Nat’s jaw cracked as she suppressed a yawn. The lack of sleep was really starting to catch up to her. Still, even though everything felt like it was happening at once, she’d have a chance to rest soon—she just needed to hold out for a little longer. Sitting with her arms folded, she listened as the blue-tinged hologram of Carol Danvers standing at the front of the conference room responded to Steve’s last question.
“I’m near the Genesis Cascade,” Carol said, the image crackling with black static that wasn’t usual for their communications. “The Guardians were chasing something, which… let’s just say you don’t come out here unless you have a really good reason. I followed them, been trying to catch up. I’m pretty far out from the nearest Jump Point—two, three days maybe. Even then, I’m not exactly in the neighbourhood. It’d take some time for me to make my way back to Earth from here.”
“Can you park your ship somewhere safe?” Steve asked. “We can reach out to Kamar-taj and ask the Ancient One to portal you in, given the potential emergency, if that works for you?” He stopped, waiting for the delayed response.
Idly, Nat wondered what the exact distances involved were—she knew regular radio signals took about a second or two to travel between Earth and the Moon, but she wasn’t familiar with the details of the communications array that was hooked into the Universal Neural Teleportation Network. If Carol was two or three days out from the Jump Point and it took roughly twelve seconds to get a response—six each way, then that meant…?
Carol nodded, her image juddering slightly from the interference. “There’s an uninhabited rock not too far away. I might be able to find a safe place there. I can call you back in eight hours or so, once I’ve had a chance to check it out? I really don’t want to risk leaving the Hoopty somewhere it’ll get eaten by plasma wraiths. They’re, uh, these sentient energy field things—I can handle them fine, but if I leave my ship out here by itself, it won’t last long.”
“I’m pretty sure the Ancient One should be able to open a portal big enough to fly your ship through,” Natasha chimed in. “I don’t know if she’ll be able to drop you back off exactly where you came from later, though. We can talk to her and get back to you?”
Another twelve-second delay.
“Sure, that sounds good,” Carol said, then grimaced a little. “I’d prefer to not lose the Guardians’ trail if we can help it—it took a lot of effort to get this close, starting over would be a pain.”
“Thanks, Carol,” Steve said. “Talk soon.”
The staticky hologram winked out of existence as he terminated the call.
Everyone had reconvened at the compound once they’d followed up on their respective leads—none of the Avengers had met with any success in locating Wanda, of course, and it wasn’t just Nat’s team that had managed to add some extra complications to the current situation. The whole core team was gathered around the table now, plus Bucky, who had refused to sit down and was prowling around the edge of the room.
Tony was sitting on the opposite side of the conference table from Nat, one finger idly tracing the blacked chest plate sitting on the wooden surface. The beams of cosmic energy that Ikaris had shot him with had been powerful enough to cause the Mark 47’s vibranium-alloy plating to buckle under their assault, but it had held, even if Tony hadn’t escaped completely unscathed. He was sporting two cracked ribs and a huge, ugly bruise that crawled down from the side of his neck to disappear below the collar of his shirt. Playing possum had been the right choice but, even so, he’d still been extremely lucky.
“Where’s Thor when you need him?” Tony asked rhetorically, letting out a small sigh. “Really wish Point Break had left us some way of reaching him.”
“The Ancient One might be able to,” Nat said. “No reason not to ask, if we’re calling her for help anyway.”
“Uh, guys?” There was a note of concern in Bruce’s tone, and he was suddenly tapping away at the screen of the translucent tablet in his hand. “I don’t mean to be the bearer of further bad news, but we might have a problem.”
“Oh, good,” Pietro scoffed. “I was just thinking: ‘How boring, this isn’t enough problems that we’re dealing with, we could really use some more’.”
“Uh, let’s call it more of a complication to an existing problem?” Bruce swiped his fingers across the tablet, then used a flicking motion to send what he was looking at to the conference room’s main screen.
Natasha blinked, looking at the blank topological map of the Midwest. “I don’t see anything.”
“What are we looking for?” Clint asked.
