#6
V O Y A G E R
Erik Selvig was beside himself with excitement. Four hours ago, he had been looking at a grainy, low-resolution render of their inter-dimensional visitor. A hurried summons from the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and three sweaty, nervous hours in a quinjet later, he was now standing face-to-face with the him. It seemed that this stranger from a strange land identified as none other than the Norse god Thor, and some functionary of Director Rogers' had run Dr. Selvig's background and learned about his undergrad minor in Germanic and Norse myth. Never in a million years had he ever considered that his pet interest would present him an opportunity like this one.
He walked abreast of this "Thor" as armed guards led them through the helicarrier's labyrinthine interior toward the hangar. The man beside him didn't seem much like a god. Sure, he was enormous, standing a head taller than the six-foot Selvig, and his chest was the size of an engine block. Nothing about him besides that seemed particularly supernatural. Selvig was not a medical doctor, but as far as he could tell this man had a pulse, he breathed air, his eyes blinked, and Thor's other biological functions seemed no different from his own. He carried a curious smell about him; it reminded Selvig of the scent of wet earth that followed rain.
While the two men walked in silence for some time, each occasionally stealing a glance at the other, it was Selvig that first spoke up. "
Well Mister, uh, Thor... If we're going to be working together, would it be alright if I asked you a few questions?"
Thor glanced at him for a moment, his expression seeming more curious than anything else. "
Ask whatever you like." he said, his gaze returning to the hall in front of them.
"
I have a... basic idea of what we're going to be looking for, but I could use some specifics. What exactly are you hoping to find?"
"
Runestones." Thor said plainly. "
Ancient oaths, written in stone, carved by my father's own hand. They tell of the conquest of Midgard, the peace your people made with mine, and the obligations they owe to my father's throne."
"
I see." He had been informed of how casually this character discussed conquering the Earth during his en-route briefing, but hearing it himself was somewhat unsettling for reasons Selvig could not quite describe. "
And where do you expect to find these runestones?"
"
Where the peace was made and the oaths were sworn. I don't know your name for this place; it's been hundreds of Midgardian lifetimes since I've last been there. My father favored it because it reminded him of our home: a land of fire and ice, beautiful but unforgiving."
Selvig looked at Thor with trepidation. He was beginning to understand why Director Rogers was suspicious of him. Too much of what he said seemed unverifiable. Even if he was from another dimension, that didn't mean anything he said was necessarily true. Selvig needed evidence, or at least something he could verify before this task seemed like anything more than a fool's errand.
"
Well, if you've been there before, can you take us back there?"
"
Of course, what kind of a sailor would I be if I couldn't navigate?" He said, looking at Selvig and smiling.
Selvig smiled back at him, but still felt uneasy as they entered the helicarrier hangar and boarded yet another quinjet. The space inside the plane was more cramped than usual from having to share it with their bulky visitor, but Selvig knew that these things were build to accommodate the Hulk, and decided not to complain. Their pilot asked Thor for the coordinates of their destination, but he wasn't familiar with latitude and longitude, and didn't know them. Then the pilot offered him a tablet screen with a satellite view of the Earth, which Thor claimed to be equally unfamiliar with.
"
I've never seen this planet from above. I only ever travel here with the Bifrost bridge."
"
Is that how you came to Earth today?" Selvig asked, and Thor nodded. He would have to inquire more about that later. "
How were you planning to get there if you can't say where it is?"
"
I may not know what your world looks like from the stars, but I know what the stars look like from your world. Once night falls, I can take you there."
Of course he used stellar navigation, he was (or thought he was) a viking. Selvig could have slapped himself for not seeing the obvious answer any sooner. At least they would not actually have to wait for nightfall, were he telling the truth. He took the tablet from Thor and replaced the image of the Earth with a stellar map of the Northern Hemisphere, and returned the screen for Thor to inspect it.
He studied it for some time, before saying, "
This is... not what I remember. The stars seem familiar, but they've drifted out of place. It's been a very long time since I've last been on this world, by your people's standards."
At this point, Selvig was nearly at his wit's end. Only now was he realizing why Director Rogers was so desperate to pawn this guy off on someone else. He had one last idea before he was totally tapped out. He took the tablet again, and turned the screen into a blank, black canvas. He gave it back to Thor, and told him to draw the stars he remembered over the land of fire and ice. With any luck, he could use a few constellations as reference to triangulate a general search area.
