"Loki," Malekith hissed, his voice a low, dangerous growl. He stared at Hela, whose power was visibly swelling with every passing second she stood on Asgardian soil. "You neglected to mention that Odin had another child. Another enemy of this magnitude."
The accusation hung in the air, thick with menace. This trickster god was proving to be profoundly unreliable.
"This is the first I'm hearing of it myself," Loki replied, his tone a perfect blend of truth and lie. He'd only learned Hela's name a few weeks prior, but his shock at her existence was entirely genuine.
A flicker of irritation crossed Hela's regal features. These two insects still had not knelt. She did not offer a second chance. With a flick of her wrist, a new blade of obsidian death shot toward them.
CLANG!
A flash of sparks erupted as the Cursed warrior, Kurse, surged from behind Malekith, swatting Hela's projectile aside with a single, brutal punch. His strength was monstrous, dwarfing even that of Thor. This was the being who, in another timeline, could only be stopped by a singularity grenade that ripped apart reality itself.
"Kill her, Kurse," Malekith ordered, his voice devoid of emotion. He felt no particular sentiment about the life or death of Odin's firstborn. In fact, a deep well of resentment bubbled within him; Hela had murdered the one man who could reveal the Aether's location. For that alone, he wanted to see her torn limb from limb.
Kurse charged, a living siege engine of muscle and rage. The contrast was almost comical—the hulking, beast-like warrior against Hela's slender, elegant form. It was a collision of beauty and the beast, but the disparity in raw, physical strength was just as stark.
In the first exchange, Kurse simply overpowered her. His massive, stone-like palm clamped around Hela's head, and he slammed her into the palace wall with enough force to shatter the ancient stone. He didn't stop there, dragging her through the breach and hurling her small body across the courtyard. She skipped across the ground like a stone on water, carving a dozen craters before finally crashing into a distant palace spire.
The towering structure groaned, its spine broken by the human cannonball, and collapsed into a mountain of dust and rubble, burying Hela beneath it.
Loki's scalp prickled with raw fear. The sheer violence of the display was staggering. It was even worse than the beating he'd taken from Four Arms. Did he just kill my sister?
Despite having known this problematic old woman for all of five minutes, he couldn't help but feel a sliver of concern. The brute force of the Cursed warrior was terrifying. He doubted even Thor could have withstood such an onslaught. Loki knew with absolute certainty that he could not. It would have been an instant, messy death.
"Hmph." Malekith glanced contemptuously at the plume of dust where Hela had vanished. Just another one of Odin's children. A woman barely out of her millennia-long imprisonment. He paid her no mind. "To the Vault. I will find the Aether myself."
He turned to leave, but a deep, grinding roar from beneath the earth stopped him. The ground began to shake violently. The entire palace trembled, its carved murals and painted friezes cracking and falling. Then came a sound like mountains being dragged in chains. Malekith slowly turned his head back toward the wreckage.
BOOM!
The very ground of Asgard was torn asunder.
A black blade of impossible size, large enough to cleave the heavens, erupted from the depths, stabbing upward toward the sky like a new, dark mountain. And standing atop it, wreathed in shadow and fury, was Hela. Her Crown of Death seemed to burn brighter, her eyes glowing with a mad, bloodthirsty light.
"What in the Hel—" Loki stammered, so frightened he felt he might shed his own skin. If she brought that sword down, it wouldn't just be him; the entire palace would be split in two. The urge to simply vanish, to slip away into the shadows, was almost overwhelming.
Kurse, however, felt no fear. Facing the mountain-sized blade, he launched himself toward Hela without a flicker of hesitation.
Hela stood upon her speeding weapon as if it were a chariot, the wind whipping her cloak behind her. Her face was a mask of ecstatic madness. "Come, you rats of the dark! The war for Asgard never ends!"
She raised an arm, and from her shadow, countless more blades erupted, rising from the ground like a forest of thorns. They shot upward, piercing the castle from below, turning the magnificent structure into a giant, bleeding hedgehog. One of the massive black thorns shot past Loki's face, so close he felt the cold draft of its passing. If it had hit him, it would have been more than a simple impalement.
"Lord Malekith..." Loki's voice trembled. This was no longer a game. Even if this was all part of his father's grand stage play, he was an actor who was beginning to fear for his life. Stage accidents happen.
Malekith's expression was equally grim. He had not anticipated this level of power. From his vantage point, he watched Hela and Kurse engage in a frantic battle amidst the forest of black blades, the standing spires of obsidian serving as their personal, deadly playground.
Kurse was still dominant. Even after the giant blade had carved a massive, bleeding gash across his torso, revealing bone and viscera, he pressed his attack, his raw strength suppressing Hela.
"Is that woman immortal?" Malekith frowned, watching the impossible fight. Hela had already sustained countless injuries that would have killed any other being. Kurse had pierced her abdomen, her chest, even her brain, but after a brief grimace of pain, she would rip the blade out herself and retaliate with renewed ferocity.
"I fear her power is tied to Asgard itself," Loki surmised, his mind racing. He might not be Odin's biological son, but he was a prince, and he understood the fundamental magics of his home. "As long as she is here, her power will only grow stronger. We must eliminate her, and quickly!"
Hela, too, felt that something was amiss. The flow of divine power from Asgard felt… incomplete. It was as if a portion of her strength was being siphoned away before it could reach her. Has part of my power been stolen?
Kurse ripped her open again, and she was kicked away, her own intestines spilling onto the ground. Ignoring the grievous wound, she stuffed her organs back inside her body, rose to her feet, and commanded a new volley of blades to assault the Cursed warrior. Simultaneously, Dark Elf soldiers began scrambling up the obsidian spires, surrounding her, adding their numbers to the fight. The pressure was mounting. She knew she would eventually win, but it would take far too long.
