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Chapter 89
Technomancer in MCU
Asgard
–Toby Mathers–
Wearing the fancy robes that were provided to him by the scared maids assigned to him, he looked in the mirror for the nth time.
And as usual, his face took on an ugly snarl as all he could see in his reflection was his demon form.
His ugly, disgusting Demon Form.
Someone who liked to rule over others, liked to toy with beings beneath and loved to destroy someone instead of merely defeating them.
That person was someone who managed to rule over an entire dimension with his wits and cruelty.
…But, he was not who he once was.
Not the person he wanted to become. He still had blurry images of the time with Ed, back when all they had to worry about was studying for a job.
God, he was so naive back then. Thinking that just studying without networking would get him a good job. Ed, on the other hand, had his life sorted out for him, even then.
When the two of them were presented with the option to go to an entirely new universe, he was pretty psyched up because he was of the mind that he could finally escape his boring life back then.
Little did his past self know what hell, literal and metaphorical, awaited him when he was blasted off from the path that he and Ed were taking.
For a long time, he actually resented Ed when he got to Earth and saw that Ed had been transported to the planet safe and secure, along with the trusty partner that was supposed to help them grow instead of just becoming the partner of Ed alone.
From day one, he could sense Alfred’s resentment towards him and even now, among the ocean of emotions he could pick from Asgard, Alfred’s resentment was something that was a constant for him.
Maybe, he should have stayed away from them after freeing himself from his prison.
It's not as if he could not understand Alfred’s concern about him just going ballistic, especially since they just recently got an idea of his power if he were to go all out, disregarding any concerns about anybody being nearby.
Looking at the mirror, he tried to adjust his sleeves again only for the reflection to come back again. Frustrated, he just punched the mirror only for his fist to bounce back immediately, making him step back in shock.
Confused, he looked at the mirror, only to see a golden magic circle in front of the mirror that reflected the force of his punch back to him.
“You know, it is considered a bad omen if a mirror bearing your reflection is destroyed by yourself-” A voice spoke from behind him.
He turned around, only to see Frigga standing at the door with her palm facing the moor which had an identical miniature magic circle as the one which was on the mirror.
”- and whatever opinion we might have regarding your kind, you are still one of our guests and no guests under the House of Odin would ever be harmed on Asgard. That is one of the covenants that everyone in the house of Odin swears by.”
Clearing his throat, he ran his hand through his head and said.
“I am sorry you had to see that. Has the banquet already begun?”
She dispelled the magic circle and lowered her hand slowly, “Yes, Asgardian Banquets are unique as in they have no specific start and end timings. They don’t stop for anyone, not even their King. It is tradition and as such, you can join in anytime you want. If you are not comfortable and would like to discuss what just happened, we can do that too.”
He coughed uncomfortably at the offer.
He had never been offered a sympathetic ear when he was but a pathetic weakling back in the hellworld with nothing to offer to anyone and once he began rising in prominence, all the offers felt disgustingly fake to him anyway so he never bothered with them.
But now?
He could literally feel the sincerity with which Frigga had offered an ear to listen to him listing away his troubles.
Suddenly, without warning, his senses tingled as an energy that was a complete antithesis to his own flooded the room. His neck snapped to meet Frigga’s glowing blue ones as she said, “There, now no one can hear us talking, not even my husband.”
She lowered her arms and cast a spell of some sort that lightly nudged his mindscape as if asking for permission to access it.
Normally, his automatic defenses would have kicked in and obliterated such an attempt without even conscious input from his side but he had forgotten one thing.
He had built almost all aspects of his mental defenses with intent in mind. The intent of Frigga’s spell was so unique that it made his defenses ignore it. The only reason he would have been alerted to it was due to the fact that the spell seemed to be designed for it.
Apprehensive of her intentions but trusting his powers since that was what allowed him to survive for so long, he opened up a portion of his mindscape and allowed the tendril of magic to enter his mind, ready to eviscerate it the moment it tried to do anything fishy.
In the real world, outside his mindscape, Frigga smiled encouragingly at him as her spell took effect and every first effect of it unconsciously relaxed him more than he would care to admit.
Soon, the room that was flooded with Frigga’s magic transformed to resemble the park he and Ed used to visit when they wanted to “touch grass” and get out of their dorms for a change.
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It was nothing special. A couple of swings and some gym equipment lying around but it was their place. The place where they could go after hours, with cheap ramen, to escape from the heavy-duty lifestyle they both led and to unwind the stress they had ramped up.
“I am surprised. I thought your most happy place would be something of grand opulence but I guess, you can’t judge a book by its cover. I believe that is a popular saying in Midgard?” Frigga said as she looked around at the real-life manifestation of his happy place in front of him.
He would die before admitting it but his eyes glistened with tears as Frigga’s spell allowed him to relive a cherished memory he didn’t even know he had forgotten.
Taking a deep breath, he began, “What would you like to know?”
Frigga smiled and sat down on one of the swings and asked him to take the one next to her, “Come, let’s start with why you felt the need to destroy the mirror. I assume that the poor mirror had no fault of its own for you to try to destroy it with such ferocity?”
He chuckled bitterly and sat on the swing next to her, his musculature allowing him to just barely fit into it but the joy he got from using the swing was many times more than the discomfort he felt from the chains digging into his skin.
Before he could speak though, the chains became lighter as the swing widened to allow his body to properly fit in.
