So, that was what he felt in the morning. “It was a worthy tradeoff then,” he said. “Is there a chance for some burn salve or something else to reduce the inflammation? I don’t want the wound to become infected.”
“Sure,” she said, getting up, then changed her mind halfway through. “Or alternatively…” She reached into her bag again. She pulled out a glowing cylinder and tossed it at him. “Here.”
He caught it and stared at it. “Is this…”
“Yeah. Tony apparently made a new one after the first time you two did that energy transfer thingy. He says you can have it until you get your mojo back. Or as long as you need, really. It works just as the one in his chest without the inconvenience of being attached to a living being.”
“But…”
“I bumped into him in the workshop. We had a little chat about what you told him about taking the energy from a person being immoral or something. So, here’s a solution. No person attached, just a fancy battery. It should work, right?”
Loki could feel the energy thrumming under his fingertips, tingling in his veins and calling to him invitingly. “Yes,” he said and ran his fingers around the perimeter of the glowing circle. It was an extraordinary gift. “Thank you.”
She shrugged. “Now you can use it wherever you want. Stark offered he could make you a hole in your chest if you want a convenient place to store it, but I’m ninety-nine percent sure he was joking.”
Loki let the power seep through his fingers and spill its way into his body, then directed it, still flowing and swirling, into healing his injuries, starting at his ankle to show her it was working, then moving on to the broken ribs he got from the skirmish with the guards and the abrasions in his throat. It was an intoxicating feeling, to feel the power filling him and to know there’s so much more where it came from, free for him to take. So much so that his mind started to reel from the surge, and he had to slow it down to a trickle. Just like with food, taking too much too quickly after a long period of deprivation could make one sick, so he needed to proceed carefully.
Emboldened, he closed his eyes and focused on shifting his form. He knew he couldn’t keep it up, not yet, but he yearned to experience it again, to feel like himself, just for a brief while.
“Woah,” she gasped. “The transition looked so much smoother than the last time. Is it some other kind of magic?”
He shook his head, staring down at his hands. It was actually weird to see the pale flesh now, less like returning home and more like a flashback from another, long-forgotten life. Also, despite the changed looks, he didn’t feel any significant differences, other than the perceived temperature and how the room seemed darker and less vivid now. And that was still due to physical alterations the shift invoked in his body. Was his mind affected then, or was it not? Would he be ever able to tell?
“No,” he said. There was no point in keeping the truth from her. He had already shown off the ability in front of Fury and her being convinced his magic was returning when it wasn’t would only work to his detriment. “It just gets easier each time I try.”
He still didn’t know how to make the change permanent, even with an external power source and he could still feel it tugging uncomfortably at his core, and the notion that it was but a form of magic was ringing in his brain. Was it possible this was what his Æsir form was all along and he wasn’t aware because he was used to it and never got his energy drained so low?
“Can you do anything else with it? Like, change into other people or something like that?”
“I suppose it’s possible,” he said carefully, “but I haven’t got an opportunity to explore it yet.”