She couldn't let Malekith accomplish his goal, whatever it was. I need my army of the dead!
A new light entered her eyes. With a wave of her hand, she unleashed a fan of hundreds of death blades, scything through thousands of the climbing elves. Then she focused on Kurse. To deal with a monster like him, she needed overwhelming power.
Gathering her divine energy, she manifested another blade as massive as a mountain, a black spear of death that she plunged downward, pinning the Cursed warrior beneath hundreds of thousands of tons of solid darkness. It wouldn't hold him for long. She needed to ignite the Eternal Flame, to call forth her invincible Fenris Wolf and her legions of the dead. She turned and strode toward Odin's Vault.
Loki and Malekith were already there.
Malekith was frantic. Realizing that Hela was effectively invincible on Asgard, he had abandoned any thought of a direct confrontation. Why waste time on a foe he couldn't kill unless he destroyed the entire realm? His only course was to find the Aether, plunge all Nine Realms into eternal darkness, and sever Asgard from its power source. Only then could a mortal Hela be dealt with.
The treasure vault was untouched by the battle, a silent chamber of cosmic artifacts. But it was also empty of what he sought. There was no sign of the Aether, no trace of the powerful magic that would be needed to conceal it.
In a fit of rage, Malekith grabbed Loki by the collar, lifting him into the air. "Where is my Aether?!"
"I have no idea!" Loki gasped. "I told you, it wasn't here!"
Malekith knew he was merely venting his frustration. As he let Loki fall to the floor, crisp footsteps echoed in the vast chamber. Hela emerged from the darkness, a ferocious smile playing on her lips.
"Find what you were looking for, bugs?" she asked, her gait a graceful, predatory sway. In her eyes, they were already dead.
"You are merely Odin's daughter, yet you carry yourself with such arrogance," Malekith said, showing no fear. He calmly turned to face her, his right hand gripping the hilt of his blade, his left secretly clutching one of his reality-bending bombs. He had one last resort: the residual Aether energy still lingering in his own body. It would be torture to use it, but it could grant him power even greater than Kurse's.
"Merely Odin's daughter?" Hela sneered. "If I had been Bor's daughter, the only place you would find Dark Elves today is in an Asgardian museum—as corpses." She stopped before a great brazier, stretching her arms toward the fire within. "Now, watch as I use the Eternal Flame to awaken my army—"
She paused. A look of genuine surprise crossed her face. She turned her head, staring at the magical fire cupped in her palm. "This is not the Eternal Flame." Her voice was flat with disbelief. "Where is my Eternal Flame? Where is my massive, world-ending Eternal Flame?!"
Hela was utterly dumbfounded. Without it, she could not raise her undead army from Helheim.
Loki scratched his head, a memory surfacing. "Oh, that," he said, with an air of casual recollection. "I believe Father gave it to the King of Sakaar."
Hela just stared. "...What did you say?!"
She was numb. How could Odin be such a spendthrift? To give away the Eternal Flame? The entire thing? Leaving her with nothing but a broken-down fire pit full of ordinary magic flames for mood lighting?
Malekith was just as numb. A terrible premonition seized him. He grabbed Loki's neck again. "Think carefully," he growled. "Did the old man give away the Aether as well?"
"That… probably not?" Loki squeaked, shrinking under the murderous glare. But even he wasn't sure. His father had always been careless with Asgard's artifacts, most of them gathering dust anyway. He'd let the Tesseract go to Earth, shown indifference to the Casket of Ancient Winters… Odin simply didn't care about treasures that weren't his by conquest.
Malekith read the uncertainty on Loki's face and his rage boiled over. Without the Aether, his grand plan was in ruins. The only good news was Odin's death, which meant he could still conquer the Nine Realms, given time. But the anger remained.
"The Plumbers! It's the Plumbers again!" he roared. "If Odin truly gave them my Aether, they hold four of the six Infinity Stones! They must be eliminated!"
Hela shared the sentiment. She wanted her Eternal Flame back. The two villains locked eyes for a moment, a shared enemy between them, but an alliance was impossible. Hela would never lower herself to treat this rat from Svartalfheim as an equal.
Just as she was about to attack, Kurse, having finally broken free, crashed into the vault and stood before his master, a living shield.
"Lord Malekith, shall we retreat?" Loki asked, his voice hopeful. It wasn't an act. He desperately wanted to leave.
Malekith, seeing no path to the Aether and no swift victory over Hela, nodded. He would leave his army to occupy the broken city, trapping Hela here while he regrouped. He and Loki turned to leave.
On the Rainbow Bridge, the Dark Elf army had not retreated. The Warriors Three had fought their way to Heimdall, but they were exhausted, bleeding from dozens of wounds as they collapsed before him.
Heimdall himself was in a far worse state. His divine light was fading, his golden eyes dimming. The magnificent bridge itself was spiderwebbed with cracks, its rainbow glow flickering like a dying candle. Before him, the three wrinkled War Witches cackled.
"You have drained the Bifrost's power..." Heimdall rasped.
"From this day forward, the power of the Rainbow Bridge belongs to the great Lord Malekith!" one of the witches screeched. "And you will be nothing but dry bones beneath his throne!"
They moved to deliver the killing blow. With the last of his strength, Heimdall raised a hand, shielding the unconscious warriors. He bowed his head, chanting an ancient, forbidden incantation.
"Odin, All-Father… may the light of dark magic shine on me one last time… Rainbow Bridge!"
With his final words, a blinding flash of kaleidoscopic light erupted from the Bifrost. Then, with a sound like the shattering of worlds, the bridge of Asgard broke apart, consumed by its own brilliant, dying fire.