A Lullaby for Gods Chapter 84

There isn’t much around it - even if the person Loki trusts the least is himself, the only person he can ever really trust is also himself, given that he knows the ins and outs of his own mind better than most people. It’s been a problem, since childhood, his tendency to pick apart his own psyche when he wasn’t busy picking apart other people’s - the self-awareness has been a plus, but being too in tune with the fuckery that goes on in his own head has been a definite minus.

God, he needs to go to therapy.

The Mage of Space - Senna - is offering the thick, black book towards him, its pages discoloured with age and the edges of the leather cover faded and creased. The spine looks like it’s been opened over and over for years, nearly white with all the creases and folds on it.

Apparently, it’s got answers.

Loki sighs, reaching out to place a hand on the book. “Yes.”

Senna grins. In a flash of green, Loki suddenly finds himself sitting in a field of snow, a blanket of darkness and stars above the botg of them.

He stands, abruptly, taking his hand off the book to step back. “Where - “

“Calm down. I didn’t take you here physically, merely dragged your consciousness with me,” Senna says. “This is where my actual body is, though, so we’ve switched places. You’re the illusion now.”

He tosses the thick book over to Loki, who has to scramble to catch it, just so it doesn’t crush his foot when it falls. It flashes green the second it lands in his hands; teleportation, he assumes, from Senna's physical space to him.

“Walk with me,” Senna says.

Since the man doesn’t wait, already turning away and walking off, Loki has no choice but to catch up with him. In front of him, his breath doesn’t mist. Senna’s does, though.

“Where are we?” he asks.

“My land,” Senna says. “Every player has one. It’s where we are supposed to fulfill our personal journeys to aid us in shaping and growing our abilities.”

Loki does a quick sweep of the area - snow, as far as the eye can see, but a few trees dot the field, here and there. To his surprise, they’re all still in bloom, but with silver leaves and pale blue flowers. A few white vines hang from the branches, reaching down to nearly, but not quite, touch the snow-covered ground.

“This is the Land of Snow and Stars,” Senna says.

It looks like Jotunheim. Or, at least, it reminds Loki of Jotunheim.

He brings his arms closer to his body, as much as he can with the book he's holding, shivering despite the impossibility of feeling the temperature here, being a consciousness given form via illusion and all.

“So you are part of a session,” Loki says. “The same session this Heir of Doom is from, I presume?”

“The very same,” Senna says. “I am the team’s Mage of Space. There are eight of us.”

Loki raises an eyebrow. He’s being generous with the information. “I see.”

“Don’t be wary, Loki, I’m giving you things you need to know for a reason,” Senna says, glancing back at him briefly. “If there’s anyone who knows how I think, it would be you, wouldn’t it?”

“Depends,” Loki says. “I have no idea what you’ve been through, where you’re from. For all I know, we could only share a face.”

“True,” Senna says, facing forward again. “I think, despite how we are made of the same biological blueprint, it is an irreconcilable fact that we are not the same person. Very few things make us alike anymore, I think.”

“Is there that much of a gap?”

“There’s five thousand years’ worth,” Senna says, chuckling softly. “And then some.”

The field they’re on starts to slope downwards, a gentle dip in the landscape that lets Loki see that there is a cliff down ahead. Beyond the cliff, past the sheer drop, there looks like light from a small town.

“There’s people here?” Loki asks.

Senna nods. “Every land has inhabitants. How else do you think a new universe would be populated?”

“Cloning; ectobiology,” Loki says. “It’s what the children have mentioned in passing.”

“There is that too, as an option. There’s no one way to create your universe,” Senna says.

Overhead, a large dark shape flies past, before circling back and swooping down. A large, black bird settles on Senna’s right shoulder.

It turns and looks at Loki with its beady little eyes.

“This is Huginn,” Senna says, motioning to the bird, though he doesn’t turn to look at Loki. “He’s friendly. Usually.”

“He looks like he’s about to poke my eyes out,” Loki says, grimacing.

