Chapter 151
“Master Wong, Captain Rogers.”
Daniel Drumm was waiting for us in the circular foyer of the New York Sanctum, our team filtering out of the short corridor beyond the mystic door that led to Kamar-taj’s library. Like the rest of us, the Sanctum Master was obviously ready for a fight, a thick, black, rod-like relic held lightly in both hands. A brief flex of my magical senses told me that the golden bands over the leather gauntlets he was wearing were magical as well, but I didn’t recognise the relics or know what they actually did. Though his stance was loose, there was a hint of tension in his expression.
Wong gave him a nod, the skull-tipped Wand of Watoomb gripped tightly in his own hands.
“Master Drumm,” Steve acknowledged the severe-looking sorcerer. “What’s the situation?”
“No situation, as yet. The Sanctum’s defences are active. I have seen no sign of Kaecilius’s approach.”
While they talked, I looked around. I hadn’t actually been inside any of the sorcerers’ Sanctums before now, though I had memories of seeing them in movies. The foyer was gorgeous, with beautiful wood panel flooring patterned with tiles of green-veined marble and inlaid with silver and gold. The walls were covered with art, and there were regularly-spaced pedestals along the edges of the space with vases and other things on display. The entire space was lit by dozens of burnished lamps, similar to those I’d seen before in Kamar-taj itself. Everything looked expensive and fancy in a pretty tasteful sort of way. I was willing to bet there were really comfy leather chairs near a fireplace somewhere that’d be perfect for curling up on to read. Those sorts of vibes. I wonder if Master Drumm would let me hang out here sometime…
“Confirm no issues with the reality anchor?” Steve touched his ear and turned his head slightly as he spoke, making it clear he wasn’t talking to the sorcerer.
“Reality anchor active and holding steady, Captain. One hundred and seventy-two minutes until arc reactor depletion,” FRIDAY reported back.
When it came right down to it, our entire defence plan hinged on Shuri’s invention working properly. The Sanctum had formidable magical defences—from the inside, it was easy to feel the presence of the layered spellwork that was woven into every door, every window frame, every wall. The issue was that, in ordinary circumstances, none of it would be of any help at all in stopping a Master of the Mystic Arts from portalling inside and doing whatever he wanted. This situation—a rogue master sorcerer with a sling ring—was simply something that wasn’t supposed to happen. With the reality anchor in place, however, those protections became effective obstacles to Kaecilius and his zealots. He would need to approach on foot, which meant the rest of us would have the opportunity to intercept him before he could even reach the front door.
The other potential avenue of approach was from Kamar-taj itself, via the door that we ourselves had entered from. Accordingly, the monastery had been locked down the moment everyone had finished portalling in. Masters B’sso and Hamir were managing the defences there, just in case, while the Ancient One and Mordo took to the field in Hong Kong.
“Switching to team-specific channels now. Stay frosty, New York,” Tony’s voice said in my earpiece.
The extended Avengers roster was pretty large, at this stage, and with us split into two distinct response teams, cross-team chatter had the potential to be incredibly distracting. To avoid that, the New York and Hong Kong teams had their own closed comms channels. FRIDAY could switch you across, of course, if there was something you needed to urgently communicate, but the idea was that each team would stay focused primarily on their own defence plan. The team leads—Steve and Tony—would take point on anything important in the first instance.
Steve gestured to the two Dora Milaje that were a part of our team. I didn’t know them, but they were part of Wakanda’s contribution to the defence effort, with Shuri, T’Challa and Okoye joining Tony’s team over in Hong Kong. “The Dora Milaje will stay with Master Drumm inside the Sanctum, in case something slips past the defences. FRIDAY, bring a couple of the Iron Legion in here, too. This is a big building, we don’t want to miss a breach.”
“As you say, Captain,” one of the Dora acknowledged, the two of them breaking off from us to join Master Drumm.
Steve turned toward the front doors and started moving again, the rest of us falling into step behind him. “Sam, Wanda, I want the two of you in the air providing overwatch. Falcon will link up with the NYPD and focus on the perimeter with the rest of the Iron Legion. Scarlet Witch will monitor the engagement zone.”
“Sure thing, Cap.”
“Yep.”
“Pietro, if Wanda flags any stragglers that haven’t evaced, give them a hand getting out of the way. Make sure there aren’t any civilians left inside the engagement area. Otherwise, you’re with me.”