Tony suddenly smacked his fist on the conference table with a loud bang. Bruce flinched, but everyone else just looked at him. “Goddamn it,” he swore under his breath, voice tight with frustration. He held out a hand, and Bruce passed him the tablet. “Are you kidding me? How? We had visual and their energy readings locked in.”
Nat kicked herself mentally—she shouldn’t have needed Tony’s reaction to realise what the blank map meant. The Stark Industries’ satellite that had been monitoring the progress of the Eternals as they moved east had lost track of them somehow.
Steve frowned. “The Eternals managed to give us the slip?”
“Yeah,” Bruce said with a grimace. “They were a couple miles outside of Chicago, now they’re gone. No idea what happened—they just vanished.”
“There was a little bit of distortion on the last image, but then it’s like they just winked out of existence.” Tony’s hand flew rapidly across the screen, reviewing data. He made a small noise of frustration in the back of his throat. “This is bullshit. It’ll be something Phastos made, right? Their tech guy, the one that gave your friends in Australia their privacy screen. Can’t be the same thing though, or it’d be affecting everything—it’s gotta be something a lot more sophisticated, filtering stuff out selectively.”
“Active or passive?” Steve asked. “Did they know we were watching and cut us off, or just get in range of something?”
“Impossible to tell. Ugh, I can’t believe we’ve got nothing.” Tony tossed the tablet onto the table and leaned back with a sigh. “All that, and now we can’t even track them. So much for intercepting them before they managed to get together with their buddies.”
“Poked the bear and it roared for nothing, huh?” Natasha asked, a mild reprimand in her voice.
He exhaled sharply. “Yeah, okay, I get the irony, Nat. I pushed things too hard and overplayed my hand.” There was annoyance in his tone, but she could tell he was more angry with himself than anything else. “It was a mistake. I fucked up.”
“Nothing to be done about it now,” Steve said, shaking his head. “We already knew that the Eternals were going to be a problem. The circumstances aren’t ideal, but this was always going to be something we were going to have to deal with sooner or later.”
“Later would still have been better,” Pietro quipped.
“Like maybe when we had all of our heavy hitters on board, as was the original plan?” Clint added with a frown, his arms folded in front of his chest. “I’m not so sure how well ‘guy with bow and arrows’ is going to cut it if this comes to a real fight, given how durable these guys are supposed to be.”
“Without Wanda, we can’t get ahead of them by tracking down the other Eternals first, either,” Nat said. “We might’ve been able to convince some of the others to help us, but we don’t know where they are.”
“Where the hell is she?” Bucky said, taking a small break from pacing back and forth, his voice tight. “Not Ross. Probably not the Eternals. None of our other leads have come up with anything.”
Natasha gave him a helpless shrug. She was just as worried about Wanda as he was, but they were running out of actual, practical things they could do on that front right now. “Part of me desperately wants to give our new friend access to as much data as possible, try to get a better read on the situation and maybe tease out possibilities we haven’t thought of, but…”
“That’d be reckless,” Steve finished her sentence. “Sterns is a victim, but we need to be mindful not to give him anything that we don’t want to have potentially leaked. Not until we’re sure we can trust him.”
“But we don’t really have any other leads,” Bucky responded tersely. “What are we supposed to do? Just hope she turns up on her own?”
“Buck, I know,” Steve said, holding up a hand. “But we’ve already ruled out most of the worst possibilities and, like you said, we don’t even know where to look. The Eternals are moving now. Ross is moving now. We can’t afford to let either situation get away from us.”
Nat felt a vibration in her pocket and there was a round of people checking their phones—Maria Hill had just dropped a message in the main group chat: News networks are on board, getting them prepped now @StevenGrantRogers media centre in 60?
Her team had been working closely with Sterns around the specifics of their public information release, reaching out to news networks to prep for a live public statement from the Avengers this evening. Steve was the obvious best choice to make the face of the issue—Nat couldn’t rattle off the specific probabilistic variances that added up to it like Sterns could, but it was an easy choice. The American public really loved Captain America.
