Thank you all for your well wishes. I am much better now. The rest has helped me clear my mind and I am happy to be back. I am glad to have readers like you with me. Enjoy the chapter.
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—
Asgard
Loki stood before his brother in the arena.
In the confines of digital space, they could fight without any consequences. So far, the brothers had only faced each other in spars or fought together against common enemies.
This occasion would be the first time the sons of Odin ever clashed to the end.
"Ready, brother?"
"Always."
Heimdall stepped to the middle of the arena as the referee. He made the perfect Aesir to oversee competitions with his all-seeing eyes.
"Sons of Odin, you both have proved your mettle, and it led you to this moment."
"Only one might emerge victorious, but Asgard will always have two princes, great in their own way."
"Fight to honor your family, ancestors, and Asgard. Most of all, fight to honor yourselves."
Heimdall moved away from the arena.
"Fight."
Thor began to twirl Mjolnir, and Loki brought his arms down in a crossing manner. Two emerald plasma blades sprang out of wrists, just in time to meet his brother's charge.
He weaved between the strikes. The ones that connected met his shield. Thor was more willing to take the hits in order to force him into making a mistake.
He ducked beneath a swing, stabbing both blades forward. His brother spun with the wide strike, pushing both his hands aside. A kick to his chest sent Loki back.
Rather than continuing with physical blows, Thor summoned the thunder. Loki raised his hands. He could outlast Thor when it came to seidr, but had an interesting idea to test.
The lightning struck his palms. He felt a slight tingle. His brother continued to direct lethal amounts of lightning at him.
When he stopped, Loki's eyes were glowing. Supplemented by the seidr he just absorbed, he responded with a massive beam of plasma. Thor spun Mjolnir, splitting the beam into smaller ones that mostly missed him. Once the emerald wave died, his brother stood unscathed.
Mjolnir hit the ground, sending a shockwave. He flew, letting it pass without any harm.
Spreading his arms, he raised both hands. The stone floor outside the arena began to rise, tearing off into boulders. He arrayed them into a circle above Thor's head and brought them down all at once.
Thor took off with Mjolnir, bursting through the clustered boulders.
"Brother, why don't we finish this with one last move?"
Loki's lopsided grin told him the answer.
They landed at the same time. Thor began to gather lightning on Mjolnir, while Loki's eyes glowed a brilliant emerald.
The ground caved as both launched forward. The plasma blast covering his hands met Mjolnir. The shockwave threw both back.
He could have stopped himself, but this spar had gone on long enough. He did not want to show off anything else.
"Winner, Prince Thor," Heimdall announced once the dust settled down. While Thor was at the edge of the arena's boundary, Loki was slightly outside it.
The cheers were deafening. His parents had risen up, applauding with proud smiles. Screams of their names followed the suit, and he had to play along with Thor.
It did not end there.
Their father made a grand spectacle out of it. He praised Thor's skills as a warrior and Loki's brilliant mind at seidr craft. On the podium, he stood next to Thor, who insisted he wouldn't accept the reward for first place unless it was given to Loki as well. After the judges decided that the battle was close enough to grant them the shared spot of first place, Thor had relented.
It warmed his heart.
In a moment of creativity, his father split the medal in half. The second place was Amora's, who had proven her mettle with the mind games, and the third was Theori. c.
As was custom in Asgard after a grand event, a feast followed the championship.
—
It took a month for the craze over the championship to start settling down. Daily life in Asgard proceeded as it always had, but entertainment was moved to the Tenth Realm.
As had education.
The Allfather insisted on the creation of an activity. He and Thor would each create a settlement from scratch. Shelter, food, clean water, and every other amenity the Aesir would need for survival had to be provided.
It grated on both their nerves.
Thor was pacing like an agitated bilge snipe. He stopped, suddenly punching the wall. "He is preparing us for Ragnarok. There could be no other explanation."
"Which means either he is not strong enough to stop it, or Ragnarok has to happen," Loki said. He was sitting on the bed, eyes closed in concentration.
"Why? Why would Ragnarok have to be caused? " What had Asgard done to deserve destruction?
"I believe the answer could lie in Niflheim."
At Thor's sharp look, he decided to explain. "The Collector, Taneleer Tivan. I visited him at Knowhere once. He told me not to pry into Niflheim because it would earn our father's ire."
Thor laughed. It was not his famous jubilant laugh, but one that was as hollow as the Allfather's reasons for the new lessons. "And assuming the reason behind Ragnarok lies there, if we charge ahead, it could trigger it prematurely. Or we could die."