My brother gave him a two-fingered salute as the doors ahead of us swung open on their own and we stepped out onto Bleecker Street.
As expected, the street was utterly deserted already, lit by the amber wash of the streetlamps and a neon bar sign still burning over an abandoned doorway. The muted sounds of the city around us were further muffled by the wail of sirens and the distant, booming sound of the NYPD issuing instructions in neighbouring streets through LRADs. “Continue to evacuate south. Do not run. Move south immediately.” The sidewalk in front of the building was littered with spilled drinks, scattered candy and a trampled witch’s hat—discarded signs of normalcy. On the stoop opposite, someone’s jack-o’-lantern had been knocked over, its candle guttering on the concrete.
Steve was still talking, issuing orders to the rest of the team—Wong, Bruce, Natasha and Thor—but I wasn’t really listening. The anxiety still twisting in my guts was further reinforced by a bout of nausea as my heightened senses were suddenly hit by the ambient smells of the city. Mentally pushing it away, I summoned wisps of magic to my hands and took off into the air. Sam shot past me, moving west, as I levitated into position above the middle of the street. The buildings in the immediate area capped out at about five or six storeys tall, and I paused a couple of dozen feet above the rooftops, eyes quickly scanning the surrounds. From up here the Village was a grid of streetlights, hazy and orange, the towers of Midtown glowing behind me and blotting out anything that might’ve passed for stars. Washington Square Park sat to the northeast, a dark mass of trees with the Arch floodlit white at the far end of it.
From our original planning sessions, I knew that the moment we’d all gotten our notifications about the attack on the London Sanctum, an alert would have gone out to New York as well. We’d established protocols with the local government, and an automated Wireless Emergency Alert would have hit every single cell phone within several blocks with evacuation instructions. The NYPD would have responded right away as well: getting into position, setting up their LRADs to issue instructions to civilians as they evacuated, and securing the agreed perimeter of the engagement zone, which spanned the southern corner of Greenwich Village, from Sixth Avenue across to LaGuardia, up to Washington Square Park. I could still see movement at the periphery—the strobing red and blue of light bars, high-powered torch beams sweeping between buildings—but everything seemed like it was going like clockwork.
A crack of lightning from below lit the whole street white for an instant. Thor, Mjölnir held high, had changed into his more usual armour and red, flowing cape. I felt a brief stab of jealousy. Man, that sort of quick-change magic would be really cool to have on tap. I knew I was capable of it, of course, I just hadn’t worked out the trick just yet. With any luck, after we’d taken care of Kaecilius, the Ancient One might be willing to extend enough trust to at least teach me the basics of something harmless like that. Baby steps. But that wasn’t important right now.
Still hovering in place, I raised my hands to my chest and touched the Mind Stone with my magic, carefully coaxing out a thread of its power to reinforce my own. Faint, almost invisible wisps of red energy snaked out in long trails across the sky as my awareness bloomed outwards. The minds of the Avengers below me shone brightly, pinpricks of light in my expanded perceptions. The Sanctum itself was opaque to me, the effect blocked by the same warding enchantment that had protected us from Druig’s control almost a month ago, at Kamar-taj. I pushed out further, searching.
There were some stragglers, mostly clustered along the southern edge of the zone. I gave the ones that needed it a telepathic prod—a stern evacuation warning dropped directly into their minds—and they started moving almost immediately. I remembered doing this sort of thing before, back in the original timeline, when the Avengers had evacuated Novi Grad prior to engaging Ultron. I wasn’t doing much of the heavy lifting this time around, though, given that the authorities were already working to clear the area, which was nice. Having the Mind Stone, however, opened up some more options for me to work with when it came to the trickier cases.
“Pietro,” I murmured into my comms. “Three in the apartment above the Vietnamese place across the road, a mother and two kids sheltering in place instead of getting out.” The stubborn woman let out a small yelp of surprise, backpedalling, as I drew on the Stone and my mental projection appeared in front of her, floating in mid-air. “Hello! Sorry to startle you, but you need to evacuate. The Avengers have the situation under control. Someone will be here in a moment to help get you all out.”
I didn’t wait for a response, withdrawing immediately. Pietro was already at their door.
A man asleep in his bed—deaf, I was pretty sure—hadn’t been woken by the alerts or sirens. A slightly more overt application of the Mind Stone’s power jolted him out of sleep. Smoothing his sudden wakefulness over with an impression of calm, my magic brushed against his surface thoughts. Hello! Please remain calm, the Avengers are evacuating the area. You’ll be collected and taken to safety in a moment. “Three buildings north of the intersection with Sullivan there’s a man on the fourth floor, alone. He’s deaf, he didn’t hear any of the alarms.”
