Loki

Chapter 5A: Journey into Mystery

Loki gasped awake. Three figures and...an aligator hovered over him as he opened his eyes. To the left, a bulky, dark-skinned man in green-tinted armor wielding a bronze hammer. To the right, an older fellow in a yellow costume adorned in a bronze helmet with two enormous horns protruding from it. And crouched at the center of the trio, a boy in a green leather outfit wearing a horn-emblemed crown, holding a tiny alligator, who was wearing a crown as well.

Behind the three mysterious figures laid a massive city in ruin with collapsed buildings covered in overgrowth, and endless expanse of grassy fields that seemed to go on indefinitely. A nebulous darkness was forming beyond the horizon, an amalgamation of dark clouds looming in the distance, like a controlled storm.

Loki got to his feet quickly, looking around him in puzzlement. "What is this place? Where are we? Who are you?"

The figure in the yellow costume approached him with haste. "This is the Void. That's Alioth. And we're his lunch. Come on!"

The three figures turned away and began fleeing. Loki stumbled to follow them. In the distance the clouds began to form the face of a monster with fangs, letting out a roar that could be heard across all space and time.

***

"Give me the Tempad." Sylvie demanded, standing over a fallen Judge Renslayer.

Renslayer reached into her coat for the device.

Sylvie snatched it out of her hands. "Who's really behind the TVA?"

"I'm as in the dark as you are." She said before groaning painfully as Sylvie pressed against her arm with her boot.

"Poor Judge Renslayer." She spat. "Your whole reality's been destroyed. Tell me, how does it feel..." She said before digging in harder with her heel. "...to be on the other side of it?"

Renslayer cried out again before Sylvie let up her foot.

"This is it, isn't it?" The goddess said, scoping out the room she was in, the courtroom where all of the Variant trials were held. "This is where you dragged me after you stole my life." Sylvie turned to Renslayer as she got to her feet. "A fitting place, then, to take yours."

"And what if I said Loki wasn't dead?" The Judge said. "Not yet, anyway."

"I'd say your lying." Sylvie said.

"Maybe." Judge Renslayer continued. "Or maybe we want the same thing."

"How is he still alive?" Sylvie said. "And how will saving him get us closer to who's realy behind the TVA?"

"It's complicated."

Sylvie brandished her Timestick towards her.

Renslayer held her hands up in surrender. "I'm telling you this willingly."

"Why?"

"Because I wanna know who's at the top of this." Ravonna answered. "I want to know who lied to me."

Sylvie lowered her Timestick.

"When we prune a branched reality it's impossible to destroy all of its matter. So we move it to a place on the Timeline where it won't continue growing." Renslayer explained. "Basically the branched timeline isn't reset, it's transferred."

"To where?" Sylvie asked.

"A void at the end of time." Renslayer said. "Where every instance of existence collides at the same point and simply...stops."

"Why?"

Renslayer produced a look as if to say "beats me" then continued speaking. "I don't know. The dogma states that the end of time is still being written. That the Time Keepers are transforming it into a utopia."