“What the fuck was that?” Kingo said, his voice low and incredulous. It felt a little bit like he was in shock. As if he’d just seen something so impossible that his brain was refusing to accept the reality of it.
Night had managed to reassert itself, the blazing sphere that had momentarily lit up the world waning back to a pinprick before fading away completely. Kingo took a few faltering steps forward, his eyes glued to the now-empty patch of sky, looking for some trace of Ikaris. Something. Anything.
Sersi was still as a statue, her eyes similarly fixed on the sky.
Not too far away from them, the Wakandan Hulk snarled fruitlessly as metal anchors looped with cosmic energy finished binding her to the broken ground, pinning her in place so tightly she could barely move at all. Once she was secured, Phastos turned from what he was doing and jogged over, already summoning an interface of cosmic energy above one of his hands.
As the other Eternal reached them, Kingo finally tore his eyes away from the sky so he could look at the familiar map of the globe hovering over Phastos’ palm. A tight cluster of pinpricks indicated their position in Kathmandu, but aside from that… nothing. No spark in orbit. No stray markings pointing anywhere else in the world where Ikaris might have fallen.
Phastos was stone-faced, his eyes flicking back and forth as he scanned the jumble of data that was running along the bottom of the display. Makkari blurred in a moment later, breathing heavily. She didn’t sign anything, simply joining the rest of them as they collectively stared in silence at the golden interface.
Icy fingers clawed at Kingo’s insides as he waited for Phastos to say something. For anyone to say something. No one did. Eventually, he managed to find his own tongue again. “Is Ikaris dead?” he asked in a small voice.
“There’s no energy signature. I don’t—I need…” Phastos trailed off, his voice a little unsteady. “I need to get to the Domo. Check its sensors directly.”
“He’s dead,” Kingo said numbly. “Ikaris is dead. First Thena, now Ikaris…”
Sersi was staring at Phastos, tears welling in her eyes. “How could you let him do this? How could you?!”
“I didn’t—” Phastos’ face fell and he cut himself off. “This isn’t how this was supposed to happen.” He was still staring at the display in front of him, like he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened, either.
“What about Ajak?” Sersi demanded, every word clipped with anger. “Did you and Druig reset her memories, too?”
Phastos snapped out of it a bit, finally looking up at her. “No,” he said. “Not Ajak. She’s… no.”
“I think… I think I’m done,” Kingo heard himself say. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m out.”
Sersi nodded slowly, her eyes dropping to the ground, tears tracking down her cheeks. “This was a mistake,” she said, a hoarse note in her voice. “All of this has gone too far. We have to stop it.”
“It’s too late, Sersi,” Phastos told her. He just sounded resigned. “You still want to save humanity, don’t you? Druig’s plan is still our only real shot at it. If we give up now, what was the point of all of this?”
Kingo shook his head. “I don’t care. I’m leaving.”
Sersi rounded on him, shining eyes ablaze with sudden, incredulous anger. “What?” she snapped. “No! We need to stop this, Kingo. You can’t just walk away now. Not after this.”
“I should have walked away the moment you all betrayed Ikaris.”
“Ikaris is dead. This isn’t what Druig promised. I’m going to go get Gilgamesh and we’re going to put a stop to this,” she said, her eyes flicking briefly in Phastos’s direction, spitting the words at him like she was daring the other Eternal to challenge her on them.
Phastos and Makkari exchanged uncertain glances. Sersi, please… this isn’t Druig’s fault— Makkari started to sign, only to be cut off.
“It doesn’t matter whose fault it is! Not anymore!” Sersi erupted at her. “It just needs to stop!”
Kingo looked between the three other Eternals. “I can’t, Sersi…” It felt like his voice was about to break. “I can’t. I don’t want to fight any of you anymore. I can’t,” he repeated.
He turned away, unable to meet her gaze. He looked out over the devastated courtyard of Kamar-taj instead, toward where the Hulk lay, as the others continued to argue. A brief flicker of surprise crossed his face. Wanda Maximoff had managed to survive, it looked like. She was on her knees near the body of the fallen Avenger.
