89 The Benefactor

Harry, Thor, Frigga, and Natasha stood in the war room alongside Loki, as they waited for Odin to speak. The room was silent except for the crackling of the torches lining the walls.

Jane was not present as she was still with the healers, undergoing the final preparations to remove the Aether. Thor had argued for her to be here, but Odin had dismissed the idea outright. “She is not of Asgard. And her having knowledge of this matter doesn’t impact anything. Hence, this is not her concern.” Thor’s jaw was tight, and his arms crossed, but he said nothing further.

Currently, Sif and the Warriors Three were standing guard over Jane, ensuring both her safety and Odin’s will.

“I hope this is not yet another one of your games, Loki,” Odin said, his tone laced with disdain. “You have wasted enough of my time.”

Thor stiffened. “Father, please. Loki has something to say, and for once, he’s doing it of his own volition. The least you could do is listen.”

Loki let out a sarcastic laugh. “I do not care whether the mighty Allfather deigns to listen or not.” His gaze flicked to Harry with a begrudging expression on his face. “I know the wizard is resourceful enough to heed my warning.”

Harry narrowed his eyes. The statement wasn't a compliment, but it was the closest thing to reluctant acknowledgement that he’d ever get from Loki.

Odin exhaled sharply through his nose. "You expect me to believe you are here out of some newfound sense of responsibility? Spare me, Loki. Your concern for Asgard begins and ends with how much you can twist it to your liking."

Loki sneered. "You give me far too much credit. Or perhaps not enough." His voice lost its usual theatrical lilt, turning. "But by all means, ignore my warning. If you do, at least I will have the satisfaction of knowing that when doom comes knocking, it was your arrogance, not mine, that welcomed it in."

Odin’s fingers curled over the hilt of Gungnir, but before he could fire back a retort, Frigga shifted beside him. Her expression was calm, but there was something in her eyes. Odin hesitated. Then, with the smallest tilt of his chin, he gestured for Loki to continue.

Putting aside his irritation, Loki shifted his focus from Odin to Thor and Harry. "When I fell into the abyss, I drifted through the void for what felt like an eternity before I finally landed on a place called Sanctuary."

Frigga’s eyes softened with regret. "I tried to reach out to you, but you told me it wasn’t the right time to talk."

Natasha raised an eyebrow. "Sanctuary? What is that, some kind of space monastery?"

Thor looked at Natasha, puzzled. "A monastery? Why would there be a space monastery? No, it is an asteroid field near the Mortuus Star System,” Thor replied seriously. He then proceeded to press a few glowing runes on the table, activating the war room’s holographic display. A three-dimensional projection of an asteroid field shimmered into view, the rocks jagged and massive, swirling ominously around a dead-looking star. "It is better known as Chitauri Space. The domain of the Chitauri hive and their master."

Natasha stared at the hologram and let out a low whistle. "Okay, yeah. That doesn’t scream ‘safe haven’ to me."

"It isn’t," Frigga added, her voice steady but grim. "The Chitauri do not tolerate outsiders. When we discovered Loki had been seen there, we deduced he had gained control of their army."

Loki’s expression darkened as he turned back to Harry and Thor. "I was not simply a guest in Sanctuary. I was a prisoner under constant surveillance. My thoughts, my will... all of it was watched and manipulated. The sceptre’s influence poisoned my mind, twisting every grievance, every resentment, until I no longer saw Asgard as my home, only my enemy."

Loki paused, looking at the room before continuing. "I thought I was playing my own game, but in truth, I was nothing more than another pawn on the board."

The room fell silent for a moment, the weight of his admission settling over them.

Natasha finally broke the silence, exhaling through her nose. "Yeah... definitely not a monastery."

Harry’s eyes narrowed. “I’m assuming this ‘master’ of the Sanctuary was your mysterious benefactor?”

Loki gave a slow nod. “Yes. He was the one who gifted me the sceptre, taught me how to wield its influence, and granted me command over the Chitauri.”

Thor’s brows furrowed. “And for what purpose? Why did he send an army to attack Earth?”

