Chapter 1: The Gift of a Witch
The air in the Grandmaster’s party chamber was a thick, sickly soup of smells. Roasted fowl, spiced wine, the cloying sweetness of burning incense, and underneath it all, the sharp, clean scent of fear-sweat from the latest batch of slaves being paraded past the divans. Loki shifted on the plush cushions, a crystal goblet dangling from his fingertips. He wore the smile like armor—a slight, knowing curve that suggested he was in on a joke no one else understood.
“Bored?” The Grandmaster’s voice slid into his ear, too close. The ruler of Sakaar materialized beside him, a whirl of gilded blue fabric and glittering metallic powder dusted across his cheeks. He smelled of ozone and candy.
“Merely observing the pageantry,” Loki said smoothly, taking a sip. The wine was excellent. He had to give the lunatic that. “It’s all so… vibrant.”
“It’s a lot, isn’t it?” The Grandmaster beamed, throwing an arm around Loki’s shoulders. The grip was deceptively strong. “But you, my silvertongued friend, you appreciate the finer things. The complexity. I see you watching. Not just the dancers, not just the fights.” He leaned in, his voice dropping to a theatrical whisper. “You’re watching the watchers. I do that too.”
Loki kept his expression neutral, but his mind raced. This creature’s favor was a slippery, dangerous thing. One moment you were sipping wine, the next you were being fitted for a shock collar.
“It pays to know the landscape,” Loki conceded.
“Yes! Exactly!” The Grandmaster released him with a pat that was just a little too hard. “Which is why I got you a little present. A welcoming-to-Sakaar, sorry-you-crashed-that-funny-little-ship-of-yours-here gift. I’m thoughtful like that.”
He snapped his fingers. The pulsing music dipped, and a path cleared through the writhing crowd. Two of the Grandmaster’s stern, silent guards marched forward, dragging a struggling figure between them.
She was all dark hair and furious motion. Her clothes were simple, practical leathers, stained and worn, wildly out of place in the glittering hall. Her wrists were bound in glowing blue energy cuffs that hummed with a low, threatening pitch. They shoved her forward, and she stumbled, catching herself before she fell at Loki’s feet. She didn’t look up, just kept her head down, her wild hair a curtain around her face.
“Ta-daa!” The Grandmaster sang. “Found her skulking around the lower ducts. A stowaway! On a garbage scow, of all things. Can you imagine the smell? But she’s got a certain… spark. Didn’t go quietly. Took out three of my scrappers before we got the dampeners on her.”
Loki’s gaze drifted over her. A witch, then. Or something like it. His interest, a cool and clinical thing, flickered to life. “A rogue element. How charming.”
Finally, she looked up.
Her eyes were a startling, clear blue, like the heart of a glacier. They weren’t frightened. They were incandescent with rage and a deep, tired defiance. She scanned him in one swift, dismissive glance—the elegant Asgardian leathers, the carefully arranged hair, the practiced look of detached amusement—and her lips curled. She saw the performative prince, the polished parasite. And she found him wanting.
The Grandmaster nudged Loki with an elbow. “See? Spirit! I thought, ‘My new friend Loki, he appreciates spirit. He needs an attendant with some zing.’ Everyone needs a servant, but boring ones are such a drain.”
“I am no one’s servant,” the woman said, her voice low and rough, edged with an accent Loki couldn’t place.
“You’re whatever I say you are, darling,” the Grandmaster replied, his smile never faltering. “And I say you’re a gift. Loki, this is Sage. Sage, this is Loki. Try not to kill each other before I get bored of watching.”
He laughed, a sound like shattering glass, and wandered off toward a group of weeping diplomats, already moving on to the next amusement.
An awkward silence descended, filled only by the thumping music and distant cheers from the adjacent arena. Loki took another slow sip of his wine, studying her over the rim of the glass. Sage stared back, her chest rising and falling with controlled breath.
“Sage,” he repeated. “An aspirational name. Or perhaps ironic.”