"Correct."
He grabbed his little brother by the arms. "Loki, you are the most brilliant person I know. Tell me, brother, what should we do?"
There was no one else he could ask for advice. Father would lie or wouldn't answer at all, Mother didn't know anything—he would never believe she would lie to either of them—and there wasn't anyone on Asgard he could speak to.
Loki almost avoided his brother's gaze. His blue eyes looked so vulnerable now.
"Prophecies are not divine omens from what I have seen so far. Most of the time, they are self-fulfilling. You try to stop them from becoming true, and the chain of events you create causes the prophecy to happen."
There were plenty of Greek prophecies as examples.
"So we do nothing?" his brother asked.
For Thor, a god who preferred action over words, to not act would be harder than everything else.
"No. We grow strong enough to do what our Father could not and stop Ragnarok. If it is a self-fulfilling prophecy, then yes, living as if it does not exist is our best choice. But if Ragnarok will happen regardless, then what we need to do is to grow beyond it," Loki said.
He saw no other option. If even Odin Allfather gave up, what chance did they have except to grow stronger than him?
"How does the Eternal Fire play into this? If it is actually the source of Surtur's power, then he should not be able to destroy Asgard without it, provided he is even alive," Thor said.
Unless his father had lied, Surtur was dead.
"Correct. In addition, how is he even supposed to arrive in Asgard? Not through the Bifrost, and the tears between the realms are too rare," he said.
Thor was about to punch the wall once more, but he stopped, sharply turning to Loki. "Unless someone resurrects Surtur with the Eternal Flame."
His eyes widened, and he got off the bed. "That is possible, more than that actually."
"Let us walk this through." He created a screen, bringing forth an image of Surtur's crown with an x over it.
"As far as we know, Surtur is dead, and the Eternal Flame lies in the vault," Thor said.
He created a representation of the palace, with the chalice holding the Eternal Flame beneath it.
Thor touched the demon's crown. "To resurrect Surtur, a part of his body would be necessary."
"Of which we do not have any," he said. The crown's location was unknown but most likely in Muspelheim.
Unless the Allfather had hidden it somewhere else.
"Then if someone wanted to resurrect Surtur, that person would have to retrieve a part of his corpse from Muspelheim."
He nodded. "Somehow bring it into Asgard, bypassing Heimdall and all the security measures we have, and resurrect Surtur right beneath the palace."
Heimdall's vision could be fooled, but the destroyer was aware of everything transpiring in the vault. Without Gungnir present, it would destroy any non-Aesir to enter.
"All of Asgard is caught unaware. Now that Father defeated Surtur in Muspelheim, he could definitely do it in Asgard with all our support," Thor said.
They might not have been able to defeat Surtur in the Tenth Realm, but with the help of their father, it would be a breeze.
"Which means it will happen after Father passes away or is otherwise incapacitated."
"The Aesir live for around five thousand years. Father doesn't even have a millennium left," Thor said, suddenly realizing his father was old.
"Father dies, someone resurrects Surtur beneath the palace, and Asgard is destroyed," he summarized.
"The question is, then, who is that person?" Was their father unable to kill him or her and instead imprisoned them in Niflheim?
"Then it is clear, we must be strong enough to walk out of Niflheim with answers." Thor trusted Loki with his life, though how they would get stronger was a mystery to him.
Loki clicked his tongue. He did not want to mention this, but there weren't many options. "There is actually something, but I am not sure if it is of any help."
"At this point, it is better than nothing."
"The Midgardian beliefs concerning us, and Asgard as a whole, are rather interesting. Their seers could not make sense of most of it. As such, the tales turned out rather outlandish, but there are some truths to them."
"Such as?" he asked. Loki had told him how a small fraction of Midgardians worshipping the Aesir had enough seidr to be seers. Terrible ones, especially with the hallucinogenic mushrooms, but seers nonetheless.
"Angrboda is one. The Midgardians have tales of me having three children with her. Jormungandr, the World Serpent; Fenrir, a monstrous wolf; and Hel, a half-dead, half-alive child who is the Goddess of Death."
Three images were created on the screen. A serpent wrapped around Midgard, a giant wolf in chains, and a female with a half-skull face.
"Our father feared them, so he cast Jormungandr into Midgard's sea, bound Fenrir in chains, and placed Hel in Hel to rule it."
