Once upon a time in a land very, very far away there was a kingdom in a place you might know of as the Balkan Peninsula in Eastern Europe. It was a tiny little kingdom with a tiny little population and it was really quite isolated, surrounded as it was by tall mountains and thick forests. However, this little kingdom was prosperous and safe even when those around it were in turmoil.

But the kingdom wasn't safe because it had a large military or a clever police force or even a lot of superheroes, but because of who ruled it, for the kingdom's name was Latveria and it was ruled by a Prince named Victor von Doom.

Prince Victor was very popular with his subjects; he was a good leader and protected everyone in his country from danger, whether it was from invading barbarian hoards (of which there were few) or lenders with high interest rates (of which there were far too many). He was also very clever, producing machine after machine that they could use themselves and market to those outside their borders. In fact, besides his penchant for naming things after himself, there was only one thing that the people of Latveria could find wrong with Prince Victor and that was his vanity. For as well as being a great leader the prince was very handsome, he was tall and muscular with dark hair and dark eyes and a strong-featured face and he was very proud of not just his good looks, but his leadership, his intelligence and his skill as a sorcerer. He was always pushing himself to greater and greater heights of achievement in his race to be the best and failure, though it did not happen often, frustrated him greatly when it did.

One day the Prince was very frustrated, more so than he had ever been before in his life, for even with all his wealth, power, intelligence and popularity there was one thing that he could not do, and that was raise the dead. For Prince Victor's parents had died when he was very young and he missed them greatly, especially his mother Cynthia from whom he had inherited his magic.

For years he had tried to bring them back to the world of the living, developing hundreds of machines and hundreds of rituals and then combinations of the two that grew stranger and stranger as time went on, but he could not find a way to make it work.

The people of Latveria were beginning to become concerned, the Prince was becoming angrier and angrier, neglecting his duties and being snappish to the servants and refusing to concentrate on anything other than his latest experiment. This one, he was convinced, would work if only he could find the missing piece, the final bit of power he needed to complete the spell. He had painstakingly recreated a ritual from an ancient grimoire, but like many of the most powerful spells there was a missing part that was difficult to find, in this case the grimoire stated that only the person the spell-caster loved most could bring the final component to the ritual. Unfortunately for Prince von Doom love is not quantifiable or readily available.

This was what frustrated the Prince so, for the people he loved most were dead and buried and he was too vain and jealous to allow others to tamper with his magic. He wasted hour after hour trying to recreate whatever the substance was and every hour after that trying to find a loophole, another route towards success.

But no matter how determined a person is they will tire eventually, and this happened to Prince Victor. He was so disheartened and tired that he couldn't even feel angry anymore, just melancholy and he rested on his chair in its place by the open window and hoped that maybe, one day, he would find what he was looking for.

After a few seconds he closed his tired eyes and prepared to fall asleep, but a brilliant light, one so bright that he could see it even through his eyelids suddenly wakened him. Outside the window and falling quickly towards the earth was a bright light that resembled a shooting star, but to Victor looked like the answer to his prayers.

He rushed outside as fast as he could, eager to find this mysterious object and eventually, after over an hour of searching, he found it. In the middle of a sizeable crater there was a large, dark shape lying on the ground. As Victor moved closer he realised the shape was not a meteorite as he had previously expected, but a person. He was quite young, around Victor's age and was pale with long dark hair and his body was entirely covered by strange, plate armour. As Victor moved closer the man stirred and righted himself slowly, pulling himself up to his (rather impressive) full height, he turned towards Victor and regarded him with dazed green eyes.

Victor looked at the man and asked,

"Have you been sent here to help me complete my ritual?"

The man looked at him blankly, though that may have been because of a concussion, and after a few moments of silence raised his own question.

"Who are you?"

Victor looked back at the man in front of him until the man repeated his question.

"Who are you?"

