Walking was hard.
Not physically — though my ribs reminded me with every breath, and my left shoulder throbbed with a dull ache. Hard mentally. Every step across the asteroid's gray dust dragged up new memories that weren't mine.
That's how Thor laughed when we were children.
That's how Idunn's apples smelled in Asgard's gardens.
That's how Frigga held my hands when she taught me my first spell.
I wasn't stumbling over rocks — I was stumbling over someone else's life, which had now become mine.
Enough, I ordered myself. Sentiment later. Right now — survival.
The junkyard stretched to the horizon and probably beyond it. Wrecks of ships of every shape and size piled into bizarre towers: needle-sharp fighters; bloated freighter carcasses; something organic, coated in dried slime. Entire civilizations had dumped their trash here. Or had been dumped here — judging by melted armor plating and stains I preferred to think were rust.
Sanctuary sector, the inner voice reminded me again. Thanos gathers resources here for his armies.
Useful. So his bases were nearby. Ships. Chitauri.
And, more importantly — supplies.
Loki's body was durable. Asgardians could go weeks without food or water; Jotun could go even longer. But "could" didn't mean "pleasant." Regeneration needed energy. Recovering magical reserves needed energy. And energy came from—
Stop.
I froze, listening.
Loki's memory — the real Loki's — included centuries of training. Combat, magic, diplomacy. Somewhere in that storm of recollections were skills I hadn't fully realized yet.
One of them triggered on its own.
Hearing.
Not human hearing. Not even Asgardian. Something in between — sharpened by adrenaline, honed by centuries of hunting across nine worlds.
A rustle. Metallic. Rhythmic. Too even to be natural.
A patrol.
I slid behind the hulking skeleton of a wrecked cruiser before I even thought about it. The body moved on its own — muscle memory hammered in by millennia of practice. Back pressed to cold metal, breathing slowed, every muscle ready to spring.
It was… strange. I'd never been a fighter. At most, school scuffles — and those ended with a broken nose (mine) and a call to my parents. And now this body knew how to hide, how to move, how to kill.
I could only hope that knowledge wouldn't fail when it mattered.
The patrol appeared from behind a heap of debris thirty seconds later.
Chitauri.
In the films they looked like… cannon fodder. Gray creatures with elongated skulls that the Avengers mowed down by the dozen. Up close, the impression was different.
There were four of them. Bipedal, but clearly not humanoid — joints bent at the wrong angles, and what I'd taken for armor was chitin. Biomechanical symbiotes, I recalled. Technology and organic matter fused into one. In their hands — something like spears, but with energy tips that flickered blue.
And they were walking straight toward me.
Scent? Scanners? Or just chance?
Didn't matter. The result was the same.
I measured my odds.
Physically, I was stronger than any of them — even now, injured and drained. Asgardian physiology plus Jotun heritage equaled a being that could tear steel bare-handed. But four against one, armed against unarmed, when every sharp movement sent pain through my ribs…
Magic, I thought. I need magic.
My reserves were nearly empty. But "nearly" wasn't "completely."
I reached for that pathetic spark still smoldering inside. Focused on an image. On intent.
An illusion. The simplest kind. Don't change reality — change perception.
Loki's memory supplied the technique. Seidr — the "women's magic," as Asgardian warriors sneered. The art of deception, not destruction.
Perfect for me.
I exhaled — and became invisible.
Not truly. Light still reflected off my body. But the mind of anyone looking my way simply refused to notice me. Their gaze slid past, like water over glass.
The Chitauri passed within three meters.
I didn't breathe. Not because the illusion required it — I just couldn't force myself to inhale.
One of them stopped. Turned its ugly head, sniffing.
Damn it.
The illusion fooled sight. Not smell.
The creature hissed something in a language I didn't understand — even though Loki's memory held the Universal Tongue, the Chitauri used their own dialect. The other three pivoted, raising their spears.
Well then.
Plan B.
I struck first.
Not because I was brave — because surprise was my only advantage. The illusion broke the instant I moved, but by then my fist had already slammed into the nearest Chitauri's throat.
Crunch.
The creature flew back, clutching at crumpled chitin. I didn't stop to see if it was dead — I just turned on the second.
