Sindri was at peace. At least this was the closest he'd been since his brother's second death. He sat on a hill and watched the rapidly expanding Nidavellir grow beneath him. Without the Allfather's cruelty and attention, without Heimdall's evil purple-eyed gaze to track their progress, and without that loathsome brute, Thor's hammer, to crush their resistance and whatever beauty they crafted.
The laughter of children drew his eyes to a grove with a little pond. Four children ran around it in a game Sindri vaguely remembered playing with his own brother. Some variation of tag. Whoever was tagged would be pushed into the water until only a single person remained. The fact that children were being allowed to wander so far from the enclave made it clear how much things had changed.
A year ago, no child below the age of fifty would've been allowed to so much as leave their caverns or homes without their fearful parents praying for their safe return. Now here they were, children less than twenty years old, running about without any true fear or care in the world.
The dwarves of Nidavellir were growing more comfortable every day with this new existence, and he couldn't blame them. They had moved on from Odin's tyranny already. It was not their fault that Sindri was a bitter old dwarf who stubbornly chose to cling to his grief and hatred.
"If you keep your face like that any longer, it'll permanently remain like that, ya know?"
A brusque voice called out behind him, female with a harsh undertone that spoke of taking in way too much smoke and ash from a forge. Sindri didn't need to turn back to know the identity of the speaker.
Only one blacksmith had the balls to walk up to him relentlessly without care for his attitude or character.
"Lunda." He acknowledged her presence with a scowl of irritation. The loathsome woman refused to leave him be, like the vast majority of the dwarves. In fact, her continued annoyance had only served to fuel the other dwarves to bravery. Just two days ago, a younger dwarf with a name Sindri had not bothered to keep in his head, had approached him about learning how to forge.
He had chased the dwarf away with a raised hammer, but it did not change the fact that it happened, and wasn't very likely to stop anytime soon.
"I see you're back to scowling and grumbling like a greybeard."
"Allow me."
"I would, but if Brok was here, he wouldn't, so here I am. Trying to cheer up your miserable ass."
If any other dwarf had made that statement, uttered his brother's name with such careless regard, there would've been blood spilled. They had not forgiven him for bringing Brok to life the first time, and while they might've moved on from his transgression after Brok's death, he had not forgiven them for not embracing his brother as they should have.
He sent a withering glare back to the red-haired dwarf, and she ignored him like he was a fly hovering around her forge. He kept up the ineffective glare for two extra seconds before turning away with a grunt. Lunda was an old friend, unlike the rest.
She had kept close contact with the brothers even after their quasi-banishment from Nidavellir. In fact, she had been so close to Brok that more than once, Sindri had thought the duo had something going. He still wasn't sure they didn't. Yet he lacked the guts to ask, so he left it at that and focused once more on the scene before him.
The children had gotten bored while Lunda had been pestering him and had changed to pursuing goats and riding any unfortunate one to be caught in their stumpy, grubby arms. He pitied the poor creatures, but not enough to step in to save them.
"Where's your new best friend?" Lunda finally asked after a few minutes of silence.
Sindri thought on the question for a second, on if it was something to be shared, and just how much he should. Then he shrugged his shoulders in realization. It did not matter. Eitri would not mind, and this was Lunda. If he couldn't share this with Lunda, then who else could he speak to about it?
"It's that time of the day again," he said vaguely, but a sharp prod with a steel-toed boot to his arse forced him to scowl once more and give the red-haired blacksmith a glare, one that was just as ineffective as the first. He turned away, grumbling before he spoke again.
"He's trying to give as much peace as he can to the remnants of his people. It's been a few months, but he has yet to stop beating himself over what happened."
"Sounds like someone I know," Lunda said with a short chuckle.
The barb struck harder than she knew, and he hid it with a wince. Unfortunately for him, the blacksmith was just as perceptive as she was obstinate. A rough and calloused hand held his shoulder gently.
"You can't keep wallowing in your grief forever. Neither you nor your friend has such an opportunity to, I fear."
Sindri heard something in her voice. There was a tremble in it, a tired one that forced him to pay attention to her for the first time. Pay true attention. Lunda was tired. Her red hair was messy, even if she tried to hide it. Her skin pale, and her eyes slightly bloodshot, but that was not the source of her tremble.
"What do you know, Lunda?"
She kept quiet for a few seconds, processing and arranging her words, and Sindri let her. When she was ready, she moved to his side and sat, letting out a short sigh. Then she stared into the distance, into the middle of the realm, a place that Sindri had wandered close by often enough.
This new amalgamated realm had created a strange scene. One of fused stone and metal, a flat planet with a gaping space in the middle. A gaping space reserved for what, if Eitri was to be believed, held a star. A star used to forge their greatest weapons and artifacts. Sindri wondered what it would feel like to forge something under the fury and heat of a star.
