Kingo sighed softly, letting his forehead thunk gently against the cool glass of the terrarium. He was tired. Not physically—he was still an Eternal, after all, and they didn’t really do that—but mentally and emotionally wrung out.

  After the conversation with Druig, he’d taken Karun with him and they’d relocated to a chamber that was as far away from the others as possible while still remaining on the side of the ship that had a view of the planet. Being able to actually see the Earth while he thought things through, not just consider things purely in abstract, felt important somehow.

  As well as the long window facing Earth, this chamber—like several others in the Domo—featured long, full-length internal windows into niches lit from within and filled with plants that he’d once thought came from Olympia: Bright, faintly luminescent colours clinging to stepped white rock. Kingo was standing at one of the displays now, staring at a wide, cup-shaped blossom with thick, burgundy petals veined through with golden thread. Small motes of energy floated around the flower, rising and falling like embers dancing in a fireplace.

  According to his memories, it was called a Hearthvine Lily. They’d always been his favourite. A flower that only blossomed in places where people gathered—a symbol of home and belonging. He’d made a version of them a plot point in the Shadow Warrior movies, even. He used to think they grew in the courtyards of Olympia. But there was no Olympia. Was anything he’d known true?

  He turned his head slightly, looking at his valet out of the corner of his eye. Karun was sitting, a little stiffly, on a bench surrounded with piles of Makkari’s keepsakes—trinkets, paintings and a lot of books and scrolls. Makkari had always liked books. She liked them more than she liked people, really. Kingo was pretty sure that she’d rescued and stashed most of the contents of the Library of Alexandria here, while the building had burned. The Domo’s internal climate was designed to help with long-term preservation, so it was a good place to store ancient relics. Kingo let out a soft huff of amusement despite himself—he supposed that was a good way to describe the Eternals themselves, too.

  After a long moment, Kingo turned to face his friend more fully, trying and failing to keep the exhaustion from leaking into his voice as he leaned back against the glass. “What do you think I should do, Karun?”

  “It is… a hard decision. I know how important family is to you, sir.” Karun gave up on the uncomfortable bench, rising to his feet instead and patting at himself with both hands to smooth out the creases in his clothes. He gave Kingo a tight, sympathetic smile. “What they are doing, if this is the only way to save humanity? Then it is good. It should be done. But the others do not listen to you. They do not include you in their plans; they only expect you to go along with them. They say you are needed, but they do not act like that is true. If you are not needed here, sir, then you must only stay because you want to. Because you choose to.”

  “You know, there’s a little voice in my head saying, ‘Druig’s the Prime Eternal, you should listen to him’, even though that doesn’t make any sense?” Kingo exhaled sharply, reaching up with one hand to briefly massage his temple. “I love Ajak. I’ve always respected her. Listened to her. But I’m starting to wonder if maybe that was just something programmed into me, too.”

  “Maybe,” Karun said with a small shrug. “But the time you spent together here, on Earth—that you know was real. You spent thousands of years together, sir. You are a good enough judge of character that you would have reassessed your feelings by now, if they weren’t correct.”

  Kingo nodded slowly. “Maybe.”

  His friend’s voice softened. “You must not give up hope, sir.”

  Kingo didn’t respond right away, taking a few slow steps over toward the window looking down at the planet first. “Thank you, Karun,” he said softly.

  “What for, sir?”

  “For staying. This would be a lot harder without you.”

  “Of course, sir. I would not abandon you. The Eternals are not your only family.”

  Kingo glanced at him and they exchanged a smile. After a moment, he nodded again. “They’re going to do their plan with or without me. Like you said, I’m not needed. We could just go home, wash our hands of this. But… I still believe in Arishem and the Celestials. The Emergence is still at risk. I can’t trust that Druig—or even Sersi—will make the right call when it comes to making a decision there. Someone needs to be a voice for the Celestials. To speak for Tiamut while he can’t speak for himself. If Ikaris was awake, he’d tell me to stay. It’s the right thing to do.”

  “Then we will stay, sir, if that is what you want.”

  Kingo stared down at the planet. “Yeah…”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Sersi’s voice suddenly came from behind them.

