Coulson and his team had done extraordinary work to misdirect Fury for this long. As much as the stalling gave Ebony Maw more time to make his own plans and left time for Tyr's arm to heal, it had been inevitable. Loki had needed time to prepare, Stark - to build a new suit, SHIELD -- to lick their wounds clean. Loki would have preferred one more day, but then, he seldom got what he wanted.

'Then let the back-up know, Jarvis,' he said sharply.

The AI offered no response, but Loki trusted Stark's skills enough to assume it would follow instructions without requiring direct supervision. He rested his hand on the staircase railing, then swung his feet over and launched himself into the air. He landed with a loud thud down on the ground floor. To his irritation the overhead lights flickered on, flooding the lodge with light. If there was anyone outside, they would have already spotted him. And the only thing Loki could see out the windows was his own reflection.

'Jarvis,' he muttered as he crouched down to make himself less conspicuous, 'cut out these lights.'

The lights dimmed in a coordinated sequence, but Loki stayed where he was. The AI would have alerted the others also; he had seconds to get everything right.

Loki's preparations hadn't included plans to spend the night crouching in fear between Stark's living room couches. He closed his eyes and reached for his magic. When he opened them again, he grinned. His vision had acquired two shadow visions that saw the world from different angles. It was disorientating to stare up at illusions of himself and see himself staring back at them through their eyes. But they did look good. Solid. Intelligent.

There was stomping upstairs. Thor and Rogers were on their way down.

Loki didn't dare to admire the products of his craft any longer. He left his two illusions standing in the middle of the living room while he continued to keep low and hurried towards a darker corner of the house.

'Nat's out there with SHIELD. She confirmed we have incoming,' Stark declared as he burst out of his workroom, already donning a new version of the Ironman suit. 'No sign of the unholy trinity yet, but I'm sure they won't miss the party.'

For once Loki was in total agreement with Stark. He reached inside the inner pocket of his coat and fished out the ear-piece Coulson had supplied (and Stark had tinkered with); there wouldn't be a repeat of the chaos in San Francisco here. Loki's illusions echoed his movements.

'The hell?' Stark spat out as he jerked to a stop at the sight of them. Loki bit down a laugh. They hadn't discussed the illusions in their plans -- a strategic decision on Loki's part. He preferred to make a bit of last-minute mischief to risking the chance that the Maw could tear out every detail of their preparations from Thor's or the Midgardians' minds.

'A simple magic trick, nothing more,' replied the illusion closest to Stark, which Loki decided to dub as Illusion One. Thor and Rogers had also converged on the dimly lit living room, so Illusion One shifted a couple of steps closer to Thor. 'I'll stay by you, brother.'

Thor looked pained at those words, but nodded.

How long will it take him to figure it out this time?

While the second illusion drew its knives and moved closer to Rogers, Loki cloaked himself in a facsimile of Romanoff's body and crept towards Stark's workroom. The room was unlocked, so he pushed it open and made himself comfortable on a lone stool behind a bench heaped with scraps of warped steel and shredded plastic.

What Thor never quite grasped was that there was a whole gamut of spells that produced illusions and their end results differed greatly. Some illusions were solid, some not. Some spoke, some remained mute. Some moved independently, some had to be guided like marionettes. The ones that were capable of movement sophisticated enough for prolonged combat, unfortunately, required close directions and it strained Loki's faculties to guide not one, but two illusions with the force of his mind.

Illusion One remained with Thor and Stark, but Illusion Two followed Rogers out onto the front porch of the lodge. Gunfire echoed through the valley as if the air pulsed with constant, miniature thunderclaps. Light flashed to the east and two hundred metres above the level of the lodge - bright orange of SHIELD tracer-rounds and scattered beams of torches.

'They need help up there,' Rogers sighed.

Illusion Two furrowed its nose. 'The point is to draw them in, not to scatter -'

'Are you afraid of a fair fight?' Tyr shouted. 'Come out, you whimpering pup!'

Neither Loki nor the illusion immediately saw their adversary. The illusion took the stairs down from the porch, then moved slowly through the six-inch-deep snow. Tyr stood aloof about a hundred paces away, like a harbinger of death on that blanket of white.

The illusion smiled. 'Here I am, old man. Do your best!'