A stab of guilt intermingled with the grief already churning in Kingo’s chest. The Avengers had lost people they cared about in this fight, too. And it hadn’t been their fault. This was on Druig. On Phastos. On Sersi, even.
On him.
--
It had been about six months since Pietro and I stole Loki’s sceptre and fled HYDRA. Since then, I’d been trying to do what I could to make things better. The original timeline had the heroes always win in the end, but there were still costs. Pietro. King T’Chaka. Nat and Tony. Thousands of people lost as collateral damage, including Zemo’s family. Even the Ancient One herself.
A day hadn’t gone by since our escape without me wondering if I was actually making any sort of positive difference. Whether I’d actually been helping, or if by messing with things I was only risking making everything worse. The mistakes I’d made in Wakanda. Successfully averting Ultron only to run face-first into Eliza. What had nearly happened in Westview. And now what was happening with the Eternals. I’d tried to rationalise it. Debated it in my head. Even with my missteps, I had good things I could point to that I thought made up for the bad. An early Avengers alliance with Kamar-taj and Wakanda. Bucky. Carol. No Civil War, early preparations for Thanos…
I couldn’t rationalise this away.
In front of me lay a dead Avenger.
The Hulk stared vacantly up at the night sky, flecks of starlight reflected in empty eyes. I hadn’t interacted with him very often, but every time I had he’d always seemed so tense. Constantly on high alert, like he was expecting to have to lash out at any moment. That made sense, though, right? He was a living manifestation of Bruce’s inner rage. Until now, the closest I’d ever seen him to something I’d call ‘relaxed’ was when Natasha ran him through their lullaby control routine, in the moments before he transformed back into Bruce. Now? If I ignored the fact that most of his chest was missing, the Hulk looked… almost peaceful, for the first time. Like he’d finally managed to let go of the anger that had defined him.
And it was my fault. None of this had to happen. None of it would have happened. We never would have been here if it wasn’t for me.
Six months. That’s all the time it had taken me to get one of the Avengers killed.
And it hadn’t even been one of the ones I’d been worried about, when fighting the Eternals. I’d been so concerned about Natasha staying safe, about what might happen with the other unenhanced humans like Clint and Sam, that it hadn’t even occurred to me that something like this could happen.
The Hulk was so strong. Durable. He had a healing factor. Bruce had seemed to think that it wasn’t possible for him to die. He’d told the Avengers that he’d tried to kill himself, once—that he’d put a bullet in his mouth and the Hulk had spat it out. In my ‘visions’, I’d seen him jump and fall far enough to break his everything, and the Hulk had gotten back up just fine. In Wakanda, when the Hand assassins had come for us, one had opened Bruce’s throat. The Hulk had been up and fighting only a few moments later.
Every time, the transformation into the Hulk had saved Bruce. Kept him alive. Protected him.
But the Hulk didn’t have anyone to save him.
I stumbled over to him. Fell to my knees by his side, a thin layer of my magic the only thing insulating me from the pool of green, tainted blood that had spread out from the still body. My vision was blurred. I was trembling, tears carving stinging channels down my fire-kissed cheeks.
Some detached part of me thought it felt wrong that he hadn’t changed back into Bruce. Like the Hulk should operate by werewolf rules, for some reason, and revert to human form when he died. It was like one final little indignity for Bruce—he didn’t get to have his body be his, even in death.
People were still talking in my ear. A tight order from Steve to fall back to the library to regroup and reassess. Natasha’s shaky, exhausted voice telling me not to touch the body, to not get his blood on me. Tony demanding to know something or other. Sterns calculating explosive yield and predicting the likelihood of Ikaris’ survival.
I wasn’t really listening. Some part of me absorbed the words, but it was mostly just noise. I didn’t say anything back. What could I possibly say?
Bruce was dead. Carol was… God, who was I kidding? Carol was probably dead, too. Bucky had been badly hurt—I didn’t hear his voice in the comms. I didn’t want to ask about him, afraid what the answer might be. And it was all my fault. I’d fucked everything up. The Ancient One had been right about me, after all.
It wasn’t fair.