“It’s my name,” she said flatly. “What’s yours again? Lackey?”
A faint, genuine smile touched Loki’s mouth. “Charming. You do have spirit. A useless quality here, generally. It just makes the inevitable breaking more entertaining for the crowd.”
“I’m not fighting in your arena.”
“My arena? Oh, no. That’s his.” Loki nodded toward the Grandmaster, who was now feeding grapes to a terrified-looking creature. “I’m just another curious trinket in his collection. As are you. The only difference is the quality of the cushioning.” He gestured to the divan. “So. What kind of witch are you? Parlor tricks? Illusions? Do you summon small, unpleasant vermin?”
Sage’s eyes narrowed. The cuffs on her wrists glowed brighter for a second, and the air around them grew hot, smelling of ozone and burnt sugar. The guards beside her tensed, their hands going to their shock-prods.
Loki raised an eyebrow. “Ah. The untamed, self-taught variety. Born from desperation. The most volatile kind.” He set his goblet down. “And the most foolish. Displaying your power here, now, with those dampeners on? That’s just pain asking for an introduction.”
“I’m not displaying anything,” she spat. “It’s just… there. It reacts. It doesn’t like being caged.”
“Something we have in common.” Loki stood, smoothing his tunic. He approached her slowly, a predator assessing a strange, cornered animal. He could feel the energy coming off her, a chaotic, hot ripple in the air. It was messy. Unfocused. Potentially enormous. “He didn’t gift you to me out of kindness. It’s a test. To see if I can control you. To see if you’re worth more to him as my problem or as tomorrow’s entertainment.”
Sage finally held his gaze, the defiance softening for a millisecond into calculation. She was listening. Good.
“So what’s your play, ‘Lackey’?” she murmured, the title now a question, not just an insult.
“The play,” Loki said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur only she could hear, “is to be so quietly, utterly useful that he forgets to be entertained by us. For now, that means you stop making scenes. You follow my lead. And you keep that fascinating little wildfire of yours on a very, very short leash.”
He reached out, not toward her, but toward the guard on her left. With a flick of his wrist and a shimmer of green light, the guard’s key card appeared in Loki’s palm. He gave the man a wink. The guard blinked, confused, patting his belt.
Loki tapped the card against the energy cuffs. They flickered and died with a hollow pop. Sage gasped, pulling her wrists in and rubbing the red, raw skin.
“A gesture of good faith,” Loki said, letting the key card vanish. “Don’t make me regret it. Regret, here, often involves disintegration.”
She stared at her freed hands, then back at him. The outright hatred had banked, replaced by a steep, wary suspicion. He could work with that.
“Come,” Loki said, turning away, expecting her to follow. “You look like you haven’t eaten in a week. The canapés are surprisingly adequate. We’ll discuss the parameters of your non-servitude.”
He took two steps before he felt it—not a threat, but a shift. A subtle pull in the air around him, a cool whisper against the back of his neck. He glanced back.
Sage hadn’t moved. She was staring at her own palm, where a single, perfect snowflake spun and glistened for a heartbeat before melting into a drop of water. She looked up, her blue eyes wide not with defiance, but with a kind of startled horror. She hadn’t done it. The magic had just… happened.
Loki’s calculated composure froze. Ice. In the sweltering heat of Sakaar, in a room boiling with life, her magic had produced ice. Not fire. Not chaos. Control. A specific, elemental control her conscious mind didn’t command.
The Grandmaster hadn’t gifted him a volatile witch.
He’d gifted him a riddle wrapped in a mystery. And possibly a bomb.
A slow, intrigued smile spread across Loki’s face. This was no longer merely about survival. This had become interesting.
“On second thought,” he said, his voice a low murmur meant only for her. “Skip the canapés. Let’s find somewhere… quieter to talk.”
Loki moved through the pulsing crowd with the ease of a shadow, a murmured excuse here, a distracting compliment there. Sage followed, a silent, seething ghost at his heels. The Grandmaster, now enthusiastically judging a contest involving live eels and spoons, gave them a languid wave as they passed, his eyes glittering with proprietary interest.