Loki’s expression remained unreadable. “He did not care about Earth.” He glanced at each of them before settling his gaze on Odin. “He only wanted the Tesseract.”

Odin, who had seemed disinterested for most of Loki’s tale, suddenly became very still.

His one good eye locked onto Loki. “What did you just say?”

Loki arched an eyebrow. “He wanted the Tesseract.”

But Odin was no longer listening to Loki’s words. His grip on Gungnir tightened ever so slightly, and his posture shifted from composure to something more rigid.

“Was he a member of the Kree?” Odin demanded. “Or the Nova Corps?”

Loki blinked at the sudden interrogation. “No,” he said slowly, as if trying to understand Odin’s sudden change in demeanor. “He was neither.”

Odin’s frown deepened. The war room felt colder.

Loki hesitated for just a moment before continuing. “He wasn’t Nova Corps—I can tell you that much. And though his skin was a shade of purple, he wasn’t Kree either. His size alone made that clear. He was massive, towering over anyone I’ve ever met—easily eight feet tall, perhaps more. Broad. Powerful.”

Odin’s knuckles were white around his spear.

“What was his name?” Odin asked.

There was something different about his voice now. Loki tilted his head slightly, watching Odin with intrigue. He had never seen the Allfather react like this before.

Finally, he answered. “Thanos.”

The name hung in the air like a death sentence as Silence swallowed the room.

Then, as if on cue, Thor, Harry, and Natasha all turned toward him and asked in unison:

“Who’s Thanos?”

Loki exhaled, rolling his eyes. “Honestly? I don’t know.” He spread his hands in mock surrender. “All I know is that he commands the Chitauri and is the one who gave me the Sceptre.”

“That doesn’t tell us much,” Natasha said, frowning.

Odin, however, barely seemed to hear them. He was staring at the floor, his expression unreadable. Frigga turned to him, her voice quieter. “It wouldn’t be him, would it?”

Odin didn’t answer immediately. His gaze remained distant, as if he were sifting through centuries of memories. “It is possible,” he admitted. “Few beings in this universe understand the true nature of the Tesseract. And even fewer would dare seek it for themselves.”

“Mother, Father.” Thor’s voice cut through the tension. “Who are you talking about?”

Frigga turned to him. “Do you remember the head of the Titan Royal Family? A’Lars and his wife, Sui-San?”

Thor frowned, trying to recall. The names felt distant, like echoes of a history lesson he had barely paid attention to. “Their planet was on the southeastern edge of the Andromeda Galaxy,” Frigga added.

Thor shook his head. “I don’t—”

“They visited Asgard once,” Odin interrupted. “But we were never at war with their kind. Your memory is not at fault, Thor. You were too young to remember the last meeting with them.”

Odin tapped the table, and the floating hologram shifted. The asteroid field vanished, replaced by an image of a desolate planet. Its surface cracked, lifeless, the ruins of a once-great civilisation now reduced to dust. Alongside it, an image of a family appeared: a father, a mother, and two sons. The elder of the two was strikingly different from the rest—taller, bulkier, his skin a deep shade of purple.

Loki’s gaze lingered on the hologram before he let out a breath. “He might be a few centuries younger,” he muttered, “but that’s him. That’s Thanos.”

“Who were they, and what’s their story?” Natasha asked.

Frigga gestured toward the holographic image of the planet. “Titan was the homeworld of the Titans, a race of extraordinary beings. They were once highly advanced, both scientifically and physically.”

“Their physiology was unlike anything in the cosmos,” Odin added. “Titans possessed extensive lifespans, immense strength, and durability that rivalled even the greatest warriors of Asgard. Few weapons could harm them, perhaps only those forged from Uru.” His expression darkened. “Even if Asgard had waged war against them at our peak, victory would have been uncertain.”

Thor raised an eyebrow. “There are very few races in the Nine Realms or beyond that you would say that about.” He studied the projection of the ruined planet. “If they were so formidable, surely I would have heard of them.”

“You would have,” Odin admitted. “If they had ever been a threat to Asgard.”

Thor frowned at that answer. Before he could press further, Natasha had deduced the reason. “They went extinct, didn’t they?” she said.