My face was flushed and hot. My shoulders were shaking. My breath coming in short, sharp sobs. A tight ball of anger and grief was building in my chest, making it even harder to breathe that it already was. It wasn’t fair.
I could hear raised voices from the other side of the courtyard. The other Eternals, still arguing amongst themselves. Arrogant. Self-centred. I turned my head slightly. I could see them, out of the corner of my eye. Phastos had arrived at some point, binding Shuri to the ground under layers of metal restraints and ropes of golden cosmic energy. Sersi was yelling at him. Makkari was signing something. Kingo looked away from the others, exhaustion and grief warring across his features, and his eyes came to rest on me.
Tendrils of blood-red mist crept through shattered flagstones and over the edges of the Hulk’s corpse like crawling fingers—probing, caressing.
I wasn’t in control of it. Not really. I hadn’t even noticed that I was already drawing on my well of power until it became impossible not to. My magic was struggling under the weight of the emotions roiling inside of me, clawing desperately to seize hold of every fragment, every scrap of power it could. Reserves that had started to replenish themselves while I’d been unconscious were emptied, the energy drawn out to fill my body, spilling out into the space around me. It didn’t stop, the pressure building as it dug deeper and deeper, not caring that I didn’t have anything left.
And yet…
I’d always thought of my internal reserves as being a sort of tank that could be emptied. That’s how it had felt. But I’d reached the limits of what I thought I was capable of and more power was rising inside me anyway, seeping up through cracks that were starting to appear in what now felt more like a wall than the dry bottom of a well. My magic was digging, clawing at what I’d felt had been a hard limitation, straining to break through.
More energy leaked through, from somewhere down below. My magic seized it, drawing it out, drinking deeply and greedily like a man that had been dying of thirst. More scarlet fog boiled outwards, wrapping around me.
Something happened.
A sharp shift of some of some kind, like a pressure value being released or a wall crumbling away. Some sort of internal realignment and… coldness. Fog. I felt detached, like I was watching someone else, from far away. Grief and despair and anger rolled off me in waves, colliding with the devastation around me, the evidence of my failure stirring and shredding it, so that when it returned it had reformed into a deeper, blacker sort of rage.
At the bottom of the well, still a deeper depth…
I could feel it. A dark, yawning abyss of power loomed below me, whispering assurances, reaching tendrils of its own up toward me, grabbing at me, threatening to pull me in. I felt myself sliding toward some sort of edge.
Reflexively, I dug in my heels. Held myself back. Stopped. I’d been here before. I remembered this feeling. Falling in. Losing myself.
Arms embraced me from behind. Wrapped tightly around me. Held me steady. “It’s okay,” Eliza said quietly in my ear.
I didn’t want to lose control. Not again.
“You haven’t. You won’t. You’re not her. You’re not responsible for the things she did. For what I did.” She squeezed me tighter and I leaned into it, somehow drawing some measure of strength from it. I knew she wasn’t real. That this was just my fucked up head doing fucked up things. Even so.
I was standing at a precipice.
“You’re not,” Eliza murmured. “You’re standing guard. And you’ve been at your post for a very long time. The very fact that you’re still so concerned about losing control means that you are still very much in control.”
I didn’t feel like I was fully in control. I felt like I’d taken a step back. That what was happening was doing so without my direct input.
My body was a wreck. I couldn’t heal myself—I didn’t know how to do that, or if it was even something I was capable of doing at all without what the other version of me had gained from the Darkhold. Still. If a mediocre sorcerer like Jonathan Pangborn could constantly channel magic to walk despite being paralysed, then maybe I could use it to walk on a broken foot. Fight with a broken arm. Keep my broken ribs from puncturing my lungs.
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Eliza was still holding me from behind. Gently, she moved one hand up to the shoulder of my ruined arm. Where the tips of her fingers touched bare skin, a deadened sensation spread out, magic anaesthetising the nerves. I didn’t really know the details of how I was doing it. I just knew that if I wanted to be able to function, I needed to not be in pain. To not feel the next part.