“He likely will, if you ever meet him with your actual body,” Senna says, chuckling. “But you’re safe, for now.”

“For now,” Huginn croaks out, in an alarmingly human voice.

Loki decides this thing is creepy as fuck.

The gentle slope they’re on finally evens out again, to flat land, and Senna stops as he comes right up to the edge of the cliff. Loki stops a few paces behind him.

The small town below them isn’t that small at all. In fact, there’s a cleared-out road winding down the middle of it, lights on in the houses and buildings scattered all about the area. In the distance, through the dark of the night (is it night?), there are fainter lights of building farther away.

“It always snows here,” Senna says, softly. “There is no sun, so there is no morning. There’s only the stars to provide for light. Fire and heat are this place’s most important resources.”

“Wouldn’t that render this place an uninhabitable zone?” Loki asks.

“If Sburb acted by logic all the time, yes,” Senna says. “But I think it suspends its tight rules when its players are in the midst of their game.” He waves a hand. “Besides, the rules of physics in every universe are different - I don’t know if you’ve developed an interest in it, yet, but there are theories amongst the scientific communities of Earth that other universes might have physics that are completely different from what you know, or completely the opposite of what you know. Mirror worlds and such, but only in the context of physics. We certainly have evidence to believe that this may be because the composition of a universe is affected by Sburb and its players.”

“I...see,” Loki says.

“Read that in your own time,” Senna says, turning to motion to the book in Loki’s hands. “It’ll explain things. Universal composition, infinity sets, magic.”

Loki raises a challenging eyebrow again. “I think I’ve got that last part down, thank you.”

Senna snorts. “Don’t get too arrogant, Loki. Remember you’re still four thousand years my junior.” He nods his head towards the town below. “Look here.”

Loki gives him a skeptical look, but takes one step forward beside him.

Green light glows softly from the space where Senna is standing, a pulse of green starting from his feet and then expanding outwards in a circle. Expanding with it, at the very center, is an insignia Loki has seen many times before from Jade’s outfits. The Space Insignia.

“New World Order,” Senna whispers, and the green light underneath him suddenly races down the cliff and towards town, reaching it before Loki can even blink.

In its wake, grassland and flowers bloom, trees that would have taken years and years to grow suddenly spring out of the ground and rapidly grow leaves, blossom flowers, bear fruit.

The green light avoids the houses and the road but not the space around them, taking every patch of space it can and transfiguring snow and hard ground into lush greenery.

Below, a few shadows appear in the windows, before people are going out of their houses. They look around at the sudden greenery that has appeared in their town, and after a few minutes, Loki can hear faint, but no less joyous, cheering.

“It’s hard to be alive in this place,” Senna says. “You always have to take care of it, to nurture it, to keep an eye on it. It takes responsibility to maintain this land and make sure everyone here survives.”

“So you always have to come back here?”

“I am a god, Loki,” Senna says, but his green eyes hold no pride in the statement, not like how Loki imagines himself when he says it. He speaks as if it is a matter of fact - and it is - but he sounds resigned, almost tired, yet still accepting. “I am their god. It is my responsibility to take care of them.”

Loki says nothing, for a few seconds. He looks away, after a moment.

“What spell was that?” he asks, after the silence between them grows slightly heavier.

“New World Order. It’s territory magic - a mass transfiguration spell,” Senna says. He motions to the book in Loki’s hands. “It’s in there; essentially, you have to simultaneously mark a certain expanse of space and transfigure it. It’s not illusion work, it’s active metamorphosis of physical space and its components.”

Loki looks down at the book he’s holding. Territory magic - that would explain the need to mark a certain space as a target. He can do transfiguration in small amounts, but this spell obviously needed a larger amount of output for it, and a lot more speed as well.

Five thousand years’ worth of difference. He has to remember that.

“Come on,” Senna says, already walking off again to the side, “I didn’t just bring you here to show you my land and my magic. I can’t explain everything to you all at once with the limited time we have, so I'll tell you the important bits. Do your homework for the rest."

