Dr Strange
He was not yet bleeding out, not with the length of alien metal in his stomach, but he wasn't so far off. There was a dull lull in the ambush, a short pause as the three people present looked at each other.
The alien before him, and he was certain it was an alien because he knew his Norse mythology, and the pale humanoid features, sharp-angled jaw and brow, glowing red eyes did not fit what he knew of the other races, bar perhaps the elves, and even then. His eyes trailed down to the length of the blade that was buried in his stomach. No elven blade should've easily penetrated the enchantment woven into the very fabric of his garment with such ease.
The alien grinned at him, revealing shark-like teeth, then, with a flex of its hand, it lifted him up slowly, till the only thing holding him up was the spear in his gut.
"I thought this would be harder."
The alien hissed in a twisted and near-garbled English that spoke of a language implanted, not learned. Stephen flexed his fingers, hidden as they were inside his robes, hiding the golden glow of the magic circle.
"We are no simple brute like Obsidian Cull, my love." Another voice called out, walking behind him, and it took Stephen everything in him to twist his head to observe the newcomer. The person... and he used that term very vaguely, who had thrown the pronged spear he had deflected, no doubt.
The newcomer was a woman, judging by the hair and presence of breasts, even if she was just as alien as the first. Too-sharp features, horns at the side of her head, blue hair that cascaded down her head, a form-fitting suit that was obviously woven of an alien material. She was tall, too, just like the first alien.
"We track, we stalk, we wait for the perfect opportunity, and then we strike. We are hunters first before anything else, and we have yet to lose a single prey." She finished coming to a stop beside him. The way she spoke and the way she looked at him told him that she was saying this for his benefit.
Chatty, he wouldn't have thought that of aliens. Which was a good way for him to buy time. It was a good thing he was just as chatty and he was not the slightest bit moved by their alien features. He had seen worst in the Dark Dimension.
"W-wh—"
His first attempt at speaking had him coughing up blood. The pain was dulled, of course; that was the first spell he had released after the spear took him in the lungs. His second attempt was much better.
"W-who are you?"
The woman's purple eyes widened in some surprise.
"Ah, a stubborn one, aren't you? Most of your kind, as we've come to learn over the past few days, die all too easily. But to answer your question, you primitive, we are the Children of Thanos. Although I doubt your primitive mind understands the weight of such words, the grandiose of such a title."
"W-why're you here?"
"Because the time is right, the stars are finally aligned, and my master's will will be done," she began in a fanatical tone that would've made Stephen raise a brow in amusement if it would not show more than he wanted it to, but she slowly got herself, losing that fanatical edge as she continued to speak. "We are here for the stones, human. Including the one that hangs around your neck."
The woman punctuated her statement by grabbing onto the Eye of Agamotto, and just like that, the illusion was unraveled.
Before the eyes of the two humans, his form came apart like a thread ripped from cloth, sending the sum of the material scattering in the air, before gravity resumed its hold and everything began to fall. The two aliens stood in place for a second in surprise before they realized they'd been fooled.
"Sorcerer!!!!!"
The woman called out with a scream of anger, as Stephen Strange began to drift away under the cover of a hastily made camouflage. He had barely managed to stop the bleeding, but the damage had been done. He was certain there was a trail of blood left behind, however small it was, and he needed a proper healer.
His semi-sentient cape flickered, drifting down and almost depositing him on the ground before it regained itself a split second later, and that was enough to remind Strange that he was not the only one who had been hurt in the ambush. The spear had ripped into the cape as well.
"You can run for as long as you want, sorcerer, but we shall find you, and when we do, you would wish death had taken you!"
The alien woman's voice was far off, like he had given more distance than he thought, yet despite the distance, Stephen knew she was not lying. He looked down at the ruined mess that was his right hand, being cradled across his chest by the left, and scowled. His sling ring was gone. The first blow that had cleaved off the fingers had taken it with them.
He ignored how much the thought of losing his fingers once more, this time in a more permanent way, sent a tingle of fear down his spine. He was no longer a simple doctor; he was the Sorcerer Supreme. It would take more than a simple ambush to kill him, but killing him wasn't their goal, and with that realization, a bright idea immediately popped into his head.
Their goal was the retrieval of the Eye of Agamotto, for whatever nefarious plans they had. His left fingers moved at once. The first spell he made was to bind himself and his life force to the ancient amulet. If he were to die, the amulet would close forever, until at least a new Sorcerer Supreme was picked.
The second spell was one he was only halfway through when the cape flickered once more, the red enchanted clothing losing power as it dropped him, and with a surprised yelp of pain, Strange was sent to the ground, rolling and grunting in pain as he bled off the momentum before coming to a stop, bruised, battered, and on his back.
