[center][qUOTE=@Lord Wraith][b][color=#daa520]"I will send you back to your master, broken and begging for him to end your life.”[/color][/b][/quote]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/rj1hfqD.png[/img][/center]
[b][color=#ffffff]The Raft, New York[/color][/b]

[color=#ffffff]The Surfer coughed. Another mouthful of silver blood came splattering from his mouth and onto his chin. He was laid on his back on the battlefield with a piece of lumbar jutting through his chest. If the Surfer could feel pain, he was certain he would be in it. Yet as long as there was still the power cosmic running through his limbs, the Surfer would go on. Whilst his Lord Darkseid’s wishes remained unfulfilled, no physical labour was beyond the herald’s reach.[/color]

[b][color=#999999]“CARL CREEL? JUNE MOON? BARBARA NORRIS? YOU SEEK TO LAY THEIR PAIN AT MY FEET?”[/color][/b]

[color=#ffffff]The herald’s pink hands wrapped around the piece of metal lodged in his chest. He pulled hard and without a noise dragged the metal free. The wound did not bleed but there was now a gaping hole in the Surfer’s chest. Its edges were pink and fleshy and now the herald’s silver coating seemed to be retreating even from his torso.[/color]

[color=#ffffff]He rose to his feet and approached the Asgardian with a hand outstretched. The God of Thunder swung yet more angry fists in his direction but this time the Surfer invoked his intangibility to pass through them. The strain of doing saw even more of his coating slip away from him, but he did not need much more power to see to it that the god’s true tormentor was revealed to him.[/color]

[b][color=#999999]“LORD DARKSEID IS NOT THE AUTHOR OF YOUR PAIN, ASGARDIAN – NOR I ON HIS BEHALF. IF YOU SEEK THE TRUTH, YOU MUST SEARCH [i]CLOSER[/i] TO HOME.”[/color][/b]

[color=#ffffff]The Surfer’s hands grasped Thor’s head and a sudden shockwave of power cosmic passed through him. As with Iris West earlier in the contest, the herald’s power delved deep into the Asgardian’s memories and sifted through them. Carl Creel’s attack on Marville. June Moon’s enshacklement to the goddess Amora. The pain of Blake Donaldson’s love Barbara Morris. All these memories and more were sent tumbling through Thor’s mind.[/color]

[color=#ffffff]And through the carnage a figure appeared. One long thought lost to Thor and his kind. He stood in the darkest recesses of Thor’s mind. He was barely visible. The black suit he had wrapped himself in whilst meddling in the affairs of mortals had been discarded. Now the architect of Blake’s many trials was revealed to him. A sudden shock of lightning illuminated the figure for but a second.[/color]

[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/MMDmLwQ.jpg?1[/img][/center]
[color=#ffffff]It was Loki. Not Darkseid, nor the Silver Surfer, as the herald had explained. Thought long-dead, Thor’s brother had returned – and had brought a maelstrom of discontent and pain with him from the afterlife. The knowledge tore Thor’s inside aparts. The memories, the images, the Surfer was dredging through were like a hot knife being jabbed into the deepest parts of the Asgardian’s brain.[/color]

[color=#ffffff]The Surfer’s hands slipped from Thor’s head and the god fell to his knees in pain. He was still trying to process his brother’s part in his suffering – and the physical pain that the Surfer’s mental assault had inflicted upon him – when the herald passed an intangible hand through the still-reeling Thor’s chest. It lingered through his heart as the Surfer prepared to deliver the coup-de-grace.[/color]

[b][color=#999999]“YOU HAVE BEEN A WORTHY ADVERSARY, ASGARDIAN. YOUR DEATH WILL BE QUICK. YOU HAVE EARNED THAT KINDNESS.”[/color][/b]