The mountainside trembled with the wrath in Tyr's yell as he crossed the distance between them and aimed his sword for the illusion's left flank. The illusion blocked the blade with one knife, then attacked Tyr with the other. But there was no easy victory in that move. Although Tyr was long past the days of his youthful glory, he remained a more skilled close-combat fighter than Loki, let alone compared to the relayed skill Loki could offer to his illusion. Only Rogers' shield kept him breathing.

Worse yet, Thor, Stark and the illusion with them had found their adversary as well.

Why did I think this was a good idea? All be damned.

Loki cradled his head in his hands. Illusion Two had just ducked down to allow Rogers to swing out and punch Tyr in the nose, sending blood spraying. Illusion One had just slid an armchair across the length of the living room, but Ebony Maw whipped it off to the side like it was a leaf caught on the wind.

'Stop breaking my things,' Stark snapped as he hovered two feet off the floor. His words would have perhaps had more weight if he didn't then charge up a missile from the arsenal in his arm. The Maw put up an energy field over himself and Gamora and deflected the explosive, making it burst in the middle of the room instead. A wall, thankfully not a weight-bearing one, crumbled to pieces and wisps of fire spread throughout. The fire suppression system kicked in, dousing everything and everyone in stale water. 'Fine. I didn't like that wall anyway.'

Another missile, more thunder and lightning from Thor, more of Ebony's counter-strikes. The sprinklers soon ran out of water. Illusion One found the energy within one of the resulting fires and magnified it to form a wall between himself and Gamora, but she just leaped straight through it. The illusion drew back; Loki wasn't keen on engaging in two rounds of hand-to-hand combat simultaneously. But she pursued him, like a lion trailing after wounded prey.

'Thor!' Illusion One called out.

And Loki's brother hurried to answer the call for help, but Ebony Maw had his own plans for how this night would go. A pulse of raw energy from the sceptre aimed at Thor's right arm sent Mjolnir flying out of his hand. A gale of telekinesis threw Thor against the back wall and pinned him there. A final touch - Ebony Maw ripped apart the furnishings, the walls, the floor, even parts of Stark's new and improved suit. These became raw materials for a cage capable of containing even Thor.

Loki blinked. Illusion Two had taken a cut to the cheek; Tyr now bled from his knee, but kept fighting. Illusion One threw a knife at Gamora. The weapon struck her handle first and achieved nothing. Zahoberei skin was quite impervious to knife handles. The illusion lifted its hand to throw the second knife only to feel the horribly familiar tug of Ebony Maw's magic.

'No!' the illusion hollered desperately.

Stark, his suit no longer capable of flight, sent another missile at Ebony Maw. This was no more successful than his last effort -- it only caused further damage to the lodge and drew Gamora's attention to him. However, it did give Illusion One the opportunity it needed. It dropped the second knife and reached into a pocket to pull out a small flask. The lid was designed to pop off with ease.

The liquid inside, viscous and very acidic, didn't go down its throat quite so easily. The illusion gagged, the lining of its throat already eviscerated. Loki himself had to press his hand into his mouth to stop himself from crying out. Stark's workroom hosted a plethora of corrosive, violent and deadly agents, but none of them afforded a quiet death. Ebony Maw had given up his hold on Illusion One and shaking his head, tried to undo the damage. It was too late. Bloody froth poured out from between the illusion's blistered lips and its limbs spasmed. If Loki couldn't go peacefully, he would at least go fast.

Thor's cries provided a grizzly soundtrack as the illusion's body surrendered its fight for survival. The limbs stilled and the froth thinned. Loki held his breath as the Maw knelt by the corpse. He was aware that the other illusion was still fighting for its survival, but refused to care - what Ebony Maw did next took precedence.

Loki had done this once before; he had Thor fooled for two years. But Thor understood magic little better than the average Midgardian. Ebony Maw was another matter. So Loki was unsurprised to see Ebony Maw using his long fingers to pry wider the illusion's still-open eyes. Finding no satisfaction in the eyeball Loki was careful to keep unfocused and immobile, the Maw's fingers shifted lower and grasped the illusion's chin.

Ebony Maw snarled with disgust. He flicked his hand. Loki's vision of the destroyed living room dissipated as rapidly as smoke on a windy day. The game was up; the illusion was gone.

The sharp corners and cold spotlights of Stark's playroom came into focus as quickly as the Maw's face had faded. The sound-proofing was solid in here; whoever had built this room didn't want to be disturbed by people carrying-on elsewhere in the house. What the sound-proofing smothered, however, the ear-piece in Loki's ear broadcast perfectly well. Judging by the shouting, Thor and Ebony Maw were evenly matched in their anger.