He forced himself to his feet and looked down at the cape beneath him. It was semi-sentient and a magical item at that, so it was not exactly dead. The cape had saved him more times than he could count, and he had learned how to fix it by now, but that could only be done in the Sanctum.
"Damn it all."
He muttered to himself as he pushed himself onto his feet and began to stagger forward, once more returning to the spell. His fingers flicked, and a bird formed from golden glowing magical energy, and constructs appeared on his shoulder.
"Go to the Sanctum, my friend. Let Wong know what has happened to me, as well as the strangers' desire for the Eye of Agamotto. Be careful."
The bird nodded its beaked head solemnly as it could somehow understand what had happened, then it hopped to the sky, turned, and began to flap off, turning into a golden blur as it shot into the distance, leaving a heavily injured Stephen Strange alone once more.
He eyed the distance he had traveled already. He could divert and change course, and perhaps seek aid from the stone trolls, but Strange was not certain if the aliens had nothing to do with this new world merge, and he was not going to risk the trolls' lives for his sake, so he turned and began to struggle forward once more, leaving a trail behind him.
__
Proxima Midnight
Twenty minutes.
It had taken them twenty minutes to navigate the unfamiliar lands, which would have been an embarrassment on any world she had hunted across, except that this world was not like any other world she had hunted in. It had taken her days to spot the difference, but it had been no less shocking when she finally did.
Corvus moved through it and alongside her, without any complaint, as he always did. That was one of the things she had adored about him first, before simple adoration had calcified into something more permanent. He was not one to complain, unlike that useless brute, Obsidian Cull.
"Blood trail is fresher," he said as he came to a stop somewhere ahead of her, his fingers digging into the earth. He came back with red-streaked fingers.
They were close.
The human sorcerer had managed more distance than she had initially credited him for, which revised her assessment of him upward by a modest but real degree. The wound Corvus had given him should have killed him within minutes. Yet it had not, in fact, he had still managed to escape her grip. She wasn't certain about the why. She and Corvus were magnificent hunters, but this was the first time their prey was a sorcerer, and lacking knowledge of what they were truly capable of, she had sought to wait and follow till he was weak and tired.
She came to a stop beside Corvus and looked at the trail. She had been tracking prey across eighteen worlds over the course of four decades by her father's will. She knew the difference between a trail left by something that was running and a trail left by something that was enduring. This was the second kind. The sorcerer was not simply running from them; he was buying time for himself. Had he managed to contact reinforcements?
She tapped a section in her suit that held the ring he used to open the glowing portal, as well as his fingers, before she put it away and kept moving.
They found him seven minutes later.
He was on a rock outcrop, a shelf of grey stone that jutted from the hillside at a slight angle, and he was sitting against it with his head resting against it. His left hand was pressed to his side. His right, the ruined one, was cradled across his chest. His short hair of black streaked with grey hung down his face, nearly obscuring his closed eyes, and for a moment, she thought Corvus's wound had done the final work after all.
Then he took in a shaky breath, and let it back out with a wheezing sound.
"Sorcerer," she said.
His eyes flicked open with some effort, and despite everything, when she looked into them, they were clearer than they had any right to be.
"You're persistent," he said. His voice was rough. "I'll give you that."
Corvus was already moving around the outcrop's flank, cutting off the angle. She stayed where she was, wary of another trickery he would pull off. Her grip on her spear tightened. There was nowhere for the man to go, and he must've known that as well, considering how he shifted on the rock to rest better.
"The stone?" she said.
He looked down at the amulet on his neck, where the stone she wanted rested against his chest, then back up at her.
"You can try," he said. "Genuinely. I'm curious how that goes for you."
He finished with some humor in his voice.
Corvus reached him in two strides and closed his hand around the amulet.
What followed was brief and entirely informative. Her mate was flung back by some magical explosion that hurled him away. A heartbeat later, she hurled her spear, burying it just beside his head, before closing the distance a second later. Before he had a chance to do anything else, she pressed a curved blade to his throat, her teeth bared in a near-feral hiss at the trickery.
"Told you," the sorcerer said.
"Another trickery, and I'll take your head."
"I don't think you'll like the result," the totally unmoved sorcerer said with a pained smirk.
"What have you done to it?" Corvus said, his tone low and angry as he walked up to them. Proxima did not turn to him, but her twin hearts beat the slightest bit calmer at the fact that he sounded only winded.
"Bound it," the sorcerer said. "To me. Specifically, to my continued existence as a coherent life force. If I die, it closes. Permanently. Or at least permanently enough that your... Master's desire for it becomes significantly more complicated."
He coughed once, sending forth speckles of blood.
