Asgard's Royal Palace - Queen Frigga's room.
The kursed warrior handled her with humiliating ease.
Iron-dark fingers locked at the base of Frigga's neck, lifting without effort. The heat radiating off his transformed body pressed against her skin; beneath the plates of fused armor, crimson veins pulsed like slow lava. She had struck him, cutting feints, a thrust meant for the seam at the ribs, a flick of glamour to mislead his guard, but nothing worked. Her blade might as well have been made of foam. He was too strong, and his defense was even stronger.
She had already done the only thing that mattered. A shimmer had passed through the chamber moments earlier, a pearly distortion like breath on glass. Jane Foster vanished within it, folded away into illusion, hidden where only Frigga knew to look. The spell took only a thought, but even a queen's mind is not two things at once; the sliver of distraction made the capture inevitable.
Malekith crossed the threshold as if into a room he'd once known by heart. The shape of the room reflected in his pale eyes, tall windows, the drape of silks, a table with cups of untouched tea, yet his attention never left the woman he sought. He could feel the pull of the Aether in his bones, an old call returned at last, humming faintly through the walls.
He approached the figure by the window. A mortal woman, breath quick, hand at her side. His lip curled in satisfaction. He reached and his hand closed on air.
The woman broke into a quiver of pale light and dissolved.
The illusion peeled back with a whisper, and Malekith turned, face tightening. He met Frigga's gaze, bright and clear, steady as a drawn bowstring, and his voice came out low and cold.
"Where did you hide her?"
A smile touched the corners of Frigga's mouth, nothing of warmth in it. A queen's poise, edged in iron. "I will say nothing. You will never find her."
"Then you choose death," Malekith said, and the words fell like frost.
He flicked a glance at the kursed warrior. No gesture was needed beyond that; the order was clear in his eyes.
The kursed warrior nodded minutely, drew a sword from his back, and set the point toward Frigga's side.
Steel hovered and the queen's breath stilled.
And then the air… wavered.
A ripple rolled through the space between them, a perfect ring spreading out from nothing, like a stone dropped in still water. Curtains stirred without wind. The kursed warrior paused, blade angling lower as his head tilted toward the distortion.
As it opened, one man and two women stepped out of the ripple as if they'd merely crossed a doorway. They had clearly not been there before; but now they were. The world accepted the trespass and sealed around them.
Malekith stared. He had seen all manners of transit, the Bifröst, wormholes, the silent throat of ancient gates, but this was different. The ripple had been soft, almost polite. It left the faintest taste of ozone and something unfamiliar on the tongue.
The kursed warrior shifted, dragging Frigga back two steps, the sword hovering again. Keeping her hostage in this unexpected situation seemed wiser than just killing her.
"Who are you?" Malekith's voice sharpened to a point.
Frigga, held fast, studied the arrivals with new intent. She didn't know the faces, but her gaze snagged on the weapon in the blonde woman's grip, short, heavy, etched with runes that sang to the bones of the palace.
Mjölnir.
Thor had told her the tale of its… misplacement. The Midgardians who had shamed him and yet, strangely, earned his respect. If these were those same mortals, then they were not enemies.
"Be careful," Frigga said, voice calm as ever despite the strong hand at her throat. "They are dark elves."
The three newcomers; Luke, Wanda, and Sharon, were still blinking off the slight vertigo of crossing such an enormous distance. This was further than Luke had ever jumped during his experiments. The floor felt half a degree cooler than the air; the light here bent richer, gold with a pale-blue undertone.
But Malekith wouldn't wait for them to regain their bearings. This was Asgard, and any delay could mean the doom of his plans.
He drew the long sword at his back, the blade whispering free. His hostage would buy him seconds. Seconds that were enough to kill the new arrivals.
[Ding, the dark elf leader Malekith is thinking about killing the host. The sword in his hand has mutated into a candy sword!]
[Ding, the kursed warrior has hostile intentions against the host. The sword in his hand has undergone a negative mutation and has become a plastic toy sword!]
"Do it," Malekith snapped and swung his sword.
At the same instant, the kursed warrior drove his blade into Frigga's waist.
Luke recovered first. He folded his arms, took a single, almost lazy step back, and let the corner of his mouth tilt up. He had no intention of getting candy all over his clean clothes.
Wanda's eyes lit with crimson light; Sharon's body crackled with a whisper of lightning as her stance set, Mjölnir braced for a fight.
Malekith's swing should have cut a person in two. Instead, midway through the arc, the balance in his hands vanished. The blade grew inexplicably light. The metal went clear, the edge soft; a scent, bright, citrus-sugared, bloomed up like memory.
"What?" The rest of his thought ended in splinters. The sword fractured under the force of his own strike, breaking into glossy shards that skittered across the floor and came to rest by Wanda's boots.
