Burning Bright: An Avengers Fanfiction

Reliving the Past, Moving Towards the Future

Beware, long chunks of dialogue ahead!

The chilly wind blows through my hair as Wolf gazes at me with wide, beseeching eyes. I want to immediately reject what he just said, to tell myself it's a lie. He can't be the son of Loki. Loki had destroyed New York, tried to take over the world, and had no qualms about the people he had killed as he did so. Wolf couldn't be the son of one so cold and uncaring, the son of a monster.

But, logic fought for control in my mind. It would make sense. How he could heal so quickly, why he called Thor uncle, why he seemed to know so much about Elemental mages. He also had no reason to lie to me, especially about his parentage. Being the son of a raving lunatic isn't exactly impressive. But, what did sting was that he had lied to me.

I hold back my tongue from asking Wolf why didn't tell me, and simply wait for him to expound on his little reveal.

Wolf sighs and sits down on the couch that Tony keeps out on the balcony. He rests his forearms on his knees, his right knee bouncing up and down anxiously.

"Why don't you take a seat and I explain everything, huh?" he asks nervously. I nod my head and slowly sit on the other end of the couch. Wolf sighs again and then launches into his story.

"Fifteen years ago, a small village in Asgard was hit by a terrible plague. A farmer had bought a spell from a mage that would make his crop grow twice as large. Unfortunately, the mage wasn't a very competent one, and had given the farmer a spell that was from the Golden Ages that was fused with Dark magic. Of course, when people ate the crop produced, the Dark magic spread to them, making them deathly ill. Most did not survive a week."

"What's so dangerous about Dark magic? And if it's so dangerous, how did this mage get a hold of it?" I question.

"Dark magic is a lot like Elemental magic in that is very old and very powerful. In fact, it was formed when a sorcerer tried to combine all of the Elemental magics into one type of magic. The result was Dark magic. Dark magic, like Elemental magic, has to feed off magic from inside a person. But, as a person who comes into contact with Dark magic is usually not an Elemental mage and thus doesn't have such reserves, the magic instead feeds off its host's vitality, slowly killing the person. And because no Elemental mages existed until today, there has been almost no one who could wield Dark magic for two thousand years. But, there are still spells out there that were created by Dark mages when they still existed, and this mage had happened upon one and gave it to the farmer by accident."

"Almost?"

Wolf gives me a grim smile, and goes back to his story.

"A team of several mages was sent to the village to try and combat this issue. They had figured out a way to slowly remove the Dark magic from a host's body and store it. One of the mages on this mission was Prince Loki." Wolf' said his father's name with equal parts spite and sarcasm. Okay, obviously not a good sign. I shouldn't have been reassured by his dislike for his father, but a part of me was.

"While some of the mages were sent to destroy the crop, others went around removing the Dark magic. Loki had removed the Dark magic from over a dozen villagers, one of them a young maiden named Diana."

Wolf cast his eyes in my direction nervously, and his leg bounced even faster than before. A part of me wanted to reach out and hold his leg down until the damn jittering stopped, but I saw how rattled he was and let him continue.

"Magic is...tricky. When you cast a spell on someone, enchant a weapon, anything, you leave a tiny imprint of your magic in whatever you did. Most of the time that imprint fades after a while, but this was a special case. Diana had been ovulating at the time she had become infected, and the Dark magic had taken root in some of her eggs."