Thor and Loki Join Forces to Save the World in Thor: Metal Gods

EARTH

LONDON

1989

Loki stared at the rain gently falling against an incandescent neon sign of the Hammersmith Odeon. Each drop refracted and warped the letters, rendering the marquee abstract and meaningless. The image reflected his foul mood. Standing outside the building, he could hear deafening applause coming from within. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, the party was over.

He had come all the way to this world to have some fun, to leave behind the burden of his adoptive Asgardian family and all the chaos he’d instigated in distant realms, to lose himself in spectacle and distractions. What better place for that purpose than Earth’s music scene? And yet his escape had gone sour.

He focused on the marquee of the Hammersmith Odeon and the red signage, and that terrible band name, Heavy Whispers. Sylvain’s choice, and a bad one, at that. It had amused Loki at first. Now it irritated him, one more reminder of the man’s shortcomings.

Loki lifted his chin and strolled into the concert venue. Fans immediately started following him, recognizing him by his clothes: the purple trench coat, loose tank top with rainbow mesh 

Loki stared at the rain gently falling against an incandescent neon sign of the Hammersmith Odeon. Each drop refracted and warped the letters, rendering the marquee abstract and meaningless. The image reflected his foul mood. Standing outside the building, he could hear deafening applause coming from within. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, the party was over.

He had come all the way to this world to have some fun, to leave behind the burden of his adoptive Asgardian family and all the chaos he’d instigated in distant realms, to lose himself in spectacle and distractions. What better place for that purpose than Earth’s music scene? And yet his escape had gone sour.

He focused on the marquee of the Hammersmith Odeon and the red signage, and that terrible band name, Heavy Whispers. Sylvain’s choice, and a bad one, at that. It had amused Loki at first. Now it irritated him, one more reminder of the man’s shortcomings.

Loki lifted his chin and strolled into the concert venue. Fans immediately started following him, recognizing him by his clothes: the purple trench coat, loose tank top with rainbow mesh ribbons, and the spiked bracelets and headband. They mobbed him as he crossed the lobby. As he ducked into a performers-only entrance past a hulking slab of muscle, hands wriggled into the edges of the door, keeping it from shutting. The security guard swatted at their groping fingers and slammed the door closed. This was merely the worship of music, but the image of fans’ fingers squirming past a threshold reminded Loki of a demonic summoning.

He walked a quiet, weathered corridor alone. Backstage, this venue, site of so many legendary concerts, had a homely feel. He couldn’t figure out how his awful band had gotten a show here. A muted thrum of drum and bass seeped through the walls, an underwater cacophony followed by a tidal wave of applause.

He had to admit, the opening band was good. Soon they rushed past him, each member high on adrenaline and adoration. He kept walking toward his own dressing room. The opening band’s joy reminded him of how he’d ended up in this mess.

Then he came to his door, and he could glimpse the man within. Loki stood there, girding himself for the inevitable.

“Ten minutes!” shouted a stagehand, strolling the hall with a clipboard. The crowd was still cheering.

Loki went inside. From a stand he picked up his guitar, a pearlescent black, jagged beauty with a flying V body. He strummed lightly. It was unfair, perhaps, that he’d cast a glamour to make himself one of the greatest guitarists Earth had ever heard. But the exceptional sound of his music, well, that was worth it.

The dressing room was empty save for one person. In the corner, lit by warm light bulbs framing a mirror, a slender man sat shirtless, exposing the body of a ballet dancer. He applied makeup while admiring his own reflection. Sylvain.

He glanced at Loki and grinned wolfishly, then went back to his primping.

“You like looking at me, don’t you?” Sylvain said, eyelashes lowering. 

Loki continued to strum hushed guitar chords. “Not as much as you like looking at yourself,” he said.

Sylvain laughed. Loki had once found his laughter charming. Now he only heard the self-absorption behind it.

“Did I ever thank you for this gift?” Sylvain asked. He held aloft a crown, which glittered under the mirror’s horde of light bulbs.