Loki follows after him, again, bare feet not leaving footprints in the snow.

“As I am a Mage of Space, I’m sure you’ve already worked out that you might have Space as an aspect too,” Senna says. There’s a slight frown on his face as he says it. “There is still a possibility you’ll end up with a completely different class, but that’ll be up to you.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning it depends entirely on your personality and the role you will take,” Senna says. “I am a scholar at heart, but I am still a sorcerer. An active knowledge class with a penchant for illusion-work and resourcefulness marks it that I am fit to be a Mage. But as I have said - for all our similarities, I fear there are very few things that even makes us similar anymore. Time and circumstance has made sure of that.”

“Would your spells work if I didn’t share your class?”

“It’s not just Mage magic written in there, it’s Space magic as a whole. As much as I remember,” Senna says. “So however you turn out to be, you’ll be fine.”

“I see,” Loki says.

Ahead, the pathway dips again, a lot steeper this time.

“Where are we going?” he asks.

“There are eight members of our session,” the Mage of Space says, instead. “Two Heirs, two knights, one witch, one mage, one bard and one seer.”

Loki frowns. “So the Heir of Blood and the Heir of Doom are - “

“Both from our session, yes,” Senna says. “Two sides of the same fucked up coin.”

“What happened?”

“A lot of things. Do you know what a cognitohazard is?”

“Objects that cause you harm the more it stays in your consciousness, correct? The more you think about it, the more dangerous it becomes for you,” Loki says.

Senna nods. “The Heir of Blood is one. The more you know about him, the more in danger you are. So please understand that I cannot tell you everything about him at the moment, only the things I feel you will need right now.”

Loki presses his lips to a thin line. Okay, he can work with that. If it were him, he’d do the same thing, honestly, so he can’t really blame the Mage too much no matter how inconvenient it is.

“As you can imagine, there are only seven of us largely working for the same goal, now,” the Mage says. “I lead the team in strategy.”

“Of course you do,” Loki mutters.

“And strategy demands that it might be time for you and the others to step up to the plate soon. We’re dealing with three threats all at once, after all,” the Mage says, continuing on despite the fact that Loki’s sure he definitely heard him.

“Three?” Loki asks, letting it slide.

“The Heir of Blood, The Condesce, and perhaps the one who’s dangerously the closest to this solar system at the moment,” the Mage says, “Jack Noir. Though, I suppose the Heir of Blood can pop here and there as he pleases, but we’re keeping an eye on him.”

“The Condesce, I know of,” Loki says. “An Empress of sorts, correct?”

“Yes. But she’s far away at the moment as well,” the Mage says. “Jack Noir - Bec Noir, however we’re calling him - is a more immediate threat. You know of Jade and her abilities, yes?”

“Similar to mine in some ways.”

“She is part First Guardian, a creature guarding a universe that is connected to the Green Sun,” the Mage says. “This Green Sun is connected to multiple universes at once, and it gives the guardians their abilities. As of late, the decaying of the universe has weakened its reach and the stability of the connection, but relying on this would only serve to doom us. Jack Noir is still a threat due to the fact that he similarly shares the Space abilities of a First Guardian.”

“Can you not simply destroy the Green Sun if it is the source of his powers?”

“If fate doesn’t will for it to be so, then no, I cannot. It’s also incredibly far away right now,” Senna chuckles. “This means our only good matches for Jack Noir are those who share his First Guardian abilities, or the Hope Players.”

“We have Jade,” Loki says. “If we can snap her out of it, we’ll have that match.”

“And we’re also trying to get into contact with someone else with those First Guardian abilities, so we’ve got another contingency plan,” Senna says. “In the event this falls through, however, this means your next best chance is your Hope Player, Eridan Ampora.”

Loki tries to wrack his mind for a face to match the name, and unfortunately comes up blank. As much as he’d tried, the stress and the number of people he’d had to meet all at once at the hospital has made retaining names and faces he’s only been exposed to once has made memory flimsy.

“Who is that, again?” he asks.