  Kingo turned to look—the other Eternal was standing just inside the entrance to the chamber, hovering quietly in the background. He hadn’t heard her approach, but she couldn’t have been there very long without him noticing. She gave him an uncertain look, like she was asking his permission to join them, and Kingo gave a small nod of assent.

  “It feels like we’ve lost so many of us already,” Sersi said, walking slowly over to them. “Ajak and Ikaris asleep, Sprite hiding away, and Thena…” She trailed off, a pang of grief evident in her tone.

  “If this works,” Kingo started, giving her a serious look. “Say we get everyone off the planet, find them a new home, Tiamut’s fine, everything goes perfectly. Then what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sersi, do you really think that, once this is all over and done with, Druig is just going to give up control? He’ll just say ‘Well, job done, everyone is free to do as they want again’?”

  “You heard what he said before,” she hedged. As she spoke, she looked away from him, turning toward the view of the planet and studying it intently. “He was tempted, but didn’t do it. Humanity’s flaws are what make them what they are.”

  “And you’re completely sure about that? About him?”

  Sersi hesitated. When she spoke again, her voice had an edge of desperation to it. “We don’t have any other choice, Kingo. I know he wants to save them, so we just have to trust that he’ll do the right thing when the time comes.”

  “And Ajak and Ikaris? What’s the ‘right thing’ to do about them?”

  “That’s not fair,” Sersi said. “I’ll… we can talk to the others. I don’t see why we can’t wake Ajak up once we’ve gotten everything settled. She was wavering, and even if she wasn’t, she doesn’t have a way of contacting Arishem anymore. Ikaris…” She let out a conflicted sigh.

  “He won’t let Druig off, after something like this. When he wakes up, he’ll kill him.”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  “And what if you don’t?” Kingo said, a harsher note in his tone. “What if Druig decides that humanity is better off with him in charge forever? That Ikaris and Ajak will stay like that forever?”

  Sersi hesitated again, her eyes dropping to the floor. “Then I’ll free them myself,” she said quietly.

  Kingo exhaled sharply through his nose. He didn’t doubt she could do it—there wasn’t a prison that Phastos could put up that Sersi couldn’t tear down with a touch—but would she, after everything? “You’d free him? Just like that? You think he would forgive you, after the way you all betrayed him?”

  “Ikaris knows who I am,” she said, raising her head again. Her tone shifted, becoming stronger, a look of fierce determination settling across her features. “He’ll understand why I did what I did. Even if he doesn’t… Like you said, he wouldn’t let Druig off. Either way, humanity would be free.”

  Kingo looked back at the Earth, laid out below them in blues and greens, studying it quietly for a long moment before responding. “You know, Sersi,” he said softly. “I always thought you were the nicest of us. I’m not sure I like this side of you.”

  Her expression didn’t change. “All I want is to keep as many people alive as possible. I’m just doing what I have to.”

  --

  The sorcerers of Kamar-taj were assembling. I’d still been talking to Rintrah—who was such a surprisingly normal-seeming, laid back kinda guy that you almost (almost) forgot you were talking to a seven-foot-tall green minotaur wizard from another dimension—when they’d begun to filter out.

  There hadn’t been any sort of overt alarm, no shouted orders… or none that I’d heard, at least. Dozens of the rank-and-file sorcerers had simply started to emerge from the monastery’s depths like ants from a disturbed colony, gathering in loose groups on the terraces and in the courtyard, lighting more lamps and arming themselves with a variety of relics. I saw a handful with longbows slung across their backs and had a brief flash of memory—flying high above the walls of Kamar-taj, sorcerers firing arrows forged of pure magic at me as I rained destruction back down on them in turn.

  I blinked, turning from them, and glanced back at Rintrah. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s time,” he said simply. “I must go prepare with the other Masters, if you’ll excuse me.” He gave me a shallow, polite bow before turning and making his way toward a set of stairs leading back up to the terraces.

  “Time for what? Am I supposed to be doing something, too?” I called after him, but didn’t get a response.

  Hesitating, I looked around at the sudden activity. Should I go find the others, or…?