Frigga nodded solemnly. “Yes.”

Thor’s brow furrowed. “When?”

“Approximately nine centuries ago,” Frigga replied, her voice tinged with sorrow.

“Give or take fifty years,” Odin added. His tone, however, lacked the same sentiment. “The Titans were a proud race, too proud to ask for aid, even when they needed it most. And I… saw no reason to intervene.”

Thor’s gaze snapped to his father. “You let them die?”

Odin met his son’s eyes without flinching. “I made a choice. A strategic one.” He gestured toward the flickering image of the ruined world. “The Titans were never our allies. Their strength was formidable. Had they prospered, they could have turned their attention to conquering the nine realms one day. But instead, their arrogance doomed them.”

“You could have saved them,” Thor pressed.

“I could have prolonged their suffering,” Odin corrected. “Overpopulation, starvation, civil war, it was their own doing. And once they fell to ruin, Asgard’s position in the cosmos became stronger.”

Silence stretched between them.

Thor clenched his fists at Odin’s response.

“If their race went extinct, then who is this Thanos character?” Harry asked.

Frigga’s expression darkened. “Thanos was the crown prince of the Titan royal family. Son of their last king, A’Lars. And as far as we know, the last surviving member of his kind.”

Thor frowned. “Then how did he survive?”

“My spies reported that Thanos was exiled before Titan fell,” Odin answered. “He was cast out when he proposed a radical solution to their overpopulation crisis.”

Harry and Natasha exchanged glances.

“What kind of solution?” Natasha asked, already suspecting the answer.

Odin’s expression did not change. “Mass genocide. Killing off half the population to restore balance.”

A cold silence filled the war room.

“His own people exiled him for it,” Frigga continued, her voice laced with quiet horror. “But that did not deter him. If anything, it cemented his beliefs.”

Odin nodded. “Stripped of his title and rejected by his people, Thanos abandoned his birthright and sought to prove his philosophy correct. When Titan finally collapsed under the weight of its own excess, it only validated him. He came to believe that the universe itself was on the same path, overpopulated, teetering toward ruin. And in his mind, the only way to save it was through balance.”

“Balance,” Thor echoed, his voice full of disdain.

Odin’s hands tightened around his staff. “He became a warlord, gathering power, amassing resources, and building an empire. He moved from world to world, conquering planets, and imposing his twisted sense of order by exterminating half of all life wherever he went.”

“He’s a fanatic,” Natasha muttered. “A mass murderer with a god complex.”

Odin exhaled slowly. “A conqueror with a cause. And one who has spent centuries refining his methods. The fear he instils is not without reason.”

“I can see why a person like that would want the Tesseract,” Harry said, his mind piecing together the implications. “With it in his hands, he could move his armies instantly. Instead of travelling across the void between stars, he could create wormholes anywhere he pleased, just like what happened over New York. No delays, no warning. No way to stop him before the attack begins.”

Thor’s fists clenched. “Then why have we not put a stop to this mad titan?” he demanded. “A butcher who slaughters half the lives on every world he conquers? Why has Asgard not struck him down?”

Odin remained unimpressed, tapping his fingers against his staff. “Because he is of no concern to us.”

Thor blinked, taken aback. “No concern?”

“He operates on the fringe of the universe,” Odin said dismissively. “He is nothing more than another warlord playing at power. There have been thousands like him, and there will be thousands more when he is gone.” He scoffed. “The might of Asgard has no need to waste itself on a gnat.”

Thor looked furious. “A gnat? He has razed entire civilisations! He is a threat to all life, and you would ignore him?”

“I would not squander our resources chasing shadows across the cosmos,” Odin shot back. “Asgard is not a vagrant mercenary force, nor do we claim to rule all of creation. Our duty is to the Nine Realms, not every insignificant world that cries out for a saviour.”

Thor opened his mouth to retort, but Odin cut him off.

“Enough,” Odin said, finality in his tone. “I will not be questioned for my decisions.”

A slow, mocking clap broke the tense silence.

“Always the monarch,” Loki mused, his voice laced with amusement and something sharper beneath. He leaned back against his chair, his gaze fixed on Odin. “So, tell me, All-Father, which was it?”

