Chapter 106 - Delayed Heroics
For Heimdall, the day differed from countless others only in the names attached to each disturbance. The rebellions across the Nine Realms were ending, but ten trillion souls did not become quiet merely because Asgard declared victory. He heard prayers offered in gratitude and curses offered with greater sincerity. He watched warriors return home and counted which companies had left their dead behind. None of it demanded his hand. The great mechanism of the observatory turned around him while his attention crossed distances that would have reduced a mortal mind to gibbering ruin.
One absence caught his eye.
It was not the clean absence that surrounded Lucius Noctis, whose history and future refused his greater sight even when the man stood within arm’s reach. This was a flaw moving against the ordinary world, a thin wrongness where stars vanished for a fraction of a heartbeat before returning. Heimdall narrowed his gaze. The distortion had already crossed the outer approaches to Asgard.
The shape resolved as it moved; its concealment did not fail. A vast vessel slid through the sky with its hull hidden behind a near-perfect imitation of whatever lay beyond it. Its pilots had trusted the immensity of Heimdall’s watch to protect them. No eye could examine everything at once, even one that watched ten trillion lives.
They had been correct for several fatal seconds.
Heimdall broke into a run.
His boots struck the golden path through the Bifrost observatory, each step carrying him past curved machinery and toward the open edge. The ship continued over Asgard while the mechanism behind him began to answer his will. There was no time to bring the realm’s defences to bear before it reached the city. He vaulted the rail, drew both daggers, and fell through empty air as the concealed hull passed beneath him.
For an instant, he appeared to be diving into the sky itself. Then his blades struck resistance. Metal screamed beneath their points, the imitation stars rippled around his arms, and Heimdall drove both weapons deeper as his weight dragged him along the moving hull. The damaged concealment shuddered. Black metal emerged around him in spreading fractures, exposing the ship to every tower and sentry that had failed to see it arrive.
The alarm reached Asgard after the enemy did. Hatches opened along the vast black vessel, and smaller craft poured out before the first horns completed their warning. Dark Elf pilots descended between towers, their weapons carving burning lines across defensive positions and scattering warriors who had assembled for a ceremony rather than battle. Asgardian skiffs rose to meet them, but the attackers already held the height and the first strike.
One raider clipped a tower and spun into a lower bridge. Another swept along a crowded terrace until an Asgardian skiff rammed it away from the fleeing civilians. The collision severed the bridge and forced the palace guard to divide between rescuing those trapped on it and firing at the next wave. By the time the city’s formations began to take shape, the Dark Elves had spread through them like sparks through dry cloth.
--
Far below the open sky, Algrim felt the first impact through the floor of his cell.
He opened his eyes. A second tremor followed, then the prison lights wavered. Malekith had waited until Asgard’s vigilance became routine, and the patience of the Dark Elves had purchased the only advantage that mattered. Surprise was now being spent above him by the breath.
Algrim drove his fingers into his abdomen.
The pain was necessary. His hand closed around the red device hidden within him, and he tore it free in a wash of dark blood. The Asgardian guards beyond the energy barrier recoiled. One reached for the control at his wrist while the other lifted his weapon, but both had already wasted their final safe moment.
Algrim crushed the device.
Sacred dark energy flooded and claimed the rest of him. His back bowed as his bones thickened, forcing his frame wider and higher. Blackened ridges pushed through his skin. His hands enlarged into brutal claws, and hard growths spread across his shoulders and face until the Dark Elf who had entered Asgard disappeared beneath a living suit of jagged armour. The pain deepened as strength filled every altered limb. The power promised no long life, only enough of one to break the enemy before it consumed what remained of him.
He accepted the bargain with a roar.
The transformed Algrim struck the cell barrier. Energy flared around his fist, held for less than a heartbeat, and burst outward. Both guards hit the opposite wall. He stepped through the dying field as Kurse, seized the nearer warrior by his breastplate, and threw him into the control post hard enough to silence both.