Senna laughs. “A young boy with grey skin and tall, curving horns, almost like waves. He’s amphibious, with fish fins. Violet eyes and blood.”

Oh, that description clicks.

“He’s a destroyer class, so he can be quite powerful, lacking in amiable personality traits he might be," Senna says.

Loki studies the man’s profile, eyeing him carefully as they continue to walk down the long, narrow path down the side of the hill. All of this was convenient, what with the instructions, but all in all, the Mage of Space has been mostly vague, showing him his land, an example of his magic, and a threat to focus on. There’s no actual explanation, only the feeling of one; a long walk and a laundry list in the guise of answers.

“What do you really want?” Loki asks.

The Mage of Space stops walking, turning to him. “Hm?”

“What do you really want me to do?” Loki asks. “What do you really want us to do?”

The Mage says nothing, similarly studying him, gauging his expression, his curiosity. Eventually, the man shakes his head.

“Of course, you’d ask that,” he says. He pauses again, and then sighs. “Can you handle yourself?”

“Of course I can.”

“No,” Senna says, turning back to him. “A Mage of Space is a creator of space. Someone who does everything in their resource and power to utilize it. It means distance, it means isolation. Those are not things most people can handle over a long period of time.”

Ah.

The look in Senna’s eyes is void of mirth, his gaze filled only with pity, and yet at the same time understanding.

“Can you handle yourself?” Senna asks.

He’s asking him if he can keep a few secrets. If he can make judgment calls only he knows the significance of, until it’s time to let people know what’s going on, because it’s dangerous for people to know about the Heir of Blood, because other people knowing who can’t understand how he thinks might fuck up the Mage of Space’s plans. He’s asking him to take the brunt of possible scorn, possible judgment; to take the brunt of what could be survivor’s guilt.

But - the thing is that Loki has been here before. He’s been alone for most of his life. What’s a return to form?

“Yeah,” Loki says. “I’ve done it my whole life, haven’t I?”

Senna smiles, sadly.

“Yeah, we have.”

-

“What is this?”

The Mage of Space has handed him a small gemstone, a flat and unremarkable red thing that has magic clearly thrumming through it.

“Remote control,” Senna says, and then taps the stone once.

In a flash of red, they’re not in the snow-covered landscape anymore. Instead, Loki finds himself in a familiar, cozy living room, outfitted with a carpet and a few bookshelves, a couch and a loveseat, plus a coffee table.

Oh.

This is his living room.

“It’s enchanted,” Senna says, motioning to the stone, just a little too late now that it’s already done its magic. Too late for Loki to protest anyway, sneaky little shit. “With time magic. It lets you access and project someone’s memories.”

This little -

“You knew I was going to ask,” Loki says. “You knew I was going to sus you out.”

Senna chuckles, keeping his gaze straight ahead. “For the five thousand years between us, Loki, I still know my younger self better than anyone else.”

Loki snorts.

Someone walks into the living room; Loki walks into the living room - or at least, Senna’s younger self does, dressed in a comfortable sweater and some sweatpants, the very image of relaxed domesticity. He’s shelving some books back into place, eyeing the blank spaces carefully so he can return things to their rightful places.

Someone else barrels into the living room, their crown of snow white hair eye-catching even when they’re moving in a blur. “I got it, bitch!”

“Would you keep your voice down, it is five in the morning,” Memory-Senna says, turning, exasperated, at his friend.

“Who’s that?” Loki asks, at the current Senna.

“The Heir of Doom,” Senna says. “I don’t think you’re quite close with your Heir of Doom candidate, but I’m best friends with mine.”

“You’re awake, so how’s that relevant?” Memory-Heir of Doom says, all smiles, in all their seventeen-year-old glory. “Come on, we’ve waiting for this shit for years.”

“Can you at least wait for the others to get up?” Memory-Senna shelves the last book in his arms before he turns back to them, disapproving. “It’s supposed to be played in pairs, isn’t it? Clients and servers?”

