A ghostly grey ball of smoke came into view.
It appeared to be inhabiting the Locket.
It took Loki a great deal of focus not to act on the fear he instinctually felt as his gaze locked in on the piece of soul trapped inside the Locket.
In the same moment when Loki's gaze locked onto the resident soul, it grew eyes, realistic eyes that were frantically spinning around above a mouth that started whispering forbidden knowledge.
Loki felt someone stab his brain repeatedly and blood dripped from his nose in excess like a torrential river of red.
But he boldly dove through it all since there was a reason Loki was going into the fight bare without even using Salazaar Slytherin's concealment rune!
His only preparation was accommodating the card of blasphemy.
Because Loki had accommodated the Error Card of Blasphemy his Sequence was forcefully raised from a meager Sequence 7 Cryptologist to a Sequence 6 Prometheus. This allowed him to see everything in his spirit vision as runes which could be stolen!
There were several different runes, ones to describe locomotion, others to describe the languages one knew, there were even runes that corresponded to various unknown abilities and last but not least there were runes that corresponded to his target, the soul itself!
Loki started to quickly use his spirituality to shift through all the runes he was seeing-
'Fool!' Loki heard the soul speak directly into his mind.
Voldemort had established a 'connection' with Loki as soon as he had locked his sights on 'His' soul and could now use it to exercise his abilities and target his attacks on his astral and mental bodies.
The soul glowed and morphed as it appeared out of the locket and manifested with the help of a dark fog.
A large face composed of only a pair of bloodshot eyes and lips that appeared as thin as sticks manifested in front of Loki.
A smirk played on the lips of the gigantic face in front of Loki as they slowly parted to speak in Latin, "Death!"
Loki instantly spat out blood from his mouth, yet his gaze remained firmly planted on what was in front of him.
'Almost there!'
Loki was just a few small pinpricks away from shifting through and comprehending all the runes that were floating around the Locket to recognise which rune belonged to the soul.
Loki's knowledge of runes and what the symbols meant came into quick use as his mind decomposed the various figures of strokes he was seeing in the air to their corresponding runic symbols.
The complicated structures were broken down bit by bit.
He was working through the pain and using his superior mind to analyse everything visible as he ruled them out one by one.
'These are not what I am looking for.'
'I am looking for the runes that the idiot in front of me engraved on his soul to anchor it to locket!'
Loki's brain felt like it was growing hot under the mental assault that Voldemort was performing but also under his own overuse. It felt like his mind was a stone's throw away from crumbling under its own weight.
'Sequence 3 Blatherer huh?'
A strong sense of suppression overtook Loki's mind as he gazed at the figure of a Saint of the Abyss pathway, but he did not give in.
He had one goal from the beginning and he focused on achieving it.
And he did.
Decomposing the runes engraved directly onto Voldemort's soul, Loki near instantly grasped it with his sight and never let it escape no matter how the fog around it swirled or boiled.
Pouring his spirituality into the Necklace of Giants on his neck, Loki felt a burst of strength encompass him as a twilight glow radiated from him.
Loki forcibly raised his hand to perform the 'theft'.
But as soon as Loki's hand postured for the theft, the assault he felt on his mind and astral body doubled.
Yet, keeping his focus, he began to act by utilising every last drop of the energy in his body.
"How funny! An ant thinks he can take on a Saint!" Voldemort snarled.
The dreadful one sided deadlock that had existed between Loki and Voldemort had started to take a toll on Loki. Added to that the sweet words filled with corruption Voldemort was using, Loki felt overwhelmed.
His astral body started to mutate, his skin wriggled, his muscles spasmed, his vision turned red from the blood that leaked out of his eyes and his organs felt like they were ruptured and bleeding internally.
Above all, his mind felt like a million knives were stabbed into it, only increasing by the moment. Getting worse and worse as Loki started to go in and out of consciousness.
Looking at his condition Voldemort smirked.
Victory was closer for 'Him' than it was for Loki.
"You are pathetically weak! Give up and I will let you serve me as a slave! Maybe I won't destroy the lives of your loved ones!" Voldemort spoke in a voice that resembled the grating of glass against one's eardrums.
Except in the spur of a moment, the second Beyonder ability in the Necklace of Giants exploded outward.
A twilight halo emerged with Loki as the centre, spreading around into a ten-meter radius causing the entirety of Voldemort's soul to freeze as it became trapped within the purification ring.
An unholy scream emerged from Voldemort's soul as it started to burn under the constant assault of the purification ring filled with twilight light.
Since there was no body, the Purification circle directly assaulted Voldemort's bare soul.
But that wasn't all that Loki did.
He immediately focused on the Concealment rune in his mind, turning his Body of Heart and Mind completely invisible. The action broke the connection that Voldemort had with Loki until now. This was why Loki had gone in blind! So that any connection Voldemort would build up could be momentarily distorted!
Loki didn't trust that the concealment rune would protect his mind from Voldemort the entire time with him being right in front of him. And so he chose to bet it all on one fully planned coordinated moment that needed it the most.
It paused Voldemort's dreadful attack leaving 'Him' stunned and confused.
Loki took full advantage of this pause and increased the pressure on the rune that was anchoring his soul and managed to knock it out of the locket by flicking his wrist, causing it to fly towards him.
'Strike!'
A smile finally formed on Loki's battered and tired face but he didn't stop yet.
'No! Not yet.'
Although Voldemort had been knocked out of the locket, it still did not mean Loki had won yet. He could still attack Loki or worse realise exactly where they were.
And that is exactly what happened.
Voldemort's focus shifted from Loki, something Loki had done his best to prevent from happening from the beginning by using himself as juicy bait that was completely unprotected from Voldemort's assault.
The grey fog that was lying completely still until just now began to churn.
"NO!!!!! YOU!!!! WHO ARE YOU!!!!????" Voldemort screamed as he dove towards Loki, trying to stop him from controlling the grey fog by possessing him or using his Beyonder abilities to slow Loki down but it was too late.
A hurricane created by the fog emerged inside the purification ring of twilight. The towering hurricane made out of the grey fog forcibly sucked Voldemort's soul into it, not giving him even a single chance to retaliate as it was immediately torn to shreds.
And just like that, the Saint that had arrogantly proclaimed Loki's death just a few seconds prior had vanished, eliminated.
Loki stayed still for a few moments, doing his best to use the grey fog all around himself to make sure that the dark lord wasn't coming back from oblivion and to heal his wounds.
'Is that it?'
'Can I give the locket to Salazar now?'
'No, not yet. I need to do something before that.'
Loki summoned his topaz pendulum.
"The piece of soul that attacked me has been vanquished."
"The piece of soul that attacked me has been vanquished."
"The piece of soul that attacked me has been vanquished."
…
"The piece of soul that attacked me has been vanquished."
But Loki didn't open his eyes to check on the pendulum that was spinning clockwise.
They remained close as his breathing slowly changed from heavy to light, from frantic deep inhales to pump his ruined body with oxygen to calm slow breaths as his body relaxed and he fell asleep because of the calm and relaxation of cogitation.
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