  Seemingly in response to the thought, a procession emerged from the corridor that led to the space where the Avengers had set up their temporary base of operations: Mordo, two other sorcerers, Steve, Pietro, Bucky and Carol. Steve was in his full Captain America regalia—the sorcerers must have sneakily recovered it from the compound for him at some point—shield held loosely in one hand. Bucky was similarly geared up, a big-ass assault rifle of some kind slung from a strap over his shoulder. Carol had done up her suit and was holding what looked like some kind of alien blaster that I didn’t recognise. She seemed to at least be moving a little better than she had been before, too.

  Pietro broke ranks and zoomed over to me. “Hey!”

  “Hey! Do you know what’s happening?”

  “I’m going to guess the others are on their way,” Gilgamesh said as he emerged from a dark passageway tucked away behind the nearby stairs, joining us with a few short steps. Thena’s golden helmet was held loosely in one of his hands. I could smell the wine on his breath, but he seemed like he was mostly okay—still a little tired-looking, but that was it.

  My brother glanced at him and shrugged. “I dunno. They said the Ancient One had told them when they needed to be ready.”

  Steve, Bucky and Carol joined us a moment later. Mordo lingered a pace behind them, while the other two sorcerers headed off to join their fellows.

  “Hey, doing okay?” Bucky asked, a slight crease to his brow. “How’s your head?”

  “Yeah, good. I’m good now. Any luck with…?” I looked at Carol.

  “No flying, no photon blasts,” she said with a small shake of her head, but hefted the weapon she was holding. “I’ve still got a little something left in the tank, though. I can fight. Had this lying around the Hoopty—never thought I’d actually need it.”

  A flicker of movement up along the edge of one of the terraces caught my attention: Natasha, her hand raised toward me in a small wave as she moved with another group that had emerged from the monastery. Bruce and Shuri were with her. I waved back.

  “Wanda, here,” Steve caught my attention, lightly tossing me a small, sleek container.

  I caught it easily, flicking it open to pick out the last remaining earpiece from the padded interior. After I’d fixed it in place, I held the empty container awkwardly for a moment, not sure what to do with it, before tucking it into one of the pockets of Bucky’s jacket.

  “Good evening, boys and girls,” I said through the comms.

  “I trust you’ve been keeping out of trouble, Wanda?” Maria asked—I didn’t see her anywhere, so presumably she was still tucked away in the temporary command centre.

  “I don’t know why everyone always assumes I’m getting into trouble,” I responded primly.

  “Honestly? It’s one of your best qualities,” Nat said, a smile in her voice.

  “We’ve got a lot of people on the channel, so let’s try to keep chatter to a minimum,” Steve said. “Is everyone online?”

  There was a chorus of confirmations from the Avengers. Sterns and Darcy responded in the affirmative, too, though their voices were a little tinny to my ear—speaking through a laptop mic, rather than one of the earpieces, probably.

  As the last few confirmations came through, a portal opened next to us and the Sorcerer Supreme emerged from it. She’d changed her robes, switching out the long-sleeved white outfit in favour of her familiar orange and yellow. My eyes, however, were drawn to the bronze amulet she was wearing around her neck—the Eye of Agamotto. The Time Stone. That wasn’t something she brought out casually. Off to the side, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mordo frown at the relic, though he didn’t say anything.

  Steve clocked it too, his eyes flicking briefly to the amulet as he turned to her. “What’s the situation?”

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  “We’re expecting company,” the Ancient One replied. “Soon.” She shot a lingering sideways look at Gilgamesh—the Eternal was watching her carefully—and gave him a shallow nod.

  He blinked, and the two of them stared at each other for a moment, long enough for there to be something meaningful being communicated, but not quite long enough for it to become awkward. Gil cleared his throat and turned toward me. “Here.” He held the helmet he’d been carrying out toward me. “I think this was probably meant for you. Wouldn’t fit my fat head, anyway.”

  I took it from him, holding it in both hands as my eyes traced the faintly glowing lines of the golden construct. “I can’t use it, though.”

  “Why not?” Carol asked, looking at the artifact curiously.