Tiny wisps of chaos magic crawled over my body. Gently, Eliza dragged her fingertips downward, caressing the brutalised limb. It straightened as she did, like the lightest touch was all that was needed to push everything back into place. There was a grotesque series of cracks and crunches as my bones violently realigned themselves, moving back into their proper positions. Threads of energy flowed beneath my skin, overlaying broken bones, torn ligaments and shredded muscle, forcing everything back into position, deadening my tortured nerves further, compressing the swelling to allow me a full range of movement. Magic wrapped around the compound fracture in my forearm, keeping my blood mostly inside of me where it belonged. My protection spell settled back into place over the top.
Realistically, I knew that forcing things like this was probably doing even more damage, but at this point? I didn’t really care. It didn’t matter if I fell apart after the fight. I just needed everything to work for a little while longer. Long enough for me to end this. To make sure no other Avenger would die here because of me.
I flexed my hand, fingers curling like claws, as I rose to my feet. Eliza let go of me as I stood, though her presence lingered. I turned toward the Eternals, meeting Kingo’s eyes as he stared at me. Hesitatingly, his hands started to come up, balls of energy starting to form at his fingertips. I tilted my head to the side, continuing to meet his gaze evenly.
I didn’t know where my spear was—all I knew was that I wanted it. It was mine. I had rightfully claimed it as spoils, when I’d taken it from Wakanda. There was a pressure of some kind in my magical senses, a hazy idea of the weight of it. A weapon that had killed a goddess. An Eternal-killing weapon. I held my hand out, demanding that reality conform to my desires. A moment later, the weapon arrived from whereabouts unknown in a blur of movement, its haft slapping into my palm with a crack.
“Head. Neck. Chest,” Eliza breathed in my ear.
My fingers closed around the weapon and I squeezed the grip tight, my knuckles bone-white. I took a stiff step forward. Then another.
On the other side of the courtyard, Kingo’s eyes widened. “Uh. Guys?”
--
A bloody fog of undirected magical energy pulsed and roiled around Wanda Maximoff. Probing tendrils crept into the gaps of the broken ground and wreckage around the witch, crawling over the fallen body of the Hulk and casting her silhouette in dark relief.
Kingo’s eyes widened slightly as her ruined arm contorted in a series of sickening, unnatural crunches as it realigned itself, the sound audible even from here. That was… uh. It looked like something right out of The Grudge or The Exorcist.
Wanda rose to her feet, turning toward him, and his eyes were drawn to meet hers: Pinpoints of bright, hateful red, glowing with power, starkly visible against her otherwise-shadowed features. He found himself flinching away from the intensity of her gaze, taking an involuntary step back, his mouth suddenly feeling a little dry. There was something almost inhuman about her appearance.
Kingo’s hands started to come up, ready, orbs of chaotically buzzing cosmic energy already formed at his fingertips. He hesitated.
No less ominous or unsettling than Wanda’s eyes or shadowed appearance were the thin, glimmering red lines that formed a crown-like energy construct framing her face, its twin peaks sweeping back from her forehead. An eminence? Kingo had only picked up bits and pieces of magical lore over the years—he definitely wasn’t as knowledgeable as Phastos or Sersi—but he’d thought that was something that only manifested when a witch presided over a powerful coven. A sign of true rulership over magical power or an aspect thereof, not something you’d ever see on a solo practitioner like Wanda.
She tilted her head to the side and held the hand of her formerly ruined arm out to the side. A moment later, a vibranium spear appeared in it, summoned from elsewhere. She took a step toward him, eyes still glowing balefully.
“Uh,” Kingo said, calling back over his shoulder without taking his eyes off the witch. “Guys?”
--
I lunged forward, throwing myself spear-first across the courtyard with a reckless burst of power. All around me, wreckage from the devastated monastery was ripped from its resting place to accompany me in a shotgun blast of stone and wood as I closed on my target.