Steve straightened up in his seat and started to peck at the screen like it was a typewriter, tapping out a response, and the corner of Nat’s mouth quirked upwards. He was such an old man, sometimes. It always seemed a little like he had to actively suppress the urge to type STOP at the end of each message.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
“We’ll call Kamar-taj, then I’ll head over to make our initial statement about Sterns and Ross,” he said, looking up from his phone and glancing around the table. “After that… Tony, do you think you can work out how to counter whatever is stopping us from tracking the Eternals?”
“I doubt it. Not in any sort of useful timeframe,” he said with a shake of his head. “We can ask Royal R&D to take a look, but we don’t have any sort of starting point to work out what the mechanism might be—we’d just be throwing things at the wall and hoping they stick. I’m gonna need to do some work on my suit, anyway.” As he spoke, he picked up the vibranium-alloy plate and waved it vaguely in Steve’s direction for emphasis.
“What about the nanotech you guys have been working on?” Bruce asked. “Still not ready?”
“I’d been planning on making the switch soon, but honestly? It’s a good thing I hadn’t deployed it yet. I’d probably be dead right now if I had.” That statement drew a few surprised looks. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s beautiful tech. A work of art, really. Can’t beat it when it comes to ease of deployment, flexibility, self-repair… But FRIDAY’s been running the numbers and a rigid nanomorphic structure—even a vibranium one—just wouldn’t have had enough integrity to hold up to a sustained blast from Superboy Prime like this did,” he explained, gesturing with the piece of armour in his hand. “Solid plate can just tank bigger hits.”
“Nanosuit’s a dead end, then?” Bruce asked.
Tony shook his head. “Eh, I have an idea for a dual-layer system. Think something like a gambeson and mail under plate armour, like an old-school knight would wear—a nanotech suit that’s tough enough to handle a lot of things on its own, but can be bulked up by integrating a layer of dedicated hard plate when the situation calls for it.”
Bruce looked intrigued, but Steve held up a hand to interrupt before the conversation could get further into the weeds. “Sounds great, Tony, but let’s stay on track—we need to get things sorted out with Kamar-taj so we know what our next move is with Carol and the Eternals.”
“Sure thing, Cap.”
Steve glanced in Nat’s direction. She nodded, tapping at her phone for a moment to start the call before flicking it up onto the conference room’s main screen.
“What time is it there, anyway?” Pietro asked, but before anyone could answer, the call went through immediately.
“Avengers,” the Ancient One said as she appeared on the screen, inclining her head in a small nod of acknowledgement.
“Ancient One,” responded Steve. “Sorry for calling at this hour.”
“You picked up pretty fast, considering it’s, what, three AM there?” Tony pointed out. “Couldn’t sleep? Up for a midnight snack?”
The corners of the Ancient One’s eyes crinkled slightly with amusement. “I’ve been expecting your call,” she said. “I believe this conversation would be better had in person.” As she spoke, she turned and gestured. A portal sparked into being at the head of the table, orange threads of sorcerous energy coming together and opening to reveal her standing on the other side. “Please, come with me,” she said, gesturing with a hand.
Nat and Steve exchanged a glance—he looked a little hesitant, but nodded, and as a group they stood and filtered through the gateway to Kamar-taj.
The walls of the room they found themselves in were dark, age-worn wood, polished to a soft lustre by centuries of careful tending. One wall was dominated by a large window that looked out over a riot of green—a serene, subtropical forest, with sunlight filtering down through the canopy. That was definitely not in Kathmandu. Natasha wasn’t sure whether it was an illusion of some kind, or if it was literally the view of somewhere else on Earth.
The warm scent of sandalwood hung heavy in the air. The Ancient One was, as always, clad in an elegant set of robes, its ochre tones catching the low light of the bronze brazier that sat in the corner of the room. Dozens of comfortable-looking cushions were haphazardly scattered around the room, and an aged tome, its cover softly glowing, sat on a low table in one corner.
