Home | Loki [Book Two]

Chapter Thirteen

"How?"

"Can you stand guard for a moment?"

"Loki, what are you planning?"

"Nothing of great importance."

"If you say so." I stood by the door as Loki flashed green momentarily. Suddenly, I could hear the distant sounds of a fight and, more clearly, the words frequently spoken at an Asgardian funeral. 

I had heard that Loki could do this, but I'd never actually had proof before now. What he was doing was folding space in on itself within a small area to communicate. If it was done wrong, reality could unravel, so it was considered a forbidden act of magic, buried long ago with the few people who remembered after being forbidden. 

"I've placed a large wager against you," Loki was saying to Thor. "Don't let me down." They must be talking about the fight, I thought. I hoped this would work. 

"You didn't tell me you could do that," I reprimanded when Loki ended the conversation. 

"Do what?"

"Communicate through universe manipulation."

"You taught me."

"I can't do that!"

"There's a lot you don't know you can do, love."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"There are hundreds of years of memories that you don't know about yet," Loki said as he closed the window I had opened earlier. 

"So?"

"You've traveled the universe. There are probably some tricks you've forgotten."

"You're saying that I can communicate through universe manipulation?"

"Yes."

A bored knock came to the door. "The Grandmaster wishes that you be escorted to the suite," Topaz said through the door.

"Don't forget your shoes," Loki reminded me as he made his way to the door. 

"Thanks." Grudgingly, I slipped on the uncomfortable footwear and followed Loki out the door, down an elevator, through a series of twists and turns, up a different elevator, and out onto a huge suite that overlooked a stadium that looked like it belonged in first century Rome.

"Ooh! My special guests!" The Grandmaster said, getting up from his front-row seat. "Welcome to the best seat in the house."

It took every ounce of my self-restraint to not roll my eyes. 

"The preliminary fights will begin soon, but then we have my champion against your brother, or whatever the story is there," he said to Loki, who nodded and tried to hide his annoyance. "In the meantime, enjoy yourselves!"

"He's interesting, isn't he?" I said to Loki as the Grandmaster walked away.

"That's one word for it. Drinks?" He offered me a glass filled with a champagne-looking liquid.

"That is... not what I expected," I said after taking a sip.

"Good or bad?"

"Not sure, but it's alcohol, and that's what I need right now."

The first battle was between a creature made of rocks and some kind of fur-covered hyena-humanoid thing. It ended relatively quickly, but still riled up the crowd enough that the next fight was mostly forgotten in the midst of everyone's opinions on the previous. Personally, I knew from the start that the hyena never stood a chance. Compared to the other creature, he was like a feather against a diamond. 

There was a short intermission to clean the battlefield before the champion battle, so I took the opportunity to discuss the plan with Loki while the Grandmaster was absent from the scene. 

"This should be interesting," Loki said to me.

"If by interesting you mean quick. Mjolnir should make quick work of whoever the competition is."

"That's why it will be interesting." He sat down on the couch that looked out over the stadium. "His hammer was destroyed."

"What? How?"

"He didn't give me all the details, but apparently he ran into some complications on his way to Sakaar and Mjolnir shattered into about a million pieces."

"Wow! Look at all of you." The Grandmaster had projected himself to sixty feet tall in the middle of the stadium. 

"Here we go," I said. 

"Lord of Thunder!" he was saying. "Watch out for his fingers; they make sparks."

"What is that about?" I asked. 

"God of lightning," Loki explained. 

"Ah."

I'd missed the announcement, but the huge door to one side had begun to open, revealing a huge green monster I recognized. 

The Hulk was on Sakaar.