The corridor outside the chamber was only marginally quieter, the thump of music vibrating through the polished obsidian floors. Guards lined the walls, their eyes forward, but Loki felt their attention like a physical touch. Every being here was a sensor, reporting back.
“This way,” Loki said, his voice losing its performative lilt, becoming flat and efficient. He turned down a narrower passageway lit with a soft, violet bioluminescence. The doors here were closer together, marked with obscure symbols. His was at the end.
He placed his palm against the smooth surface. It rippled like water and slid aside with a whisper.
The room beyond was a study in dissonant luxury. It was spacious, appointed with silks and low, modern furniture, a bottle of something amber and expensive waiting on a side table. But the view from the wall-sized window was pure Sakaar—a teeming, chaotic sprawl of scrap and neon under a swirling, sickly green sky. It was a gilded cage. He knew it. She’d know it too.
“Inside,” he said, not looking back.
Sage crossed the threshold, and the door sealed shut behind her, muting the distant cacophony to a dull throb. The relative silence was immediate, thick. She stood rigid in the center of the room, her back to him, still staring at her own hands as if they’d betrayed her.
“Alright,” Loki began, turning. The words died in his throat.
In the stark, clear light of his rooms, away from the party’s pulsating lasers and decorative shadows, he saw her. Really saw her.
The defiance was a cloak she wore, threadbare and thin. Underneath, she was hollowed out. Her skin, which had seemed dusky in the chamber, was pallid, stretched taut over sharp cheekbones. Dark, bruise-like shadows pooled under her eyes, not from makeup but from exhaustion so deep it had seeped into the bone. She was gaunt, the lines of her collarbone sharp enough to cut, her practical leathers hanging loose.
And the bruises. They were not from the scuffle in the ducts. These were older, strategic. A yellowing bloom across her right jaw. The distinct, ugly imprint of fingers encircling her left wrist, darker than the raw marks left by the energy cuffs. A vicious, mottled discoloration peeking above her collar.
She wasn’t just a stowaway. She was a refugee.
Sage flinched when she realized he had stopped talking. She wrapped her arms around herself, a useless gesture of protection. “What?” she challenged, but the fire was gone, replaced by a raw, exhausted rasp.
“Your planet,” Loki stated, his voice uncharacteristically quiet. He moved to the side table, not to pour a drink, but to put distance between them, to give her space he instinctively knew she needed. “It wasn’t just a place you left. It was a place that was dying. Violently.”
She didn’t confirm it. She didn’t need to. The evidence was written on her in pain.
“The Grandmaster’s scrappers,” Loki continued, piecing it together with cold logic. “They don’t just capture. They interrogate. They assess value. They wanted to know what you were, where you came from, if your world had anything worth… salvaging.” He finally looked at her. “They were not gentle in their asking.”
A tremor ran through her. She closed her eyes, and for a terrifying second, Loki thought she would simply collapse. But she didn’t. She swallowed, hard, and her eyes opened again. The blue was glacial, fixed on the chaotic skyline.
“They wanted coordinates,” she said, her voice a flat monotone. “Historical data. Population density reports. Tactical maps. I didn’t have any. I was a gardener. I grew medicinal moss in a hydroponics vault under the city.” A hollow, humorless sound escaped her. “They didn’t believe that. The magic… confused them. Made them think I was lying. So they asked harder.”
Loki was silent. He had orchestrated invasions, precipitated wars. He understood the machinery of conquest, the cold calculus of information extraction. He had never been on this side of it—filthy, exhausted, and bruised in a stranger’s room, with nothing left to trade but your own trauma.
“Why did you use magic at all?” he asked. “If you were hiding.”