“You were expecting a call, huh?” Tony asked the sorcerer as he stepped through. “Time Stone shenanigans, right? You manage to get caught back up?”
The Ancient One looked at him, an unreadable expression on her face. “In the broadest sense. Some events occur frequently enough and are distinct enough that they are easily seen across great swathes of possibility.”
Sam snorted, looking around the room. “Do we even need to tell you what’s happening, then?”
“I know some things,” the Ancient One said firmly. “Not everything.”
She turned and gestured for them to follow her as she headed toward the room’s single exit, an already-open doorway. She led the group through a long corridor—some of the walls here were carved wooden lattices, letting you easily see through to some of the unoccupied rooms beyond. Most of the monastery would be asleep at this time of the morning, Nat guessed.
As they walked, the sorcerer spoke in quiet tones. “We should speak as we would normally. A conversation where you omit telling me things because you assume I already know them will not work. Not every detail is revealed to me when using the Eye, and talking about the futures I have seen means effects from those conversations then get incorporated into new futures, the timelines start to become infinitely recursive and… Well, let’s just say that things can get quite strange. It all works better if you just ignore it.”
They stepped out into the cool, pre-dawn dimness of the monastery’s large, open-air central atrium. Master Mordo, clad in his formal green robes, was waiting beneath the branches of a gnarled, ancient tree that stood in the corner nearest to them.
“Master Mordo,” Steve greeted the man as they drew close, reaching out to shake his hand.
“‘Sup, Mordy?” Tony shot the sorcerer with a grin.
Mordo gave him a polite smile back, inclining his head slightly in a shallow bow. “Avengers. Kamar-taj welcomes you.”
“Now,” the Ancient One said, turning to face them. “How can we help?”
--
A short time later, the Avengers followed the Ancient One as she led them into the monastery’s dimly-lit library, passing by intricately carved wooden shelves filled with row after row of books and furled scrolls.
After listening to their requests, the Ancient One had given them a moment to call Carol and confirm she would be okay for an immediate pick up before opening a portal large enough for the Hoopty to fly through. The gateway had taken longer to open than Natasha was used to seeing—almost a full minute—but once it had finished sparking into being, there were no further issues.
Unfortunately, it looked like retrieving Thor in the same way wasn’t on the table. The sorcerers were peripherally aware of Omnipotence City, though they hadn’t known it by name. Divine power interfered with the way that sling rings locked onto their targets, so a simple sorcerous portal couldn’t be formed without a strong sympathetic link—a strand of hair, a drop of blood, or similar. The Ancient One had noted that it was possible for them to try to send a message to Thor ‘through the aether’, but it wouldn’t be a secure or reliable way of communicating with him. Messages like that could be intercepted, and there was no guarantee it would reach him at all depending on the specifics of whatever protections Omnipotence City had to keep its occupants from being bothered by mortal petitioners. It was something they were keeping in their back pocket as a fallback option, but it wasn’t something they could depend on. They needed to trust that Thor was making his own progress on the Celestial situation, in any case.
Carol took her ship into orbit, returning a couple of minutes later, and then the Ancient One had ushered the group inside to talk further.
Master Wong met them at the back of the library, giving a brief, shallow bow before falling in wordlessly beside Master Mordo and the Ancient One as the sorcerers led them deeper into the building. Nat had never been here before, but she recognised the description Steve had given during his debrief several months ago as they reached a room lined with books bound to hexagonal frameworks: the Sorcerer Supreme’s private collection. They continued through to the far end, where the room opened up into an older-looking stone chamber.
In the centre of the space stood a pedestal with a bronze amulet perched on it—the Eye of Agamotto—surrounded by three doors emblazoned with mystic sigils, leading to the sorcerers’ Sanctums around the world. A darkened globe hung above their heads. At first, Nat thought it was suspended from the high ceiling somehow, but after a moment’s inspection, she realised it was unsupported, sitting motionless in midair as firmly as if it had been nailed in place.
“Master Mordo, Master Wong—a brief lesson on the fundamentals, if you please?” As the Ancient One spoke, she touched the circular rim of the room’s central pedestal.