Muffled, low thumps in the distance. My eyes opened and I turned my head, trying to locate the source. Were those…?
“We’ve got gunshots at Washington Square Park,” Sam said in my earpiece. There were more even as he spoke, this time from a different direction, and the faint sound of repulsor fire as the Iron Legion engaged.
“Multiple contacts outside of the engagement zone,” FRIDAY supplied helpfully. The interjection was punctuated by more shots. Louder ones, this time, echoing directly up Bleecker Street from a third direction. There were faint screams, now, alongside the gunshots and repulsors.
This was unexpected. We’d assumed that Kaecilius would try for a stealthy approach to the Sanctum.
“They’re trying to lure us away from the Sanctum,” Nat said.
“We’ve got no choice. Wanda, cover the park. Sam, give Thor overwatch on Houston and Sixth,” Steve started directing us with rapid-fire instructions. “Wong, Nat, maintain position around the Sanctum. Pietro, you and I are on LaGuardia. We need to move fast; give me a lift?”
“Not the most dignified way to travel,” Pietro responded wryly. I couldn’t see what was happening there—I was already skimming over the rooftops, heading northeast toward the park—but there were no further comments so I assumed they were moving, too.
There were more screams of panic, more gunfire popping off ahead of me and I shot forward, calling my spear to my hand and extending it with a flick of my wrist. There was an odd thrumming sound and, a moment later, one of three cop cars gathered at the intersection ahead of me, in front of the park, was torn apart by a beam of energy. What I was pretty sure had been three of the Iron Legion had already been reduced to scattered, smoking parts, with only one drone left to provide the civilians with covering fire. The park was packed with people in costume, panicking as they tried to flee through the trees away from…
“What the hell are those?!” Sam’s voice came through.
I had no idea.
The creatures were humanoid, though there was some wrongness to the way their long, gangly limbs bent and twisted as they loped forward, throwing themselves recklessly toward the panicking police officers. Black, almost rocklike flesh glimmered with a pearlescent sheen of greens and blues and purples, and their featureless faces were dominated by a single, glowing red aperture that seemed less an eye and more like an opening. One slammed directly into the last Iron Legion drone, the robot smashed under the creature’s bulk. More than a dozen of the things were rapidly closing with the cops, who were torn between retreating and trying to take shelter behind the remaining cars.
My spear left my hand like a guided missile, streaking down toward one of the creatures at the periphery of the area. At the same time, I drew more deeply on my well of power. Thick, wispy strands of scarlet chaos dripped from my hands as I darted downward as fast as I was able, accelerating myself with magic. I slammed into the asphalt directly in the middle of the bizarre, gangly creatures, blasting them away from me with a wave of telekinetic force and slamming them violently to the pavement and into the buildings on either side of the street.
“You need to get these people out of here!” I yelled at the closest officer. His eyes were wide and he was breathing heavily, his gun locked in a death grip as he held it out in front of him. A wave of my hand snapped him out of it. “Go! We need to widen the evacuation area!”
I paused and frowned, staring at my own hand. Almost invisible distortions hung in the air around me, faint enough that I’d initially not noticed them at all. It was like reality had shifted slightly to accommodate the creatures as they moved through it, then hadn’t quite managed to line back up correctly afterwards. I could feel it, just barely—a sensation that was faint and difficult to describe. Lifting my hand, there were several small moments where parts of my skin didn’t seem to line up completely, like there were tiny, half-millimetre gaps in reality.
“Uh, guys,” I said into my comms as I passed my hand through some of the anomalous space again just to confirm I wasn’t imagining things. “I don’t know what these things are, but they’re doing something weird to reality, I think?”
“Mindless Ones,” Wong responded, his tone grim. “Twisted servants of Dormammu, from the Dark Dimension. They should not be here.”
As he spoke, the interdimensional horrors I’d knocked away with my landing were finding their feet, their limbs bending at odd, inhuman angles, cyclopean eyes blazing with power. I wove a barrier, sweeping it outwards to cut the creatures off from the retreating civilians. Just in time. White-red beams sliced out toward them and me. The blasts were deceptively quiet, cutting through the air with a dissonant groan that belied the force behind them. More wrongness. Even so, they were thankfully not strong enough to cut through my protection spells.