“We can test it out, come on, there’s two of us.” It’s almost funny, how Memory-Heir of Doom bounces around on their feet. They suddenly walk over to the couch to climb on it, standing on its seats so they can look down at Senna, who’s much taller than them. “I’m the motherfucker who pre-ordered it, so I get to call the shots - “

One of the doors to the right opens. That should be a bedroom, Loki thinks, if the layout to this apartment is similar to his.

Sure enough, someone pokes their head out, looking like they’ve just been woken up at an ungodly hour of the day. A rat’s nest of dark, curly hair sticks out of the doorway, its owner blearily adjusting the glasses on their face.

“What the fuck are you two talking about?”

“I got Sburb,” Memory-Heir of Doom says.

“And?”

“And? It’s been talk of the forums for months now, I want to play it.”

The kid just slow-blinks at them, as if in disbelief at what they’ve just said. “It’s - “ A glance at the nearest wall clock. “ - fuck o’clock in the morning, can this wait?”

Memory-Heir of Doom just grins. “No.”

“Fuck you,” the kid says, groaning, slamming their door shut again. Memory-Heir of Doom just laughs.

“I don’t...recognize them,” Loki says. There was no one in the Safehouse with hair as white as the Heir of Doom’s. At least, no one he’s made friends with, or is a passing acquaintance of.

“That would be because of the shifts in fixed points,” the Mage of Space says. “The fact that your universe has shattered has sent thousands of butterfly effects into play: things that should be at certain times moving to completely different points in it and reshaping the timeline, people making different choices than from my timeline, decaytiers, people from different universes partially falling in.”

“Partially?”

Senna nods, moving his arm and positioning it for Huginn to move from his shoulder and to perch on it. The bird obliges.

“Sometimes, because of the slowing of universal decay, a person doesn’t completely fall into a universe. Sometimes, only their body does. Sometimes only their consciousness does - it’s similar to dying, but instead of ending up in a dream bubble, you end up in a completely different universe, and you’re not actually dead, your consciousness has just been temporospatially displaced. Your body can still be alive, but comatose.” He motions to Huginn. “Huginn is one of the victims of this effect of decay.”

The bird turns its head towards Loki, its gaze sharp.

“I have a brother,” it says. “Muninn. We do not remember our names. We do not even remember where we came from. All we know is that we are here.”

“In another universe, they are not confined to these bodies,” Senna says. “They had friends. Family. A whole life ahead of them. The walls of their universe and all universes surrounding it breaking had them fall into another incompletely.”

“And now we are stuck here, forever,” Huginn says, still with that sharp, almost bitter gaze.

“There are more,” Senna says. “There are always more. We cannot help all of them.”

He drops his arm and Huginn moves back to his shoulder. Senna reaches for the gemstone still in Loki’s hand, tapping its surface once again.

Another flash of red, and then they’re in a damp, dark cave. Loki can only see a sliver of light to his left, and to his right, he can hear people desperately trying not to breathe.

Senna’s younger self is half in light and half in darkness, acting as a lookout for something.

After a minute or so, he seems to relax, nodding and turning back to the rest of the people in the darkness.

“We’re clear.”

There are gasps of relief from the shadows. There’s a scrape of metal, a few clicks, and then a small flame illuminates the dark space; a young man in a dirty, yellow sweater face streaked with blood and grime, has a lighter in hand.

“Christ,” he says. “I fucking hate this place. I fucking hate this game.”

“We should have never played it,” Memory-Heir of Doom says, curled up in a corner with their hands buried into their hair out of frustration. “We should have never played this stupid fucking game - “

“You have to understand, we were too young, then,” Senna says. “And out of all of them, only I had any capacity for offense or defense. They had friends, family, lovers on Earth. And all of that was ripped away from them in an instant. None of them knew how to fight, and we were up against things that constantly wanted to kill us.”

A sob echoes around the cave. On the cold ground, there are two bodies; a young man with red hair and another boy with blonde hair, in a purple sweater. There’s blood all over their shirts, fabric wrapped around them in clear hurry to prevent them from bleeding out. They’re both frighteningly still.

