Chapter 22
A guard met them when they stepped out of the Antechamber; even when he scrupulously observed all the formalities, he irradiated a hardly suppressed sense of elation.
And it wasn't unfounded, because the news he delivered were as happy as unexpected.
The barrier now covered the entire city, having disintegrated every enemy in its expansion path. The news spread quickly all over the Palace and people were celebrating, but Thor and Loki gathered his friends and the Einherjar captains for a council or war. There were three of them, as there were three branches of the Einherjar: the Palace Guard, the best warriors, their Captain was Gulbrand the Sharp; the City Guard, tasked with patrolling the streets, led by Bjarni the Fierce; and the Forest Rangers, who patrolled the mountains and whose Captain was Vidar the Silent.
In this council of war Vidar was absent, as he had been patrolling at the time of the invasion and no one had heard of him or his men ever since; only a small number of Rangers were accounted for, since they had been off duty and at home.
While the shield was up again, the defenses would take some time to start working. The city was protected, but they couldn't launch a counter-offensive yet. However, the Vault had been safe all along, thanks to the Destroyer and the fact that its systems would be the last thing to shut down in case of emergency.
"We are surrounded by them in all fronts, but still we managed to gather some important intel, Your Highness, like the encampment thy have erected at the edge of the forest," Captain Bjarni explained as he showed the structure in the holographic map. "We tried sending spies and scouts the very first day, but no one has returned. Aside from the alliance between Jötnar and Svartálfar, we don't know much about our adversary."
The enemy circled the city by land, but over the sea small ships patrolled in the air, preventing anyone from escaping, while a gigantic mothership orbited around the disk of land, constantly blocking their sun, for the Dark Elves loathed its light. Freya had offered to don her feather cape and fly back to her world to seek help, but she had been denied by her cousins.
"I could infiltrate their camp," Loki offered. "I could disguise myself as some small animal."
"That could work," Thor mused as he pulled at his beard pensively. "Though I have my doubts."
"What about sending a messenger?" Fandral asked. "Instead of spies. Do they speak our language?"
At that moment the door opened and a soldier walked in as quietly as he could, confiding a message to Gulbrand, who nodded and dismissed him. Thor interrupted the conversation to ask the captain what was happened.
"Commander Tyr is alive and on his way to the Palace, along with the soldiers and refugees he took with him," the Sharp answered with a smile. "No life has been lost on his part."
Sif heard Volstagg, who stood at her side, let go of a ragged sigh, but the man composed himself almost instantly. His reaction wasn't lost to his friends, though, and Thor gave him permission to go see his family, something Volstagg didn't hesitate to do after excusing himself. Seeing his wife and kids would help him focus on the mission at hand and everyone knew it, for if there was one thing he loved more than food and mead, it was having his family around him.
In the end they agreed to send a diplomatic envoy to open negotiations. Thor's plan was to know their intentions and what they wanted before taking any further step.
They were in the midst of planning when Commander Tyr entered into the War Room.
Commander Tyr was Odin's right hand man and Master-at-Arms at Asgard's court, having served as weapons' instructor for the Princes. A stern instructor, his prowess and strength in battle were only behind the Allfather, never allowing anything less than perfection. He was as tall as Thor but no less intimidating, depite his quiet demeanor; his beard was long, clean and well combed, and he liked to adorn it with silver beads; his armor, though now soiled with sooth and dried blood, was always kept in pristine condition. No one knew how old he was, but it was known that he had served under King Bor at the time of the Svartálfar war.
Upon entering, the captains saluted, and the Princes stepped in to greet him.
"It's good to see you, my Princes," Tyr bowed to them before Thor caught him in a bear hug. At first he stiffened, but then he returned it willingly, patting the Prince's back.
"Where have you been keeping the citizens safe?" Loki asked.
"The catacombs under the Colosseum, my Prince," said Tyr. "They tore down the only entrance they could find, thinking they had buried us alive. Of course they didn't know of the other six. We sealed four, guarded one and the other we used for our spies to go out. Most didn't return, but those who did spoke of the alliance between Svartálfar and Jötnar, as you might know already."
