With one last look over Asgard, Eli grabbed the trunk and left his mother's manor to get to the passage he used to enter Asgard. He had spent another hour in the manor to look for interesting things to bring, but only packed three more books until his trunk hit maximum capacity.
He had marked the passage and stabilized it with a runic circle from both ends, but he felt something had changed. After a critical look, he concluded it wasn't on this end, so he took a cautious step forward.
Once on the other side, he was glad he still ended up on Earth, but a quick look around told him he had ended up in London.
Standing on top of the roof of a store, whose name told him he ended up on the Isle of Dogs, Eli rose to the skies and immediately saw a dark elf ship the size of a NY skyscraper and disks akin to portals above it to the south.
He's never been there personally, but his mother's foundation had sponsored promising women attending the Old Royal Naval College on multiple occasions, so he knew the convergence would happen over the skies of Greenwich.
First, Eli flew in the opposite direction. He dropped off the trunk at a safe location, hid it with a runic circle, and made his way back towards Greenwich. He just couldn't help it. This looked like a world-ending event, and he would lend his hand when necessary.
Overcharging the spell to identify passages, Eli dodged random portals that popped up here and there and made his way to the dark elf mothership.
People were fleeing from the weird effects, he saw some vanish into portals, some were lucky enough to come out a good distance away immediately, though they were even more frightened than before.
Once he made out dark elves moving in groups, he observed them first to see what their weapons were capable of.
And he was glad he didn't charge in like an idiot, those singularity grenades that would suck in everything in a small radius for a short time would do some serious damage to him. He tried out some of his minor telepathy and marveled at the fact that he could understand their thoughts. Who knew Allspeak would even translate thoughts for him.
These groups had no special missions right now. All they did was something akin to perimeter control for their king. The king would have to be stopped, but Eli learned he gained the Aether on Svartalfheim because of the actions of Thor and Loki. That means Malekith would be too strong for him by a lot.
Eli decided he would gather some of the grenades from the elves and take out as much fodder as possible, so that Thor or someone of equivalent strength could take out the dark elf king without worries.
He dove into a group of eight elves fully prepared. He was still invisible, hid his face with the earring, had drawn his sword, and enlarged his grandmother's bracelet into an ornate vambrace, covering his forearm. He only learned of the last trick by accident last night when he poured magic into the hidden door in the wardrobe, the bracelet had reacted to him.
Eli quickly took out four dark elves that were moving in a line by bisecting them. Since he was invisible to the elves, they started firing all around in apparent panic, which Eli barely had to put any effort into dodging. He landed in the middle of the group and began by piercing the last of the elves, who still carried one of the grenades in the neck.
The other three elves noticed and turned to fire in the middle. They hit him, which broke his invisibility, but the damage he suffered was negligible.
Eli made short work of the three elves with his vastly superior speed, but he still took several more hits. These elves were not as numerous, but clearly a more threatening enemy than the Chitauri.
He gathered the three grenades the elves had on them and put them in a small backpack, he found on the side of the road.
Learning from his last mistake, the next group of six dark elves he decided to fight, Eli dove into the group twice under his invisibility and took them out without taking any damage. This group only yielded him one more grenade.
He took out several other smaller groups until he got closer to the lawn of the Naval College. Roughly 50 or 60 dark elves were there, spread out far enough that he could neither conveniently take them out in a line like before, and the grenades would not help either. He couldn't even shatter the sword. He feared the shards would be spread all over the nine realms if he does.
Since even Malekith was part of this group, Eli waited patiently. This group would not damage any civilians just gathered here, and the dark elf king was just waiting for something.
It was a short moment of calm until it was broken by the faint sound of thunder and a hammer hitting the king right in the gut.
Malekith and Thor had a short back-and-forth until Eli heard Thor quip, "you know, with all that power, I thought you'd hit harder."
After that, their fight escalated, and Thor took the king away from the ship. Eli used this moment where the enemy was unfocused to rush into dark elves. He took out three of them before gaining height to dodge some wild shots more easily. When he dove in once more, a spike rammed into the lawn emitted a force field of sorts and teleported him and eight elves to Svartalfheim.
Cursing under his breath, Eli began dispatching the elves as best he could. His invisibility was broken, so he took a few more hits. When he was done, he looked around to see if he could find a passage back to London, or even just Earth.
The first passage he stepped through, Eli learned from a gruff looking man of apparently Asian decent that he was on Vanaheim. Quickly stepping back, Eli eventually came back to London, close to Greenwich, and began dispatching more dark elves.
In an alleyway, he saw a young man smash a group of elves with a car thanks to the weird gravity all around. With his actions, he saved a young woman, and they swiftly began celebrating their victory with a kiss, weirdly with the man leaning down instead of the woman, but who is he to judge.