Another young man immediately makes his way to them to re-wrap their wounds better. The young woman who he’d been sitting beside earlier just stares, seemingly in shock, as there’s no focus to her gaze.

Memory-Heir of Doom starts scratching at their scalp, a nervous tic. The one other kid - with dark hair and glasses - gently takes their hands to stop them.

“Hey, hey,” the kid says, soothing. “You’re hurting yourself.”

Memory-Heir of Doom clenches and unclenches their fists, their breathing too erratic.

“That’s it, okay. That’s better,” the kid says, patient, slowly kneeling in front of them. “You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”

“I’m not,” Memory-Heir of Doom says. “I want to go home.”

The kid says nothing else. Earth has been destroyed. There is nothing else to say.

“We all did,” Senna says. “Asgard was gone too, you know?”

Loki closes his eyes.

He takes in a deep breath and lets it out.

“What happened?”

“A reckoning completely destroys a universe,” Senna says. “Everything the game wills to be destroyed, anything that is not fated to be brought into another universe, will be destroyed. A full reset.”

Loki nods, slowly. The nine realms was a part of their universe. For a full reset, everything would have to be destroyed.

“We were distraught,” Senna says. “We were too young. And we were mortal, then, with no idea of what we were doing.”

“And what happened next?”

“One of us did something drastic,” Senna says. “Very drastic - out of fear, out of desperation; maybe even out of a desire to protect the rest of us. Someone traded their own life for our safety.”

The Heir of Blood.

Loki opens his eyes, looking to where the dark-haired kid is comforting Memory-Heir of Doom.

Senna touches the gemstone again, and the scenery changes.

They’re not in a dark cave anymore. They’re in what looks like a temple, with white marble floors and pillars, and one end of it looks like it has collapsed, sunlight streaming in from the gaping hole from the ceiling.

Something falls - no,  smashes onto the rubble, dust and concrete exploding as soon as it hits it. Loki instinctively squints and covers his mouth despite the fact that it won’t affect him.

When the dust clears, rainbow tendrils are evaporating into the air as whatever - whoever - had fallen picks themself up, their bones clicking back into place from where they’d shattered, flesh and blood knitting themselves back together from where they'd been turned to mush upon impact.

Someone in a dark green cloak stands, their white hair a mess.

They look around, confused. “What the hell…”

Slowly, carefully, they take a step forward. A bit of rubble falls from the pressure of their foot, and they hesitate.

"Where - Loki!" they call out. "Where the fuck are you?!"

No answer. Their voice merely echoes in the temple.

They look up, instead, at the sky where they’d fallen in from, squinting.

“Where the fuck - “ they cut themself off, frown deepening. They look back down again, dark energy wrapping around their hand, before they rap their knuckles against thin air like they're knocking on something. “Heaven’s Door.”

The space around their hand warps, the distortion rippling out until it spreads into a rectangle around them, similar to a screen. In front of the Heir of Doom are a series of lines too fine for Loki to make out or read, but whatever it is they’re reading, the Heir of Doom, clicks their tongue, displeased.

“Shit, a fucking - fucking completely different universe - Jesus - “

Loki watches the Heir of Doom hop down from the pile of rubble that still has their blood all over it, taking advantage of their flight powers to cushion their fall. The screen they’d created earlier dissolves just as they land on their feet.

“What is this?” Loki asks.

“The beginning of the end," Senna says.

There’s a weak cough, to the left. The Heir of Doom immediately turns to it, alert, body tense. Another cough follows, and as Loki tries to trace their line of sight, his eyes land on a single, grey hand, sticking out of a pile of rubble.

The fingers twitch.

“Shit!”

The Heir of Doom rushes forward, hands already wrapped in the same dark energy from earlier before they’ve even reached where the person is buried under. Their hands slam onto the huge slab of concrete above where the victim is, and to Loki’s surprise, the whole thing gets eaten up by the darkness and dissolves into nothing but ash, blowing away quickly as it decays.

