Chapter Text
It was supposed to be a simple mission.
Mobius had been confident about it. “Just a routine search and retrieval,” he’d said, handing her a file filled with neatly typed information and black-and-white photos taken by a reconnaissance drone - because they can guard all of reality from destruction, but cameras that take pictures of higher quality than could be found in the 1950s are out of the question, apparently. “Couldn’t be more clear cut. You’ll be home before dinner.”
Sylvie might just have to kill him, provided she doesn’t end up dead first. And her imminent demise is looking more and more likely by the second.
The item they were supposed to find is an obelisk, a slender pillar of what the report describes as unidentified opalescent stone. At the approximate measurements of twelve feet tall, it’s one of the biggest artifacts they’ve ever been sent to retrieve. It’s supposed to stand at the very center of a deep-forest temple on the planet of Aesthar, on a small island in the middle of a lake that contains a liquid that definitely doesn’t look like water.
Aesthar is a tiny planet lost somewhere in the far reaches of a galaxy millions of light years away from the Nine Realms, orbited by several moons. Its sun, a red giant, provides it with far less warmth than Earth or Asgard, and in this strange cold landscape, plants unlike anything Sylvie has ever seen have developed. Trees with bark and leaves blacker than tar, twisting their branches towards the starless sky. Giant pulsating mushrooms that produce faint fluorescent light. Ashy ferns and thick, ice-cold moss that’s hard as a diamond to the touch. Vines that she could swear stretch out towards her when she’s not looking, like they’re about to wrap around her limbs and trap her here forever.
But creepy foliage, as it turns out, is far lower on her current list of priorities than the angry mob of a local tribe that they definitely weren’t expecting, and which has been raining arrows on them for the last few minutes.
“He said it was supposed to be abandoned!” she yells out into the communication device on her ear. It’s too dark, and she’s crouching behind a large jagged rock to protect herself from the attack. Loki is somewhere on her right, in a similar position, but she can’t see more than a faint outline of him, his head bowed low as he attempts to curl his ridiculous height into something less easily aimed at.
“I know.” His voice is loud and clear through the comm, a little breathy from the frantic running they were forced to engage in after nearly walking into an ambush. It hadn’t been a particularly sophisticated trap, but in this unfamiliar, dark land they had almost missed it. If it hadn’t been for his hand on her elbow, stopping her at the last second, they would be dead already. “Obviously, he was wrong.”
Sylvie scoffs, wincing as an arrow hits the ground a little too close for her liking, embedding itself in the black soil with a loud thud. “You think?”
There must be at least fifty people between them and where the temple is supposed to be, or at least that’s her best guess. Aesthar’s inhabitants, from the few glimpses she’s gotten so far, are short-statured, maybe half her height, and long hooded robes obscure their faces and silhouettes. Their language doesn’t seem to be recognized by the TVA’s universal translator, but it’s throaty and guttural and strong on the consonants. The way it moves through the air in their shouts is less like floating and more like the heavy flight of some primordial beast, assaulting her ears with a deep, nauseating sense of wrong.
Something is wrong about this planet.
She doesn’t share this particular observation with Loki, but she’s sure he can sense it too. Since the moment they landed, walking through a time door that closed behind them and plunged them into this impossible darkness, it’s like there’s been some kind of nearly imperceptible radiation in the air, slight but sickening. Even in her skintight protective suit and helmet with an oxygen mask, designed to withstand the most hostile atmospheres, she can’t escape it.
They need to get out of here, and they need to do it fast, and not just because they’re about to be skewered by the local population.
Sylvie evaluates their options, few as they may be. Fighting their way out isn’t a viable strategy, and neither is enchantment. Even with their combined powers, fifty people is too many to control at once, and the strangeness of this world makes her feel off-balance and her magic wonky. They could open a time door back to the TVA, but the idea of going back to square one and having to return to this place fills her with absolute dread, even if she’d never admit it out loud.
The arrows stop raining for a brief moment, save for an odd one here and there as the archers have to retrieve more ammunition from where it’s scattered on the ground, and Sylvie takes the opportunity to push herself away from the rock behind her and quickly roll towards Loki’s hiding spot.
She miscalculates the distance in the dark, crashing into him inelegantly, and Loki scrambles to the side to make room for her as they flatten themselves against the rock that’s currently the only thing keeping them alive. The native population must see much better than they do, which is making things all the more tricky. Fighting an opponent who’s used to the environment on their home turf would be the definition of stupidity.