The crown’s simple construction belied its sturdiness. Asgardian runes decorated it, not that Sylvain would recognize them. As Sylvain slid it ritualistically onto his scalp, making sure that it caressed his flowing hair, a dull shard of slick, oily gray metal in its center seemed to suck all the light out of the room for an instant.

As the crown settled on his head, Sylvain exhaled in pleasure. “Every time I put it on, I realize just how small you are,” he said.

The more he had to deal with Sylvain’s airs, the more Loki regretted giving him the artifact. It had seemed a fine jest at the time, a way to enhance Sylvain’s lackluster performances. The crown distorted reality, and at first it had helped the band draw greater audiences. The prospect of Earth’s fans clamoring after such a talentless singer had amused Loki—at first. But the truth of the matter was, the joke was ultimately on him.

Now Sylvain was singing far beyond his ability, and only Loki could hear how out of tune he was.

Sylvain’s lips curled. “Tonight, Loki, we start a new direction for this band. One that’s been a long time coming. Because they’re not here to see you. They’re here to see me.”

“Gents, it’s time to start this show,” a stagehand with a walkie-talkie intoned from their doorway. Sylvain started flexing his muscles and his once-beautiful smile became a rictus. Loki grabbed his axe and started for the stage. He couldn’t put up with more of this travesty of a band. There must be some way out, some way to express his dissatisfaction.

The bassist, keyboardist, and drummer for Heavy Whispers were already laying down a thick blast of synth goth atmosphere and rhythm. The crowd’s loud cheers washed out the music as Loki took the stage.

Loki joined in on lead guitar. But he was just going through the motions. He could barely summon the interest to contribute and yet the crowd’s roar crescendoed. Did they realize what a sham the performance was? Despite the audience’s genuine worship, his mood got in the way. Instead of the thrill that should have overtaken him, he felt numb.

As Loki put his boot down on a pedal and shot some howling reverb out of the guitar through a wall of amplifiers, Sylvain took the stage. He resembled a dark princeling, with leather pants he’d been sewn into, a shirtless chest already gleaming with sweat, and that incredible gossamer hair framed by the crown.

The audience became frenzied beyond all sense and reason.

Loki couldn’t stand this. It wasn’t Sylvain’s charisma or talent. He knew it was the effect of the crown. Worse, the purity of the audience’s fervor struck him as equally unreal, and Loki had no one but himself to blame for the illusion.

Sylvain ripped his mic from its stand and tossed the metal pole at a stagehand. He came over to Loki and had to scream in his ear to be heard: “Try and keep up tonight. Things are changing around here.”

Then Sylvain turned to the crowd and intoned, “Tonight Heavy Whispers will have you screaming. Tonight we are a new band, serving a new master, and you will know us by a new name. You are witness to the coming of …”

The crowd screamed eagerly, roused by Sylvain’s mania.

“NIHILATOR!”

An enormous blacklight sign dropped from the ceiling and lit up with the name.

Loki scoffed and shouted back at Sylvain, “What, you couldn’t afford the extra vowel?”

Sylvain’s eyes narrowed. “How dare you speak of Nihilator this way!”

But their interaction jolted the crowd. Sylvain turned to them, soaking up their love. The rest of the band exploded into a new sound, heavy. And metal.

Loki didn’t care. He scanned the faces in the crowd.

Passive, mindless hordes. Their ecstatic faces left him numb. It was almost a pathology on Earth, which made it simple to manipulate people. One little spell here, a corrupt artifact there. Midgardians had a propensity for worship, and it was so easily exploited.

A pair in the audience caught his eye—two beautiful people, laughing together with an earnest warmth. Loki started to noodle out a repeating melody on the guitar. There was something about these two, their humorous gaze and sense of connection surrounded by slavering fans stood out like a flickering candle in a snowstorm. He recognized Lila Cheney, a musician herself. He’d run into her in the small nocturnal circles of London’s music scene at countless afterparties.