Gunfire cracked from behind me and I almost flinched. It didn’t seem to faze the Mindless Ones at all, the bullets ricocheting harmlessly off their craggy skin. I shot an irritated glance back toward the police—they were completely disorganised, a couple giving me ‘covering fire’ while the others tried to herd the nearby panicked and running civilians in one direction. I gestured sharply, shooing the police away.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Eliza’s voice murmured in my ear. “You shouldn’t be fighting. Not now.”
“I know,” I said to myself, keeping my voice low. “But if they do need me…”
While I felt pretty confident that we were adequately prepared for Kaecilius, there was no room for error here—if Kaecilius got what he wanted, it was the literal end of the world. And what was my alternative? Bowing out of the fight with no explanation? I’d only just found out about my pregnancy and I wasn’t even ready to talk to Nat about it, let alone airing it in front of everyone.
There was no response from Eliza. A handful of the nearest Mindless Ones closed in on me, scrambling and loping along the ground, and I could see even more of them coming from… where? Where were they coming from?
My brother’s voice cut through the comms. “How many of these things are there?”
“We’ve got a heap of them pushing down Houston to Sixth Avenue. Counting forty, maybe fifty?” Sam responded.
“Push ahead and move to contain, try to keep yourselves between them and the civilians.” Steve’s voice was terse. “Sam, we need you and the Iron Legion coordinating the NYPD to expand the evacuation area.”
I drew deeply on my well of power, flicking the fingers of one hand toward the wide barrier protecting the hastily-retreating civilians as I tied off the magic. At the same time, my other hand gestured toward the Mindless Ones as I commanded my spear to return to me. It did so, skewering the frontmost creature and erupting out of the thing’s chest on its way to my hand. I caught it easily out of the air and pushed off toward the rest of them, blasting chaos bolts from my free hand as I thrust the tip of my spear through the throat of another of the horrors.
Sticky black tar leaked from the Mindless Ones’ wounds, boiling and evaporating as it hit the ground. It had a pungent smell to it, oily and thick, that made my stomach roil. Their dead bodies seemed to fold in on themselves, vanishing with a discordant hiss.
Five down. Ten. Fifteen. They didn’t move right, like they weren’t occupying the same space I was. It wasn’t quite teleportation, but occasionally one just… wasn’t where I was expecting it to be, and I couldn’t work out how it had moved without going a bit cross-eyed. I let go of my spear, sending it flying away from me to dance through the creatures on its own, directed by sharp swipes of one hand while I threw bolts of charged magic with the other.
One of my chaos bolts seemed to juke to the side just before impact, turning what should have been a solid hit into a graze. My spear whiffed next, narrowly missing the target I’d flicked it toward, and I scowled. The distortions the Mindless Ones were leaving in their wake were messing up my aim, the bent space making it difficult to draw straight lines through the melee. There somehow didn’t seem to be any less of them, either, even though I still wasn’t sure where they were even coming from.
At least they didn’t seem interested in trying to break through the barrier I’d put between us and the park. The things were focused entirely on me, trying to scramble past and into the street leading back toward the Sanctum. Despite that, there was nothing tactical about their movements. None seemed to be circling around or trying to get an angle on me. They were just… mindlessly swarming. Which was appropriate, I guess? I sent a wave of telekinetic energy out, lifting a half-dozen of them into the air. They flailed for a moment, then bent their bodies at disturbing angles to orient on me, eyes glowing brightly. Before they could fire any energy beams, I flung them into the façade of the building across from me hard enough to fracture it, windows shattering, glass and brickwork showering the sidewalk. Only one stayed down, dissolving into nothing as the others scrambled back to their feet. Tough bastards.
“This shouldn’t be possible,” Wong’s voice came through again. “Kaecilius might have slipped a small handful of Mindless Ones through the barrier with a summoning while the veil between worlds was thin, but so many? I cannot understand how without an active breach to the Dark Dimension, but that should be imposs—” he stopped.
“Wong?” Steve asked.
“It’s the reality anchor,” the sorcerer said, grim realisation in his voice. “He’s using it against us. A breach requires a large amount of power to open or maintain for more than a second or two, but he doesn’t need to maintain them. We’re keeping them open for him. It’s why the distortions caused by the Mindless Ones aren’t dissipating. Reality normally has some flexibility, some give in it, but the rigidity imposed by the anchor is causing space to tear instead. It should still recover naturally, but not while the reality anchor remains active.”