Then Tyr spoke of the encampment the captains had mentioned, saying that only one scout had ventured that far and barely returned with his life, but assured that the Svartalfár seemed to be searching for something.
More soldiers came and went into the War Room while their superiors talked, delivering messages to their captains about the state of the city and the Palace.
According to the soldiers, the Dark Elves had been very keen in entering the Vault, but the Destroyer had kept them at bay most of the time. There were now piles of ashes scattered through the Vault; they were probably successful at stealing the Casket for Laufrey, but at the cost of who knew how many soldiers until one could scurry away with the artifact. Later the Dark Elves posted some guards while they could guess how they could take the Destroyer down without damaging all the treasures it guarded. Now they all lain dead, as the other Jötunn and Svartalfár the shield had caught in its path to the city's borders.
But for now they had to solve the problem of housing for the civilians that were pouring into the Palace. Fortunately enough, the able bodied surpassed in great numbers the wounded, old and infirm, and they helped clearing out the lower levels to make them suitable for temporary living spaces.
The day advanced, and more news about what had happened during the invasion kept pouring in. Despite their brutality, few buildings had been completely demolished and, while soldiers had been killed on sight, most civilians who didn't resist had been taken captive, although they hadn't been able to discover where.
As Prince Regent, and after a very long deliberation, Thor's decision was to offer a truce and parlay. Everyone noticed how torn he was about this predicament, but the consequences of his recklessness were still too recent to ignore, even by someone like him. Thus Loki wrote the message the envoy would read and it was dispatched.
A letter came back a few hours later. It was written in their language, at the back of the parchment they had used, but the letters were crudely formed, as if it was the first time the scribe used it:
"Malekith, Sovereign Supreme of Svartalfheim and its people, demands the returning of the Aether, which the Kingdom of Asgard appropriated unjustly, to their lawful owners. Should the stewards of Asgard fail to comply with our Sovereign Supreme's conditions, a number from the Asgardian subjects kept under ward by our people will be drawn and put to death each sunrise that our demands are not met."
Captain Bjarni had been the one to read it; his voice faltered at the end, when he pointed out loud that they hadn't used ink to write. The soldier who had delivered it had died not too long after crossing the shield back into Asgard. They had captured him and the few companions who were sent along, and only he had been left alive long enough to come back to his people.
Loki saw his brother's hands balling into fists until his knuckles turned white, yet when he spoke his voice was even. He sent for the guards who had been at the upper levels to be interrogated so that they gave an account of movements outside the city, ordered to be shown maps of all the forest and valleys, and ordered the computer to trace the pattern the mothership followed in their sky, trying to cover all the possible flanks.
The news came quite quickly: The guards had seen the civilians being herded into the mountains as soon as the city fell. Thor followed the direction the soldiers pointed out and they all saw the path led to nowhere. Not giving up, Thor tried activating the surveillance systems, which came to life after some tries: They could see a big concentration of life forms exactly in the direction the soldiers had pointed out, in the middle of the forest. They tried assessing the number of moving, not grouped dots when all signals blinked and went out.
"The system went out again," Thor explained, looking at his screen.
"There is an abandoned keep here," Tyr said, pointing out at where the red dots had been. "During the first days of Asgard we built much, but also tore down what we didn't use anymore. Our land is filled with old towers where only wild animals live now. But I remember that old tower. They probably chose it because it's underground chambers are vast and deep."
"Seems like this one still has its use," said Thor. "They are keeping them in the catacombs."
"There is no teleportation platform for the old towers," Hogun revealed.
"Indeed," Tyr continued. "If it dates from the first settlements I'm afraid they are cut from us. We implemented that technology much later."
"It wouldn't be fun it it was easy, right?" Thor muttered.
"We could assault the keep," Sif said, as she pointed out in the map. "Take a small group through the forest, storm the keep and resist there until you chase away the invaders."
"Chase away?" Thor asked.
"We cannot give them what we don't know what it is, can we?" Sif turned to Tyr. "Unless the Commander can enlighten us in this matter."