Her gaze snapped to his, fierce again. “To eat. To seal a leaking air duct. To put out a fire when an energy coil exploded. It’s not a party trick. It’s… stitching. It’s what I do to keep things from falling apart.” She looked back at her hands, flexing the fingers. “Here, it just… reacts. It feels the wrongness of this place and it lashes out. The snowflake…”
“An autonomic response,” Loki murmured, more to himself. “Your power isn’t just untrained. It’s traumatized. It’s trying to heal a environment that is fundamentally poisoned.”
The magnitude of the Grandmaster’s “gift” settled over him, colder than any frost. He hadn’t been given a weapon or a servant. He’d been given a deeply wounded, magically volatile survivor. A liability wrapped in pain. And the old hedonist was watching, right now, from some hidden screen, waiting to see if Loki would break her, befriend her, or simply throw her back into the grind.
Sage swayed on her feet. The adrenaline of the presentation was bleeding away, leaving only the sheer weight of her reality.
“Sit down,” Loki said, the order devoid of its usual sharpness. “Before you fall down.”
He didn’t help her. He knew better. She stiffly walked to a wide, low chair and sank into it as if her bones were made of glass. She drew her knees up to her chest, making herself small.
Loki remained standing, leaning against the window frame, a silhouette against the galactic junkyard. The plot had just twisted into something far more complicated than a simple game of survival.
“A gardener,” he repeated softly.
She rested her forehead on her knees, her voice muffled. “The vault is gone now. It’s all gone. The scow was the only thing leaving that wasn’t a warship.” She took a shaky breath. “So. What’s the play now, Lackey? You’ve seen the merchandise. It’s damaged. What’s my worth?”
Loki watched the endless stream of garbage barges crossing the sky. A plan, cold and intricate, began to form in the back of his mind. It wasn’t about her worth. It was about her alignment. A wild, healing magic, fundamentally opposed to the decaying chaos of Sakaar… and to the kind of order the Grandmaster enforced.
He turned from the window, his green eyes catching the light.
“Your worth,” he said, “is that you are the one thing everyone here has forgotten how to be.”
She lifted her head, wary.
“You are real,” Loki said, and the words tasted strange, almost dangerous. “And in a palace built on lies, that makes you the most powerful weapon of all.”
“And in a palace built on lies, that makes you the most powerful weapon of all.”
The words hung in the air between them, too grand, too theatrical. He saw her absorb them, saw the flicker of fragile hope in her eyes, and instantly regretted the flourish. Hope was a liability. He was about to rephrase, to ground his statement in something practical, when a chime sounded from the door.
It slid open without waiting for permission.
A servant—a slender being with iridescent skin and downcast eyes—stood there, holding a bundle of fabric. They bowed stiffly. “A gift from the Grandmaster. For the new acquisition’s… comfort and presentation.” The voice was a monotone rasp.
The servant laid the bundle on a low table and retreated, the door sealing shut once more.
Sage unfurled herself from the chair and approached the table with a predator’s wariness. She picked up the top garment between her thumb and forefinger, as if it might be venomous.
It was a slip of iridescent mesh, the color of bruised twilight. The next was a pair of high-waisted shorts made of a sleek, black material that looked more like paint than fabric. Beneath those was a halter top comprised largely of strategically placed metal rings and thin leather straps. The final item was a diaphanous robe that would conceal nothing.
A harsh, scoffing sound escaped her. It wasn’t quite a laugh. “Comfort and presentation,” she repeated, dropping the mesh back onto the pile. “He wants me to look like everything else here. Consumable.”
“He wants you to remember your place,” Loki corrected, his voice cool. He stayed by the window, observing her reaction. “Which is on display. These are the only options. Your former attire will be incinerated. It’s the rule.”
“It’s a humiliation.”
“It’s a uniform. See it as such. Armor takes many forms.” Even as he said it, the words felt hollow. This wasn’t armor; it was a costume for a role she hadn’t chosen.
Sage said nothing. She gathered the clothes and walked toward the bathing chamber, her movements stiff. The door closed behind her with a soft click.