The body moved faster than thought. Dodge the spear — the energy tip seared my cheek, but missed. Grab the shaft, yank it in, elbow smash into what passed for a face.
Hard, a detached part of me noted. The ribs are very unhappy.
The third Chitauri sprang at my side. I didn't have time to evade — claws tore across my flank, four deep furrows through Asgardian armor (where did that come from? memory: the prince's standard attire, self-repairing, but slowly).
Pain.
Real, bright, scorching.
And with the pain — rage.
Not my rage. Loki's rage. A thousand years in Thor's shadow, a thousand years of mockery and condescension, a thousand years of being second — it all burst out like water through a broken dam.
I let it happen.
Cold.
It surged from within — not like before, not a careful experiment, but an explosion. My skin turned blue in a heartbeat, my eyes filled with red (I couldn't see it, but I knew), and the temperature around me dropped so sharply that the Chitauri recoiled, hissing.
I seized the nearest one by the throat.
Its chitin crackled as frost spread over it. The thing thrashed, trying to break free, but my fingers tightened — tightened until what lay beneath them became brittle as glass.
Crunch.
The body dropped.
Two remained. One was still wheezing on the ground, clutching its crushed throat. The other — intact — stumbled backward, clearly deciding what was worse: me or punishment for failing its mission.
I didn't let it choose.
Ice. I reached for the cold inside, drove it outward into my hand, giving it shape—
This time it was better. Not an icicle — a blade. Crooked, rough, but sharp.
The Chitauri tried to raise its spear.
I threw the blade.
It punched into the creature's eye socket, went through, and stuck with a wet, unpleasant sound. The Chitauri jerked once and went still.
Silence.
I stood among four corpses, breathing hard, feeling blood — mine, dark, almost black under distant starlight — running down my side.
Well, I thought. That was… informative.
Lesson one: Loki's body remembers how to fight. Even if my mind can't keep up, the muscles know what to do.
Lesson two: Jotun heritage isn't just protection from cold. It's a weapon. Crude, draining, but damn effective.
Lesson three: I just killed four sapient beings.
The thought arrived late, like thunder after lightning. I looked at my hands — the blue was already fading, my skin returning to its normal (for Loki) tone.
I am a killer.
Strangely, there was no panic. No disgust. Only a cold understanding of the fact.
They were enemies. They would have killed me. It was self-defense.
Rationalization? Maybe. Right now, I didn't care.
I crouched beside the nearest corpse and began searching it.
The loot was meager.
Energy spears — two, still functional. They looked like a hybrid of polearm and blaster: you could stab, you could shoot. The power source was unfamiliar, but it glowed, so it had charge.
Some kind of communicator — a small disk fused to one Chitauri's chitin. I tore it off with a chunk of flesh attached (not a pleasant sensation) and shoved it into a pocket. It might be useful. Or it might broadcast my location. Paranoia was an isekai's best friend.
No med kit. No bandages. Nothing. The Chitauri apparently didn't bother with field medicine. Logical — they were expendable material for Thanos.
Like me, I thought. In his plan.
The wound on my side was already closing. Slowly, painfully, but it was happening. Asgardian regeneration plus Jotun endurance. In a couple of hours there would be only scars.
If I had a couple of hours.
The patrol wouldn't come back — but their absence would be noticed. Sooner or later, others would arrive. More of them. With support.
I had to move.
I picked up one spear (the second I strapped across my back — awkward, but better than nothing) and headed deeper into the junkyard. Away from the fight. Away from any pursuit.
Toward what?
I didn't know. But staying put meant death.
After an hour (or two? or three? time without a sun was a relative concept) I found shelter.
A cargo ship. Big, heavy, shaped like a pregnant whale with thrusters. The hull was punctured in several places, but one compartment had kept something like airtight integrity. Inside there was atmosphere (stale, smelling of machine oil and something organic) and even working emergency lights.
Home, sweet home.
I sealed the door from the inside — primitive, simply jamming the mechanism with a spear — and let myself slide down the wall.
Day's results, I summarized. Woke up in Loki's body. Survived the fall through the Abyss. Killed four aliens. Found temporary shelter.
Not bad for day one.
