<div class="floatleft">(https://i.imgur.com/nHeZWaE.jpg)</div><strong>Character Name:</strong>Magni Thorsson<br/><strong>Location:</strong>The Marvels Building Upstate New York City<br/><strong>Wearing:</strong>White tunic, white trousers, leather boots<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong>Ravager, Devils Nyght, Aegis, Roulette, Pandemic, War Bride, Mind Witch, Red Goblin, Torrent, Silver Samurai<br/><strong>Warnings:</strong>None<br/><br/><hr/><br/>Unaware of the compounded misunderstanding on Ravager's part, Magni continued to lift. But there was no need for the mutant to have doubts. The demigod lifted solemnly and seriously. Every motion was controlled and there was no sign of strain or the approach of failure as his curls passed from single figures into the double figures and above.<br/><br/>Magni's form as he did curls was not<em>exactly</em>perfect. There were ways it could be improved. He was indeed lifting the weights with his fingers, but equally, his thumbs, hands, arms, and shoulders! His feet were shoulder width apart and facing straight ahead. His back was straight and true. The demigod had ceased to play when others entered the training room. Both to reduce the risk to others if he were to lose control of one of the weights, and to, in some measure, avoid giving shame to the others. Magni knew well the sting of not having something another did and did not wish to engender it in others over his strength unending. But what did strength count for, in the end? It did not make one Worthy. Captain America had grasped Mjǫllnir and wielded the hammer true, and his strength of body was no grand thing.<br/><br/>The demigod's mind was like unto a mighty fortress with its gates barred and locked. He felt the mind of another force upon it, and he halted in his exercises to turn his gaze upon Mind Witch. Slowly, the demigod spoke, choosing his words with care.<strong>"I say thee, Mind Witch, hath thou a care. My trust in thee - in <em>all</em> Marvels, yea, e'en mine half-brother Modi - is as a seed newly sown, not yet hath it grown: neither roots nor trunk it hath. I do not easily grant thee access to mine self unguarded."</strong>He doubted his words would be well received, but he was ill at ease compromising the sanctity of his mind to anyone at this point in time, especially for the sake of 'fun.' There was not anything, really, of any particular value in his mind compared to that of anyone else's: it was not as though Magni were entrusted with the secrets of the Realm Eternal, nor that he had lived so long that his mind had grown labyrinthine and dangerous in its breadth as a long-lived immortal's would. His thoughts and memories were merely different. But they were his own, and no more did he wish to flaunt them than other parts of him that were intimate.<br/><br/>Though he might wish it were a secret, it was disclosed within Magni's file that he was susceptible to the Sin Unpardonable. It was too great a danger to keep a secret from all others. But if these people were to be more than strangers, Magni reflected, there had to be trust. If any of them were to be friends, boon companions, ones who would stand at his side still though even the whole of the Ten Realms . . . there had to be trust.<br/><br/>Slowly, painfully slowly, Magni lowered the defenses that made his mind proof against invasion and control. It caused him unease that was now palpable. Such was writ plain across his face and his mindscape. The weights in his hands began to feel as though they were many, many times heavier than they were within his hands, as if he carried in his hands a pair of great mountain ranges and not mere barbells.<br/><br/>And then, wrought from nothing more than the manipulation of his senses, the golden serpent. Alarm triggered, it played upon Magni's face and in the tension upon his shoulders. His eyes followed something that only he and the two mutant psychics could perceive. It was an especially fearsome creature of golden scales and sinuous coils that were great enough to wrap him and more within its grip. It brought to mind an avaricious World Serpent, and as the toxic smell of its venom appeared to strike his senses he was forced to think of what was his father's carved destiny Ragnarǫk. That dread cycle that held all of the Æsir in its cruel, inexorable grip. Destiny is all.<br/><br/><strong>"And what wouldst thou make of this, Mind Witch? 'Tis Ása-Þórr's carved destiny to fall, killed by serpent's breath, three steps after he hath slain Jǫrmungandr. Of mine own carved destiny, all that is known is though I striveth for Worthiness, but eternally shall it rest beyond mine grasp."</strong>It was a triumph of Magni's will that he remained as calm as he did under the circumstances. All about him coiled a foe to challenge his great and mighty father fully arrayed in his panoply of dwarf-wrought treasures, and every one of his divinely heightened senses was being tricked to tell him that it was a real, true thing he beheld. His logical mind knew that it was not so, and it warred with what his body told him was true. The impulse to fight, to strike out at the serpent, was powerful beyond all measure and sensibility. With every beat of his immortal heart, Magni felt the temptation to loose upon the auric creature the anger within him that threatened glory and ruin, to give himself over to that unknown Will that triumph might be assured even though it was forbidden by he who was the Way and the Wrath and the Wonder in heaven high and caverns deep.<br/><br/>It shamed Magni that, though he was confronted by mere illusion, trickery of the senses, it came to his mind at all. Was he being made sport of by the mutants?