For once, Loki didn't join the conversation. It wasn't that he didn't have anything to say, that hardly ever happened. It was more that his attention was entirely taken up with maintaining and casting more spells, defensive and otherwise, than he generally did. In most combats, he looked after himself and backstabbed at the edges of the fight. It had always worked well, before.

It wouldn't work here. There was no 'edge' to combat, and he was more likely to interfere than not if he tried his usual tactics.

Fortunately, a combination of illusions, deflections, and dispels (all more obvious with flashing green light than he really liked to be) served to keep a fair amount of the thing's rotting and burning attacks away from the ones who actually were fighting it. As a matter of efficiency, he'd mostly stopped including himself in his defenses: four were easier to track than five, and as the only one not overtly attacking, he didn't appear to be high-priority for the thing.