Kurse ripped the panel from the wall. The other cells opened in a chain of failing light, releasing prisoners who understood freedom before they understood its cause. Some attacked the fallen guards while the rest ran for passages they had memorised through years of confinement. Their motives did not matter. The disorder would pull Asgardian soldiers away from the controls that maintained the shield above the city.
Kurse entered the corridor and followed the path he had learned while pretending to be helpless.
-
While Asgard discovered that its ancient enemies had excellent timing, Lucius had his hands on the hips of an Asgardian scholar and more immediate concerns.
She had dragged him into her rooms with the confidence of a woman who had spent an evening watching him drink her wine and flirt with his eyes. Now she braced herself against the edge of a broad table while Lucius drove into her from behind. His handprints reddened both curves of her backside. Her breasts moved with every thrust, and the view had already justified accepting Thor’s hospitality.
An explosion rattled the wine cups. The scholar looked toward the balcony, breath catching for a reason unrelated to him.
Lucius caught her chin and turned her back toward him. "Whatever that was, it can wait half a minute. I have faith in Asgardian architecture."
Her laugh broke into a moan when he increased his pace. A second blast rolled through the district, closer than the first, and the table scraped several inches across the floor. Lucius kept one hand on her hip and used his telekinesis to hold the furniture still. There were practical advantages to being considerate.
He finished with one last hard thrust and held her against him while pleasure tightened through them both. When he withdrew, his seed began to spill down the inside of her thighs. He admired the result, slapped one flushed cheek, and watched it wobble with the solemn appreciation of a scholar reviewing successful fieldwork.
"Now I should probably save the realm."
She snatched up a fallen cushion and threw it at his head. Lucius caught it without looking, set it back on the couch, and dressed as the building shook again.
-
He had already mapped Algrim as a Dark Elf. The transformation promised a second set of information, and whatever was happening outside had almost certainly provided the necessary trigger. Free improvements were rare, and one delivered into a nearby prison deserved punctuality.
By the time Lucius reached the palace approaches, the city’s shield was rising. Light curved over Asgard, struggling toward the shape of a half globe while guards ran in the opposite direction. He ignored them. Telepathy gave him fear, confusion, and fragments of shouted instruction from every mind he passed. He extended his reach and found the Dark elf he was searching for, but beneath the noise lay an absence where Algrim’s thoughts should have been.
Lucius followed the broken doors.
The dungeon corridor had become a lesson in poor emergency planning. Released prisoners fought among themselves and with the guards, because apparently, captivity did not teach cooperation. Lucius stepped around a fallen warrior, turned invisible, and teleported past the worst of the crush. He found Kurse advancing through a ruined junction toward the shield controls.
The creature was larger than Algrim had been, encased in black ridges that had grown from altered tissue rather than been fitted as armour. Each step carried enough force to chip the floor. A guard struck him across the back with a blade. Kurse barely turned before driving one arm into the warrior and sending him through a stone partition.
Lucius caught him in a telekinetic grip.
Kurse stopped with one foot above the floor. The restraints tightened around every joint, holding him upright without crushing the structures Lucius wanted to study. Kurse fought with strength that would have torn an Asgardian formation apart, and Lucius felt the pressure travel through his telekinesis as a useful measurement rather than danger.
"Yes, that is much better. Malekith really does provide a premium service."
Invisible behind the transformed Dark Elf, Lucius placed one hand against the ridged spine. His senses moved through layers of hardened tissue, enlarged muscle, reinforced bone, and channels carrying the dark energy that sustained the change. He compared each detail against the map he had taken from Algrim’s original body. The device had not merely strengthened what was present. It had rewritten proportions, redirected reserves, and accepted rapid destruction as the price of immediate violence.
He took his time. The invasion could survive another minute without his generous participation.
When the physical map was complete, Lucius reached for the mind he had read before. He expected pain, rage, or the narrowed purpose of a zealot. He found no Algrim waiting behind them. Memory had collapsed into fragments stripped of personal weight. Desire, fear, and self-preservation had been burned away. Only absolute loyalty to Malekith remained where a person had been.