“We don’t have a good way out,” Loki says, voicing the exact thoughts running through her head. It’s a little unnerving how often that happens lately; how he seems to know exactly what she’s thinking without her having to communicate it.
It’s a product of their time working together, of course. It must be.
She squeezes the hilt of her sword, if only just for comfort; it’s not going to be much use in their current predicament, but its presence helps her focus all the same. The moons in the sky are dark shapes, some smaller, some large and looming, barely visible with not much light to reflect off their surfaces. The voices of the tribe fill the air once more, somehow deafeningly loud and yet strangely whispery, overlapping in a chorus of guttural sounds.
Sylvie closes her eyes, forcing her breathing to remain even, no matter how much the terror in her chest grows, every cell in her body screaming for her to get out as fast as possible. She must reek of fear, and she wonders if they can smell it.
Focus.
No fighting. No enchantment. No fleeing the scene, even though it’s what the most primal parts of her brain desperately want to do.
Trickery it is.
“Loki.” She glances at him, and finds his eyes already on her, wide and alert. She takes a deep breath, trying to keep her voice steady. “Duplication casting.”
Instant understanding flashes across his face. “Do you think it’ll work?”
The onslaught of arrows starts anew, and Sylvie instinctively curls in on herself. Loki pulls his knees to his chest.
“I don’t know,” she admits. “It’s not much of a plan, but do you have a better idea?”
She really doesn’t want to know what will happen once the locals decide to deal with them in some other way than archery.
“No,” Loki says. “It’s worth a try.”
He offers her his hand, and she grabs it tightly. Even with thick gloves, there’s something reassuring about the touch. Her mind clears a little; her heart slows down.
Sylvie chooses not to dwell on what that means.
Her magic is as off-balance as the rest of her, and she can feel Loki having the same problem, as if the power that’s so familiar to both of them has become slippery somehow, harder to keep a hold of than usual. It takes them a few tries before the faint green glow of seidr lights up in earnest.
“Alright,” Loki murmurs, and Sylvie gets a feeling he’s saying it to himself as much as to her. “Alright. Let’s do it.”
She nods, glancing down at their intertwined, shimmering hands. “Let’s do it.”
Loki’s the one who taught her to cast duplicates, and it’s always the weirdest sensation. It’s not painful, exactly, but the closest comparison she can come up with is a snake shedding its skin. Between one heartbeat and the next, she pushes her magic outside herself, like she’s peeling all of her skin off at once and throwing the empty husk to the side.
It’s disgusting, and for all of Loki’s assurances that it gets better over time, it hasn’t improved one bit so far. She shudders faintly as an exact replica of herself, surrounded by a slight glint of magic, materializes in front of her, right next to Loki’s. The duplicates slowly stand up, like marionettes coming to life.
With a flicker of their joined wrists, the duplicates take off, running full speed to the side and away from the temple. There’s yelling from behind them as the two figures are spotted.
Please let this work.
The next moment, there’s loud, disorganized commotion, and mercifully, the crowd starts to follow the duplicates. Sylvie can hear the footsteps - so many footsteps - moving past, and harsh, guttural words that might be orders or instructions or just simple conversation. She couldn’t possibly tell. She tries to make herself as small as possible as their attackers run by, hoping no straggler turns around and spots them.
The absolute silence that follows seems to last forever, until Loki very slowly exhales. The soft puff of air is like a gunshot, making her jump.
“I think we’re good,” he whispers cautiously, as if the tiniest sound could give away their location, even now that the locals have disappeared over the hill.
“How long will the duplicates hold, do you think?” Sylvie asks just as quietly. She belatedly remembers to loosen her grip on his hand, and Loki lets go after a beat.
“Not long. Maybe a few minutes if we’re lucky. The farther they get, the harder it is to keep them from disappearing. We need to hurry.”
They pull themselves up from the ground, still trying to stay as low as possible as they cross what must qualify as a meadow or a field on this planet - a wide expanse of terrain covered in nothing but grass that looks like it could cut them - until they reach the edge of the forest. The darkness awaiting them under the trees is even more dense, with nothing but the fluorescent mushrooms and some strange glowing insects to illuminate their path. Neither one of them dares to use their magic to summon more light. It hinders their progress, because the ground is treacherous, full of thick roots and stones that they need to step over, but it puts them at a lower risk of being spotted.