A laugh escaped me — dry, cracked. Hysteria? Possibly. I'd earned it.
But hysteria was a luxury. And I didn't have luxuries.
I closed my eyes and reached for Loki's memory. Not the emotions — the knowledge. Somewhere in those millennia of recollections was information about Thanos. About the Chitauri. About the Scepter and the Infinity Stones.
Knowledge is power, I thought. And I need a lot of power.
Thanos.
The name surfaced with images. A purple titan. Eyes with nothing human in them (naturally — he wasn't human). A voice — low, almost gentle, that made you want to howl.
Loki's memory hadn't met him before. But it had heard of him. Stories, legends, warnings.
The Mad Titan. The Dark Lord. The one who destroyed Zen-Whober and a hundred other worlds. The one who sought the Infinity Stones to rewrite reality itself.
In the films, his goal was almost noble — to save the universe from overpopulation. Brutal, but logical (from his perspective).
Here… here I wasn't sure.
What does it matter, I cut myself off. Noble goal or not — he'll kill me if I'm not useful. And he'll kill me when I stop being useful.
So I needed to become indispensable.
And then — find a way to escape.
The second hour (third? fourth?) I spent on meditation.
Not the meditation from yoga movies — crossed legs and mantras. Seidr meditation was different. A dive inward, into the layers of consciousness where magic lived.
My reserves were recovering. Slowly, drop by drop, but recovering. The fall through the Abyss had burned them nearly to nothing, but nearly was the key word. The source hadn't been destroyed. Just drained.
Like a battery after a long trip, I thought in familiar terms. It needs time to recharge.
I didn't have time. But I didn't have alternatives either.
While the body recovered, the mind worked.
What do I know about what comes next?
Thanos will find me. Sooner rather than later. A patrol vanished — searches would start. The Abyss spits out all sorts of things, but living things are rare. They'll look for me.
When they find me — two options. Either they kill me on the spot (unlikely: Thanos is pragmatic, and an Asgardian prince is a valuable asset). Or they drag me to the boss.
And the boss will have the Other.
The Other. Thanos's right hand. A telepath, commander of the Chitauri. The one who, in canon, broke Loki.
Broke, I repeated. Mentally violated. Turned inside out and assembled again into a convenient configuration.
I wasn't going to allow that.
But how? Loki's mental defenses were… average. By Asgardian standards. Frigga taught the basics, but he never specialized in shielding. Too confident. Too convinced of his own superiority.
Idiot.
Luckily, I had an advantage the original didn't.
I knew the attack was coming.
Forewarned meant forearmed. While I had time — I had to build fortifications.
I sank back into meditation, this time with a specific goal.
A human mind is chaos. Memories, emotions, instincts — everything piled together like files on the desktop of a careless user.
A mage's mind should be structure.
So I began to build.
A mind palace. The concept wasn't new — it showed up in books, films, even BBC's Sherlock. Visualizing the mind as a space where information is stored in order.
My visualization was… specific.
A server room.
Long rows of racks, lights blinking. The hum of air conditioners. The smell of ozone and plastic. A place I knew better than any other — my job, my life, my home for the last seven years.
At the center — the main terminal. Root access. My true self.
Around it — the periphery. Folders of memories (Earth and Asgard). Emotional processes. Reaction protocols.
And outside — a firewall.
I built it carefully, layer by layer. Not a wall — walls can be breached. A labyrinth. Endless, shifting, full of false routes and dead ends.
If the Other wanted to reach my core — he'd have to wade through that.
It wouldn't stop him. I wasn't an idiot — a millennia-old telepath against a novice who learned magic existed an hour ago. But it would slow him down. Buy time. Create the illusion of resistance.
And illusions were my specialty.
Now — my specialty.
I felt the alarm before I heard it.
Not sound — vibration. Heavy footsteps outside the ship. Many footsteps.
I opened my eyes.
Faster than I'd expected.
But not faster than I'd feared.
I rose, ignoring the body's protest. Picked up the spear. Checked the second one on my back.
The compartment door shuddered under a blow.
Well then, I thought. Time to meet my new employer.
Loki's mask — the arrogant, broken, revenge-hungry prince — settled over my face like a second skin.
I was ready.
Almost.