Odin returned to Asgard with a method and nowhere safe to use it.
Age had not diminished his power. It had made the power harder to contain. The longer an Asgardian lived, the more divine force accumulated, until body and energy became enemies sharing the same skin.
Thor could already generate more than he controlled. Adding Odin's burden might shorten his life rather than extend his father's.
Loki's Frost Giant body was not built to receive it. A new containment realm risked detonating during construction, and Hela would treat any gift of power as a weapon against the prison holding her.
Each solution moved the danger rather than containing it. Odin wanted more time to prepare Thor, postpone the collapse promised by Ragnarok, and live without his own strength tearing him apart.
He did not want the price to be one child's body, another child's loyalty, or half of Asgard lost to a failed experiment.
He tried shaping a barrier himself. The first layers responded to his will; the next amplified the force meant to sustain them. He stopped before the feedback became an explosion. Power was not the missing ingredient. Fine control was.
That left the small world Odin had seen beneath Michael's estate.
He wanted to understand how its barrier accepted energy and kept it separate from the person controlling it. Instead of asking Michael himself, he summoned Thor and instructed him to seek an exchange of knowledge.
***
Thor heard something simpler: his father wanted Michael to teach him.
He arrived at the manor by hammer and announced himself loudly enough for Michael to hear from inside.
Lilian identified him before Michael opened the door. "Thor. The identification comes from S.H.I.E.L.D. records."
"Did they give you access?"
"No."
"We are going to discuss that again."
"You will object. I will explain that their systems remain hostile infrastructure. Neither of us will change position."
Michael let the forecast stand.
Thor waited on the drive, more puzzled than threatening. "Odin says I'm supposed to learn how you control divine power."
"Did he offer anything in return?"
"He is Odin."
"That isn't payment. And I don't know the method he thinks I can teach."
Thor considered the problem as if compensation had never entered the message. He had expected a lesson, not a negotiation, and possessed neither his father's question nor authority to answer Michael's.
"Then I suppose we're done," Thor said.
He spun the hammer and left.
Odin's voice reached him before he cleared the region. The command to return carried enough anger that even Michael heard the thunder change.
***
The proposal interested Michael immediately. Odin's earlier bolt had crossed the biological barrier as if the protection were a suggestion. An object made by the same civilization might reveal how divine power was stored, directed, and survived.
"What kind of artifact?" Michael asked.
"One made for you."
"And what happens to the sandbox when you put your power inside it?"
"Its barrier held what I sent through it before. I will reinforce it first."
The sandbox was already destabilized, Blaine was dead, and three prisoners remained at the center of a pocket realm. Odin's energy might destroy what survived.
It might also create conditions Michael could never produce alone.
"Agreed," Michael said. "But I control when the barrier opens and closes."
Odin extended his hand toward the boundary. Lightning entered in a controlled stream.
The system responded before the environment did.
External energy threshold exceeded. Structural upgrade initiated.
Michael watched the barrier strengthen around the incoming charge. The system diverted energy through structures he did not understand and altered the limits governing the experimental region. It announced no new function yet; Michael could not tell what the upgrade would allow.
Odin increased the flow until the system declared itself saturated.
"Now open it," Odin said.
Storm clouds covered the visible sky.
Lilian formed armor over Michael without waiting for the first strike. "The scale is rising beyond the reinforcement input."
"I see it."
"You can still refuse."
He could. The bargain had not specified how much Odin meant to store, and consent to reinforcement was not consent to an undefined flood.
Michael opened the barrier.
Lightning poured into the sandbox from every direction. The ground vanished behind white light. The three-domain structure, the pocket realm, and every remaining life inside became unreadable beneath the energy.
Odin lowered one hand when he was satisfied. Michael closed the barrier at once.
The storm ceased.
Lilian kept the armor closed around Michael. Readings from within the barrier remained incoherent: heat, divine force, and spiritual residue occupied the same space. She could not confirm survivors or the condition of the three prisoners.
"Do not call it empty because we cannot read it," she said. Get faster updates on g.com.
"I wasn't going to."
"You called the risk acceptable before opening it. Precision afterward matters more, not less."
"How much was that?" Michael asked.
"A quarter of the divine power available to me."
Michael looked at the scorched region. "A quarter."
"The rest is not presently separable from my body without killing it." Odin sounded relieved rather than depleted. "This may give me thousands of years."
Michael had traded access to a populated experiment for a promised object. Whatever survived inside had not agreed to his bargain.
"The artifact," he said.
Odin laughed. "You negotiate after surviving. Good. Come with me."
***
Odin ate before they left.
Lilian prepared the quickest meal available and watched him finish it with the appetite of a warrior returning from campaign. His insistence that Michael was family became no more credible for being cheerful.
"You will need protection where we are going," Odin said.
Lilian covered Michael in light armor again. "He has it."
Odin studied her contribution to the same divine signature he had been calling a sign of descent. "Then both of you come."
He told Michael to call Heimdall.
***
Far away, Heimdall saw the three of them clearly. Michael and Lilian carried Asgardian-like power, but its path did not begin in Asgard. Neither was Odin's child.
Heimdall did not challenge what Odin had said to them. The king had smiled more in the past day than he had in years, and Heimdall let the claim stand.
***
Michael called Heimdall's name.
The Rainbow Bridge opened beneath him and Lilian. Color became motion, distance collapsed, and the manor disappeared.
They arrived in Nidavellir beneath the light of a star harnessed for a forge. Towers and rings surrounded it, built for workers called dwarves despite standing taller than the humans before them.
Odin spread his arms as if presenting an inheritance.
"Welcome," he said, "to the place that will make your artifact."