  “It’s the interface that Thena used to channel the Mind Stone. It’s almost completely uncontrolled—just a raw stream of pure cosmic energy channelled directly inward. Even though she was an Eternal, basically designed to handle that sort of power, it was still pretty rough on her. On a human?” I made a squelching sound with my mouth, letting go of the helmet with one hand just long enough to flick my fingers in a demonstrative mime of a head exploding.

  “Can you wear it without the Stone?”

  I glanced at her, then shrugged and carefully lifted the helmet with both hands. It felt a little odd, the strands of cosmic energy not quite coming into contact with my actual head as I put it on, as if there was invisible padding of some kind keeping it snugly in place. Other than that, it seemed to fit well enough. A vaguely comforting feeling of familiarity came with wearing it—it was almost like I could feel Thena in the back of my mind again, filling the hole that the lack of our connection had left.

  I tapped on the side of the helmet with a fist. It felt solid enough under my knuckles. “How do I look?”

  “Eh. I’m not sure it goes with the outfit,” Gil said with a small smile.

  “You look like a video game character that’s equipped stuff only because it has the best bonuses,” Pietro added.

  I opened my mouth to definitely probably give some sort of really good, witty comeback, but the Ancient One interrupted, gesturing toward the stairs with one hand. “If you’ll all accompany me?”

  Closing my mouth again, I settled for glaring a little at Pietro instead. He grinned at me. As we followed the sorcerer up to the terrace, I exhaled and drew power into myself, weaving it into the shape of my protection spell. As an afterthought, I zipped Bucky’s jacket up, covering my top and bare midriff. Stupid Pietro making fun of my stupid outfit.

  At the top of the stairs, I could see that sorcerers in red robes had lined up in neat formations on either side of the wide space, each with a decent amount of space left around them to allow for movement. Wong, Rintrah and a few other sorcerers in blue robes—the men that had been with Mordo earlier and the Asian woman who’d been part of the rescue squad—were gathered in a small circle near the edge of the terrace, speaking in low tones.

  As well as the Wand of Watoomb that was tucked into his belt, Wong also had my vibranium spear held loosely in one hand. The blade was clean, with no visible trace of the blood it had been covered in earlier. The librarian straightened slightly when he saw me, speaking a single, curt word to Rintrah before moving purposefully over to join us. As he approached, he offered the spear to me. “Miss Maximoff,” he prompted.

  Hesitating, I glanced toward Gil, a vaguely conflicted expression on my face. He waved off my concern. “A weapon’s just a tool. It’s the wielder that matters.”

  Still, though.

  I took the offered weapon and gave the sorcerer a small nod. “Thanks. Appreciate it.” There was something about the weapon’s balance that felt a little odd in my hand, like there was some extra weight to it that hadn’t been there before.

  There was a dull roar of thrusters as Tony, fully suited up, caught up to us, followed closely behind by Sam in his flight harness. The two of them landed lightly on the terrace, joining us as we walked over toward the edge of the walls. The faceplate of Tony’s armour retracted. “Is this a fight?” he asked. “Because I have concerns, if so.”

  Sam nodded. “A knifefight inside the monastery plays to their strengths more than ours. Not a lot of room to maneuver. What’s our flight ceiling with the protections?”

  The Ancient One gestured toward the gathering of Masters. “Masters Mordo, Wong, Rintrah, and B’sso are all capable of individually keeping another person’s mind protected. They have been instructed to do so where necessary.”

  “Good to know,” Tony said, glancing toward Mordo. He caught the other man’s eye and they exchanged a brief nod of acknowledgement.

  “So, are you going to tell us what’s going—” I paused as I looked beyond the walls of Kamar-taj, processing the view for a moment. “Oh.”

  Kamar-taj was surrounded.

  Row upon row of people stood at the far edges of the parks that pressed against three sides of Kamar-taj’s grounds, lining the streets around the monastery. There had to be thousands of them, a seemingly even mix of locals and tourists tightly packed shoulder to shoulder, all standing completely motionless and staring up towards us on the walls. Even from here, I could see that all of their eyes were clouded over with faintly luminescent golden energy.