Silence returned, broken only by the ever-present, low hum of the city. Loki poured himself two fingers of the amber liquor, not drinking it, just watching the liquid cling to the sides of the glass. He was calculating filtration systems, escape routes, the Grandmaster’s mercurial attention span. The gardener-witch was a variable he hadn’t accounted for. A wounded variable. He needed her functional, not fractured.
A sound came from the bathing chamber. A sharp, wet cough, followed by a stifled gasp.
Then another. This one was longer, a ragged inhale that hitched painfully in the middle.
Loki set his glass down. The symptoms of interrogation were rarely just surface-level. Internal bruising. Cracked ribs. A punctured lung, poorly healed. He moved to the door, leaning his head closer.
Her breathing was uneven, a shallow, whistling rhythm that spoke of obstructed airways. There was a faint, alarming pause between one breath and the next, as if her body had forgotten the mechanism. Then a frantic, deeper gulp for air that dissolved into another muffled cough.
This wasn’t just trauma. This was a physical liability.
The chamber door slid open. Sage stood there, clothed in the black shorts and the halter of rings and leather. The mesh slip was discarded in a heap on the floor behind her. She had kept her own worn, soft boots. The contrast was jarring—the aggressive, sleek clothing against her pale, battered skin, the wild tumble of her hair over the cold glint of metal. She was trying for defiance, standing straight, but her shoulders were hunched slightly, protecting her torso.
“Satisfies the dress code?” she asked, her voice tight.
Loki ignored the question. “Your breathing is impaired.”
She blinked, thrown. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not. You have a catch on the left side, here,” he said, pointing vaguely to his own lower ribs. “And you’re compensating with your upper chest. It’s inefficient. You’re not getting enough oxygen.”
“I’m getting by.”
“You are slowly suffocating,” he stated flatly. “And if you faint in the Grandmaster’s presence, he will not call for a medic. He will have you taken to the labs to find out why his new toy is malfunctioning. Their methods are not gentle.”
The color drained from her face, making the shadows under her eyes look like smudges of charcoal. The bravado crumbled, leaving raw fear. She leaned back against the doorframe, and the act of standing seemed to require immense focus. Her breaths were quicker now, shallower, the whistling more pronounced.
“It… it hurts. More than it did yesterday. A deep ache, like a stone is sitting there.”
Loki swore under his breath, a low, ancient curse. He paced away, running a hand through his hair. He was a prince, a sorcerer, a would-be king. Not a field surgeon. But he understood pressure, and rupture, and the slow collapse of systems.
“Sit,” he commanded, not unkindly. “On the floor. Before you fall.”
This time, she didn’t argue. She slid down the wall until she was seated on the cool obsidian, her legs stretched out, head resting back. Each breath was a visible effort.
Loki knelt beside her, maintaining a careful distance. “Look at me.” Her blue eyes, clouded with pain, focused on his. “Your magic. It responds to need. To healing. Can you direct it? Not to lash out. To go inward. To… assess the damage?”
She shook her head, a tiny, desperate motion. “It doesn’t work like that. It’s not a tool. It’s a… a current. I can point it at a leak. I can’t ask it to scan for cracks in the pipe.”
“Then we do this the tedious way.” Loki’s mind was racing, adapting. “Where does the stone feel heaviest? Show me.”
Her hand trembled as she lifted it, pressing just below her left breast. “Here.”
“And the pain when you breathe deeply?”
“Everywhere. But sharpest in the back. Same side.”
Likely ribs, then. Possibly a pleural rub. The internal bleeding he’d suspected. A planet dies, you run, you fight, you hide in cramped ducts. There is no time for healing.
A new, silent understanding settled over him. The Grandmaster’s gift wasn’t just a test or a weapon.
It was a clock.
He was watching to see how long it took for Loki’s new possession to break down on its own. The reveal had been the first act. The clothes were the second. The third would be her collapse. And he would be there, grinning, to ask Loki what he intended to do about his broken toy.
Sage’s eyes were closing, her lashes fluttering against her cheeks. The shallow breathing was becoming rhythmic, a frail machine skipping on its last reserves of power.
