Synopsis / Summary / Plot
While the current Earth-616 Avengers have been in the pages of this series lately helping the 1M BC Avengers defeat the Multiversal Masters Of Evil, over in Avengers Forever the multiversal Avengers have been defending Avengers Tower in the God Quarry against an invasion of multiversal Mephistos. In AvF#13 the multi-Avengers defeated the Mephistos but the issue ended with the arrival of Doom Supreme and his army of Dooms on Doom The Living Planet. And at the same time Avenger Prime returned from fighting more Mephistos (further back in Avengers Assemble Alpha) and revealed his identity as a Loki.
Now this issue continues on from that, and this series' stars and the prehistoric Avengers don't show up until the last page. And the 1st half of the book has this Loki relating his history to us.
This Loki says that the happiest moment of his young life was when his brother Thor died after trying to master Mjolnir. The hammer flew him into the Sun. Odin lost heart and teenage Loki became lord of Asgard, and then sold his adoptive father as a slave to the Frost Giants. But he found the victory totally unsatisfying.
He used Asgardian science/sorcery to bring other Lokis from alternate timelines to see if he could learn from them. But the only thing he learned was that you can never trust a Loki. So he continued by just secretly observing other Lokis, and saw that they always suffered defeat, mostly at the hands of groups who called themselves Avengers. And inevitably these Avengers 1st assembled to fight a Loki. (Not counting the Avengers who were assembled in the prehistory of many Earths.)
So he made sure no Avengers would arise on *his* Earth. He chained Mjolnir up so no-one could claim its power. He had frozen Captain America taken away by Frost Giants. He kidnapped Tony Stark and kept him drunk in a dungeon. He destroyed Wakanda. He slaughtered any Kree half-breeds. He banished all Ghost Riders to Muspelheim. Etc. But in the end this only ensured his doom, and that of the universe. In the absence of all superheroes Earth fell prey to Galactus, Celestials, Thanos etc. And he had to fight them alone. His magic defeated them all but at the expense of a broken Earth and the lives of everyone else in the universe.
He had achieved total victory but he only felt a faint pleasure. So he decided to follow Thor into the Sun. But he couldn't even achieve the peace of death ...
... because he wound up in the God Quarry, the graveyard of dead gods, but still alive. So for the 1st time in his life he prayed, and the God Quarry answered. He was told that he wouldn't be allowed to die until he paid his penance. He had to assemble the multiversal Avengers to build Avengers Tower here at Infinity's End. When that was done he explained who he was to his team, which didn't go down well. But his sentence continued. Over the eons he has led many different multiversal Avengers. And he also had his army of Deathloks, who are now all gone. And then in Av Ass Alpha he went to meet the current and prehistoric Earth-616 Avengers, disguising himself with a winged masked helmet.
Now he's returned from that mission to help face the hordes of Doom. And he dispels them all by summoning the Winds Of Watoomb from various different timelines. But now that he's unmasked the current multiversal Avengers, especially the Goddesses Of Thunder, don't trust him at all. So Loki starts to tell *them* the story we've just read. But then he collapses from multiple stab wounds in the back.
We flash back to Av Ass Alpha where Avenger Prime has been stabbed multiple times by the Red Council of Mephistos. He's killed many of them but Mephisto-616 has led the others to the assault on the Tower. And then our Thor finds him. And he has to tell the story to *him*.
Now Loki has recovered and pulled the last dagger from his back. Some of the longer-standing multiversal Avengers want to accept him because he is after all their leader Avenger Prime. But Loki offers the others evidence of his good will. As more Dooms rush to the attack he opens a portal and the current and 1M BC Avengers step through.