The deeper they delve into these black, eerie woods, the worse Sylvie feels.
That radiation in the air seems to get stronger with every passing minute, until it’s no longer just a sensation, but a whole series of them. A rumbling that vibrates in her chest like the workings of a giant invisible machine. A cold sweat that breaks across her back, damping her undershirt. A nausea in the pit of her stomach and an ache around her eyes.
She can barely breathe, even though the flow of oxygen in her mask is uninterrupted.
It makes her slow and heavy and clumsy, and as she climbs over giant roots protruding from the ground, going more by touch than any other sense to feel out her surroundings, she has a brief moment of worry that she will faint.
Or that Loki will faint, because he doesn’t seem to be faring any better, and that thought terrifies her. His presence next to her is the only thing keeping her from running for the hills, tendrils of panic still wrapped firmly around her lungs.
“Almost there,” he says weakly, staring at the coordinates displayed on his wrist. “Just a little more.”
It still seems like a century passes before they finally emerge at the center of the forest, stumbling and light-headed.
The temple is made from a stone that’s unlike anything Sylvie’s seen before. White as bone, making it almost glow in this pitch-black night, and towering over them at a breath-taking height. The stone seems to almost ooze with something, a milky liquid pearling on the walls, and in the silence that isn’t interrupted by the call of a single bird, Sylvie can hear a sound almost like breathing.
As they approach the door, it feels more like they’re walking into the mouth of something far beyond their understanding. She stumbles as another wave of nausea hits, and Loki’s hands shoot up to steady her.
“We should leave,” he says quietly. It sounds like it takes him a lot of effort to speak.
Sylvie shakes her head, though every part of her agrees with him. “We’ve come this far. It’s almost over.”
The entrance to the temple is six stories high, at the very least, a gaping hole of complete nothingness. She can’t imagine the planet’s inhabitants would’ve managed to build something this gigantic.
Maybe it was here before them. Maybe it wasn’t built at all. Maybe it grew.
Norns, help us.
When they step inside, Sylvie expects something to happen - something terrible, something unthinkable - but there’s only stillness and quiet, and an endless staircase leading upwards. Her muscles feel like they’ve been filled with liquid lead. She’s out of breath after the first few steps.
Turn around, turn around, turn around.
They ascend the staircase, breaths heaving. The radiation buzzes inside every fiber of her being like a million bees.
Turn around. Run.
The chamber that opens up in front of them seems to have no back wall, or at least not one that she can see. It just stretches infinitely forward, slick white column after slick white column, illuminated by a light that seems to be coming from nowhere. Its sickly glow casts no shadows.
The obelisk stands right at the center, like a giant stalagmite that grew out of the floor, its sides carved in runes that Sylvie doesn’t recognize, but they make her stomach turn all the same.
The radiation is coming from the obelisk. It tastes like blood and mercury in her mouth. It smells like death. It crawls into her veins like a disease, the same disease that’s infected this whole planet, right to its core.
She recognizes it now, though it’s twisted and malformed beyond repair, like healthy cells turned into a malignant tumor. She’s felt something like this - but unlike this - a million times before, traveling through time, living at the TVA.
Temporal radiation. That’s what must have put this on their radar originally.
Except it’s all wrong, it’s mangled and horrifying, as if time itself is bending around this wretched thing and being poisoned. Becoming something it was never supposed to be. A vortex that violates every law of nature.
It’s like staring into an abyss, and Sylvie thinks she might be driven to madness by it.
“No,” she whispers, shaking her head and scrambling backwards, nearly tripping. “No. No.”
Her lips can’t form any other word.
Next to her, Loki is swaying on his feet, as if an invisible wind is buffeting him. His face is pale and sickly. Sylvie tries to reach for him, but her hands are shaking too violently.
The chamber suddenly feels smaller, so much smaller, as if its living walls are closing in on them. Like a stomach ready to digest its prey.
With stark, feverish clarity, she understands why the natives were trying to keep them out.
She can’t run. Her feet refuse to move. Her throat closes up.
The buzzing and the rumbling get louder, so loud they could rupture her ears. So loud they make her scream, though she can’t hear it tearing its way out her mouth.
The obelisk vibrates. Its runes are aglow with the same ghostly light that floods every corner of the temple.
The last thing she registers, before it all turns into blinding, deafening nothingness, is Loki’s voice calling out her name.