The dimensional tunnel spat Elric out like a piece of unwanted debris.
He tumbled through the air, body spinning wildly as reality reasserted itself around him. Sand. Lots of sand. The ground rushed up to meet him, and he hit it hard, rolling across burning desert terrain until momentum finally abandoned him.
At least I'm still in one piece, he thought dizzily, staring up at an unfamiliar sky. The tunnel could have torn me apart molecule by molecule. So there's that.
His head was still spinning too fast for coherent thought. The world tilted and swayed around him like he'd been thrown into a washing machine set to the most violent cycle. Fragments of memory flickered through his mind—the confrontation...
Right. The beautiful woman trying to kill him.
Speaking of which—
Elric's combat instincts screamed a warning. He jerked sideways on pure reflex as a blade carved through the space his head had occupied a heartbeat before. The sword buried itself in the sand where he'd been lying, close enough that he felt the displaced air against his cheek.
"Whoa!" He scrambled to his feet, swaying slightly as the world continued its lazy spin. "Can we maybe take a breather here?"
Hela extracted her blade from the sand with a smooth, deadly motion. She looked as disoriented as he felt—her usually perfect posture slightly off-kilter, one hand pressed against her temple. But that didn't make her any less dangerous. If anything, it made her more unpredictable.
"Okay, buddy—and I use that term very loosely—can you just stop for a moment?" Elric raised his hands in what he hoped was a placating gesture. "Look, I know I just threw a black hole at you, but we don't have to be mortal enemies, right? We could talk this out like rational, semi-immortal beings?"
"Rational?" Hela's eyes blazed with cold fury. Her voice was soft, deadly. "You killed my father."
"That's—okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration." Elric took a careful step back as she advanced. "It was a tiny black hole. More of a black hole-let, really. At Odin's level, it's incredibly hard to kill someone like him with just physical force. He could probably survive inside an actual black hole, let alone my boutique miniature version. He's fine! Probably!"
"You—" Hela's grip on her sword tightened until her knuckles went white. The air around her shimmered with barely contained power.
"Don't be ridiculous," Hela cut him off. "Did you think teleporting to some backwater planet would save you? That Asgard wouldn't track you down? Stop being delusional."
"Oh, I didn't teleport us here." Elric's expression shifted, becoming almost amused despite the situation. "You did. And if the Asgardian army somehow manages to find us..." He pointed past her shoulder. "Look at that thing."
Hela's eyes followed his gesture despite herself. Her gaze fell on her hand, where she still clutched the Tesseract.
Except it wasn't glowing anymore.
She froze, the color draining from her face. The cube that should have been radiating power, that should have been thrumming with cosmic energy, looked like nothing more than an elaborate paperweight. The brilliant blue light that had filled its crystalline structure had faded to dull transparency.
An Infinity Stone losing its energy. What an absolute joke.
Hela tried to channel its power, to open a portal back to Asgard. Nothing happened. The Tesseract sat inert in her palm, no more responsive than an ordinary rock. The universal treasure she'd seized, the key to controlling space itself, had become worthless.
"What did you do?" she demanded, rounding on Elric.
"Me? Nothing." He held up his hands again. "That's all on you and your enthusiastic portal-making. See, here's the thing about Infinity Stones—they lose their effectiveness outside their origin universe." He watched her expression carefully. "We're not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy. We're in a parallel universe."
"A parallel universe..." Hela's voice was barely above a whisper.
She stared at the useless cube, mind racing. The Space Stone was capable of opening channels to other universes—that much was theoretically true. But the odds of accidentally triggering such a feat accidently.
The thought sent a fresh wave of fury through her, but it was dampened now by the cold weight of reality. She was stranded. Cut off from Asgard, from her armies, from everything she'd been fighting to reclaim.
Elric watched the emotions play across her face with a mixture of caution.
He'd activated his sensing abilities the moment they'd arrived, automatically mapping the energy signatures of this new world.
This was Earth. Not just any Earth—a modern Earth. The realization had hit him, If this parallel Earth was similar enough to his home, if he could locate this universe's Time Stone and combine it with the Space Stone...
He might be able to go home.
But first, he had to deal with the Goddess of Death who was currently contemplating the best way to separate his head from his shoulders.
"Miss Hela," he said carefully, watching her grip on the sword. "What do you say we call a temporary truce? We can continue trying to kill each other after we get back to our original universe. Sound fair?"
Hela's eyes narrowed. She studied him with the intensity of a predator evaluating prey. Why was he being so passive suddenly? This was obviously the perfect chance to eliminate her while she was weakened.
Unless he needed her alive for something.
Or unless he genuinely didn't want to fight anymore.
You guys can check out my patreon with 30 advance chapter, and want to support this story.
patreon.com/LMStar666