Kingo opened fire at the same time, snapping off a handful of shots in the second it took me to cross the space between us. Two were deflected by larger pieces of flying rubble. Two I dodged, narrowly weaving between them. The fifth clipped my shoulder—I barely even felt the hit, but the force behind it was enough to send me into a tumble. I didn’t bother trying to stop or catch myself. I leaned into it, letting the momentum take me forward in a wild, uncontrolled charge. Instead of skewering the Eternal, the haft of my spear slammed crossways into his face with a crunch and we both went down in a tangle of limbs. He was briefly stunned by the hit and I ended up on top of him, already rearing back to re-aim my spear, before plunging it down toward his heart with both hands.
Chest.
Something moving faster than I could see slammed into my side, tearing me away from my target before I could kill him. There was a crunch somewhere inside me, the power behind the impact bleeding through my protection spell, but I ignored it. Twisting in midair, I managed to swipe the tip of my weapon across Makkari’s face, carving a thin, bloody line across her surprised features. She backpedalled, springing away from me, then her footing almost went out from under her as the piece of fallen masonry she’d stepped back onto lifted into the air, edged in blazing red power. She was forced to slow down, check herself for a moment.
My feet were already back under me and I punished her lapse, directing my magic with almost no conscious thought. Another piece of shattered stonework slammed into her, keeping her off-balance just long enough for me to drive forward, my spear couched and aimed for the mark I’d already left on Makkari’s face.
Head.
Once again, my attack was interrupted by another Eternal. This time it was Phastos, a barrier threaded through with cosmic energy designs suddenly interposing itself between me and Makkari. There was no hesitation on my part—the tip of my spear kissed the shield and I immediately flipped myself forward, landing on the obstacle with both feet before springing off hard, reversing direction. I couldn’t afford to stop and test the barrier, to focus on one target to the exclusion of the others. My pulse was a dull roar in my ears, my heart pounding so hard in my chest it felt like it might burst right through my broken ribs.
Sersi and Kingo were to either side of me. Phastos was directly in front.
The technopath flicked a hand sideways and more metal devices unfolded from the seemingly limitless compressed space at his arms, spreading out to assemble into another shield. This time, before the disparate devices could activate, red magic flared into existence along their edges, pulling them out of alignment. The delay only lasted a fraction of a second—green fire lighting up along the intended path of the barrier and clearing it of my influence almost immediately—but it was enough. I burst through the thin curtain of dispelling energy and the barrier formed behind me.
The magic keeping me aloft stuttered and I hit the ground in a violent tumble. My good shoulder hit a protruding bit of flagstone with an audible crack, a brief spike of pain lancing through me before my protection spell and the other bits of magic keeping me together managed to recover. I ignored it, focusing on turning the tumble into a roll. I caught a brief glimpse of Phastos’s surprised expression as I used my momentum to come back to my feet, then I drove my spear up toward him.
Neck.
The blade went through the Eternal’s throat, juddering in my grip as it sliced through flesh and ground against his spine. His eyes bulged, a brief choking sound escaping his lips. A curtain of blood spilled down his armoured chest as I wrenched my weapon to the side, almost taking his head completely off. He collapsed.
“Phastos!” Sersi screamed.
No time to process. No time to come to terms with Phastos’ death. It wasn’t enough. I needed to end this. They all had to die.
I started to turn. There was a bare instant where I managed to register Makkari’s presence, her hand closing around my shoulder, then the world smeared around me. I went from vertical to horizontal, my body slamming violently into the ground. She didn’t stop—she ran, dragging me along at high speed and using the ground like a cheese grater, every broken ridge and fractured stone smashing into me in a continuous series of jarring impacts that should have torn me to literal shreds. My protection spell came apart, bleeding energy and fraying away into almost nothing.
Reflexively, I lashed out downwards, blasting the ground below us with a wild spike of telekinetic energy. It bounced us off the ground like a pair of skipping stones, our momentum slamming us hard into the remains of the building across the street. My feet were somehow under me again as my arm whipped up, and without really comprehending the intermediary steps I suddenly had the Eternal by the throat, boiling wisps of telekinetic energy pinning her in place against a concrete support column that had survived the battle mostly intact.
My breath was coming in wheezing, shuddering gasps, and there was stabbing, sharp pressure inside my lungs, like they’d been filled with gravel. I paused, eyes widening briefly as my brain finally caught up to what was actually in front of me.