Lucius examined the emptiness twice. The result did not change. Either Malekith had built that obedience into the transformation device, or the sacred dark energy answered to him through some older connection. Both possibilities deserved a controlled study, preferably with subjects Lucius did not mind breaking.
He released Kurse.
The creature landed, staggered once, and continued toward the shield controls without looking back. Lucius could have stopped him, but the attacker still had information to surrender. Heroism worked best when delayed until it became profitable.
One teleport placed Lucius at the Bifrost observatory. Heimdall was no longer inside it. Through the open structure, Lucius saw the immense Dark Elf ship revealed against the sky and the smaller craft spilling from it. He fixed the exposed hull in his mind. His second jump carried him through black metal and into the invading vessel.
Dark Elf engineering immediately improved his mood.
Asgard was built as though every hinge deserved a hymn. The Chitauri built as though flesh, circuitry, and administrative incompetence had been forced into the same committee. The Dark Elves had managed function without ugliness. Their corridors directed movement cleanly, structural members carried more than one load, and control paths remained accessible without being exposed. Black surfaces swallowed stray light while restrained red lines marked active systems. The vessel used dark energy as fuel, routed through arrangements Lucius read and stored as he moved.
He copied the design language, the power architecture, and the logic behind the concealment system. Even the maintenance access pleased him. Then a helmeted Dark Elf rounded the corner, and the civilisation lost several points at once.
Lucius tilted his head as the soldier raised a weapon. "No. That helmet is a crime, and I am currently trying to be heroic."
He crushed the weapon into the soldier’s chest and pinned the body to the wall. The armour beneath the helmet was salvageable as inspiration. For his own forces, he would use the Wild Hunt as the template, another Elven tradition with enough menace to compensate for the unfortunate relatives currently invading Asgard.
The thought exposed a separate design flaw. At six feet ten inches, he was large enough to intimidate ordinary people, but his future soldiers would include bodies assembled from far more impressive stock. A commander should not need everyone to kneel before becoming the tallest figure in a room.
Lucius altered himself while walking. Bone lengthened, muscle redistributed, and clothing adjusted with the change until nearly five inches had been added to his height. Seven feet three inches was a respectable beginning. He could add another two inches each month until his soldiers had to look up properly. Moderation remained important, especially when practiced in tiny monthly portions.
He completed his survey, stored the last relevant system pattern, and teleported out of the vessel.
High above Asgard, Lucius reappeared in the open air. The battle spread beneath him. Dark Elf craft cut between towers, Asgardian skiffs pursued them, and the defensive shield that should have sealed the city in a half globe flickered before collapsing down its own curve. Kurse had reached the controls. Malekith was either inside the palace or close enough that the distinction would soon lease it’s meaning.
Lucius extended both arms.
Telekinesis caught more than two dozen smaller vessels at once. Some stopped so abruptly that their pilots struck their restraints. Others twisted away from the buildings they had meant to strafe. Lucius closed his hands, and black hulls folded around their crews. He drove the wreckage into the remaining attackers, clearing a path toward the palace in a chain of controlled collisions.
The surviving Dark Elves turned their weapons on him. Red fire crossed the sky. Lucius rolled aside, caught one bolt inside a force field, and threw the trapped energy back to its source. He accelerated toward the palace while telekinesis tore pilots from open craft and crushed soldiers who tried to establish positions along the bridges. A raider passed beneath him. Lightning split its hull from end to end and dropped both halves into an empty courtyard.
He kept moving, killing, and counting useful pieces that had not been damaged beyond study. Saving Asgard was pleasant enough when the enemy arrived with samples.
Perhaps Odin would reward the assistance with a feast, an artefact, or access to something the old bastard thought securely locked away. More likely, the worst father in the Nine Realms would grant him a grave chuckle and call it honour.
Lucius destroyed another Dark Elf craft and headed for the palace anyway.