"There has been talk of war, Sindri."
He looked to her with a worried frown, then back to the children playing without care below them.
"What do you mean?"
"You won't know, not with how closed off you've been from the rest of the world shortly after the shift. But I'm the former liaison, or ambassador, I suppose, of Nidavellir owing to my closeness with Kratos and his son."
Sindri held in a grumble at the sound of the name, but allowed her to continue speaking.
"Word is that there's some great threat. A figure known as Thanos. In this strange new array of realms we've found ourselves in, he's much like Odin used to be. A cruel tyrant, with an unmatched army. I didn't get all the details, but I understand he is looking for a couple of stones. Magical stones that hold power great enough to accomplish the wishes of the wielder."
Sindri froze at that. He had heard that name, Thanos, from Eitri before, but that was not all. He had not forgotten his original mission. The reason he had broken from his stupor in the first place, but over the weeks that had followed, he had been so consumed that it had slipped to the side. But now Ratatoskr's words came back to him. The rumors of stones powerful enough to reshape reality.
The possibility of returning Brok to life for the second time.
"Where are they?" he snapped to Lunda, grabbing her by her shirt. "Where did they say these stones are?"
Lunda gave him a look before carefully prying his hands off her shirt with strength forged from crafting dragon scale into mail.
"I don't know. I suppose Asgard holds one, but that is simply a guess. This would be a fight for them; until then, everyone is simply preparing. Now what is this about, Sindri?"
He let out a defeated sigh as he took his arms from her grip and sank into his seat. He knew it was not going to be easy, but he was ready for the challenge regardless.
"Forget about it, Lunda."
The grizzled dwarf gave him a stern look before shrugging and looking away.
"Fine. Nonetheless, there is another conversation to be had, Sindri."
"What about?"
"I'm tired," Lunda started with a grumble. "For the past few months, I've been acting as both ambassador and de facto leader of this bunch," she said, waving a hand toward the enclave below them. "And traveling between realms, while also keeping up my trade. It has worn me out, and I need a break. You're going to have to pick up the slack sooner rather than later. You or your friend."
"I'm sure there is someone else who can."
"Unfortunately, there isn't." She turned to him with a frightful stare, her mismatched pair of brown and pure white eyes staring into his. "You were not here, Sindri. Neither you nor Brok, but Odin, made sure that there would be no dwarf, man, or woman, brave enough to ever lead our people again. I only survived because I ran off to join Freyr's army. The same could not be said for the rest."
Sindri turned away at last. "Fine. I'll bring it up with Eitri. He was king once. He would know better than me."
Lunda opened her mouth to say something, but closed it a second later, and with a shake of her head, she turned away from him. "Alright, Sindri. It is a step forward at least, even if it's not the best."
__
He found Eitri where he had expected to find him.
The shrine sat at the far eastern edge of the enclave, at a point where grass and trees slowly gave way to steel and iron structures. It was not an elaborate structure, even if it held the inept beauty every dwarven structure was known to have. He had helped in the building, he, Lunda, a couple of other blacksmiths, and even the children, but Eitri had been the one to finish it.
A shrine to his lost people.
It was built of stone and metal, tall jagged monuments on which they had written names, names that they had found while wandering the steel and iron roads the previous dwarves had made. Eitri had filled in the rest they had been oblivious to. Around the base of the structure sat offerings. Small things. A broken tong, a child's first chisel, a braid of red hair. Things that his people had left without being asked to.
Eitri knelt before it with his great hands folded in his lap, which was a sight that still required a moment of adjustment every time Sindri came across it. The largest dwarf he had ever seen, and the former king of Nidavellir. Sindri stopped a respectful distance back and waited.
The wind moved through the eastern edge of the enclave, carrying forge smoke and the distant laughter of the children from farther off, and eventually Eitri rose. He straightened to his full height by degrees, and when he was fully upright, he stood there for a moment looking at the names, and then he turned and saw Sindri, and the expression on his face changed, even if it was only in the slightest of margins.
"Sindri."
"Eitri."
They stood together before the shrine, differences in height ignored.
"Someone cleaned it before I got here," Eitri said after a while.
Sindri looked at the base of the shrine. The stone was clear of the fine metallic dust that settled on everything in this border portion of Nidvillner.
"I see," Sindri said.
"It was not you?"
"No."
Eitri was quiet for a moment, looking at the cleaned stone. "Who, then?"
Sindri shrugged one shoulder. "A few of the kids, no doubt. Urged by their parents."
Eitri said nothing immediately, the silence lasting long.
"They like you," Sindri said. "They have an idea of what you have lost, having experienced some level of the same culling once."
Eitri turned to look at him, and the expression this time was one of understanding.