The globe hanging above them suddenly came to life, glimmering sparks of orange sorcerous energy lighting up the surface in nodes and clusters as it slowly started to spin on its axis. It reminded Nat of satellite images of the Earth at night, light pollution visible from space marking out the locations of cities and towns.
“Life is power,” Mordo said authoritatively, gesturing up at the globe with one hand as he stepped forward. “It is a simple enough statement, and self-evidently true. You live and, in doing so, your existence influences the world around you. This most basic and simple form of power—inherent to all living things—has many names: chi, ki, prana, pneuma, élan vital.”
“When a living creature’s mind reaches a certain complexity,” Wong continued, “this energy catalyses, condensing and transforming into trace amounts of a much more potent form of power.”
“Cosmic energy,” Carol murmured. She lifted her hand, wisps of fiery golden energy playing across her fingertips.
Wong nodded. “Yes. Cosmic energy—the essence of the divine. It is not, however, something that mortals can normally contain or control. Instead, once it appears, it escapes into the world, and in sufficient concentrations forms rivers—currents that flow across the world.” Brighter orange lines flared into being as the globe continued to turn, great pathways that traced out a network across the planet. “Where these currents converge, places of power can be found. Thousands of years ago, the first Sorcerer Supreme, the mighty Agamotto, built three Sanctums in the most potent of these locations.” Large, mystical designs were drawn at the largest intersections, each centred over the location of one of the sorcerers’ Sanctums. As the third was completed, a web of energy spread out between them, covering the entire world in a faint, membranous golden sheath.
“The Sanctums generate the shield that keeps us safe from the most dangerous other-dimensional beings that threaten our universe,” Mordo finished the explanation. “The Sanctums protect the world, and we sorcerers protect the Sanctums.” The phrase was said with a practised cadence, like he’d spoken it hundreds of times before.
Nat tore her eyes away from the globe for a moment to glance around the room. Everyone else was watching the display, rapt, orange magical energy reflected in their eyes. Tony’s expression was thoughtful, wheels turning in his head—wondering if he could tap into this energy in the same way the sorcerers did, no doubt.
“Importantly, the Sanctums do not drain the cosmic energy that passes through these nexuses,” the Ancient One added. “It flows into the planet. The Sanctums are more akin to waterwheels—dipping into the natural flows to generate power, not consume it.”
“They’re like umbilical cords,” Steve said, a note of awed realisation in his tone.
“Quite so, Captain Rogers,” the sorcerer said with a pleased nod. “Until recently, we did not know the ultimate fate of the energy that flowed into the planet. It has been studied and theorised about, but the simple truth is that the Masters of the Mystics Arts were completely unaware of the nascent Celestial growing within the planet or the existential threat it posed to the world.”
“But then everything got thrown out of whack,” Tony said, nodding to himself. “Hang on, if this is how the baby Celestial is growing, can’t we just cut it off, somehow? Dam the flow of energy?”
“I feel like Arishem might have something to say about that,” Natasha commented.
“What if we limited them, rather than cutting them off entirely? That might be less noticeable?” Bruce asked. “Wanda said that the Emergence was originally delayed five years because of the Blip. If we could slow things down a bit, we could buy ourselves a bit more time to handle the issue.”
“It might be possible,” the Ancient One responded. “The energy could be shunted away. Redirected, perhaps, to dissipate in a neighbouring dimension, but it could have unpredictable consequences.”
“And even then, we’ve got no guarantee that Arishem wouldn’t sit up and take notice.” Tony sighed. “Wanda called him the closest thing to a capital-G God in the universe, and if he decides to go all Old Testament on us…” he trailed off, waving a hand vaguely.
Nat noticed Steve wince a little bit at the blasphemy—he was still a Christian, under everything, though Nat had no idea how he managed to keep his face in the face of all of this—before nodding his agreement. “This isn’t a problem we need to solve right this moment in any case. The Eternals are the clear and present.” He turned to the sorcerers. “We might need your help, if you’re willing?”