Still mid-kiss, Eli saw another one of those force fields that had displaced him earlier, and instead of the kissing couple, Eli found himself next to roughly 18 elves.
Since they were grouped up a little more than usual, he made quick work of twelve of those elves and fought the other six.
Once he was done, he picked up the single grenade he could still find among them and turned to look at the elves' mothership. Next to it, an unnatural red dust storm of sorts was beginning to pick up.
Thinking that he was out of time, since the disks above that storm were beginning to allign, Eli grabbed his backpack and flew towards the storms.
He entered it and felt pain all over, like the storm was pure corrosion, well it looked harmful to begin with. Something inside of him began to think about this phenomenon; a storm that was more than just winds, but he had to figure out what to do with the king first.
His backpack held eleven grenades. Throwing all eleven at once would be too risky, so he decided to throw three at the same time.
Malekith was focussed on something else, so the three grenades explo...imploded next to him and as if anchored into the ground, he stood rooted on the spot. His left arm however became mangled inside the implosion's radius and it looked as though the Aether was somehow ripped out of him under the effects of the grenades.
Eli was about to throw five grenades at once, but the Aether that was out of the dark elf king's control, touched Eli as if seeking him out and his throw was completely off target. The grenades didn't even implode next to each other to achieve resonance like before.
As he was touched by the Aether, Eli dropped the backpack and fell to his knees. Just like before, when he touched 'Loki's Scepter' his eyes began to glow, and he was completely at the mercy of others in this form.
The tendril that had touched Eli grew thinner over time, but Malekith wouldn't give the young man any more chances. Since the Aether was out of his control for the moment, he crouched to pick up a fist sized stone to use as a projectile.
Before Malekith could get back up to ready the throw, he heard Thor Odinson yell at him.
"MALEKITH!"
Reluctantly, Malekith turned to face Thor instead of dealing with the young man. He was arrogant enough to believe that this was but a minor setback.
The Aether would come back under his control shortly, the tendril connecting it to that bug was growing thinner anyway. He couldn't use it to hurt the boy, but his control over the Aether was coming back slowly.
"Darkness returns, Asgardian. Have you come to witness the end of your universe?" The king's voice was eerily calm and quiet, but through all the noise of the storm, Thor could hear him clearly.
"I've come to accept your surrender," Thor shouted back.
Immediately after, Thor threw one of the three spikes he had on him at Malekith, who arrogantly caught the first one with his unmangled arm. A few moments later, a much smaller force field than before was emitted and ripped away the king's last good arm.
Thor threw the second spike, and the king lost the shoulder and mangled arm on the other side.
Together with a whack of Mjolnir, Thor pushed the last and third spike through Malekith chest after a leap and nailed him to his mothership.
Once Malekith was teleported away by the spike's force field, the tendril connecting Eli to the Aether was snapped away, and like a puppet without strings, he fell from his knees onto his back.
Three deep breaths later, Eli sat back up and noticed the mothership had disappeared, well, most of it did.
Grabbing his backpack with the three remaining grenades, Eli moved next to Jane and Thor. Jane was surprised to see Eli, but Thor was currently unconscious.
Under the pretense of trying to heal Thor, Eli made some magic circles and cast a spell on Jane, not to make her forget his real identity, no, Eli made it so she would be compulsed not to talk about it with others. Even if his grandfather knew, he could do nothing about it. Odin was much more powerful than him.
His grandmother, should she wake up soon, would do everything in her power to make sure he was safe and respect his wish not to tell others about his real identity.
But Jane was an unknown to Eli, and he wouldn't want Thor to find out yet. If Odin tells him, so be it, but it wouldn't come from Jane's mouth.
Just like that, he slapped Thor after his magic ran its course, and the Asgardian woke up.
"Okay, he's good to go," Eli said to Jane, who had an incredulous look on her face. She wanted to ask why or how he could slap his father, but the moment those words came to her, she didn't ask them. Eli nodded at that. He had read the surface thoughts of Jane and had seen the question vanish from her mind.
"Jane, are you alright?" Thor asked with great concern lacing his voice as he grabbed the woman from his lying position.
"Yeah, I'm alright. What about you, Thor? You're bleeding all over," Jane said as she concentrated back on her boyfriend below her.
"No worries, he's alright. Those shallow cuts will heal by the end of today or after a good nights sleep," Eli added from the side.
"Friend Eli, you once again came to save the day," Thor said as he brought the young man into a one-armed hug while he was still sitting on the floor. Jane was swept up too, and so both Jane and Eli were hugged by Thor at the same time.
'Just like a family,' Jane thought with a faint blush as she shook her head. Even without the spell, she wouldn't have said something so embarrassing out loud.