"I hear there is a war coming," Sindri started, but Eitri must've lost interest because his eyes were back to the shrine. Sindri knew how to draw his attention. "Thanos."
Eitri's giant head snapped to him at once.
"What? Where did you hear that name, how?"
"You murmured it in your sleep once."
Eitri stumbled back and away from him, then regained his balance on his third backstep. "I see... You said a war?"
"Yes, Eitri," Sindri replied. "A war for stones said to hold the power to rewrite the universe. Tell me what you know, Eitri"
The silence after that was a different thing entirely from all the previous silences.
Eitri did not move for a moment. Then he let out a breath through his nose, slow and deliberate, the breath of someone deciding something.
"I suppose this is a long time coming. I had put it off for so long, and yet..." Eitri turned back to the shrine. The monument to his people's genocide. "They are called the Infinity Stones," Eitri said, his tone flat and without inflection.
"Yes."
Eitri was quiet for long enough that Sindri thought he might not continue, and he was preparing himself to let it go and try another time when the large dwarf spoke again, still looking at the wall of names.
"Six stones," he said. "Each one a remnant of what existed before this universe did. Before anything did." He paused. "That is not a metaphor. That is what they are. Each one commands something absolute. Space. Mind. Reality. Power. Time. Soul. Together, in the right vessel, and with the strength of will to control that vessel, they can do anything. I do not use that word loosely, Sindri, I mean anything. The impossible becomes a question of will rather than possibility."
Sindri kept his face still and his breathing even, because with every word from Eitri, he could see his dream and goal of bringing his brother back gain more shape.
"Have you seen them?" Sindri asked.
"I forged the vessel powerful enough to hold them. A gauntlet of my own creation." The words came out in a frantic and horrified tone. "He came to Nidavellir. Alongside his children and his army, and he held my people captive, and he told me what he wanted, and I forged it for him." The mania in his voice pitched, cracking slightly. Just at the edges, and only for a moment. "I had no choice. I want you to understand. But I have spent two years telling myself that, because it is true, and because the truth of it has not once made it easier to believe."
"Thanos," Sindri said.
Eitri finally turned to look at him. Sindri remembered the eyes Eitri had the first time they met. The depths of despair, self-hate, anger, and agony he had seen in those eyes. Eyes that were so much like his. Over the past few months, those eyes had lost a great deal of those emotions, but this story was like digging a grave and revealing a festering injury that had been hidden.
"Yes."
Sindri held his gaze, knowing how much it hurt, but knowing it had to be done anyway. "Tell me about him."
And Eitri told him.
He told him about the size of the fleet. About the children, his Black Order, and the way they moved through Nidavellir, killing man, woman, and child, calling it balance. He told him about the gauntlet, about the work of making it, about the particular agony of being made to put your finest craft in service of the worst thing you had ever encountered. He told him about the day it was complete, about the way Thanos had held it up in glee.
When Eitri finished, the light had shifted, the low angle had grown steeper, and the shrine's names were in shadow. Sindri had not moved through any of it.
He stood in the silence that followed for a long moment and let the full story rest on his shoulders. It was a story he had asked for, and it would be shameful to run from it. Thanos was more of a monster than even Odin had been. Then he thought about the why. Thanos had slaughtered a whole civilization to build a simple gauntlet, one powerful enough to hold the stones. He thought about what Eitri had said.
Anything, he said. The impossible becomes a question of will.
He thought about Brok. He did not know the full abilities of these stones, and he did not know if he had the strength to gather all six and hold on to them, but a single stone came to mind. One that just might have the power to do what he wished.
If the names were as accurate as he hoped, then his priority was the Soul Stone.
He needed to get to it before Thanos did, or failing that, he needed to take it from Thanos after, which was an idea so audacious that the part of his mind still committed to self-preservation raised a brief objection before being firmly overruled by every other part.
He would need help.
He would need more than help. He would need resources, information, and access to a forge capable of producing something that could survive contact with a stone of that magnitude, and allies who were either brave enough or foolish enough to follow a bitter old dwarf into the most dangerous errand in the history of anyone who had ever run one.
He looked at Eitri.
"You said the gauntlet was necessary," Sindri said slowly. "That without something to channel and hold all six, the power would destroy the wielder."
Eitri looked at him with a frown. "Yes."
"What would it take to hold a single stone? Two at most?"
Eitri looked at him with disbelieving eyes.
"Something significantly less. Tell me," Eitri said, "what you're thinking."
Sindri gave him a stern look. "I'm thinking of flipping the whole board, and maybe, just maybe, paying Thanos back for what he did to your people."
Eitri held his gaze for long moments and must've found something in it, because he made his way to his feet.
"What do you need?" And just like that, Sindri had the first participant for his mad plan.