6575/Jane Thor Reunion

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Jane Thor Reunion
Date of Scene: 15 June 2021
Location: Asgardian Embassy
Synopsis: Thor rescues? Maybe? Jane from...all of the death realms at once?
Cast of Characters: Thor, Jane Foster




Thor has posed:
"ANOTHER ROUND!" Thor declares as he finishes off his latest tankard of mead from Asgard. The Asgardian barkeep sighs quietly and says, "Prince Thor, you have drank the last of the mead. And you finished off the Asgardian ale yesterday. We will be getting more in tomorrow." Notably: the mead hall in the embassy is empty except for Thor and the beleaguered barkeep. "Why don't you go sleep this off, my Prince?" he asks, knowing full well the suggestion will be ignored.
"This is UNACCEPTABLE!" Thor shouts to the heavens, and then tugs out the hammer Mjolnir. Somehow he remains worthy of it, despite spending most of his time drinking and wenching. "I shall see Aesir about this outrage!" He is in full wroth over not having another drink, and stabs the hammer skywards, calling for the Bifrost to carry him to Asgard itself.

Jane Foster has posed:
Another round, another drink! The mead hall shall be constantly stocked or else it abuses its name, hardly living up the expectations heralded of a golden-beamed hall ripe with the blessings of the Aesir upon Midgard, the middle realm. Those touches of home can be found in many a flourish, but surely none so great as the camaraderie promised by the great benches, the long tables, and the bountiful produce of honey wine and crisp derivatives plucked from the orchards and apiaries across the Nine Realms. To think that such a boundless well could ever run dry is like assuming the Norns went up and started working at Costco, finding the benefits better than weaving fate.

Thus in the melodies of Thor's boots striking the ground and the fading declaration, the world deigns to answer. Not with a lump of coal or a tumble of barrels out of the deep, boundless Asgardian cellars, or so much as a lightning crack, but with a design printed to the earth as ever.

The only flaw in the knotwork is subtle, visible no doubt to Heimdall on high when he frowns from his observatory. Though he must be well aware of the entanglements marred in some way, knots scarred and scored where they burn an imprint on the mortal clay of the Earth. So too the explosion of rainbow light descends in the expected spectrum, but even there are flaws. For when he jettisons Midgard, Thor is bound to see in that transit _up_ something off.

Withered leaves, whitened branches, a glimpse of the World Tree stricken by some plague not known to it in the past. Pale lines twist over the boughs visible through the curtain of shining light, whole twigs full of curling black leaves with weak livid acid-green veins running through them. Another flash and it's lost, showing the starry masses of galaxies and the interstellar void as usual, but then whole shots of the trunk engulfed in the sticky, cloying mists of Niflheim. Except Niflheim ought to have its realm resting _under_ the roots, not stretching up into the main trunk. Not right, not at all.

A trickle of greenish light intersects the bridge, and with it comes a glimpse of warriors, a multitude of them, and boundless, unfathomable numbers of souls. Ghosts covering their heads, clustered together, whipped back into their place. That place looks like a holding pen of some kind, under staggered stone fangs in some chamber.

And Asgard? Valhalla's not gained much at all of late in Einherjar or new souls.

Thor has posed:
Thor does not land where he expects. Not at all. Rather, he ends up...somewhere else. The Bifrost's knotwork as subtly changed as it is, is more than enough to knock him off his desired course. He lands in a similar sort of holding cell as all the other souls, though, his is empty. Barren. A cold empty nothing. Not that the cold bothers Thor overmuch. He is a bit inebriated and, well, angry that he has ended up here and not where he expected. "HEIMDALL!" he shouts to the void. "IS THIS SOME TRICK?"

The Asgardian shoves his hammer towards the sky again, but, for some reason, the magic of it does not work. So, he does it again. Again, a failure. And then again, and again, and again. Faster and faster with his frustration before he yells again, "WAKE UP HEIMDALL YOU LAZY...." and then his voice trails off as he seems to come to the realization that he is here, alone. The Asgardian looks around the empty space he's standing in, and hrmphs, before he starts to trudge in a random direction. "Might as well see if I can find a good drink here at least..."