  Something else felt off as well, besides the obvious, and it took me a moment to place it properly. It was quiet. Not like, normal city night quiet, but almost dead silence. The ambient noise of Kathmandu was utterly absent—no car engines, no gentle murmur filtering in from the night markets, nothing. Outside of the walls of the monastery, it was like the entire city had come to a complete halt. It was… disconcerting.

  I hesitated uncertainly.

  “Druig wishes to talk,” the Ancient One said. “I’ll leave the negotiations in your hands, for now.”

  “So, I just want to be really clear about things, here,” Tony said quietly, glancing in my direction. “I forget: which Eternals did you say we wouldn’t have to worry about, again?”

  I bit my tongue. Not the time for an argument. He was just being a snarky jerk, we didn’t need to get into it. Not the time.

  “Druig’s reminding us how strong his power is,” Nat murmured, the words coming through my earpiece clearly. “He’s not using them as messengers—they’re hostages. It’s a threat display, meant to unsettle us.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s working,” Tony retorted.

  I didn’t disagree. There was a tight ball of tension in the middle of my chest. How badly did they want us? How would I expect a mind-wiped Druig to act under the instructions of Ajak or Ikaris? I really didn’t think they’d resort to tactics like ‘surrender or everyone in the city slits their own throats’, but it was very unpleasant to be reminded that that sort of thing was even a possibility. Our retreat to Kamar-taj had been a gamble—the only thing that I could think to do at the time—and the only reason it had even worked effectively as an escape from Druig’s power was because the Ancient One had cheated by peeking ahead with the Eye and spent days preparing for it. In almost any other circumstance, we’d have already lost by now.

  Steve straightened slightly, like he was about to call out, but I beat him to it. “You know,” I started, raising my voice as I addressed the wall of bodies encircling Kamar-taj. “I can think of, like, ten less fucked up and creepy ways you could have gotten our attention.”

  A local child stepped forward from the crowd—in the low light and at this distance it was hard to make out too many details, but he looked no more than eight or nine, at a guess, with a scruffy mop of dark brown hair and slightly dusty clothes patterned with reds and greens. He looked up at us, eyes softly glowing. “It’s nice to see you again, too, Wanda,” Druig said through him, the tone of the words feeling a little incongruous with his appearance. “My apologies, I do like a bit of drama. But we’re here with good news, actually. Ajak has stepped down as Prime Eternal, and Ikaris has joined her in a bit of an early retirement. The rest of us have decided that we aren’t really on board with the whole ‘destruction of humanity’ part of the Emergence.”

  “It’s about time,” Gilgamesh called back, though he didn’t sound entirely convinced. And for good reason—if that were true, what was this all for? Why the threat display?

  I glanced questioningly toward the Ancient One. She didn’t look back, her face carefully expressionless as she continued to gaze silently out over Druig’s hostages.

  Below us, the crowd parted silently, a small, eerily synchronised ripple of movement creating a clear path through them. The Eternals stepped out into the space—Phastos, Makkari, Sersi and Kingo, all still clad in their ceremonial armour. No sign of Ajak, Ikaris, Druig or Sprite. The group of four walked forward, stopping in the space between the crowd and the monastery, under the light filtering down from the lamps atop the wall.

  “Gilgamesh,” Sersi called up. “Thena, she… I’m so sorry.” All of them looked upset.

  “Where’s Ajak?” Gil asked, his tone brusque.

  “We… put her to sleep,” Sersi responded, a little chastened. “Ikaris, too. He’s too loyal to Arishem. We’re done. We don’t want another fight.”

  “Are you the new Prime Eternal?” I asked.

  She blinked. “No. Druig is.”

  What.

  “Druig?” Gil sounded just as confused as I was.

  “His memories weren’t erased,” Phastos spoke up. “He hid them using his power, then he brought us together.”

  Huh, okay. That was… If what they were saying was true, then Ikaris and Ajak were out of commission for now. Druig was notable in his absence—they were keeping him hidden, using his power at a remove so it was more difficult to target him, meaning they were still prepared for this to potentially turn into a fight. But there was still someone else missing.