Odin’s eye flickered toward him. “Which was what?”

Loki smirked. “Did you ignore Thanos because he was beneath your notice, or because you wanted to see if he was right?”

The room went still.

Odin’s grip on his staff tightened just slightly.

Loki continued, eyes gleaming. “I know how you think. You do not tolerate threats to Asgard’s dominion. If Thanos had truly been a danger to your reign, you would have crushed him long ago.” He tilted his head. “So the only other reason you would allow a being like him to continue his campaign is because… you were curious.”

Frigga stiffened.

Thor’s face darkened. “Loki, enough.”

But Loki ignored him, his smile growing cold. “You let him roam free, slaughtering world after world, because you wanted to see what would happen. To see if his theory would prove true. If the fringe worlds would stabilise after his so-called ‘balance’ was imposed. After all, if he was correct, then why should Asgard intervene?” He let the words sink in. “It would only prove that his solution was necessary.”

“That is enough,” Odin warned, his voice heavy.

Loki chuckled, but there was no humor in it. A tense silence stretched between them, thick with unspoken truths. Thor looked between them, a frown creasing his brow.

“There are things we must do as kings,” Odin said, his voice carrying the weight of centuries. “When you take the throne, you will understand.”

Thor stood still. His fingers twitched, curling slightly before relaxing. His shoulders, always squared with the confidence of a warrior, sagged just a fraction. His jaw clenched. He wanted to retort but held it back in. Now was not the time, there were more important matters to discuss.

The tension in the room lingered, but Natasha wasn’t done yet. She had noticed something Odin and Frigga weren’t saying. Their concern wasn’t about Thanos himself. It was about something much bigger.

She crossed her arms, tilting her head slightly as she studied Odin and Frigga. "You’re not telling us everything," she stated.

Odin’s eye flickered toward her, a brief pause betraying his thoughts before he schooled his features. "And what, exactly, do you think we are hiding?"

Loki smirked, intrigued. "Oh, this should be good."

Natasha ignored him, her gaze locked on Odin. "A small-time galactic warlord tearing through the stars isn’t a major concern for you. You’ve ruled Asgard for millennia, seen empires rise and fall. But the second time Loki mentioned who wanted the Tesseract, you changed. You weren’t surprised about an attack on Earth. You were disturbed about why it happened."

Frigga’s lips pressed together, her silence confirming Natasha’s suspicions.

Natasha took a step forward, eyes sharp. "The Tesseract has been under Asgard’s protection for nearly five thousand years. As far as the universe was concerned, it was locked away somewhere here. So, how did Thanos know it wasn’t? How did he know it was on Earth?"

Natasha’s expression didn’t change, but internally, she locked onto the answer. "Thanos is over a thousand years old. If all he wanted was the Tesseract, he could have attacked Earth centuries ago. But he didn’t. He waited. He only made his move after Loki fell into his lap, right when the Bifrost was destroyed and Asgard was cut off from Midgard."

Silence.

Harry’s eyes widened slightly, realising what Natasha was getting at. "That’s not a coincidence."

Natasha nodded. "It means whoever Thanos is, he’s not just some warlord scouring the universe for powerful artefacts. He knew about the Tesseract, and he waited until Asgard couldn’t interfere before making his move. That means there’s something about it—it-something you know—that made him believe it was worth waiting for."

Odin’s jaw tightened, and Frigga let out a slow breath.

Natasha stepped back, satisfied. "So the real question isn’t just why Thanos wanted the Tesseract. It’s why now, and what makes it so damn important that a god-king looks worried for the first time in a thousand years."

Frigga smiled at Natasha’s keen deductions. “You are right. Thanos wanting the Tesseract is only part of the problem. The true danger lies in what he intends to do with it.”

Natasha didn’t like the way Frigga said true danger. It implied something much worse than what they had already discussed.

Thor frowned. “What do you mean?”

Frigga exchanged a glance with Odin before answering. “We are concerned that he seeks to complete the set—and that the timing is no coincidence.”

“Complete what set?” Thor pressed.