The Commander held her gaze for a moment, pursing his lips.
"The Aether is a terrible substance," he said slowly. "During the last War of the Elves, Malekith himself tried to use the Convergence of the Nine Realms to unleash its power, since he wanted to return the Universe to it's primal state of darkness. That I had to live to hear that name uttered again! Truly these are dark times."
All the younger Asgardians looked at him with a mixture of confusion and worry; the Commander tore at his long beard and sighed deeply.
"My loyalty and love to Bor's Clan prevents me from speaking ill about any of his decisions, but keeping the younger generations in ignorance about old enemies is always a mistake, especially when said enemies ran away from battle, as these seems to have done."
And he told them about the malice and hatred the Dark Elves harbored for the Asgardians and all the Realms which had been liberated from their rule, about the rising of a powerful sorcerer to the Throne of Svartalfheim, and how that king devised a weapon so terrible it could erase the light and establish a new tyranny of darkness that would last forever. But that weapon could only be used during the Convergence of the Nine Realms, and that moment arrived when king Bor had pushed the Svártalfar back into their home planet. Knowing himself about to be defeated, the Dark Elf king tried harnessing the power of the Aether, and he would have succeeded, hadn't king Bor used the Bifrost to snatch it from Malekith's hands, in a desperate bid to avoid a sudden and crushing turning of the tide.
Full of rage, the Dark Elf King plunged his fleet over the entire planet, killing Elf and Asgardian alike. The Accursed, he was called later by the other Realms for, in his folly, as he tried killing as many enemies as he could, he sacrificed not only his own soldiers, but his own people, and many said that among the ruins of their Capital they recovered the corpses of his wife and son.
But of Malekith nothing could be found, and from the rubble and the destruction little could be known about how many ships had actually crashed into the planet, or how many boarded them. Because no one ever knew or heard about Malekith, or saw a Dark Elf again, it was believed the entire race was extinct, and their planet Svartalfheim was left abandoned, barren and poisoned with radiation, a giant mausoleum to the former glory of a cruel and tyrannical empire.
"King Bor took away the Aether," Tyr concluded. "But no one ever knew where."
There was silence in the room. They couldn't negotiate with something they didn't have.
"The infiltration and liberation plan seems like the most reasonable course of action," Loki said at last. "Provided, of course, that Thor can stall the conversations long enough for the second group to act."
"I could do it," Thor asserted, looking at his brother. "We did this before, remember?"
"That time it wasn't a long lost enemy," Fandral reminded him. "That one was a weapons' dealer inside a tent. This one could put you in very serious difficulties."
"It will be fine," the Prince smiled, as Loki mirrored his gesture. "I grew up with one of the most gifted talkers in the Nine Realms. You learn a couple of things throughout the years."
His friends didn't say more, but their faces had grown worried.
"Is there any functioning tower near the place where the prisoners are kept?" Loki asked.
Hogun zoomed in the map and ordered the garrisons to be displayed.
"There is one near them," he said. "We won't be seen exiting the city, but we will have to be careful in the forest. Who will go where?"
"You, Loki and Fandral are best at infiltration missions," said Thor. "The captains informed me that there are several members of the Forest Rangers here, rested and ready, that can go with you. Volstagg and Sif will accompany me to meet Malekith, just in case. Tyr, you will remain here in charge. Bjarni, send someone to muster the Rangers, no more than five of them, and fill them in with the details: they have a mission tonight. Loki, Hogun and Fandral, meet with them at the teleportation room an hour before sunrise. From there you will know what to do. But first, I need a word in private with my brother."
Hogun and Fandral abandoned the room, as well as the Princes, who went to their private quarters for a while. No one questioned their absence, and thought normal that the two brothers sought counsel on each other. Though their rivalry was well known, when they acted together they were a force to be reckoned with, and all present at the War Room knew the situation to be so dire they never questioned that the Princes relied on secrecy in certain matters.
When Thor came back, he resumed the planning with Sif, his Commander and his captains, and no sooner had he arrived that Volstagg entered the room with a broad smile on his face, the first time in days that he showed his true, jovial character.