Eagle (A Loki love story)

Chapter 167

Loki's POV

My entire body felt bruised. I couldn't see, and something heavy was strewn across my hips. I opened my eyes and shook my head, trying to free them of the constant, dripping water. Someone groaned nearby, but I couldn't twist enough to see.

"Who's there?"

"Me." It was Clint, "You alright?"

"No. We have to move." My biceps screamed as I lifted the pipe up enough to wriggle free. Clint fortunately wasn't trapped by any heavy debris.

"How deep do you think we're buried?" He was looking around. Dim, red emergency lights were on in some places, giving the cavern a claustrophobic feeling.

"I don't know, but we have to get out of here." We both looked up, but the climb was too steep, too perilous. But neither direction of the maintenance tunnel we'd landed in looked particularly inviting.

"Loki." Clint hissed. He crouched down and picked up a piece of rubble. When he dusted it off, I realized that it hadn't been rubble at all, but the gauntlet! How could I have forgotten about that? As he clutched it to his chest, I became aware of subdued growling coming from the tunnel behind us. I flicked my eyes down to Clint, who stood frozen.

"Do you?" He nodded jerkily. I gestured for the gauntlet, but he hesitated.

"You're not going to go all power-crazy, are you?" He was already handing it over.

"Come on!" I tucked the gauntlet under one arm and pulled a dagger from one of the many sheaths on my person.

"Ready?" He nodded once before whirling around and shooting an arrow down the center from the tunnel. The light that emanated from it revealed the multi-armed beasts from Wakanda crawling the walls on all sides.

"Shit."

"You can saw that again. Run!" When we broke into a full sprint, the monsters abandoned their efforts for stealth and raced after us. When we reached a T- junction, Clint turned left without a second thought. This maze could prove fatal if the beasts were smart enough to split up.

"Do you know the way out?"

"No, but always turning left will eventually lead to one." If they hadn't all collapsed.

We ran into a couple tight spots where squeezing by had lost us ground, but for the most part we remained ahead of them. Whenever we passed over puddles of water, I froze them to make the beasts slip, but after a few successes, they simply rebounded off the walls. Clint was having more luck, however. He was continuously sticking arrows onto every surface he could reach without turning his head. We were coming up on another junction, but this one had blueish light coming from above! Daylight!

Suddenly, all the arrows Clint had planted exploded, throwing us both forward. In the commotion, I fumbled the gauntlet and it went skittering across the grates to Clint.

"Nice work, butterfingers."

"Thanks, ameteur bomb enthusiast." Clint picked up the glove and I glanced back into the tunnel. The beasts that had just been on our tails were barely moving as fire consumed their flesh. But where they fell, others sprung from behind, unscathed. I looked up into the shaft. There was a single ladder, but not much else that I would be able to climb on. Oh, how I wished for Mira's wings right about now! Making myself vulnerable, I shapeshifted into a serpent and wrapped myself around Clint's arm just as he flew upwards, pulled by a grappling hook. As a serpent, I couldn't make out the details of what happened, but I knew our ascent was not uninterrupted. We spun a couple times, I heard metal cut through flesh and bone, and then we landed abruptly on the ground.