There’s several more bits of rubble on top of the person and the Heir of Doom makes quick work of it, until they can finally see the man buried underneath it all.

He’s bleeding everywhere, a sharp piece of rubble having impaled his stomach. Violet blood has pooled around him, all over the floor.

The Heir of Doom snaps their fingers - an outline of darkness wraps around the man, which they immediately grab the edge of and bite down on, slowly chewing on it. Carefully, as they continue eating whatever that darkness is, they move behind the man - mindful of the curving horns sprouting from his head - and slide their arms under his, lifting him off of the piece of concrete he’s impaled on.

The man’s eyes fly open in sudden, blinding pain, and he gasps sharply, though he’s thankfully too weak to thrash around.

“I’ve got you, don’t worry,” the Heir of Doom mumbles around the darkness they’re eating.

The man weakly tries to turn to them. “Wh - fuck!”

Violet blood rains on the floor as his torso is finally taken off the piece of rubble. The Heir quickly maneuvers his body so they can drag him aside, his heels painting drag marks with his blood all over the tiles as they find a clear spot to put him on.

The building shakes with a sudden explosion. The Heir of Doom tenses, but manages to carefully set the adult troll down.

They stop chewing down on whatever dark energy has wrapped around him, a magic circle with the Doom insignia - a skull - lighting up over him instead. The man tiredly tries to turn to them, barely keeping his eyes open.

“Get...out of here,” he murmurs, though it sounds more like a gurgle. “It’s not safe.”

“You’re still alive, I can still save you,” the Heir of Doom says, as the magic circle glows. “Anathema.”

The circle flashes dark green, and slowly, right in front of Loki’s eyes, the gaping wound in the man’s torso starts to knit itself close, intestines reconnecting, muscle forming over it, skin healing to seal it shut. The Heir of Doom has started to murmur another spell as the healing works, and Loki sees a growing red stain on their midriff, a mirror of where the man’s injury was.

“Anathema is a spell that can swap out a person’s doom to another,” Senna says. “Primarily, it has two parts - the source and the Anathema Point, the person who the doom is brought to. It can have a siphon to lessen the effects, but in a pinch, it can work with only an Anathema Point.”

“That’s dangerous,” Loki says.

“It is,” Senna says. “It’s too dangerous.”

The Heir of Doom, from where they’re kneeling, puts a shaking hand to their mouth, trying to stop the blood from bubbling up their throat. That injury has hit some part of their lungs.

“That’s why it’s a spell only the Heir of Doom can safely do,” Senna says. “They know conversion spells; they can take their doom and release it as an attack.”

Sure enough, the injury the Heir has slowly bubbles up with dark energy. The Heir stands, legs unsteady, and turns away, towards the end of the temple. They raise a hand towards it, blindly aiming.

Their hand lights up in blue, a sudden blast of the same shade violently ripping through the air and obliterating a hole into the massive wall, all the way across the other side of the temple.

Loki thinks he can see the air warp when the blast streaks by.

The Heir of Doom brings their hand back and stares at it. “Shit. Radiation…”

They make their way back to where the troll is, taking slow, halting steps, until they’re right beside him. Their knees crash onto the floor painfully as they kneel down, the dark energy around their midriff slowly dissolving as the magic circle over the man fades away.

They put a hand to his forehead. He looks unconscious.

There’s a flash of gold behind them. Loki tenses as he sees them similarly freeze.

They’re injured, with another person they’d just saved but is unconscious. Behind them is a man with dark hair and glasses, in a black, tattered cloak.

He looks down at the unconscious troll in disdain, tilting his head as if studying a particularly disgusting bug.

“Relax,” he says, to the Heir of Doom. “I’m not here to fight you.”

Somehow, that’s enough to make the tension in their shoulders drop, their posture relaxing right after. They direct their attention back to the sleeping man, watching the rise and fall of his chest.

“You’re here too?” they ask, softly.

“I followed you here,” the Heir of Blood says.