Jane Foster has posed:
The stony walls of the holding pens are thoroughly rocky, climbing to a ceiling not quite high enough for a man's comfort, let alone an Asgardian crown prince of Thor's stature. Had the helm wings, they'd be squashed up against the uneven roof. If there is craftsmanship to the place, the designer clearly intended things to be as natural as possible, but eroding every edge, every broken notch or crooked protrusion that could be used for advantage of self-harm. Or harming others.

Mjolnir certainly leaves an impressive web of cracks on the wall, though, for all it doesn't shatter its way through the highly refined metamorphic stone. A dwarf could ramble on for ages, no doubt, but for the Thunderer, it is a dense rock, deeply grey, about as mournful and depressing as stone can be. Not even a lovely seam of gold or platinum anywhere to be found. Those stalactites and stalagmites witnessed through the rainbow walls of the Bifrost are here, too, rounded off so their tips aren't particularly useful, but impediments the same.

What soldiers are here vary. Some look awfully like foes he's met in past centuries, wearing the armour they died in or those cobbled from rock, metal, anything that doesn't rot. Cloth and leather are not common in any condition, unless it's tatty, pretty miserable on the whole. Others... others most definitely aren't native to the battles of his youth. There are swarthy men dressed in bone armour, others in glorious feathers like a hummingbird writ enormously large. Their woven headdresses and obsidian spears and blocky swords are enough to keep the cowering souls in check. These aren't ghosts, but pallid variations on living people, stripped of much colour but distinguishable each as individuals. From old men to babies in arms they're one and all distinct fron one another. Another set of warriors fanned out don't even look wholly human, wearing ghoulish, hideous masks or skulls from beasts that never prowled the earth, not in this epoch anyway. Red and ashen skin studded with spikes set some apart, if not for the claws. Those resonate as demons or demonkind of some ilk, and they're the fewest by far.

But it's like being an unexpected guest to a festival of nations, and ending up discovering everyone at the party isn't a faerie godmother. More like warriors and monstrous torturers all around, for some of those warriors are nearly tall and broad as Thor himself.

The chambers twist and bend, forming galleries that have walled off souls stuck in there behind strange iron-like grates or bone sigils that reek of magic even to an ignorant eye. Most are kept in the centre, occasionally beset by whimpering, shouting, moaning in as many languages as All-Speak can translate. Most are human. Most. All are piteous, raging or shuffling in unease, whipped back into place with every convenient weapon at hand. Name a place on Earth, he can find at least one representative likely here. Even an Atlantean or three, snarling and beaten.

Those weapons leave wounds; it should be said. Hence the fear, the foreboding, sticky and thick on the air.

Thor has posed:
The Asgardian ignores the lost souls. Locked away like that they are of no use or consequence to him apparently. He storms along through the labyrinth calling, "Who is the master of this place? Show yourself! Thor, Son of Odin, God of Thunder demands it!" This is the height of diplomacy for Thor, an angry, thirsty, Thor.

He rounds a corner to another corridor, and then shouts, "If there be no master of this jail I shall break this place asunder and leave it a smoking wreckage!" As he declares this, he shakes his hammer again, and now there is a bit of lightning to his threat, and a growl of distant thunder. That somehow penetrates the deep rock.

Jane Foster has posed:
He won't have to wait long. Barging in to a prison is one thing, but demanding to see the wardens in a loud voice without the accompaniment of a raccoon or a tree is asking for trouble. Especially when the nearest warden guarding those souls turns an atlatl straight at the Asgardian, the crest of hummingbird feathers standing tall and fierce as the irregular ceiling allows. Black volcanic glass and turquoise dance along the whorled pectoral plate, his armour a confusing blend of bones and hardened panels that probably won't withstand a direct blow from a hammer (whatever does?), but still give a sense of artistry and danger all the same.

<<Who are you to make demands? This is not your place,>> the warrior says, as if the language of the Mesoamerica is any different from a plaintive cry in Haitian Creole or a curse in Spanish.

A soul of a woman marked with a bindi on her forehead pushes forward against a constricting line of hovering bodies, crying out. <<Go! Do not make it worse!>> Whether warning Thor or pleading her case is another matter. They certainly see him in colour as only the wardens and gaolers are, but she cringes back when one of the wardens under a glaring skull mask and a truly fantastic suit pulls an antique handgun from his belt. Presumably his, anyway. The shot fired sends her falling back, ichorous vapor and film spilling from her 'body.' If a soul has a body. Soul-stuff? Soul essence? It smells of spices and memories pour away, glimpses of prayers at a temple, Holi, marriage, a child. A lifetime being bled.