This time Victor managed to pull himself together enough to answer.
" I am Victor von Doom, Crown Prince of Latveria. I have been hoping to find someone who can help me complete my ritual. May I ask who you are?"

The man smiled slightly and replied in his well-spoken voice.

"I am Loki of Asgard. You are a sorcerer, and a monarch as well? How fortuitous. I would see this ritual," the Prince started towards him only to stop when the man continued, " but only if you allow me to stay at your castle for as long as I please, or at least while I recover from my recent trip."

Victor considered it for a while, thinking carefully. On the off chance that the man in front of him was the Loki of Scandinavian legend he would have to be careful with how he approached this. He was encouraged further though, upon remembering that Loki was the name of a god of magic and more importantly the father of the Queen of the Dead.

"Yes, you may stay at my castle as long as you hold up your end of the bargain." Said the Prince triumphantly.

As soon as they arrived back at the castle the first thing the Prince did was drag the already exhausted man up the winding, closely spaced steps to the topmost room of the Eastern Tower, the tallest in the whole of Castle Doom. This was where his laboratory was. He moved with an almost feverish excitement, quite unlike his normally sedate self and pulled the man on behind him, not bothering to stop or slow down. He never noticed the way the man regarded his surroundings so carefully, especially the way the servants shrank away from the Prince and stared at the strange, dark visitor their monarch had following him with concerned expressions on their faces.

Once at the top of the tower Prince Victor continued with his frenzied excitement, showing the man blueprints and meticulous hand-drawn designs and finally the grimoire itself, then going through the individual parts of the ritual with him. Loki listened to it all silently and with apparent interest and when the Prince finished he regarded the magic circle calmly for several minutes, then for several minutes more. Soon the frenzied energy in Prince Victor died and he began to grow impatient with the other sorcerer. Finally, he prompted him for an answer.

"Well?"

The man replied without looking at Victor.

"Well what?"

Prince Victor began to seethe quietly, deep creases marring his handsome face.

"Have you a way to complete the ritual?"

Loki looked at the circle then back at the Prince, then back to the circle again before he smiled a little. It was probably the most genuine expression he had worn all night and it was not an entirely pleasant one. The god's tone turned teasing.

"No, it is as the book says, only someone who you care truly and deeply for can complete this. So unless you have developed feelings for me in the past few minutes there is nothing I can do."

Victor was enraged and his anger and frustration grew more and more vehement and vengeful as he turned and demanded that his fellow sorcerer leave the castle immediately, his temper only grew worse as the man in front of him began to smile and then to laugh. He demanded again, louder and using fouler language that Loki leave his castle and its grounds and never return, but the man before him only laughed harder, his pale face flushing and his eyes sparkling.

"Victor," Loki continued, not trying to hide his amusement in the slightest, "You drag a lost, cold, injured man into your castle, not giving him a moment to rest or offering him anything a gentlemen would normally offer a guest and then become so angry when he cannot give you the answers you want? And to a question you already know the answer to? Obviously you have become as strange as everyone in your kingdom thinks you have. Things are the way they are, and one of the reasons they are that way is to stop arrogant, unthinking, foolish mortals from being able to do whatever they want, hang the consequences."

The Prince went silent with rage and his skin paled except for the points of colour on his cheeks, his face contorted into an expression of absolute hate, but his answer was quiet.

"Leave now."

This time Loki took him seriously and the god's own voice descended to a level close to Victor's and a silence filled the room, for some reason even the noises of the fire in the grate and the world outside seemed to stop.

"Leave? You will break an oath with me, Doom?"

The god's expression was now truly unnerving, but Prince Victor was too angry to notice or care.

"Leave this place or I will throw you out, oath or not, god or not."

The god sighed theatrically and rolled his eyes, stretching his long limbs that were now free of bruises or cuts and regarded Victor with bright, sardonic eyes.

"Fine then, you will thank me for this eventually."

The last thing Victor heard before he hit the ground unconscious was the almost imperceptible crackle of magical energy.