“Ah.”

The Heir of Blood kicks the unconscious man’s leg, thankfully not hard enough to wake him or cause damage. “Read this fool.”

The Heir of Doom nods, lifting one magic-coated hand to tap the space over the man. “Heaven’s Door.”

That same screen from earlier warps into view over him, again. The Heir of Doom reads it silently, the Heir of Blood doing the same; whatever it is, the Heir of Doom sits back, eyes widening, while the Heir of Blood merely nods.

The Heir of Doom turns to him, alarmed. “He’s - “

“Supposed to create our universe,” the Heir of Blood says. “That’s why you’re here.”

The Heir of Doom brings their attention back to the man, eyes wide with fear. “We can’t be here.”

“We have no choice but to be here. If whatever’s breaking interuniversal walls is affecting this place, we won’t exist,” the Heir of Blood says, already walking away towards the entrance of the temple. “I suggest you get to work patching up whoever else needs it. If you let someone who isn’t supposed to die perish, we’re fucked.”

The Heir of Doom can only stare at the sleeping man, nodding mutely.

After a moment, though, before the Heir of Blood can completely leave, they speak.

“Hey.”

The Heir of Blood stops in his tracks, turning.

“Are you on our side again?” the Heir of Doom asks, softly.

The Heir of Blood sneers.

“Don’t be ridiculous," he says, “Everything I’ve ever done, I’ve done for all of you.”

And then he walks off, descending the steps of the temple, and out of Loki’s sight.

Still on the floor, the Heir of Doom nods to themself. “Yeah,” they say. “I know.”

Loki turns to Senna, frowning slightly. “What does this have to do with anything?”

“This was our ancestral session, Loki,” Senna says. “It’s yours too.”

He motions to where the Heir of Doom is trying to carry the unconscious troll up in a piggy back, having a bit of trouble considering his limbs are much longer than theirs, and the fact that he’s dead weight. Still, they manage it somehow, and they kick off the ground to zip out of the entrance in flight.

“The success of this session meant our existence was assured,” Senna says. “And it meant we were just a little bit closer to home.”

He smiles again, still tinged with that now-familiar layer of grief to it.

“Universes that are connected to each other are often in close proximity. We have a theory about it, called Infinity Sets,” Senna says. “That means when we dropped here, we were cursed to be close to home too.”

Senna snaps his fingers, and the scene in front of them blacks out to nothing. Slowly, tendrils of light come into view, some running parallel to others, some branching off of others, some completely out of the way.

"When a person makes a choice, there is always another reality where they did something completely different," Senna says. "These timelines are completely separate, even if they might have the same events leading up to that point."

Strands of blue, red and green pulse in front of the both of them, the glow of their light softening the edges to Senna's face.

"When someone with the means to go back in time and change things does so, this creates another timeline. It doesn't render the original one null, it just creates a new reality."

He lifts a hand, poised to snap his fingers.

"But."

Snap.

The streams of light in front of the both of them shatter, sparks of light flying off and drifting aimlessly. A few strands break off completely, and a few more collide into other strands.

"Timelines are tangible universes. That's why you can hop from one to another if you have the right means to. They're not conceptual things, so when one of them physically shatters, it doesn't create another timeline - it just destroys the old one," Senna says.

He waves a hand, and the streams of light dissolve, one by one, until a single blue one, cracked and broken, remains.

"Our timeline - our timeline shattered. The cracks didn't just affect the parts after the game, but every single area that composes it," he says. "We saw it as an opportunity, a way to return home and actually change our present, not just create another offshoot reality."

He turns to Loki. “So imagine our surprise and grief to find our timeline completely changed from universal decay.”

Oh.

That last memory was the catalyst, the event that had started the domino effect of them coming to Loki’s universe, to Loki’s timeline and the reason Senna and Loki are here now; the reason why they're even helping them, trying to fix things.

This is their universe.

This is their timeline too.

“Yeah,” Senna says, as Loki pieces everything together. “We’re home, Loki.”