And then he caught the other person’s eyes. Zia.

Zia.

Now there was an intriguing Midgardian, gifted with a prolonged lifespan. He’d met them while messing with a cheap conjurer named John Dee, during the Elizabethan age. Zia didn’t look thirty yet. Loki had known them as both man and woman for centuries, as they were able to change gender at will; they’d used the ability from lifetime to lifetime to hide their immortality.

Zia understood what it meant to live far longer than a mortal. Zia knew what it was to hide behind glamours, to have to conceal your real self to fit in—to survive. Just as Loki wore the shape of an Asgardian despite his Frost Giant heritage, Zia had abandoned their name and identity time and again.

And as Zia stared into Loki’s eyes across the chaos of the show, he knew they could see through all this bullshit. Everything—the band, Loki’s outfit, all of it. Zia saw right through him, like red neon through raindrops.

The party had really ended.

Now it was time to have some fun.

Sylvain had inhaled deeply, preparing to unleash his woefully average voice on the spellbound audience, when Loki slammed an effects pedal, stepped forward, and pitched his strings taut on a chord. The shattering sound from his guitar stopped everything in the room.

And then he soloed as only a demigod could. He hammered and shredded all up and down the fretboard, unleashing a sonic wail, a solo for the ages that might have echoed in the Hammersmith Odeon forever. The crowd fell into awed silence.

Loki had found a way to express his mood at last. He even bared his teeth in a combative smile.

As the final note rang in the hushed auditorium, he raised the guitar and wielded it like an axe, smashing it against the N and I in the gigantic neon NIHILATOR sign. Sparks and glass showered down in a heavy metal rain as he kept swinging the guitar against it until it said only: HILATOR

He looked at Zia, who only smiled enigmatically.

Sylvain shrieked in dismay.

Loki’s lip curled as he said, “Keep the crown. It’s your God and you don’t even realize it.”

He tossed the guitar straight at Sylvain and walked away, past the backstage chaos and panic among the roadies and music label reps and sycophants who were always waiting in the wings. He didn’t miss a step as he hit the emergency exit door and went right into the dismal rain of London, which lacked the power to wash anything away.

Fans chased him, begging for autographs. So Loki walked straight into traffic. A black cab’s horn blared as headlights illuminated him and the car tried to swerve away. Loki had already begun a spell to get him the hell off of this absurd planet.

In front of his admiring fans, the former guitarist for Nihilator vanished into thin air, never to be seen again.

SOMEWHERE UNKNOWN

THE INFINITE COSMOS

NOW
 

The rainbow shimmer of the Bifrost Bridge faded around Thor, depositing him on the asteroid. He had not come here in some time and was only here now because of a summons from an old friend. The last he had seen her, she had expressed a desire to spend some time in contemplation. He had honored her wishes, but something had changed, and the only way to find out what she needed was to talk to her in person.

An endless snowstorm skirled around him, obscuring the mountain that comprised the bulk of the asteroid. Her mood must be worse than usual, for the snow to be this bad. By habit, Thor curled his fist around his hammer, Mjolnir. Together, they were the danger out here. The thought gave him confidence.

Mjolnir … a weapon even older than he. Two cubic feet of molten Uru, tempered and shaped by Dwarven blacksmiths into a hammer in a blazing forge that consumed the energy of a star. Endless battles had chipped the hammer’s precise edges, but it retained its solidity. The haft of the hammer was wound in plain leather that had worn over centuries to Thor’s grip to become an extension of his own hands. At each corner were braided enchantments. Centered in between was a valknut, three interlocked triangles, the symbol of his father, Odin. But Odin had made the triangles curved, bending into each other with mercy, a counter to Mjolnir’s brutal strength. And that was the source of the hammer’s enchantment: “Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.”

And Thor was worthy.

Part of the measure of his worth was his willingness to help those in need. And today his friend had called on him, and he had come.