He looked towards Frigga only for her to chuckle and reply.
“Just because we are relieving a memory does not mean that we have to make it accurate. Now, where were we?”
He nodded and took a deep breath, telling her about his view of himself and how much he felt he had strayed away from the person he once was.
The person he wanted to become. The person he hoped everybody looked up to as inspiration and not as an entity of fear.
As the session was ongoing, the scenery around him allowing him to truly relax and open up, he sensed something banging on the barrier he had cast on his room.
His eyes narrowed as he felt the person outside being one of extreme darkness affinity. Before he could warn Frigga, there was a huge disturbance in the magic outside the palace as multiple huge masses of darkness congregated right in front of his barrier.
XxxxxxxX
A few hours before the attack, on Earth—
–Jane Foster–
“Come on, Jane. You know he has left. It has been almost 3 years since anybody last saw him. We even tried asking that Alfred bot and he also told us about the Rainbow thingy being rebuilt already and he still hasn't visited you or even sent a letter or whatever the Asgardian equivalent of that is.” Darcy told her for the umpteenth time as she kept on working on the code in front of her.
Taking a deep breath, she stopped coding and looked at Darcy with a deadpan gaze, “Why don’t you go and take care of the one responsibility I gave you, taking care of the new intern?”
Darcy shrank back at the heat in her words and she winced internally but the words were already said so she kept on looking at her with a stern face, hoping that she would just leave her alone.
“Fine,” Darcy pouted and left the room, probably to search for the new intern who could not be found at the same place he was left at.
As soon as the door slammed behind Darcy, she slumped as she sighed in resignation. It was not as if she could not realise the meaning behind Darcy’s words.
Everything AlfredGPT had told her had turned out to be true. It was even monumental in helping her research advance leaps and bounds ahead of her peers, not that he had many of those since her field was something that was literally invented by herself.
The thought of giving up her research did come up once or twice in her mind but what kind of scientist would she be if she gave up in front of a little emotional adversity?
So, as she was about to go get herself a fresh pot of coffee, a red mist appeared in front of her, and before she even had a chance to scream, the mist swallowed her, and she was thrown on an extremely uneven rocky surface.
It hurt but the pain kept her awake.
Looking at the rocky desolate surface in front of her, she felt astonished at the fact that she could still breathe in what was clearly another planet. She came to that conclusion due to the existence of the black sun on the horizon.
Taking a few steps forward, she could feel a dark desolate aura behind and in front of her. Not knowing what to do, she took a deep breath and walked in a random direction she picked, not knowing which road led to where.
In hindsight, the extreme calmness she exhibited even in the face of being thrown on another planet with literally no one around should have warned her about the sheer wrongness of that place but it was as if she was being guided by an unseen force to do its bidding.
As if she was possessed, she kept following a path of rocks that appeared for her and soon enough, the road came to an end. The path ended when a huge grey rock was placed at its end. The rock seemed normal and unassuming but just as she was about to debate the intelligence of going forward towards exploring an exoplanet, the stone began glowing golden.
Scrambling back from the phenomenon happening in front of her, she tripped on some of the little rocks in her path and fell down as the golden light in front of her seemed to reach a crescendo of its own.
With a roar that seemed to be full of so much malevolence, the golden light in front of her bubbled until it fell apart to reveal something dark red glowing inside.
Fully captivated by the eerie red glow, she extended her hand towards the glowing red liquid that was slowly floating towards her hand as if a snake trying to slither its way up a tree branch.
At the last moment though, an old majestic voice spoke that resounded like a gong in her ears as a golden glow encased the liquid that was trying to escape, encapsulating it once again.
While it did shake her from the trance she was under, her hand was stuck in the same position and no matter what she did, she could not move her hand away from the red liquid.
As she pulled her wrist back with her other arm, she could do nothing but watch in enchanted horror as the red liquid seemed to be winning the fight and slowly, the liquid began seeping into her skin.
She screamed in terror and closed her eyes but the terrible feeling she expected never came. Instead, she could see the golden glow now surrounding her entire left arm, extending back to her ribcage.
Fascinated by the golden glow, she touched it and as if empowered by her, the glow began dimming and glowing back in a rhythmic motion, as if it was a beating heart itself.
Patting her chest, she took in deep breaths as she broke out into a sweat as the implications of what just happened and how much worse could have happened to her, began to set it.
Hyperventilating, she began to think about all the exercises she had read about that could help if one had a panic attack. Trying to think of something else didn’t help.
Taking deep breaths didn’t help.
Imagining her happy place did not help since her happy place was in the arms of Thor and that just put her in a worse mood.
Unbeknownst to her, the red mist that was held tightly within the golden energy cocoon began pulsing in response to her thoughts.
The golden energy could have stopped it but as if it had a semblance of the sentience of its own, it recognised the line of action that the red energy was taking so it allowed the red mist to exert its influence on the surrounding, warping it slightly.
The red mist began pulsing in higher frequencies, warping the surroundings around Jane more and more until the very area Jane was standing in began blurring as if it was being erased from the scenery.
Jane, unaware of all of the changes happening around and in her body, doubled over in pain as the red mist, with the help of the golden energy, began siphoning off a part of Jane’s life force to fuel the activity it was about to do.
Gasping in pain, Jane opened her eyes only to see the world with a red-tinted gaze and before she could process anything, she was whisked away from the dead realm, leaving naught but ash in the spot she was standing in.
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Word Count - 2524
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