the brothers, said vehicle's lights were pointing to the other side, so they still had the cover of darkness. Another vehicle, a sedan, had been parked nearby and two humans used it as protection while they fired at Stark. Three more agents had dispersed from the overturned truck and tried taking aim at Iron Man, but he was too quick for them and his armor too hard for their bullets. There were five invaders, and they used lasers, thought their leader wielded a scepter tipped with a blue stone. Huddled by said leader, Loki saw a human figure hugging a metal briefcase.
They snuck behind a rock and briefly traced a plan of attack. It wasn't the first time they saw this situation and the only added difficulty was not killing the humans.
But as soon as they were about to launch their attack, Loki heard Thor grunting. When he looked at his brother, he saw that he was rubbing his forehead where a red spot had appeared, and a strange looking arrow fell to the ground.
The sixth agent.
Loki had to conjure another magic shield as the sharpshooter took aim at them. Thor skin was hardy, but if the shooter hit him in an eye they would be in trouble. Soon he would alert the rest of agents and the surprise factor would disappear.
Before that happened, Loki hastily whispered to Thor a code word for one of their tactics, and his brother waited behind him.
Then Loki dropped the shield while the sharpshooter drew his bow again and conjured several copies of himself and his brother that started running around and towards him.
Thankfully the use of magic wasn't that common in that world, but that agent lived to his fame, for his reaction span was far shorter than Loki expected. Nevertheless, Thor and several of his copies jumped in the air while Loki ran among the copies to catch him unprotected. The man shot the real Thor point blank, but the Asgardian covered his face with his vambraces before landing with a loud thud at the human's side. Loki raised his hand and casted a simple telekinetic trick to stop the man's hand from reaching the knife at his belt, but he had to drop the other spell. He noticed how the man's eyes glowed with an unnatural blue light, and his expression was vacant.
"Softly," Loki said to his brother and he slowly approached.
Thor slapped the agent, who fell unconscious on the desert rocky soil.
"Think he will survive?" Thor asked.
"I guess. Humans are very delicate. He was brainwashed, like the rest of them, I suppose."
"Stark seems to be handling it," Thor commented as he looked at the battlefield.
Tony had felled most of the aliens, which lain in burnt heaps around the vehicle, but their leader had taken the agents around them and intended to use them as living shields as he deflected Stark's small missiles with his scepter's blasts.
"What if you used the same trick as with the Jotun?" Thor asked. "I'll help Stark distract the enemy. The scepter has a cooling down period. Short, but we might be able to use it."
Loki nodded and conjured a dense mist which rolled from under his feet until it flooded the entire battlefield. The fog blinded the humans, though the alien leader seemed immune to it, for he could still aim at Stark and Thor; the latter ran away from Loki and yelled at the enemy to attract the alien's attention.
The fog he created wasn't an illusion, but actual mist taken out from what little humidity existed in the air. It had taken him far more energy than he expected, but at least he wouldn't need to hold his concentration to keep the spell up. That allowed him to cast another incantation should he needed, though his energy levels were rapidly depleting: He wasn't yet at his full power.
He slowly crept his way towards the humans. They all exhibited the same traits as the sharpshooter: blue unnatural eyes and vacant faces. One of them was some steps away from the rest, and Loki touched her arm. The sleep spell didn't work, and he had to backhand her to render the agent unconscious, lest she gave his position away. He carefully lay her on the rocky ground to avoid the noise of her body falling and, putting a hand over her brow, he sensed vestiges of a powerful magic that he doubted he could have overridden even with all his powers recovered.
The invader must have worn some special device to see in the mist, because the moment Loki reached for the fourth agent, he suddenly turned around and fired at them.
The blast of energy was so sudden Loki had no time to cast a barrier. It bruised the agent in one arm, and hit Loki on his right shoulder. Both fell to the ground, screaming and holding their injuries and, as if woken up by their companion's voice, the other two agents suddenly started calling for the wounded agent, as if the enchantment had been broken.
The alien swung the scepter, hitting the two agents and knocking them out; then he aimed for a second blast towards Loki, and a strong, howling wind rose from the enemy's left, dispersing the mist. The invader only had time to look where that howl came from, before seeing Mjolnir coming towards him, with Thor wielding it.
The hammer sunk on the alien's chest, launching him against the overturned car and embedding his body in the car's structure.
The pain burnt Loki's right side. Waves of nausea hit him as his sight became blurred. He clenched his teeth and tried stilling his breathing. Trying to sit upright, he saw the alien, finally dead, and an enraged Erik throwing himself at Thor, who had arrived to help Loki. The prince of Asgard hit him in the same manner as the agents, and the scientist fell to his feet.
Loki cursed aloud as Thor helped him to his feet.
"You didn't hurt him too much, right?" he grunted. "He's like a father to Jane."
Thor stammered something, but he was soon interrupted by Stark, who had grabbed the metal suitcase and urged them to fly away.
"Wait," Loki said, looking around them. He could finally see the aliens and, while some matched the description Thor had given them, others were eerily familiar.
He staggered towards the dead leader, and it was then when Thor seemed to actually notice the difference: While Mjolnir had caved in the armor and the creature's chest, it was clear that the front piece had been of an ivory color, like the shoulder pads, the vambraces and the cuisses, while the rest was of a deep black color. White hair, stained with blood and shoot, gathered in thick braids, cascading past the shoulders; it was the only visible feature from the head, for the face was covered by a white mask, carved in an expressionless visage, with perfectly round eyes of an unnatural size, no doubt furbished with special lens to see in difficult atmospheres.
"Who are these people?" Thor asked.
"No time for that, let's go!" Tony urged.
"We have to know!"
But the millionaire ordered JARVIS to scan all the corpses and prepare the data for a forensic analysis. Suddenly several rays of blue light emerged from his suit, scanning the bodies in a few seconds.
"Good enough?" he asked impatiently. "We have to treat that wound, and I wouldn't want to be here when Fury arrives."
Loki saw the scepter at the alien's feet and reached to grab it, but a jolt of pain shook him so violently Thor had to grab him by the shoulders.
They took off and, through the howling wind and his ringing ears, Loki heard helicopters approaching.