Thor took comfort from the snowflakes brushing his skin. The asteroid might be out in the middle of the galaxy, but Thor felt at home wherever there was a storm. The bizarre sight of this desolate mountaintop and its enchantments was a sign that he had arrived at the right place.

The snow was powdery yet dense. He took a deep breath. Snow fell thickly, and the clouds clung to the ground. Although he could not see well, a path led up the mountaintop, so he began a brisk hike. Soon he had to hang Mjolnir from his belt to keep his hands free as he scrambled up treacherous rock shelves, and the hike became more of a climb. He had to keep wiping snow from his brow and beard to maintain his sight. One rock ledge was just tall enough that he had to pull himself up and over, and he ascended onto a broad platform, dragging his bulk with him.

Just as he gained his footing, Thor raised an open hand. With a keen sound of whistling metal, Mjolnir jumped the short distance from his belt into his waiting fist. Thor instantly crouched in a defensive position, struggling to assess the danger he knew was out there. But he saw only snow and darkness.

Then the first blow came, from behind.

It blasted him off his feet and he flew forward. Impressive, he thought as the wind was knocked out of him. He landed deftly, his boots sliding across snow, and he turned, Mjolnir already swinging.

The hammer connected with a dull thud. He pulled back again and swung, deflecting more sharp bony points larger than his hammer, curved like scimitars. Each one razor-sharp.

Claws.

Billowing hot breath came from his attacker’s mouth, mixing with the wild drifts of snow. More scimitars: the jaws of a vicious and gargantuan animal. The teeth snapped at him in lunging, impossibly rapid bites. Scalding saliva dripped onto his skin. One bite came too close. As the mouth surged in again, Thor swung upwards, a blunt hammer uppercut.

Mjolnir slammed the fanged mouth shut. The beast retorted with a wild snarl and retreated into the murky depths of the blizzard. 

A burst of red flame erupted. All the snowflakes in the air vaporized in a dome around them. Thor could see perfectly now. The creature was a tiger three times his size. It was growling and hissing, and a tempest of supernatural fire the color of rose petals in summer, or blood, engulfed its body.

The situation must be dire if her first move was to attack him. She’d always struggled with her temper. How could he talk her down? Especially if, as he feared, her bestial nature had gotten the better of her?

Thor lowered Mjolnir to his side. In his most commanding voice, he said, “I come all this way across the desolate cosmos and this is the greeting that awaits me?”

The tiger drew a sharp breath and then roared with such force and heat that snowflakes vanished in the cloud that steamed from its mouth.

“Now, then, Horangi!” He edged forward. “Good tiger, no need to be angry. Just calm down, so that we may be friends again. Friends?”

The beast growled. The echo shook snow loose from the ground.

She wasn’t responding to her name. That’s not a good sign, Thor thought. He took another step toward her. “There, there …Kitty”

Thor dropped Mjolnir and reached out with the other hand, as if to pet the tiger.

The tiger roared and its eyes seared with red flame. 

“It is good to see you, old friend, but why are you so angry?” Thor tried, lowering his hand.

The tiger swiped at him with a fiery paw as Thor backed away, grazing his cape with the edge of a single claw and catching it on fire. More flaming claw strikes punched molten holes into the snow. He retreated backwards, clambering up the rocky steps, seeking to gain higher ground. The flaming monster pursued him, a ferocious gleam of red spilling all around the snow, impossible to lose sight of now.

The steps became more solid up here. Thor planted himself in the ground and raised Mjolnir. Every muscle in his body tensed and coiled. From the clouds, brilliant flashes of blinding light broke out. And then came the sound.
Of thunder. In the snow.

Thor pulled from the sky like an inhalation, and prepared to let a massive lightning strike flow forth.