"Okay okay, Prince of Asgard, I think you're not yet off the clock. There's still some clean-up left for you to do," Eli said with an awkward smile under his scarf some short time later. To think his first hug with his father would come after a potentially world-ending battle. Well, if his mother's romanticized stories of his father were to be believed, that happened more often than he would think.
The three looked up, the disk-like portals were slowly moving out of alignment. The crisis was averted, but the Aether was still not under their control, and some Dark Elves had survived.
Eli helped out getting rid of the remaining elves on Midgard and eventually left without saying a word. When he reached his trunk, he saw the bifrost come down, most likely to pick up Thor.
He undid the seal on the trunk and hefted it in front of him, but before he lifted off, he saw two women stare at him - despite his invisibility.
The taller woman was a brunette of Asian origins in her 30s. She was very pretty. The other woman was a girl, maybe 12 or roughly his age. It was hard to gauge. The girl had short red hair and a few freckles.
Eli awkwardly waved his hand at them, and they appeared just as surprised that he could see them as they surprised him.
They didn't wave back, but instead, the older of the two women hurriedly dragged away the girl who kept looking at Eli like a fish out of water.
Too exhausted from the fight, Eli didn't bother chasing the two.
He made his way back to New York. It was the night from Friday to Saturday, and he was all alone in his home. Misty was still on her mission in South Korea. At least that was what his phone said.
Eli threw the trunk in his room, fell on his bed, and slept like a log until the following morning.
In his dreams, Eli stood on a wide meadow. The grass reached his knees. The winds were growing stronger in this dreamscape when he entered, and they kept picking up more speed, everything grew more chaotic.
'A storm, it's like my vision when I was connected to the Aether, but this time I get to actually observe, feel the changes,' Eli thought as he concentrated on the movement of the grass.
The meadow was getting ripped apart at some point, and the weather changed. As he was observing, slowly, it wasn't just the meadow that changed. The entire landscape was getting ripped apart until he was hovering in the air in his obversation.
Eli was wholly unaffected by all these changes, but he began to notice the air heating up in certain parts. Without really getting how and when, Eli felt like he was floating in space instead of on a planet like before. The heat gathered in glowing, violent clouds of energy - plasma, Eli thought with his limited scientific knowledge.
When enough of these clouds gathered, another kind of storm gathered and wiped out everything else in this space. That was the moment Eli woke up, covered in sweat.
'So my powers should eventually be able to affect reality to such a degree? Is that was this vision was supposed to show me?' Eli thought as look at his hand and made a fist.
Eli got up, did his morning rituals, and began to read the books his mother had left him. Some of them talked about the sorcerers of Midgard and how he shouldn't get into a fight with them if not necessary. Some others gave him knowledge of spells that would ensnare the mind.
Eli shook his head. As much as he loved his mother, he really didn't like these kinds of magics.
When he was done browsing books, Eli grabbed a guitar, put it in a case and left to grab some food and play some music outside.
He was in a rough neighborhood in Hell's Kitchen a few minutes later thanks to his flight, ordered some food from one of the best deli's in the area and made his way to DeWitt Clinton park. He sat close to the water front and ate in silence.
When he was done, Eli began playing some music, but even twenty minutes later, nobody stopped to listen. It wasn't unusual for this neighborhood, and he never really played to get an audience anyway.
Usually, Eli pays little attention to the people around him, but at the other end of the park, right around dusk, Eli saw a slim, dark-haired woman beating up some would-be thieves.
What caught his attention was when she lept after a guy who tried to run away. She lept for almost the full length of a bus from a standing position and drove the guys head into the ground.
Seeing as she might have overdone it, the woman slowly but surely ran away from the scene, the only thing hiding her identity was a big black scarf that anyone could wear in this weather.
When she passed by Eli, who kept playing this guitar, she slowed down and eventually stood still when he wouldn't break eye contact.
"You need something, pal?" The woman asked.
"No, nothing. I want to suggest you either get better training or a better way to hide your identity," Eli calmly added with a smile.
"What business is it of yours?" She asked with narrowed eyes.
"You're doing good, but you aren't doing it well. You could hurt others more than you want or worse, you could get yourself hurt."
"And how is some teen musician from the park going to help?"
"Well, I can do this," Eli said as he began to float a little off the ground, still in a sitting position.
"Okay Houdini, are you the one that's gonna teach me then?" The young woman's voice was getting more and more skeptical.
"Uh, I'm not sure that's what I offered, Miss...?"
"Isn't it more polite to introduce yourself first Mr Abracadabra?"
"Very well, I'm Elias. Call me Eli," he offered. Since the conversation started he had not stopped playing his guitar. He played a soothing song that appropriately played a little more quiet when the conversation started.
"Alright Eli, my name's Jessica. Call me Jess," the woman said, losing some of her vigilance.