Why the hell is she taking so long?

Gritting his teeth, Loki attempted to ignore the sound his ear-piece beamed in and to refocus on his remaining illusion.

As Rogers threw his shield, aiming at Tyr's throat, Loki forced the illusion to glance around so he could re-orient himself. The fight had taken all of them hundreds of metres down the mountainside and the sprawling, four-storey lodge, lit up with spreading flames and flashes from Ebony Maw's sceptre, now seemed like an insignificant thing in the distance. The combatants themselves were amid a wide band of exposed, snow-laden mountainside between two patches of pine wood.

The illusion palpated the trampled snow. It held one knife firm, the other had slid out of its hands. There was no sign of it. The snow was fine and powdery, every move they made disrupted it further and there was no guessing where in this snowfield the knife had ended up.

Rogers made another attempt at using his shield as a projectile, but this time Tyr was ready and thrust out his hand to catch it. The shield had enough momentum in its spin to throw the Asgardian off balance. He ended up prone on the snow. Yet he didn't relinquish his hold and clung onto the shield while panting heavily.

Loki pressed his palms together. The illusions just weren't as competent fighters as he himself was and with his mind split between two dangers, he was certain Rogers had been taking the brunt of Tyr's bluster. Could Captain America tire? Loki didn't want to find out. Besides, this fight had gone on long enough.

'Tyr,' he called out. 'You daughter was spiteful, arrogant and a whore! I rejoiced when she died.'

Even in the poor light, the widening of Rogers' eyes was unmissable. Tyr's reaction wasn't so restrained. Of course, Loki had counted on precisely this. As Tyr rolled to his feet and rushed to bridge the dozen feet between himself and the illusion, the illusion lifted his left hand a fraction. Cold convalesced around its palm and down along its fingers. The resulting spear of ice had a longer reach than Tyr's sword.

'We should've fed you to the wolves the day we found you,' Tyr spat out. Despite his anger, he hadn't yet abandoned reason completely and long years of experience told him that an opponent armed with a spear should be approached with caution. He came to an abrupt stop just beyond the spear's reach. 'Come at me if you dare, you pathetic whelp.'

'Really? Because it looks like you're the one scared of me!' the illusion said, taking on a more relaxed pose, but with the spear still pointed at Tyr's torso. He could see Rogers moving behind Tyr, but was conscious of avoiding tracking the man's movements lest Tyr caught something in the shift of his eyes. Loki nudged the illusion into an unhinged laugh. 'Is this how it was back on Gjallir? You waited around until they surrendered out of boredom?'

Rogers slid a knife between plated armour pieces over Tyr's back. The man cried out in pain as he spun around to attack Rogers, but it was unwise to turn your back on the God of Mischief. The illusion's spear found purchase in Tyr's left thigh, piercing straight through. The weapon snapped under Tyr's weight as he slumped down on the snow, but the remaining shaft was long enough for the illusion to make a second strike.

'Wait!' Rogers shouted.

The illusion stopped in mid-thrust. 'Believe me, he deserves this.'

'He might have information.'

Loki studied Tyr through the illusion's eyes. He bled heavily, but he was still trying to get up. The Einherjar considered dying on your knees a pathetic way to face one's end, all the more so when that death came on the dredged up snowfield of a second-rate world. Loki would have considered it a good day if he could give Tyr precisely this kind of death.

Metal groaned.

The illusion glanced around and failed to identify the source of the sound.

'Didn't we meet each other just outside?' Gamora asked.

Loki's vision snapped back to focus on Stark's workroom. The light flickered intermittently, which didn't help the disorientation resulting from the sharp jerk away from his illusion, and the smoke poured in. Gamora had torn out the door. She now stood between two half-assembled robots with crimson blood dripping off her sword.

Shit.

'Loki, right? The master of lies has stolen another face,' she said.

He climbed off Stark's stool while he contemplated his next move. He could continue to cloak himself in Romanoff's body, but what good would that do? She was physically weaker. Apparently they had clashed already and Gamora seemed no worse off for that interlude. For all Loki knew the blood on her blade was Romanoff's. On the other hand, to strip off the magic would expose him to all, not just to Gamora.

She made the choice for him.

Loki scrambled back, away from her raised weapon and winced as Rogers' worriedly demanded that Loki respond to him.