The others there, they simply cower. In response to the rumbling that conveys beautifully through the rock, greenish flames spindle higher and the smell of frost and rum make for very odd bedfellows.

<<You aren't dead, man. You've no place here. Take it up with the head man unless you care to fix the situation,>> the rolling Creole timbre of the gunman comes, casual, not even outright threatening. Much more amused than anything, the voice behind the skull almost laughing at a great jest. Another shudder dimly answers the thunderous basso that the Prince projects.

And like that, two of the prisoners vanish in a flash of dark fire, leaving four tarnished coins behind. A whimper collectively rises.

<<But these are already claimed, you get it?>>

Thor has posed:
"Is this Hel? What have they done with the place since last I visited?" Thor asks, after watching the display play out. The man who makes a demand of Thor gets a rather dark look from the God, and again Mjolnir flashes a bit threateningly. "My place is where I wish to go, mortal," he tells the creole gunman, before he continues to stride along. Should any try and stop them, well, there is a lot of lightning in the universe for him to summon for his use.

"Last chance!" He calls to the ether, and then, well, to demonstrate his meaning, he points the hammer at a nearby blank wall, and blasts it with a burst of lightning. Perhaps to see what happens to the rock, perhaps also to show that he has the power that he possesses to whomever might be watching.

Jane Foster has posed:
<<Your first mistake's assuming we're mortal.>> The gunman cleans the gun while he speaks, pretty damn casual about it, considering how risky things might be. <<This is the new way of things, non? You be thinking all wrong, but we move on here. We're outright //progressive//, an' you be seeing what the future looks like today.>> He casually slides over the ground to a few of the souls watching with expressions ranging from fear to horror, waving idly at them. <<Away, you unworthy cretins. You haven't the right to so much as touch me.>> The same can't be said the other way around, since they look practically stung and the smell of rich tobacco, iron shackles, and rum boils up from the warden. Telling, in a way, as it's nothing Asgardian.

The green flames, on the other hand, most definitely feel familiar and those soldiers kitted out in very similar armament and armour surely fit within. <<The Queen doesn't answer to you, Odinson,>> one mutters through yellowed teeth. <<Remember your place. You're a guest.>> Their numbers are considerable, and rattling the hammer as a sabre earns a few leering grins full of sharp teeth, yellowed and long. Lightning sears bright and white-hot through the air, smashing into the rock and splintering a shower that falls upon the nearest unlucky prisoners. One of the Niflings sweeps his arm up, vambraces protecting him somewhat. And in the glare of the light is a shape.

Almost invisible, except in the afterglow, like a silhouette swimming through clear water and barely noticeable. Tall, the vestiges of an arm, a winged helm, a pair of empty black eyes might resolve to the keen vision of the Thunderer. Thor isn't Heimdall, but he doesn't have to be to be quickly aware of a glimpse of something winnowing his way. Someone.

Every hair wants to stand on end around that, whatever it is, drawn by the crackling skyfire and something very other. It's probably not often he feels a sense of foreboding, the kind that would in a normal warrior send their stomach plummetting, but if he can feel it, the existential pang of danger so often forgotten by more foolish people becomes all too apparent.

Another coil of inky blackness blooms, and another of the souls evaporates to a call they cannot ignore, dragged down into a whirlpool of incense, oil, and frankincense as another Power with a capital P calls. But it's not an Egyptian, or some person of obvious extraction from that part of the world, but a Chinese man who probably worked at a tech company before passing. Wrong. All wrong.

Jane Foster has posed:
A whisper of a touch on his arm might just be beckoning for one of those sweeping backhands that knocks anything but the Hulk through parallel planes. Someone timid would be foolish or exceedingly desperate to try, especially given how cool and small that hand is. Not a child's, but compared to Thor, all things are kind of relative. Small, but steady, then, a touch that sends a crackle spark like pulling laundry from the dryer and earning a shock. More than a moment is needed for the equilibrium. The transgressor against his royal person -- or their innate stupidity -- is off to the side opposite of Mjolnir, and pulling, as if there's any chance of dragging an immoveable presence against its will. Points for trying?