"Now, Jormungandr and Fenrir do not exist as far as we know, but a Goddess of Death residing in Hel does sound dangerous enough to me. She would even have a plausible reason to wish for Asgard's destruction."
Jormungandr, even if it wasn't large enough to wrap itself around Midgard, would not escape his size.
"Seeing as you turned Angrboda away, if this Hel truly exists, then she is not, and won't be, your child."
"Obviously. But assuming she does exist, and I hate assumptions I can't prove or disprove, who exactly is she?"
Thor put a hand on his brother's shoulder. "We will learn once we go to Hel."
—
He attempted to peer into Hel. The results were inconclusive. The fog was so dense and still, he could not see through it. Yet, it did not mean there wasn't a dangerous god imprisoned there.
All sources of information that he could access were of no help.
Thor, between their lessons in creating a settlement, of which he did not care enough to learn, had thrown himself into training. He would work on improving his strength, agility, speed, and control over lightning.
Loki was not idle either. His research, which usually included more benign paths of seidr, had turned to a new direction. One filled with increasingly destructive ways of annihilating his enemies.
He had begun to train the talented seidr practitioners of Asgard in managing and expanding the Tenth Realm. It increased his workload for a time. Once the management was in place, he only had to do random inspections to ensure his creation was working smoothly.
He had achieved several breakthroughs in military technology.
Seidr Charges provided an external power source when activated. It increased the user's physical and seidr capabilities based on how strong they were in the first place.
An ordinary Aesir would not see much of an improvement. Thor, on the other hand, tripled his power with a charge.
New weapons were created for Asgard's defenses. The long-range arsenal of the Realm Eternal consisted of cannons and turrets that fired bolts of Odinforce.
Making use of the dark matter rifles of the Dokkalfar, in addition to his own work, had resulted in a brand new type of weaponry.
The atoms that composed the Odinforce bolts were destabilized inside a magnetic shell. It increased the energy output of a single bolt exponentially. In addition, they detonated when a certain portion of the energy was lost.
Each shot had turned into an armor-piercing beam with a nasty surprise at the end.
Another improvement was the Asgardian Skiffs.
Unshielded, lacking in weaponry and armor, no enemy worth his salt would be threatened by the skiffs.
He had changed the design entirely. The aesthetics of gold and wings remained the same. Yet, each new aircraft was a proper battleship.
Reminiscent of a sword, the new Air Superiority Fighters had a main cannon of destabilized Odinforce and two launchers on the sides, each able to fire sixteen black hole charges.
That part had brought great scrutiny on him. His father was more than merely curious as to how his son managed to recreate the lethal weapon of the Dokkalfar.
His excuse was simple but brilliant.
In the storage room in the palace, filled with trophies brought from Svartalfheim by King Bor, lay a crate of black hole grenades. He had simply taken one for study.
His father had personally checked to find that there was indeed a crate, with one grenade missing.
Armored with seidr steel, powered by the Eternal Flame replicas, with anti-gravity engines, each ASF could take out a fleet of Skiffs.
While the pilots were blindfolded.
Strengthening Asgard was an excellent idea, but self-improvement was important as well. His control over seidr, and that of everyone he knew, was akin to pouring a cup of water through a filter that gave it a different color.
It was a mere guidance of seidr, not control of it.
Which had led him to work more on the atomic composition of seidr.
The study of manipulating atoms directly was a subject he had already been working on for the synthesizers. If pure energy could be controlled to create atoms, which would then be brought together in a certain combination, any matter that existed could theoretically be synthesized.
From mere hydrogen to the most complex dishes and everything else.
The work itself was dangerous. The slightest error could split the said atoms and trigger a chain nuclear reaction. The Tenth Realm had proven its worth, allowing him to do the work of decades in months.
When he unveiled the first prototype, using it to synthesize a glass of chilled mead, the concept of economy and personal wealth began to be worthless.
—
Notes: Loki and Thor try to understand Ragnarok with what they know. There are correct parts, and there are wrong parts.
Also, I intend to finish worldbuilding soon and reach the canon timeline.
—
In the next chapter:
"A female friend?" His mother's eyes shone brighter than Asgard's sun.
He knew he would pay dearly for it later, but this was necessary for the next part of his work.
"Yes, she and I agreed on a small trip," he said.
"When are you going to introduce her to us?" For the first time, one of her sons had shown interest in a female, rather than avoiding her advances. She wanted to meet her now.
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