'It's God of Lies actually,' Loki muttered as Romanoff's soft skin gave way to coarse Jotunn blue. And although Gamora had guessed the truth, she was startled all the same. Loki brought up his hands, his palms facing Gamora. 'One thing I'm never going to lie about, however. Your -'

She must have guessed where his words were heading, because she launched at him then with the fury of a rabid beast and the grief of a mourning sibling. Loki had to use every available piece of machinery and furniture to keep her at bay.

'Why are you cowering away?' Gamora demanded.

Why indeed.

Defence was easier than attack and Rogers was still jabbering on about what they should do with Tyr. Loki gritted his teeth. Tyr didn't matter anymore; Rogers could figure that out on his own. Besides, Loki could feel his magic beginning to strain. As Loki moved an electric drill to meet the downward strike of Gamora's sword he also cut off the spells that had been feeding the remaining illusion.

Clarity returned to his vision as the shadows of the illusion's sight dissipated. Loki grinned, grabbing a long metal rod of a nearby bench. He didn't know precisely what it was, but it looked like it was an interior piece of the Ironman suit; it looked capable of withstanding a couple of whacks from Gamora's weapon. And now that his full attention was on Gamora, the knots in the pit of his stomach somewhat relaxed. Gamora and Nebula had been trained by the same instructors. Loki could predict Gamora's moves more often than not.

More problematic was the thickening smoke. Gamora and Loki certainly left their own trail of destruction in their wake, but the workroom wasn't yet on fire. The same couldn't be said for the rest of the house. Loki had no pleasant associations with smoke and flames, but he could survive in a smoke-drenched space for a while. Could Gamora?

Taking a chance, Loki flitted to the side at Gamora's next attack. He feigned a counter-strike, then pulled back as Gamora took the bait and nudged them both towards the doorway out of the workroom. Before long they were at the threshold and the dark, foul-smelling smoke was so thick Loki could see no further than a few feet away.

The building groaned. Gamora took a small step back and seemed to glance up at the wall behind Loki. The lights flickered one last time and petered out, then a second, far louder and lasting groan, resonated through the lodge.

'That doesn't bode well,' Loki muttered.

He abandoned his next planned attack and sprinted towards the workroom's lonely window on the far side of the room. He had half-expected Gamora to make use of the opportunity and try to take a swing at his exposed back, but she simply followed him. With a wave of his hand, Loki shattered the already cracked glass and with a second he ripped the security bars out of the window. The window-frame wasn't wide enough to allow a dignified exit; he ended up rolling twice across the snow outside the lodge before his body exhausted its momentum.

'Ebony!' Gamora shouted.

Loki rolled onto his back and scrambled up, but Gamora grabbed him before he had fully straightened up. He kicked out and found her knee cap. She hissed in pain, yet her grip on him didn't slacken. Gamora wrenched him around and Loki let out a shuddered breath.

Fire was spreading through the lodge and the flames were now sizable enough to illuminate a large section of the surrounding mountainside. While Loki had been preoccupied with Gamora, Thor and Ebony Maw had torn a great hole in the lodge's ground floor wall and their struggle had spilled out onto the snow. Thor, Ebony Maw and Stark, Loki realised a moment later. Although the man's suit was mangled, he continued to help Thor in what ways he still could.

'Ebony Maw, I have him!' Gamora yelled. Loki pulled his hand out of her grasp and found her ear. He clamped his fingers around it, then pushed down with all his strength. This time Gamora did react to the pain enough to allow Loki to slip out of her grasp.

It was too late, however. Loki staggered away from her and right into Ebony Maw's path.

A hollow, copper-coloured circle appeared in mid-air.

Finally!

The circle, humming with magic, rained embers as it swelled until it was large enough for a person to step through. Ebony Maw's nostrils wrinkled as the Sorcerer Supreme emerged from the portal, which snapped back to nothing immediately behind her, and conjured a bright mandala spun out of Eldritch magic. The Maw sent out a pulse of energy from the sceptre, but it was slow and tentative as if he were merely testing the newcomer.

He wasn't so soft when Loki redirected the flames of the burning building towards him. Loki had to rip off the half of the roof that hadn't yet been consumed by fire to put enough solid matter between himself and the retaliative strike Ebony sent in his direction.

The world shattered. It took Loki a moment to realise what had happened. Wong had shown him the mirror dimension once but that future seemed like a lifetime ago now. Ebony Maw too seemed disorientated. He stumbled as the ground under their feet began folding onto itself and with a snarl, tried to cut through the layer of shards that separated this dimension from their own. He succeeded only in momentarily lighting up the dimensional barrier.