"Drop!" a hissed whisper from one very dead woman is very much not unfamiliar. Jane rarely uses evocative tones like that, but.

Thor has posed:
The touch on his arm is familiar, even in death, and Thor glances to the side just long enough to catch sight of Jane Foster. Or at least who he believes to be Jane Foster, before her word registers in his mind. He immediately drops to the ground. For as brash and blustering as he is, he is at least aware that this is a world beyond his power and control.

Jane Foster has posed:
Fragments then.

The brunette dressed in the warm winter clothes she took to Orkney steps in front of him to the space Thor just occupied.

Souls are caught in a slow-moving gyre.

Three points mark where the souls are pulled in, arranged in a triangle of sorts. The maelstrom sucks them in, despite their efforts to flee. One is Hela's green, that sick acid burn. A reason, then, for a ghost shouting at him to run.

Hitting the ground, but what is beneath him isn't plain stone. A glimpse of two unlikely floors meet like the ocean and the shore: one is constructed from metal- and jewel-rich black stone, a tile of which would make any man wealthy. It collides with the ice-cold hexagons stamped by the knotwork favoured by Hela herself, at least on the bridge where his father occasionally rides and he no doubt has visited.

Beyond, he might just see a glimpse of thrones positioned among a pyramid wrapped in bright frescoes, a set of columns leading into a cavern, a spike of black rock.

That one vaguely resembles his father's. Asgardian in style, for certain.

A growl of pain. A few drops of blood red hit on the ground, bright on him.

Just for a moment, a flash of hideously sharp claws and bluish, translucent arms visible under chain and more complex armour rises over his head. A warrior woman swipes down inches from where he was, mouth yawning open in hunger to bare sharp fangs, black tongue, white teeth. Utter cold from her body leeches something in him, something divine and licked by lightning, pulling it little by little away into herself. That warrior spirit looks like a valkyrie, if one were hideously distorted, poisoned somehow.

Thor has posed:
The battle taking place above him seems more interesting than a bunch of dusty old thrones. Thor looks up to see the poisoned Valkyrie, eyeing her a bit suspiciously as whatever it is she does to leech some of her power from him happens, but for now he seems content to let it occur, and see what happens. Magic is strange like that. Just let it play out because sometimes it is impossible to tell just where it is going.

Jane Foster has posed:
The battle of a strange, nebulous warrior woman against a bog-standard astrophysicist isn't a fair thing. The sweeping strikes bypass the brunette for the most part, those claws emerging from her back or passing through her arm like mist parting around a ship. She dodges _into_ the attacks, oddly enough, trying to bend into whatever violence the glimmering spirit inflicts.

"We have to //go//. She's after you, not me!" Hence the attempts to keep interposed, though if one of those claws or the skillful, brutal efficiency of the thing's attacks so much as touch Thor...

It's like being plunged into an Arctic sea, the warmth of his life force ripped forth, and only then does she become totally clear: a fallen nightmare, a Valkyrie dark and every bit as vicious, gleeful in her malicious attacks. Leeching his life is like sipping mead and eating the Apples of Idunn all in one.

It's what she hunts, godhood. What she's built for.

Thor has posed:
The first time he was hit, Thor was not quite sure what was going on, but the second, and then the yelling from Jane, gets him to hop up, and, well, do what he does best: fire a bolt of lightning into the midsection of the Valkyrie attacking him. He then wraps an arm around Jane, and says, "Go it is!" and starts to run in the opposite direction, "Any idea HOW we get out of here?" he asks Jane as he runs with her away from the God essence sucking not in the fun way Valkyrie.

Jane Foster has posed:
Not yelling; hissing, breath bleeding out through gritted teeth. But what's the worst the blue-skinned fallen Valkyrie could do to her? Kill her? Too late, bitch. There's an argument of a gutturing, howling voice that chants of spiteful ends, damnation conjured in colourful terms. <<Your rotting corpse will keep me warm long after the lightning dies. How sweet it will be to hear the death rattle of the storm on your lips, and know it is mine to devour, like every bone in your body cracking under a wolf's teeth...>>

Ring a few more bells in that hideous song and he's not exactly in the worst company. Lightning crackles past Jane as her hair rises in a wave, static energy being what it is, and the disir illuminates a terrifying blue from head to toe. She laughs and keeps coming despite the torrent of power shaping her well-formed arms, the sweep of an axe pulled from some ghostly sheath. And all around, the dead have recoiled, their wardens cutting off options all around.

