"Odin" seemed deeply displeased that Bella had called Thor powerful. He whipped around, his single eye sharp with scrutiny. "I have already stripped Thor of Mjolnir. What does he have left? You lack even this much resolve? I am sorely disappointed in present-day Midgard!"
Bella bowed her head on cue, as though being scolded by the King of the Gods was deeply humiliating. "I'm sorry to disappoint you. In truth, I'm disappointed in myself. Born of man, bound to sin—I had assumed the God of Lies would have a higher standard of performance."
She struck without warning. Drawing on the spell bearing the Eye of Agamotto's name, she pried open a rift in the timestream. A lattice of temporal energy split apart like the maw of some colossal beast, and a relentless gravitational pull locked onto "Odin."
The magical disguise shattered. Odin became a lean, sharp-featured young man with a cold, sinister face. He wore dark green leather armor, and his sweeping cloak whipped in the temporal maelstrom's pull. His meticulously slicked-back shoulder-length hair was already coming undone.
He was Loki, the God of Lies.
He had no idea that Odin and Bella had spoken before. He'd believed his impersonation was flawless. In truth, the deception had been transparent from the very first sentence, and everything after had been nothing but holes.
"Damn!" He lunged for Bella, trying to drag her into the temporal rift with him.
Bella left an afterimage where she'd stood and was five hundred meters away the instant the spell completed.
Gods had lifespans measured in millennia. Three centuries, five centuries trapped in temporal turbulence—mere inconveniences. She was mortal. She couldn't afford the same.
She sprinted and teleported in rapid alternation, maintaining maximum displacement. Loki fought against the rift's pull, reaching for her again and again, but each time he was a half-beat too slow.
Then Loki flicked his wrist and launched a bolt of light. Speed, angle, timing—all calibrated to perfection, striking the exact spot where she would be one second after teleporting.
Bella threw up an ice shield. Loki smiled coldly. The bolt punched straight through and streaked toward the space between her eyes.
She was profoundly grateful that she'd never stopped training her body. In the critical instant, she bent backward at the waist. The bolt grazed the tip of her nose as it passed. A lock of hair across her forehead was sheared clean off.
Only then did she see what the bolt actually was: an impossibly sharp dagger.
Still in her backward lean, Bella planted both hands on the ground. The dagger cleared her head, and she used the momentum to execute a clean backflip, regaining her balance mid-air.
Airborne, she fired three ice arrows in rapid succession. Loki was contemptuous. He caught all three bare-handed, then beckoned—the dagger flew back into his palm.
"Nothing but a mortal. I am a god—" He never finished the sentence. Bella's Mind Crush hit him like a freight train.
Loki was no Victor Von Doom riding an emotional meltdown. Half a heartbeat was all it took for him to shake off the psychic assault. But he furrowed his brow—that fraction of a second's distraction had been enough. His left foot was caught in the temporal rift's pull.
"For Asgard!" Thor's roaring figure materialized before Loki, war axe in hand, face ablaze with battle fury, radiating an aura of invincible might.
Genuine panic flashed across Loki's face. He squinted to look closer—and Thor disintegrated into a thousand fragments. An illusion. Loki recognized the trick instantly, but Bella was already casting again. Heedless of the psionic drain, she conjured two more Thor phantoms, threading a Mind Crush between them.
All she needed was one moment of doubt.
The rift's pull was intensifying. Loki was never known for brute strength among the gods, and his divine domain had nothing to do with time or space. Resisting for this long was already an overperformance.
In the end, Loki smiled. A charming smile, full of poise.
"Exquisite illusion work. You've clearly met my father and my brother—that's something I failed to anticipate. A miscalculation on my part. I didn't lose to you. I lost to them. Young human sorcerer, I'll remember you. I will return."
Even with most of his body engulfed by temporal turbulence, Loki's masterful command of magic let him fire one last spell. A crystalline beam of green light shot from his fingertips. Bella teleported without hesitation.
She blinked twice—and frowned. The green light hadn't vanished. It was tracking her, and after absorbing residual magical energy from her teleportation, it was accelerating.
When Loki was finally swallowed entirely by the temporal rift, Bella was forced to play her last card. She activated a contingency she'd prepared in advance, ducking behind the Sker Buffalo. The green light, homing in on her psionic signature, struck the bull instead.
The Sker Buffalo vanished into thin air.
"Moo moo?!" Its bewildered cry still hung in the empty field. It had no idea what any of this had to do with it.
Bella murmured two apologies to the empty air and even bowed slightly. Sacrificing a teammate wasn't exactly something to brag about, but this was the nature of being a sorcerer—sometimes your calculations included everything around you, whether you liked it or not.
She hoped the old bull wouldn't end up as someone's dinner. Cowardice aside, it had been a decent companion.
---
Her mount was gone. The Carpet of Flying was back in Arendelle for Natasha to play with. Bella teleported directly to the Iwi camp.
"Professor? Vivienne? Mr. Russell?"
She circled the camp once and was stunned. Never mind Professor Serizawa, who couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag—even Old One-Eye was gone. Where had they all gone? Had they quietly left for home?
Going home was clearly out of the question. Instruments and equipment sat untouched. Several S.H.I.E.L.D. agents had vanished without even taking their guns. That was beyond strange.
"Don't tell me I need to go ask Loki about this." Bella's head throbbed.
Nothing Loki said could be trusted. But—considering their peculiar brand of brotherly affection—the odds of Thor being on this island were high.
She replayed her earlier conversation with Odin—the real Odin—parsing it line by line. His words had been deliberately vague, but in light of the current situation, they seemed to carry an implicit request for help.
Help with what? Help Thor butcher Kong? Help keep Thor from being butchered by Kong?
"Time's running out."
Bella quickly defined her objective: find Thor, use him as a lead to solve the island's problem, and rescue Serizawa and the others along the way. It was the simplest, most efficient plan she could devise.
She cast a divination for Thor's location. Divining a god at her skill level returned only a blurry impression, but she had a general direction. She then divined for Serizawa and the others—all pointing the same way as Thor. Only Old One-Eye was in a different direction entirely.
Old One-Eye could take care of himself. If the world ended tomorrow, he'd still find a way to survive. Bella was worried about the academics.
She sighed. "You'd all better stay alive. Please don't get killed by Thor—because if you do, I won't be able to avenge you either."
She took her bearings, opened a portal, and left the Iwi camp behind.