'What trickery is this?' he said. His voice was calmer than Loki expected and there was a trace of genuine curiosity in it. No doubt he was contemplating whether the Sorcerer Supreme could be persuaded to become an ally.

She smiled politely, bringing up a second glowing mandala to shield herself with. 'Welcome to the multi-verse, my friend.'

'Show me how this is done and you will be rewarded with everything you have ever desired,' Ebony Maw said. 'My master is generous.'

'Your master is a madman and you're no better than he,' Loki replied. He came to stand beside the Sorcerer Supreme, who looked amused more than anything else, by Ebony Maw's proposal.

'I already possess everything I desire,' she said lightly.

Magic spun all around them; Loki wasn't even sure who had initiated the attack. The cold ground, the burning lodge, the distant trees, the starry sky -- everything around them seemed to fold onto itself, as if they were trapped inside a kaleidoscope. Ebony Maw gave up on trying to find a solid surface; elevating himself in the air and making liberal use of the sceptre's energy. His telekinesis, however, was about as useless as Loki's own. There was nothing about to send flying at someone or to throw up in defence.

Yet even outnumbered two to one and fighting on unfamiliar ground, the advantage the sceptre provided was hard to overcome. Sweat beaded on the Sorcerer Supreme's forehead and the raised ridges of scars running across her skull now stood out as the rest of her skin took on a darker shade of pink. Loki was sure his own hair was soaked with sweat. And he no longer remembered which way in this endlessly folding world was supposed to be up and which down.

Soon, he found himself trembling from over-exertion and the knots in the pit of his stomach began to tighter once more. The illusions had been a way to play for time, everything else contingencies in case the Ancient One failed to arrive. But victory continued to elude them. There was a point where Loki had to contemplate the chance that he mightn't be able to take down Ebony Maw even with her aid.

'So what, you miserable fool,' Loki muttered under his breath. 'What are you going to do now? Surrender?'

Perhaps the Maw heard him, because he snarled and sharply threw up his hand. The energy his spell contained sent his opponents flying backwards and tumbling deep into the whirl of the kaleidoscope. Neither Loki nor the Sorcerer Supreme sustained any lasting damage, but it gave the Maw a chance to direct his attention back to the barrier keeping him contained to the mirror dimension. He directed a massive burst of energy from the mind stone to the wall of floating shards. The barrier splintered, tossing the three of them back into their home dimension.

Smoke and flame greeted them, but also the rest of their team. Thor came at the Maw before any of the three magic-wielders were back on their feet. Mjolnir caught the pulse of energy from the sceptre and sent it dissipating in all directions. Loki and the Sorcerer Supreme made their own attack on the Maw. Loki's was three inches off target, but her whip of whirring magic caught his left arm. Like an underwater monster hungry for its prey, the whip wrapped several times around his hand, twisting tighter with each one, then pulled. The Maw careened to the side. As he fell he threw out his other hand to catch himself for a moment releasing his vice-like grip on the sceptre.

Loki summoned it and caught it. He ducked; the Maw was already recovering and eager to get his weapon back. Loki's heart skipped a beat.

I know a trick for this one.

He slid his hand along the sceptre's shaft and called up on his withering reserves of magic. The sceptre vanished. It was now in the very same portal dimension where he had once hidden the Tesseract; Midgardian sorcerers weren't the only ones who knew how to play with relative dimensions.

'What've you done?' the Maw demanded.

Loki shrugged. 'Sent it off to the trash piles of Sakaar. Good luck finding it.'

Ebony Maw's eyes narrowed and although Loki hadn't ever thought it possible, his skin took on a deeper shade of grey. He lunged at Loki, clearly ready to kill Loki with his bare hands. Thor and the Sorcerer Supreme stepped into his path.

'Give it up,' the Sorcerer Supreme said. Her voice had shed its pleasant overtones. 'Leave Earth and tell your master that this world not his for the taking.'

The Maw refused to listen to her sage advice, but without the sceptre he couldn't match the power of the Sorcerer Supreme, Loki and Thor. Soon he was focused only on avoiding capture. Whatever mania or slavish devotion drove him, an instinct for self-preservation also resided somewhere in his mind and Ebony Maw soon understood the reality of the situation.

He decided to make a tactical retreat.