Loki made a decision. It was not born of compassion, but of pure, ruthless pragmatism. A weapon that couldn’t breathe was useless. An alliance required a functional ally.
“Stay awake,” he said, his voice cutting through her drifting focus. He stood and went to a polished cabinet, retrieving a small, ornate box. Inside were vials—things he’d collected, traded for, or stolen. Sakaar was a crossroads; even here, one could find certain physical remedies.
He selected a vial of viscous, silver liquid and a slender, breathing strip made of a translucent hydrogel. He returned to her side.
“This will not heal you,” he said, holding up the silver vial. “It is a binding agent. A temporary patch. It will stabilize the tissue, reduce inflammation, and allow for more efficient oxygen exchange. It will also hurt. Quite a lot, for about sixty seconds.”
She eyed the vial with deep mistrust. “And that?” She nodded at the strip.
“For later. It adheres over your sternum. It monitors respiratory function and provides subtle kinetic assistance to your diaphragm. It’s discrete.” He gave her a look that was almost apologetic. “The Grandmaster must not see it. Or the vial. Weakness is entertainment here. Healing is a private act of rebellion.”
Sage held his gaze. The fear was still there, but it was being pushed aside by something harder: a will to survive. She gave a single, sharp nod.
“Do it.”
Loki uncorked the vial. The scent of ozone and crushed mint filled the space between them. “Breathe out,” he instructed. “And then, for once, try not to be so compellingly real. Think of nothing. Be a wall. Be stone.”
She exhaled, a ragged sigh, and closed her eyes.
He poured the liquid onto his fingers. They glowed with a soft, green light—not his illusion magic, but a simpler, somatic energy, a conductor. He pressed his hand against the spot she had indicated, over the halter’s rings.
She gasped, her body arching off the floor as a shock of intense, cold fire radiated through her chest. Her hand flew up and gripped his wrist, her nails biting into his skin. A stifled cry escaped her clenched teeth.
Loki held his hand steady, channeling the substance through layers of muscle and fascia, seeking the bleeding points, the stressed membranes. He felt the damage, a messy collage of violence and neglect. For a second, he was not in a tower on Sakaar, but somewhere else, feeling the crunch of broken architecture, the scream of a dying world.
The sixty seconds passed. The cold fire receded, leaving behind a deep, throbbing warmth. Sage’s grip on his wrist loosened, then fell away. She slumped against the wall, panting, but the breaths were deeper, fuller. The awful whistling hitch was gone.
She opened her eyes. They were clear, lucid, swimming with unshed tears of pain and relief. “It feels… solid,” she whispered, amazement cutting through the exhaustion.
“It is a patch,” Loki reiterated, wiping his hand on a cloth. He peeled the backing from the hydrogel strip. “Not a fix. This will help the mechanics.” He placed it high on her chest, just below the hollow of her throat. It shimmered once and then turned transparent, melding seamlessly with her skin. “You’ll feel a subtle push when you inhale. Don’t fight it. Let it guide the rhythm.”
She took an experimental breath. Out. The movement was smoother, less guarded. The stark panic in her eyes receded, replaced by a weary, dawning comprehension.
“You just rebelled,” she said softly.
Loki stood, disposing of the vial and cloth. He looked out once more at the garish, teeming skyline. “I protected an asset,” he corrected, his back to her. “The rebellion is merely a side effect.”
He heard the rustle of fabric as she pushed herself to her feet. Her breathing, while still not entirely even, was now a quiet, steady sound in the room.
“What’s the next move, then?” she asked. Her voice was stronger.
Loki turned. She was still clothed in the Grandmaster’s demeaning uniform, but she stood within it differently now. The pain was managed, pushed back into a corner. Her gaze was sharp, focused, waiting for orders. The weapon was operational. For now.
“The next move,” Loki said, a sly, familiar smile finally touching his lips, “is to go back to the party. To thank him for the thoughtful gifts. And to make him believe, for one more night, that we are both exactly what we appear to be.”