  “Where’s Sprite?” I muttered quietly, keeping my eyes on the Eternals while taking a small step back, closer to the Ancient One so she could still hear me. If the Eternals had turned on Ikaris, I couldn’t imagine Sprite going along with it, but we’d already seen that memory-erasure was an option when it came to the Eternals. We couldn’t take anything for granted when it came to their motivations. “We can’t let her get the drop on us. Do you have spells that can detect her if she’s invisible?”

  “Sprite is not a concern at the moment,” the Sorcerer Supreme responded, similarly keeping her voice low.

  “We’re on the same side, Gil. We want to save humanity, too,” Sersi said.

  “If that’s the case, then there’s no need for any of this,” Steve responded, his voice firm and clear. “Let these people go and we can talk things through.”

  “I’ll hang onto them for now, actually, if it’s all the same to you,” Druig said through his proxy. “Don’t worry, I’ve got a lot of experience stopping humans from hurting each other through their poor decisions.”

  “We’re going to evacuate the planet,” Sersi told us.

  I really wasn’t sure that was actually feasible, like, at all. Disregarding the logistical nightmare of evacuating over seven billion people, just getting every country in the world to agree and work together…? We still had a few years until the Emergence, but that was hardly enough time, right? There had to be more to it. Maybe they were thinking of trying to put Tiamut to sleep, as had been the plan in the original timeline? Had Phastos come up with a design for the Uni-Mind even without energy-stealing Deviant—what was his name? Kro?—as inspiration to draw from? Then again, I wasn’t sure if Druig was actually capable of putting Tiamut to sleep, even with the Uni-Mind.

  “This is all sounding a little too good to be true, actually,” Tony said. “I’m not buying it.”

  “Sersi…” Gil said. “Tell us what’s really going on, here. What’s Druig actually planning?”

  She visibly hesitated for a moment before responding. “Humanity needs to come together for this. We can’t help them if they won’t help themselves.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?” Tony asked.

  Ah. I made the connection. When all you had was a hammer… “Druig’s not just the Prime Eternal, right?” I said aloud. “He’s the plan. Humans aren’t great at mass cooperation, so he’s going to, what, make us?”

  The child Druig was speaking through let out a small laugh. “I love humanity, but you’re a self-involved and violent species. You deplore the arrogance of others that you call righteousness in yourself. You act, even though you don’t know what to do. You can barely tell right from wrong and usually you don’t even try. Of course you need us to step in, be the adults in the room. As we always have been.”

  “That’s not on the table,” Steve said firmly. “We already have a plan. If that doesn’t work out, we’ll come up with something else. Together. We don’t need to use mind control to force everyone to come to the table.”

  “We know about Thor’s little mission. It’s not going to work and, honestly, it was stupid to even try. All it’s going to do is draw Arishem’s attention here,” Druig retorted. “We’ve got a plan that will work, but only if everyone comes together. We can’t take any chances on it.”

  “Druig, this isn’t the right way of going about saving these people,” Gil said slowly. “Thena… she would want us to help, to lead the humans, but we can’t just take away their say in things.”

  “Yeah, no,” Tony said derisively. “The only reason we’re even having this conversation in the first place is because you can’t control us, right? Otherwise, we’d all just be doing your bidding already.”

  “You’re right—I’m not here asking for permission or consent. We’re here to tell you what’s happening. You can either be on board with it, or not.”

  “And if we’re not?” Steve asked, setting his jaw stubbornly.

  The boy let out a snort of amusement. “If you’d really throw away your only chance at actually saving yourselves, then it just proves my point! You’re too stubborn to be left to make your own decisions about something like this.”

  “Please, just listen,” Sersi said plaintively. “You don’t need to fight us. Just let us do what we have to do.”

  “If this is what you think you have to do, you’re not leaving us with many other choices,” Steve responded.

  The crowd around Kamar-taj started to move, thousands of people turning as one as they began the most oddly orderly and synchronised mass evacuation I’d ever seen. It was actually kind of mesmerising to watch, a swelling wave of humanity all flowing perfectly around and past each other like it had been choreographed, and all in complete, eerie silence aside from the dull roar caused by the pounding of thousands of shoes and sandalled feet as they all ran away, the civilians clearing the area quicker than would seem humanly possible.