But the disir doesn't care about them, toothless wisps that they are. The most toothsome morsel is bounding and she jags after, flowing through stone walls that are there and not there, for where Thor grabs hold of the mortal woman, he's seeing in double.

He's running not through merely a cave and many chambers, but the open, mist-shrouded planes of Helheim itself. Or another deathly place: is that a rearing temple, jungle all around? Thick lianas don't stop the fallen warrior woman from chasing, passing through the trunks like nothing. Another dozen paces and they're fleeing through a fire-let hellscape of weeping black walls and lava-rimmed pools, his foot hitting a creaking basalt bridge that threatens to collapse like the worst Balrog moment in Moria. Those realms are all stitched together in a series of scenes; as if he's jumping through the realms themselves with no aid from the Bifrost.

"SHIELD has all my tech, you know that," Jane says, racing with him or simply lifted off her feet. "I can't open wormholes without it. Could Sif-- //left//!"

A cliff ahead collapses into a pool of fire where demons cavort, and the ragged path steers to the side, among a narrow, winding defile. "She won't stop. They eat gods. She saw Loki -- I don't know how he came, but she nearly broke through to Earth going after him. Are you here because the All-Father has finally seen what's happening?"

Oh sweet summer child.

Thor has posed:
Yes, well, Thor isn't one to hang around with Desir chasing him. "SHIELD isn't going to be much help here," Thor says, not patronizingly because that's not really his tone, more...under his breath as he considers his options. He turns left at the command, and dodges falling off a cliff down onto some razor sharp bits of granite or something down below. He calls, "HEIMDALL WAKE UP AND GET ME OFF OF THIS...WHATEVER!" as he continues to run. Another turn, and then he fires a blast of lightning into the ceiling behind him, collapsing some of the tunnel, perhaps to slow the chase by the Desir. It won't work, but, why not blow something up.

"HEIMDALL!" he yells again, and then thrusts the hammer towards the sky again, and well, this time it works. The rainbow bridge of bifrost comes down from the sky, and well..Thor and the woman he's carrying with him are pulled out of Nifelheim and off to...somewhere else.

Jane Foster has posed:
Disir: they make Ringwraiths look like scarecrows, and Dementors are about as scary as a 5-year-old's take on a horror story. The woman can move fast, unimpeded by such things as staying on the ground or worrying about walls and structures. She most certainly is happy to pursue, and the unearthly laughs that would peel paint from steel and corrode hope to a dead ember are echoed from another corridor in the hellish realm.

One isn't hunting. Of course, it would be a warband. A pack. And their quarry? The Thunderer himself. How ripe a feast there would be, and the call picked up across their ephemeral vocal chords is an awful resonance. The opposite of his rumbling thunder; this sinks into the veins, shredding warmth away.

Lightning scorches, and what /can/ Jane do? She grits her teeth at the jarring force of feet booming against the rough stone, and then a sheer face of rearing stone rising like a mountain ahead of them. Light splits the world where shades have been lurid or absolutely deadened to blacks and reds, a rainbow tearing its way down through protective barriers that dim even the Bifrost's reach. Her face turns away from the prismatic lifeblood of Odin's will carving into the fabric of this death-enriched place, turning to Thor. "Thor, tell him," only one him worth stressing like that, "Hela and the death gods are--"

Rainbows crash and there can be no sound in the raging torrent seizing the prince back to where he belongs, away from a place stygian and shackled by the might of the gods who defy the All-Father, who defy the order of the worlds themselves. Black ash leaves curl on the World Tree and the upward pull drags him back, away to relative safety of the Golden City. To an observatory, and a man holding watch, a great sword pressed down into the mechanisms needed to spin an escape from damn near anything.

Death itself, in this case.

Mjolnir weighs more than the burden dragged up there with him, though the smut of ectoplasm is rising off her like steam. Shadows burn away, and the clothes she had are gone, blood from the disir's claws weeping down her upper arm and shoulder. Not as much as there should be, for it's his storm-soul she wanted. "--stealing souls," she finishes, in a gritty tone of someone who hasn't spoken in a lifetime.