"So you have a problem. You can't take it off me while I'm alive because I won't let you. You can't take it off me when I'm dead because it won't open. And you can't leave me to die as well for the same reason." He smiled up at her, knowing he had forced her into a bind. "So what is it going to be?"
Curse him. She stared back at him for a long moment. Then she turned to look at Corvus.
Her mate had a glint in his eyes that spoke of anger and rage. This was the second time he was facing a foe that had hurt him on this mission; the first had been the pale stranger in Asgard, and now this man. Any other time, she would've taken the sorcerer's head alone, just for that, but her Master's goals were above her feelings.
She focused back on the human and studied his face. He was obviously deeply exhausted, even before they ambushed him. Then the wound had taken something from him that rest and healing would eventually restore, but not quickly and not here.
He was, in most meaningful practical senses, entirely at her mercy. Sitting against a rock on a hillside, bleeding and missing two fingers, and looking at her with the calm and confidence of someone who already knew what would happen, what choice she would make, even before she did.
He was remarkable... for a primitive creature.
"We don't need you conscious," she said.
He let out a bloody grin.
"No," he agreed. "I suppose you don't."
Corvus's glaive came around. She looked away before it landed.
The sound was not particularly loud.
When she looked back, the sorcerer was on his side against the base of the outcrop, his breathing shallow and even, the amulet still resting against his chest, closed, patient, and waiting for its owner to wake up.
She reached out towards the amulet, but this time slowly. She felt the magical buildup before it charged enough power to fling her away like it did Corvus. It was in the static feel in the air, the smell of burning flowers, the hair at the back of her neck rising. She pulled her hand back.
"We take him," she finally said. Corvus lifted him with a single hand, and they began to walk back.
It took two minutes for the Q-ship to arrive at where they were, and the moment it arrived, she immediately climbed aboard and directed Corvus to drop him in stasis. She eyed the recovery room for a bit but could not risk him healing enough to prove a nuisance once more, so she turned away and went to the message room.
They activated a transmission straight to the mothership at once, and this time it only took five seconds before it was answered. They dropped to their knees at once, in subservience, for before them once more was a projection of their lord, partially hidden once again, in his throne room with the darkness as his shield.
"My lord," she began.
"Proxima." His voice carried the same baritone that spoke of affection yet strength. "I want to believe you have not failed me for the second time."
"There were complications, my lord. We have the sorcerer, but the stone is hidden behind a contraption bound to his very lifeforce. We cannot separate them without losing the stone."
There was a pause, and she and her mate held their breaths waiting for judgment. When it came, it took everything in her not to let out a shaky breath.
"Well done."
Beside her, she felt Corvus straighten slightly at the words. She did not look at him.
"Arrangements would be made to remedy that. However, before then, have you tried the glaive granted to you?"
"My lord?" Corvus questioned in confusion, going as far as to lift his head.
"The glaive was made from Uru metal, alongside my gauntlet. Did you think it was by mere chance that the glaive was given to you shortly before you were sent to Earth? You're yet to learn of its full capabilities, but I assure you, it is more than a simple... sharp blade. That said, what about the second stone?"
Proxima stilled as she remembered just how easily the bladed end of the glaive had parted the defense of the sorcerer's enchanted clothes and cape with sickening ease, with only golden sparks to show for the passive defense capabilities of the sorcerer. Perhaps it was not too late to see if the same could be done for the amulet the sorcerer wore.
She set the thought to the side at her master's question.
"We are already tracking the android, my lord." She paused. "We should reach its location in a few hours."
"Then I will speak to you again when you have retrieved it." There was another pause. "Good hunting, my children."
The holograph glitched out.
This time, when Proxima stood up, it was with a smile on her face.
__
Tony
He had seen a lot of things in his life. A great many powerful feats done by man, alien, and even a supposed god. He had scoffed at the introduction years ago. If the blonde supermodel were a thunder god, he'd eat his imaginary hat.
There were no such things as gods. Yet for the first time, he found himself looking at the crater now with his own eyes, and the part of his brain that processed scale and consequence was taking a moment to consider maybe he had been wrong, because if this was not the work of a god, what else could it be?
The HUD put the diameter at a little over five kilometers. He had asked it to check twice, which he did not typically do, and it had given him the same number both times, indicating FRIDAY had been correct in its original estimate. The ground within it had been vitrified in places, glass where there had been soil, and the edges were still warm enough to register on thermal. There were fissures visible from the air, dark lines running through the crater floor where the heat had cracked through to something deeper, and in a few of those fissures, there was a dull orange glow that his HUD identified without being asked as consistent with exposed mantle.