She blinked slowly, clearly surprised.
Across the room, the kursed warrior felt resistance where none should have been. The point met Frigga's side and bent. A faint tickle, as if prodded with a springy reed, brushed her ribs.
For a heartbeat, no one moved.
The kursed warrior looked down. The weapon in his fist had turned a cheerful, impossible green color. He flexed; the blade bowed and did not break.
Frigga stared at the curve of the toy sword pressing harmlessly against her gown, surprise rippling across her features before she quelled it. Sharon froze with Mjölnir half-cocked, still prepared for a throw. Even Malekith's composure flickered, his eyes cutting to Luke, to the broken candy gleaming on the floor.
The room had tipped into the absurd.
Frigga saw most clearly. She had felt the sword bend. She had watched the other shatter. The change was clearly not just an illusion; the weave of reality itself had shifted, material rewritten without sigil or chant or cost. That was magic, yes, but not hers, and not in any school she knew.
Her gaze slid back to the newcomers. The red-haired girl glowed with a power that made the hair at the back of Frigga's neck rise. The blonde held Thor's lost hammer with a veteran's readiness. Both were extraordinary.
But the young man, the one who had stepped back, arms folded, eyes bright with quiet amusement, he alone did nothing, and somehow that made all the difference. The strangeness bent toward him.
Frigga's mind moved quickly. To alter matter so cleanly… only one thing in the Nine Realms came near. The Reality Stone, the Aether itself.
But the Aether was currently inside Jane's body.
Her brows furrowed in confusion.
[Ding, congratulations to the host for meeting the core supporting character, Queen Frigga, 1 plot point obtained.]
Luke's smile deepened by a breath. "Wanda," he said, mild as conversation, "save that woman."
He hadn't come to duel. He had come for two reasons: to gather points, and to keep a queen alive.
Wanda didn't hesitate. Scarlet power slicked over her arms and spilled outward, threads coiling, tightening. It caught the kursed warrior like invisible chains and lifted. His feet tore from the floor; his arms jerked wide against his will, fingers loosening.
Frigga dropped from his grip, only a handspan, light as a leaf, and landed smoothly, stepping aside at once. The kursed warrior strained, muscles cording, the molten channels in his skin flaring. But against the grip of Wanda's power, it meant nothing. He rose another foot, then another, suspended mid-air, the green toy sword swinging uselessly from his hand.
Malekith took two careful steps back, until his shoulder was near the window. His calculation had changed. Without his strongest piece, this board was lost.
Everyone could see his thoughts. But no one rushed to stop it. Frigga had no blade to spare; Luke had no interest; while Sharon and Wanda didn't move without his word.
Lightning cracked in the corridor, familiar and welcome, and a heartbeat later, Thor filled the doorway, breath storm-quick, eyes burning. He took everything in the room at once: his mother, the dark elf, the monster held aloft in red light.
"Malekith," he snarled, and hurled Stormbreaker.
The axe tore the air between them, humming with a promise of hurt. But Malekith was already moving. He twisted, dropped, and vanished out the window's edge, landing with a thief's grace upon a waiting craft that slid into view as if conjured. The ship sliced away, dwindling to a dark needle against the city's distant glow.
Thor stepped to the sill, shoulders bunched to leap, then reined himself in as his gaze swept the room again. He knew every face here, even where they didn't belong.
"You, how did you come to Asgard?" he asked, surprise softening into something like relief when his eyes landed on Frigga, whole and unhurt.
Odin arrived a moment later, the weight of him pressing the room's atmosphere into silence. A thousand years in his face, and just then, every one of them carved deeper by what might have been. His eyes flicked to his queen first, and when he saw her safe, the iron of his expression loosened.
Then he saw the kursed warrior.
Recognition darkened his gaze. Those abominations were legend, their strength double an Asgardian's, their endurance beyond obscene. In his memory, they did not fall. They only died when they burned themselves out.
Yet here one hung, helpless as a trussed boar, midair and groaning, held by scarlet force from the hand of a mortal girl.
Who was she?
Wanda didn't look at him. Her attention was a blade's point, steady on the monster in her grasp. Sharon lowered Mjölnir by inches, eyes still fixed on the window's empty edge. Frigga stepped closer to Luke, the barest background move of trust.
In Luke's mind, the system chimed again.
[Ding, congratulations to the host for meeting a core protagonist for the first time, Odin, 3 plot points obtained.]
[Ding, congratulations to the host for his in-depth participation in the core plot of the Marvel world, Frigga's death, changing the plot drastically, 2 plot points for participation and a bonus of 3 plot points for the change.]
[Note: Depending on the degree to which the plot has been changed, different amounts of plot points will be awarded.]
…
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