Pietro’s voice cut in. “It’s getting worse. I can’t… ugh.”
He was right. The spatial distortions were visibly compounding upon themselves, the affected areas becoming progressively worse until it looked like reality had been crumpled up like a piece of paper and only an extremely half-hearted attempt had been made to smooth it back out. The effect reminded me of the glass-like facets of a portal to the Mirror Dimension, though these were static and diffused over a much larger area. It was starting to limit my movement, too—passing through a spot that had been layered over several times was starting to hurt, like my body was trying to be in two places at once, utterly ignoring my protection spell.
A Mindless One slammed into me, catching me off-guard, its angle of approach impossible to track accurately through the distortions. I stumbled back a little, but managed to get my hand up to blast it full in the ‘face’ with a handful of chaos magic. As it staggered backwards, I lunged after it and leapt upwards, slamming my heel into its eye like it was a stepping stone as I flicked over into a backflip. A downward thrust with one hand hammered the thing into the ground hard enough to crack the asphalt, its limbs splayed and twisted awkwardly as black oozed from its broken body. At the same time, a flick of my other wrist brought my spear hurtling through the space we’d been occupying a second ago, burying it in the chest of another of the creatures.
“If we turn off the anchor…” Nat started, her voice terse.
“The Hong Kong team are under attack as well,” Steve said. “Not Mindless Ones. Other summoned creatures. Some bigger ones.”
“Kaecilius is splitting his forces?” Sam asked. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why isn’t he focusing on one Sanctum at a time?”
I grabbed the haft of my spear with both hands as I landed and wrenched it hard to the side, slamming the impaled Mindless One into another of its fellows and ripping its torso apart as it tried and failed to penetrate my protection spell with an optic blast. The light in its eye died and I moved on, caught up in the flow of the fight. These things were a lot tougher and stronger than humans, but even with a press of them trying to overwhelm me, I was more concerned about the distortions in reality their presence was causing than their actual attacks. I mean, come on—my last real fight had been against multiple Eternals. Interdimensional horrors or no, these were still just mooks.
“Wanda, Sam, are the civilians clear of the expanded engagement area?”
“Houston’s clear.”
I glanced through the melee over toward the barrier. It was still clear—none of the Mindless Ones had even tried to go near it, once the police and civilians had cleared out. “Park’s clear.”
“Wong, options?”
“If we turn the anchor off, Kaecilius and his followers will be able to bypass our defences and go straight for the Sanctum. If we don’t, the Mindless Ones will keep coming unless the breaches are sealed.”
“You can seal them?” Steve asked.
“Yes, if we can find them. They’ll be difficult to spot, hidden by the movements of the Mindless Ones.”
“Has anyone got eyes on a breach?”
“Negative.”
“Nope.”
“I think I’ve got something,” I said, launching myself into the air with a burst of telekinetic power that sent the Mindless Ones that had been crowding me flying like bowling pins.
I’d only glimpsed it out of the corner of my eye, but from the air it was more apparent: one of the park’s lamps was throwing its light around a corner that had no business being there, a wedge of illumination hanging in the air a good ten metres from anything that could have cast it. In the corner of the park was a section of space that didn’t line up at all. It seemingly bent at a right-angle, the exact spot where reality folded concealed behind the trunk of one of the scattered trees in the area. I juked to the left, avoiding a dozen blasts of white-red energy, and caught a glimpse of a red-robed sorcerer watching me from inside the bent space. He reacted immediately, retreating further around the tree to disappear into the anomaly, a half-dozen Mindless Ones spilling out to replace him.
“Spotted a zealot; I think he’s guarding the breach.” I darted backwards, trying to use the bent space to my own advantage, avoiding another barrage of optic blasts. Some of the Mindless Ones I’d been holding back broke off, taking advantage of my distraction to scramble down the street in the direction of the Sanctum. “No Kaecilius yet. I’m gonna go for it.”
“Pietro, get Master Wong to Wanda,” Steve ordered. “I’m falling back to the Sanctum—LaGuardia’s clear of civilians. Everyone else regroup on me. Let’s try to limit the damage while we buy him time to seal the breaches. Wanda, be careful.”
“Okay, yeah, I’ll be careful,” I said sarcastically. “I wasn’t going to be careful until you said that, so I’m really glad you said it.” Spear in hand, I reversed direction, skimming over the heads of the Mindless Ones and making right for the folded space.