His jet flew over it and kept heading forward. Past the mountain with a hole in it. Past the hills that looked like a giant had mistaken them for candy and had taken a bite, and he finally got to his location, a completely unassuming homestead in the ass end of South Dakota. That is, if you ignored the stange looking spaceship hovering close by.
"I'm not hallucinating that ship, am I, FRIDAY?"
"You're not, sir."
His Quinjet came to a hovering stop, but it had been loud enough to draw the attention of the man he sought as the door to the homestead opened, revealing a giant of a man with red hair that fell past his ears. Tony stepped out of the jet as it finally landed and walked up to the man.
"Hey," he said.
The God of Thunder looked down at him. His eyes were the same electric blue that Tony remembered. There was also a raven on his shoulder with red-dotted feathers, which was new. What next? A belt of strength and a gauntlet?
"Stark," Ginger said.
"So." Tony nodded into the distance. "This was you."
"It was."
"Five kilometers."
"Give or take."
Tony looked into the distance. "You cracked through to the mantle, you know?" he noted, trying to give off an unassuming air.
"In places."
"Right." He put a hand on his hips, while the other covered his lips briefly, which was what he did when his mouth needed a moment to catch up with his brain. "Okay. Well. I'm going to need you to be honest with me. Every alphabet agency with a satellite, which is most of them, is currently scrambling its relevant departments in the direction of this very crater. If you're lucky, they might be incompetent enough to overlook you guys, but there's a woman... Valentina de Fontaine. She is sharp enough to notice that the trajectory of the airborne portion of this event originates from a direction that, if followed back far enough, eventually points at a homestead."
"I see."
"I'm glad you do, so we have to leave. There are also other matters at hand, matters I think we need your help with, but we can speak about that on the journey to New York." Bushy red brows rose. "That is, if you agree to come with me, of course," Tony said in a hurry, as he remembered he had not activated his nano suit in his hurry to get here, and without the suit, he would probably die from a sneeze if the red-haired calamity disliked his presence.
The raven cawed once, and if Tony was any less sane, he would've thought it was a laugh. It probably was.
Tony pointed at it. "What is that?"
"Bird's name is Huginn. He belonged to my father."
"Rightttt." Tony drew out as he focused on the bird. He knew his Norse mythology, and over the past few months, he had further brushed up on it.
Tony decided to let that one settle on its own and turned back to the house. "So where's Ajak?"
"Inside." The red-haired replied with a grunt, and as if she heard her name being called, the door opened again to introduce her.
"Stark, we saw you coming a mile off, and I rushed in to prepare some tea for you. Would you be interested in some?"
He gave the woman a wry grin. "No, thank you." Then his features hardened as he remembered why he was here.
"The agencies," Tony said to her directly.
"I heard." She looked towards where the crater was. "It's alright. We've drawn too much attention either way. We're leaving as well." There was a pause as the woman turned to look at everything she would be leaving behind. "For the first time in centuries, my family is somewhat whole. There are holdouts, of course, but I'm certain they'll listen to me better than they would their siblings." She finished, then turned to look at Ginger, giving him an indescribable look. "These are things I need to attend to. Things I have been putting aside."
Behind her, Ava appeared at the door of the homestead, coat already on, bag over one shoulder, and another bag being dragged behind her. Ginger took two massive steps toward her and lifted the much bigger one from her, then they both turned to Tony. He raised a surprised brow. Okay, that told him they had been expecting him, and also, he was getting two for the price of one.
"Alright then, let's get going. The closest jet is minutes away, and I'm certain it's Valentina's." He called out with a brief glance backward to where Ginger and Ajak stood in front of each other. The older woman stretched her hands up, and on her toes, she only managed to reach the scruffy beard of the giant, yet she cradled it softly and with great care, before whispering something he did not hear.
Ava glared at him from behind, and he immediately turned away and pulled his phone as they climbed up the ramp of the jet, dialing without looking at the screen. It rang twice before the line opened.
"You're still alive," Natasha said.
"You say that every time."
"And every time it remains statistically surprising," she said with a brief laugh, then there was a brief pause. "Thor?"
"He's coming with us."
"Good, because Tony..." Her voice shifted by a register, the one that meant she had something to say that was not a joke and had been waiting for the right moment to say it. "I put the call through."
He was quiet for a second. "And?"
"They're on their way."
He exhaled through his nose as a hand came up to massage the bridge of his nose. "Both of them?"
"Both of them."
He looked at the phone for a moment, then put it back to his ear. "Okay," he said. "We're heading back now."
He ended the call and stood at the top of the Quinjet's ramp for a second, looking back one more time towards the distance and at the five-kilometer circle of glass and ash and exposed mantle that a god had put into the Dakota hillside.
A god he was about to share a plane with. He almost missed his Thor. Flying with Point Break was never this nerve-wracking.