The tiger’s hind leg hit him dead in the chest with a straight kick. Thor saw the clouds and heard the rumble dwindling as he soared through the air until he hit a wall. The wall was icy and rigid but broke beneath him like glass. Still flying, he crashed straight through until he cracked his bones against a stone floor, tumbling and rolling onto his back. Mjolnir flew from his grasp and banged across the floor beyond his reach.

That was uncalled for, Thor thought, his own temper igniting. The tingling charge of electricity that coursed through his veins was gone. Try as he might, something about this cavern had cut him off from his connection to the clouds.

At least the snow had put out the fire on his cape. He would have a moment to gather his wits and prepare for the next bout, since his efforts to help Horangi seemed so unwelcome.

He looked around. It was a cavern, but made by hands working in tandem with enchantments. On second glance, rough-hewn stone in blocks were stacked together to create something that was more of a lair—a home. There were bookshelves, and a cozy bed with lots of blankets, and a fireplace with a cooking pot. Thor worried for a moment. What has Horangi been eating all this time?

Red streaks of light rippled down an icy corridor leading to an entranceway. The tiger was approaching, and its flames had only grown fiercer. Drops of water began to trickle from the ceiling as the heat wave surrounding the tiger drew near and melted every stray pocket of ice and snow.

Thor whipped his head around looking for Mjolnir. He couldn’t see it. Then he saw the hilt buried deep in a snowdrift. He reached out to summon the hammer and couldn’t help but think of how dangerous this battle with an old friend had grown. He did not want to hit her again.

The tiger prowled forward, head lolling, lips curling around the sword-sized fangs. Water sizzled into vapor on the floor and in the air around it. Its eyes burned with feral rage.

Thor could have called Mjolnir to him as easily as breathing. But he hesitated. He didn’t want to escalate the fight, despite Horangi’s own combativeness. One more try. 

Thor planted his feet and bellowed, “Stop this at once. Why are you reacting like this?”

The tiger leapt through the air, ready to pounce. Thor knew this would be a mauling. He winced in anticipation.

Halfway through the air between them, the tiger’s flames flickered white-hot and the tiger shrank smaller and smaller, landing right before Thor. A claw became a slender finger jabbing straight up at him. Even in a crouch he had to look down to meet her eyes.

“Because! This! This is all your fault!” she said, half growling.

Thor relaxed. He wouldn’t have to summon Mjolnir for a fight after all. She’s talking at last, he thought. Maybe now he’d find out what the problem was.

Before him was a petite Korean woman, ageless, with sharp features and bluntly cut hair, dressed in a martial robe from a time long past. Despite this smaller form, she still radiated animal cunning and ferocity.

“And how dare you call me kitty or speak to me that way,” she added.

Sheepish, Thor replied, “It’s been a long time, Horangi. I wasn’t quite sure if I could get through to this part of you. I was trying to communicate with your cat form as best I knew how.”

She jabbed his nose with fingers extended like claws. “Horangi means Tiger, you Asgardian lunkhead.”

“There is no need for insults after I came all this way,” Thor retorted. “Calm down, you’re really letting your emotions get the better of you.”

“My emotions are going to rip your throat out. I only take this human form so I can interact in this clumsy vocal manner for your sake. And I saw what you were up to. You were going to blast me with lightning.”

“You set my cape on fire!”

“Who’s being emotional now?”

Thor smiled at that. “It’s good to see you, cat friend.”

She hissed.

Thor started over. “Horangi, I have kept the secret of your exile, at great difficulty and even danger. That respect you shall always have. When you summoned me I came at once. Maybe I even missed you. I’m a little worried you might be isolated out here? Do you have anyone to talk to?”

“Talking is for blowhards like you.”

An earlier worry returned to him. “What are you even eating?”

She crossed her arms. “None of your damn business.”

“I am your guest and I’m rather hungry right now. Do you have a bowl of bread, perhaps?”

“It makes me angrier when you’re charming. Don’t think for a second I’m not mad at you still.”

“What could I have possibly done to make you this angry?”

Her brows drew down. “I will show you, Asgardian.”