Makkari’s face was twisted in a pained grimace as she struggled futilely against my grip, but instead of my hand being wrapped around her throat, there were only red wisps of chaos magic forming a crude approximation of one. My actual hand was gone. Half my forearm along with it. The ruined remains of a stump, bone poking out from the ragged flesh, was all that was left. Glimmering chaos magic sealed the wound like a torniquet, instinctively acting to keep me from bleeding out even as it spilled upwards to form a magical pseudo-prosthetic.
My spear was gone again. That didn’t matter. I held out my remaining hand, summoning it back to me.
That was when Druig hit me.
Carol had taken the Mind Stone—leaving the doors to my mental fortress wide open and unguarded—and Makkari and I had gone beyond the limits of Kamar-taj’s protections without me realising. Invasive tendrils of cosmic energy lanced into my mind, hitting me from a dozen different mental angles at once as the Eternals’ leader suddenly launched an all-out remote assault. I doubled over, scrambling, grasping, trying to fight off the sudden attack as Druig hammered me again and again.
My false hand dissolved into nothing as I fumbled my magic, unable to focus on keeping my body together and holding Makkari and fighting off Druig simultaneously. At the same time, I managed one last flick of telekinetic energy, accelerating the arrival of my spear. Instead of landing in my hand, it continued past me, the blade passing cleanly through Makkari’s shoulder, just below her collarbone, and stapling her to the concrete column. She opened her mouth in a silent shriek of pain, her hands coming up to scrabble weakly at the haft.
I didn’t have time to mess around with her. Druig’s attacks were constant, with no gaps or breaks between them, and I was barely managing to fight him off while also maintaining the pieces of magic that were keeping my body functioning and not bleeding out. I turned away from Makkari, hobbling back toward the safety of the monastery’s mental shield as quickly as I could. One tendril of Druig’s power managed to slip by my active defences, then another—each time, I managed to shatter the binding just before he could actually make my body do anything, but it was too much. I couldn’t keep this up forever, but he could and would.
Thena wasn’t here this time. I didn’t have a friendly Eternal with a special connection to me conveniently here and willing to open their mind and let me borrow their protections. My only hope was if I could get back inside the monastery. I had to—
Glowing cosmic energy lit up in my peripheral vision. I turned to look and froze, unable to do much else while continuing to fight off Druig’s rapid-fire assault.
It was Kingo.
The Bollywood actor was only a couple of metres away. He had both hands clasped together, a charged ball of sizzling energy at his fingertips aimed directly at me, a grim expression on his face.
Somewhere inside, a snarling, hate-filled part of my brain screamed at me to murder him. To just throw away any remaining pretence of defence and cut and stab and crush until there was nothing left. But the more rational part of me, the part of me that was still holding—barely—onto control, knew that if I did, then that would be it. Druig would have me. Maybe for only a second or two, before I could get back out from under his control, but that would probably be enough.
Damned if I do. Damned if I don’t. This was so unfair.
“Kingo, stop!”
Sersi burst into the space between us, facing her fellow Eternal and surprising us both. There was a heavy moment of silence that, for me, seemed to stretch for a hundred billion years as I focused on parrying and evading the Prime Eternal’s repeated attempts to control my mind.
“She… she killed Phastos,” Kingo told Sersi, his voice unsteady.
“I know. I know. But we can’t… killing her isn’t going to end things. She’s not the problem here. The Avengers aren’t. Druig is. We need to stop him. If we don’t, this will just keep going. Makkari might be next. Or Gil. Or you. We need to stop everyone. This has to end.”
Another million years passed.
Reluctantly, Kingo lowered his hands. The ball of energy at his fingertips—the shot that probably would have killed me, had he fired it—dissipated.
Sersi inclined her head gratefully, then turned toward me. Her eyes were shining and wet, track marks in the dust and grime on her face visible where the tears had carved a path down her features. “You’re fighting him?” she asked breathlessly. “Druig?”
I nodded, my eyes unfocused, most of my attention still turned inward as I struggled to fight off a thousand more attempted intrusions.
“I can stop this,” the Eternal told me. “No one else has to die.”