  The lone island of stillness was the group of four Eternals, still standing at the front of the monastery. They were exchanging conflicting glances with each other, and I saw Kingo and Sersi’s mouths moving, though I couldn’t make out the words.

  There was a flicker of movement in my peripheral vision as the Ancient One took a step back, using the edge of the wall to conceal herself from the Eternals’ view. I almost turned toward her, but settled for watching carefully out of the corner of my vision as I saw her hands frame the relic hanging from her neck. The sorcerer closed her own eyes as the Eye of Agamotto opened, faint trails of green energy spilling forth from the Time Stone held within and snaking around her wrists in twisting, runic designs.

  A tremor in the air drew my attention away from her, semi-hidden amongst the sound of the tail end of the rapidly-dispersing crowd—a low, rolling vibration that settled into my bones. I straightened, squinting a bit as I scanned the dark sky for the source of the noise. “Helicopters?” I asked.

  “Looks like a whole strike group incoming,” Tony confirmed, faceplate of his suit flicking closed with a faint clank. “And—”

  A pressure shift brushed against my skin, lifting the tiny hairs on my arms. I almost didn’t see them at all: a pair of tiny smudges against the night sky, barely visible at all even to my enhanced sight, moonlight reflecting off what I later realised were shock-cone halos shimmering around the projectiles’ noses.

  My hands started to come up—too little, too late—but the air in front of the monastery cracked open with impossibly perfect timing, splitting into a spiralling fractal of reflective shards. There was only a bare fraction of a second between me noticing the projectiles and them vanishing into the Mirror Dimension, then the portal dissipated again almost as quickly as it had opened. A heartbeat later, a concussive shockwave slammed into the parapet, rattling dust out of the stones beneath our feet. I took a step back, catching myself on the wall as the aftershock rolled past us and dissolved into the wind, chaos magic flaring in my palms.

  “Were those cruise missiles?” I shouted in alarm, my heart pounding furiously in my chest as a wave of sudden adrenaline hit my system.

  I was pretty sure my protection spell could hold up to most mundane things, but having big-ass, no-shit missiles fired at us was still plenty scary, especially when we had so many other people here who definitely couldn’t take a hit from something like that. I had no idea what sort of missiles they’d been, but it was a safe bet the strike had been intended to level the monastery entirely. Druig was playing things pretty fast and loose, here—were the civilians even a safe distance away yet?

  “Defensive positions, now!” The Ancient One’s voice rang out, clear and magically amplified. Almost as one, the rank-and-file sorcerers assembled on the terraces raised their hands, summoning mandalas of burning orange energy.

  “Go, Stark! I have you!” Mordo thundered. He was standing with his hands clasped in front of him, obviously deep in concentration.

  Tony didn’t need to be told twice, blasting into the air and away from the monastery, presumably to intercept the aircraft that had just fired on us.

  “Guys, I’m getting a report that the IAF has deployed across the border into Nepal,” Maria voice said in my earpiece.

  “Yes, Maria, thank you!” Steve responded, trying not to sound too exasperated. “Tony, what’ve we got?”

  “The BrahMos shooters have disengaged, but we’ve got four escort fighters still inbound, fifteen miles and closing.”

  “Keep them out of the city if you can, try to ground them. We can handle the helos. Kid gloves, if you can. This is all Druig, remember.”

  Where the fuck was Druig, though? Taking the mind controller out of the equation would make the Eternals lose a lot of their advantages—as well as freeing the Indian forces he’d hijacked, disabling him would mean the Avengers were no longer mostly locked down to the monastery. His power had a considerable amount of range, and while he could be practically anywhere, I was banking on the fact that the Eternals typically fought as a group. While he was obviously staying back from the front lines, with luck he wouldn’t be too far away.

  Below, the remaining Eternals were moving as well. Makkari scooped Sersi up in her arms in a smooth motion before the two of them blurred forward, Kingo covering their approach with bursts of cosmic energy directed toward the defenders on the walls. A complex array of orbiting rings had already unfolded around Phastos’ arms and, with a final gesture, they exploded outwards into a roiling cloud of dozens of spherical drones that swept up toward wall in a wave of spinning metal and energy.

  My grip tightened on my spear and I moved to intercept.