Loki folded his arms, intrigued. “Yes, what exactly is the Tesseract a part of?”

Odin tapped the table, and the image shifted. The hologram of Titan and the Tesseract faded, replaced by six shimmering stones, each glowing with an eerie brilliance—blue, yellow, green, red, purple, and orange. They pulsed with raw energy, their light casting a strange glow across the faces of everyone in the room.

Odin’s voice was heavy as he spoke. “Before the universe began, six singularities existed. Then came the Big Bang, forging them into concentrated crystals of unimaginable power, scattering them across the cosmos.”

As he spoke, the hologram shifted, depicting the chaotic birth of the universe, with six distinct energy sources forming into stones.

“Each stone represents a fundamental force of existence: Space, Mind, Reality, Power, Time, and Soul.” Odin’s voice was solemn, as if even speaking of them carried weight.

Harry, Natasha, and Thor watched in fascination as the hologram displayed each Stone manifesting its power, galaxies being shaped and torn apart, time itself distorting, reality twisting unnaturally.

Frigga continued where Odin left off. “Only beings of immense power can hope to wield a single Stone without suffering catastrophic consequences.”

“And if someone could wield all of them?” Harry asked.

Odin’s expression darkened. “Then they would possess absolute power.”

The room fell silent.

Frigga placed a hand on the table, and the image shifted again. The Tesseract appeared, but this time, it cracked open, revealing a brilliant blue gem at its core. “The Tesseract is merely a vessel that contains the Space Stone.”

Loki let out a quiet breath, eyes narrowing. “And the others?”

Odin’s expression hardened. “The locations of the remaining stones have been erased from history. It would take any individual a considerable amount of resources to locate them all.”

Thor, still reeling from the weight of this revelation, clenched his fists. “Then shouldn’t we be searching for them? If they are this dangerous, we should secure them before Thanos or anyone else can.”

Odin shook his head. “You are thinking like a warrior, my son. But as a king, you must understand, hoarding such power would paint a target upon Asgard that even we could not withstand. If the universe knew we held them, we would face an onslaught unlike any before.”

Thor looked unconvinced, but before he could argue, Frigga continued. “For the longest time, it was believed that the Reality Stone had been destroyed. But now, it has resurfaced.”

Thor frowned. “Where?”

Frigga met his gaze, her voice grave. “Inside Jane Foster.”

The room fell silent.

Thor’s eyes widened in shock, while Harry and Natasha exchanged looks of deep concern. Even Loki seemed caught off guard.

“This Convergence,” Odin stated, “is the first time in millennia that the Reality Stone has been exposed. My father, Bor, claimed to have destroyed it, after defeating the Dark Elves. It should never have been found… yet here we are.” Odin exhaled, the weight of the situation pressing down on him. “With its resurfacing, the question must be asked, who all are searching for them? And for what purpose?”

“It might be Thanos,” Natasha murmured.

“We cannot say for certain,” Odin admitted. “Perhaps he only desired the Tesseract, or perhaps he seeks all of the Stones. If he succeeds, we do not know what horrors he could unleash upon the universe.”

“Should we not bring him to justice?” Thor argued. “For what he did to Loki, for what he did to Earth? If we capture him now, whatever his plans may be, they will never come to pass.”

Odin exhaled grimly. “Our forces are not strong enough to wage war against Thanos. Not after the chaos in the Nine Realms. Not after the attack on Asgard.”

Thor’s grip tightened around Mjolnir. “Then I will go myself.”

The words rang through the chamber with conviction.

But it wasn’t Odin who stopped him.

“Don’t be a fool.”

Loki’s voice, for once, held no mockery—only warning.

Thor turned to him, surprised.

“Do not underestimate him,” Loki continued, his tone heavier than Thor had ever heard it. “You are strong. But Thanos is stronger. From what I have seen, even Odin would struggle against him.”

The room fell silent.

Even Odin did not refute Loki’s claim.

For the first time, Thor felt it—the weight of the enemy looming over them. Not a warlord, not a conqueror, but something worse. A storm gathering at the edges of the universe, waiting to strike.

No one spoke.

Because for the first time, Asgard truly had no answer.