I didn’t respond.
“The Domo. If someone can get me up to the ship, I can stop Druig. Stop all of this. Please.”
My instinctive reaction was to reject her. She was an Eternal. She’d done this, been a part of it. If I wasn’t occupied fighting off Druig, I’d have killed Kingo already. I wouldn’t have stopped there. She’d have been next. But my rational side, once again, won out.
I didn’t trust her. But did I really have any other choice, here?
My eyes flicked upwards briefly. The Eternals’ spacecraft was more or less directly above us. I couldn’t fly properly like this—there was no way I could maintain concentration on everything and fight off Druig at the same time. Sam? Tony? I had no idea where they were or what the state of their tech was. Portals were still unusable while the Domo had its reality anchor up.
Oh well. Only one thing left to do.
I lunged at Sersi, throwing my intact arm around her shoulders and pulling her in close to me. She flinched slightly, but didn’t resist. Dividing my focus away from defending myself for the briefest of moments, I reoriented my personal frame of reference so that ‘down’ was pointed toward the Eternals’ ship even as Druig’s power successfully closed around my mind.
We fell into the sky.
“Sersi,” Druig growled through my mouth, chaos magic flaring in my hand as he moved to push her away. “What are you—”
Sersi headbutted me in the face.
I felt my nose break on her forehead as her arms went around me, holding on tight. I made a gurgling choking sound at the pressure on my shattered ribs, my vision going white for a moment, the wind whistling past my ears. I could barely even think, let alone focus on freeing myself from Druig’s mental shackles. At least Druig didn’t seem to be faring much better when it came to controlling my ruined body. I caught a glimpse of the Domo blotting out the sky, the solid expanse of Celestial stone rushing toward us, and tried to mentally brace myself for impact.
Sersi let go of me, throwing her hand up ahead of us. Instead of splattering against the dark green marble, we plunged upwards through a suddenly semi-solid surface, bright colour filling my vision. Druig’s mental control over me faltered and slipped away, the constant pressure from his assault vanishing. At almost the same time, something small and hard smacked into my side, sending me into a wild tumble as a flurry of knives dug agonisingly in my lungs and other organs. My grasp on consciousness was feeling increasingly tenuous: I had to fight to keep my thoughts from slipping away.
I burst out of the… whatever it was, into a clear night lit up with stars. Fuzzily panicking, I fumbled with my magic as I tried to do way too many things at once and did a bad job of all of them as a result. I managed to shift my frame of reference again, making ‘down’ down, and started to decelerate. I couldn’t see Sersi, but it wasn’t like I was taking a calm and measured survey of my surroundings.
As I hit the top of my arc and started to fall back to Earth, I managed to stabilise, looking downwards. My eyes widened. A massive cloud of pink flower petals—what had once been hundreds, maybe thousands, of tonnes of Celestial stone—scattered and spread out below me, fluttering down over the darkened city.
As I dropped back down through the expanding cloud of petals, I fought to get back in control of my body—renewing the magic deadening my nerves so I didn’t pass out from the pain, shifting broken ribs to take the pressure off my lungs, and staunching the fresh flow of blood from my severed arm. A handful of seconds passed as the ruined remains of Kamar-taj rushed up to meet me.
I hit the churned earth of the parklands outside of the monastery’s walls, having managed to bleed off most of my momentum at the very last second. The landing was soft, comparatively, in that it only left me choking and coughing up blood for a small handful of seconds after the shock of impact jarred through my body.
Gravity, you utter bitch.
With a small groan, I drew more magic into myself and laboriously forced myself back up onto my feet. Looking toward the ruined walls of Kamar?taj and the few buildings that had miraculously remained standing throughout the siege, I tried to get my bearings, my head still a little fuzzy. Pink petals fell around me, raining down over the scene, twisting and fluttering in the breeze. I paused, taking in the sight for a moment.
Orange energy sparked into being in front of me, swirling sorcerous power forming into a portal. The Ancient One was on the other side, once-yellow robes scorched and patchily soaked through with blood. Her expression was neutral as our eyes met.
I hobbled through.
