"What exactly are you trying to say?"
Lothar couldn’t shake the feeling that the woman before him was speaking in riddles. Frigga’s questions kept circling back to Hela, yet the aning behind them remained elusive.
One mont she asked about this, the next about that, all of it concerning Hela.
Jumping from one question to another, she had Lothar quietly wondering if Frigga was here to avenge her daughter.
Was this so kind of proxy retaliation because Hela couldn’t defeat him herself, so now she’d sent her mother instead?
The more Lothar thought about it, the more he felt his logic was sound.
That thought alone made his battle instincts surge with anticipation, a surge so palpable it reached his brows, much to Frigga’s amused exasperation.
Sharp as ever, she easily inferred what was going through his head just from his expression.
"What in the cosmos did Thanos teach this boy?"
"Was he raised purely as a weapon?"
Frigga stifled a sigh. If she didn’t spell things out clearly, this dense young warrior might never get the ssage.
He was the very embodint of a blockhead.
A complete contrast to the ever-romantic Odin.
"Lothar, let ask you sothing, do you like Hela?"
The fighting spirit in Lothar’s eyes froze instantly. "????"
"I heard about your kiss with her," Frigga continued without preamble, cutting straight to the point.
"Kiss?" His eyes widened. "No! I was just using the divine death energy she carries to heal myself! That’s all!"
He denied it imdiately, refusing to bear the weight of any such implication.
He felt nothing of the sort toward Hela.
Won, in general, were the worst.
Especially ones like Proxima Midnight from the Black Quadrant, she used to ss with him constantly when he was little.
"Are you serious?" Frigga asked calmly.
"She’s the arrogant, prideful type who can’t even take a single punch from ," Lothar said flatly, locking eyes with Frigga, completely forgetting that she was, oh right, Hela’s mother.
From his perspective, any woman who could be brought to tears by a single serious punch from him wasn’t worth his ti.
"How do you know Hela can’t take a punch from you?"
Frigga was thoroughly intrigued now, this boy’s thought process was unlike anything she’d encountered before.
Quite different from what Odin had described.
"She’s fought countless tis, and not once has she beaten ," Lothar scoffed. Even now, he carried trophies from their battles in Svartalfheim within his wristband.
And let’s not even bring up Sakaar. If he hadn’t been holding back there, Hela would’ve been done for ages ago.
"Then why did you suppress your power to fight her on equal footing?"
"Well, that’s because—" Lothar stumbled, caught off guard by her question.
Now that she ntioned it... Why had he gone easy on her back on Sakaar?
"Because she’s too weak," he answered stiffly.
"I see." A knowing smile spread across Frigga’s face, and for so reason, Lothar found it unbearably irritating.
"Out of my way."
His face darkened with discomfort as he brushed past her and boarded his ship.
"Woz, take ho."
"Yes, Prince Lothar," replied the chanical feline, still calculating simulated battle models, as the starship bearing the sigil L lifted off.
Watching Lothar’s ship disappear into the skies above Asgard, Frigga whispered to herself:
"Looks like it’s ti for a proper talk with Thanos."
Her husband was a king of grand ambition.
Now that he had virtually subdued the Nine Realms, his swollen confidence had turned toward the truly supre powers of the cosmos. He intended to challenge their very thrones.
It was a dangerous gamble, one Frigga couldn’t stop.
All she could do was maintain the fragile balance of the Nine Realms in his absence. After all, Laufey still lingered in Jotunheim, clinging to power by a thread.
If anything happened to Odin, a backlash across the realms would be inevitable, and both she and Hela would bear the brunt.
In light of that, securing powerful allies had beco more important than ever.
And of all possible alliances, few were more enduring than a political marriage.
Frigga knew this from experience. Her own union with Odin had begun as a political arrangent between Vanaheim and Asgard. But over ti, love had taken root. She had fallen for him completely—past, flaws, and all.
Now, as soone who had once benefited from an arranged marriage herself, Frigga couldn’t ignore the peculiar chemistry she’d observed between her daughter and Thanos’s adopted son.
An alliance through marriage between Asgard and the Black Quadrant began to take shape in her mind.
Thanos, as the ruler of the Black Quadrant and de facto sovereign of the Centauri galaxy, wielded formidable power both militarily and personally. He adored Lothar, everyone knew that.
Odin had once told her that Thanos, in defense of his son, had invoked the authority of the Black Quadrant to intervene in the war between the Skrull and Kree empires, forcing the Skrulls into a humiliating peace settlent.
With such strength behind him, Lothar and Hela would make a well-matched pair. And if the marriage succeeded, even if Odin did fall, having Thanos as a father-in-law would give Laufey pause before attempting any retaliation.
Frigga had always planned for the worst. That was her nature.
Especially now, when Odin’s delusions of grandeur had reached a point beyond her control.
Of course, for a marriage alliance to work, the consent of both parties, and their families, was crucial.
...
Asgard, Royal Palace, Great Hall.
Beneath murals depicting the many glories and campaigns of Hela and Odin, Agamotto sat cross-legged on the floor, chanting in an arcane, ancient tongue.
A language even Odin could not comprehend, yet it was the very source of Agamotto’s imnse mystical power.
The sigil of the Sorcerer Supre shimred faintly with each syllable, casting flickering light across the vast stone floor, where scattered flas of fallen warriors’ spirits flickered and burned.
"Hela, fuse your divine death essence with this Eternal Fla, then strike the heart of the array with it!"
His chant ceased. Agamotto’s eyes snapped open, and from his fingertips erged a small wisp of the Eternal Fla, taken from the Fire Giant himself.
Guided by his power, the fla floated into Hela’s right palm.
Feeling its searing heat, Hela instinctively glanced at her father.
"Go on, Hela," Odin said solemnly, gently pushing her forward.
"Yes, Father." Drawing a deep breath, she leapt beside Agamotto and slamd her fla-infused hand into the floor!
BOOM!!
The ground erupted as the ancient sigils of the Sorcerer Supre flared to life in full brilliance.
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