"
Hm, well, first is Leida, the guiding star. Then Dagst here, Sudrst there..." He tapped a few stars onto the empty sky, before beginning to add more complex arrangements of stars. "
The fisherman, the wolf, the chariot, the battle..." Selvig watched with what was curiosity at first, but then rapt fascination as Thor continued to fill in the canvas with stars. While the space seemed to quickly fill with dozens, then hundreds of stars, none of them seemed to be placed randomly. Thor stared at the screen with unwavering focus, placing each star swiftly but deliberately.
After a few minutes he seemed satisfied, and handed Selvig back a tablet that very much resembled a functional stellar map. He cross-referenced the impromptu map against S.W.O.R.D.'s astronomic charts, accounting for stellar migration. After a few moments of processing, the computer had finished the comparison. The map that Thor had drawn was a 98% match for astral bodies visible from Iceland, circa 400 AD. Stunned, Selvig felt his knees buckle under him, and he fell into his seat.
"Well professor?" The pilot radioed them from the cockpit. "Do we have a destination?"
As advanced as S.H.I.E.L.D.'s bleeding-edge aeronautic technology was, a transatlantic flight still took a fair amount of time. Now that Thor had given some credibility to his story, Selvig was more willing to hear him out, and the two passed the time by indulging each other's curiosity. Thor mostly had questions about the Earth, and its people. He asked about their culture, the history that had transpired since he had last been to Earth, and attempted to glean from Selvig why the people of Earth had abandoned Odin. Selvig did his best to answer what he could, but he was an astrophysicist, not a theologian.
In turn, Selvig quizzed Thor. At first he wanted to know as much as possible about this "Bifrost bridge" that he had used to open a wormhole to Earth. This line of questioning quickly proved disappointing, as he saw Thor's eyes glaze over as soon as he heard the phrase "Einstein-Rosen bridge," and Selvig realized he wasn't going to get any answers he could use. Instead, he asked Thor many questions similar to the ones that the alleged God of Thunder had asked, himself. Thor told him about Asgard, the Aesir, his parents Odin and Frigga, and the Nine Realms. Selvig had no way of verifying anything that he was being told, but Thor seemed to earnestly believe what he was saying, and so the scientist recorded his attestations all the same. He wished that the quinjet they were on had been equipped with better scientific sensors and scanners so that he might conduct a biochemical analysis of Thor, but that would have to wait.
"
All of the Aesir are gods," Thor patiently explained, "
Most of them are gods of something minor: a particular river or mountain for instance. Only Asgard's nobility can claim dominion over forces like light, or war, or thunder." A prideful gleam glinted in Thor's eyes as he gave the final example. "
Now, your turn Erik. I want to know more about these Minnesota Vikings. How much plunder would you say they bring home after a typical raiding season?"
"
Not much after they traded Case Keenum, but-"
He was interrupted by the pilot radioing them, "Professor, we're here."
Selvig stared out over the austere landscape of the snow-capped Icelandic volcanoes. Though they seemed calm, he knew that Iceland was a hotbed of near-constant volcanic activity; "a land of fire and ice" was an apt description for the island nation. He turned from the window to look at Thor, who was also staring out over the vista of glacial ice and volcanic rock. He seemed wistful, melancholy even. The landscape below them seemed so alien to Selvig, he wondered if this place truly did remind Thor of his distant home.
Their pilot touched down at the coordinates Selvig had gleaned from Thor's star-map, and the two disembarked the quinjet. Thor, clothed only in his barbarian garb and a simple cloak, seemed completely unperturbed by the icy chill of the volcanic peak they had landed on. Selvig, by contrast, had to borrow a hazardous environment suit from the quinjet's emergency cache, and yet still stood shivering in the ridiculous foil overcoat.
"
This is the place," Thor said, possibly to Selvig, possibly to no one. "
My father walked here, I can feel it." Selvig did not have a chance to question this statement, as Thor continued onward, forcing the scientist to hurry after him in a frantic, penguin-like waddle. After minutes of seemingly aimless wandering, Thor suddenly stopped. "
Here, I've found something."
Selvig caught up to see what Thor had found. It was a boulder of smooth, grey stone, jutting up out of the ice. It had clearly been buried there for a very long time, and the stone did not match the black volcanic rock of the mountain they stood on. Looking closer, Selvig saw that the stone was inscribed with what appeared to be Nordic runes, though he could not translate them by sight. More remarkable than the runes, however, was that the stone had seemingly not eroded at all. If this truly was a relic that dated back 1600 years, he would assume that very little of the original inscription would remain intact. Despite this, the carvings were deep and sharp, as though they had been chiseled into the stone only the day before.
"
Is this it?" Selvig asked.
"
Yes." Thor sounded perturbed, despite having found what he was looking for. "
But there are supposed to be more. This is only one of many stones that mark the history that transpired here."
"
Perhaps the others were destroyed? Or relocated?" Selvig offered.
"
No." Thor dismissed him out of hand. "
No force on this world could destroy a runestone carved by the Allfather, nor would he stand for any mortal disrespecting his sacred runes." Though he said it, Thor was starting to severely doubt the latter fact. Nothing of what he had seen on Midgard so far, nor that Selvig had told him had given Thor the idea that Odin had any clue what was transpiring on Midgard.
"
Well," Selvig started, rubbing his arms for warmth. "
We are on top of a volcano. It's possible they were buried in an eruption."
While he said nothing, Thor agreed with Selvig's theory. He had no choice but to believe it, as he had no other way to prove Odin's kingship to the Midgardians. He would have to unbury his father's lost runestones, else he feared that he would never be able to leave this world and return home. Without warning, Thor clenched his fist and punched down into the ground under him with all of his might. Ice and stone buckled and shattered under his strength, and the resounding "
BOOM" of his strike echoed across the frozen peaks. Selvig reeled as though he had just been next to a firing cannon, and before he could say anything else, Thor struck the ground again, opening another huge crater in the volcanic peak.
Collecting himself, Selvig cautiously approached Thor, "
I don't think that's a very good-"
BOOM "
Christ!" He reeled back again. Thor's impromptu archeological excavation had turned up nothing but the first stone they had found, but Thor showed no signs of stopping his one-sided battle with the mountain. Again and again Thor crashed his fists into the black stone, sending massive chunks of rock and ice flying in every direction.
Selvig tried to yell out to Thor and get him to stop, but the more he dug the more desperate he seemed to get, and the scientists words seemed to have no effect on him. Eventually he had to retreat back toward the quinjet just to avoid being struck by flying rubble. Thor continued to batter the ground under him until the entire mountain range seemed to shake with his thunderous blows. A sulfuric smell filled Selvig's nostrils, and he rushed to equip a gas mask from his environment suit's bespoke compartment. The last thing he needed was to die here from inhaling volcanic fumes.
Thor had practically vanished from sight at this point, having burrowed so far into the mountain, and swirling, dark clouds began to coalesce overhead. Lava plumes suddenly burst up out of the rock around the crater Thor had dug, and Selvig could see other floes erupting further down the mountain. This was getting dangerous, quickly. They had to leave before the volcano fully erupted, but he couldn't conscience the idea of leaving the still mostly-unknown Thor to his own devices. Tightening the straps of his gas mask and pulling his metallic environment coat closer, he trudged toward the caldera Thor was digging. The entire mountain shook with Thor's blows, and it took everything Selvig had to stay on his feet as he pressed onward.
Eventually he came to the lip of the pit Thor had dug, and stared down at the God as he continued to destroy the mountain in a mindless frenzy. Thor was up to his knees in bubbling lava, but didn't seem to notice as he continued to wreak havoc on everything within arm's reach. Selvig tried screaming at him to stop, telling him he'd kill them all, but he could not be heard over the sound of Thor's fury. Soon, the heat grew almost unbearable, and Selvig collapsed to his knees at the volcano's mouth. He didn't want to die, but he didn't know what else to do.
The mountain then began to tremble all on its own, and Thor's frenzy of blows ceased. The lava bursts became more intense, and the volcano rumbled under them. Selvig figured that those would be the last moments of his life, before he was consumed in a volcanic eruption triggered by a superhuman alien with daddy issues. The rumbling became louder, and Selvig realized that what he was hearing wasn't rumbling at all. It sounded almost like... roaring.
Before he had another moment to think about it, the caldera pit exploded in a shower of molten rock. Selvig had to dive out of the way of a glowing-orange boulder the size of a compact car, but he was surprised to find himself still alive moments later. He looked up, and what he saw frightened him even more than the possibility of a volcanic eruption. What had burst out of the volcano was not a life-annihilating stream of lava and ash, but a huge, winged beast. It resembled a horned serpent the size of a humpback whale, propelling itself into the air on leathery wings. Its scales were glossy black, and white-hot lava dripped from it as the monster continued to rise further into the air. The beast roared again, the same sound Selvig had heard before it emerged, and a plume of baleful fire erupted from the beast's fanged maw.
Selvig would not have realized that Thor was standing next to him, also staring up at the winged monster, had he not put his huge hand on Erik's shoulder. Thor brandished his axe, and gave Selvig a firm shove in the direction of the quinjet. "
I think you should go," he said curtly, "
It's been some time since I've had to slay a dragon."
2x Thank
