Okay guys, I hope you can forgive me for my extremely indecisive decision-making with this fanfic. I'm very impulsive and I update on whims, and I know I shouldn't. However, I have officially come up with a compelling story-line, something that I know you'll appreciate. Please, forgive me for doing update after update of this individual chapter. My ultimate goal is still the same. I want the Enchantress to be likeable. As such, I am retooling this entire fanfiction into a different story.

I promise you, this will be good, and it will be stable enough for you all to appreciate. And don't worry, for those of you that read the previous version of this fic, June herself will eventually have some powers of her own.

I will admit, the problem was that I couldn't create a good story with so many complex elements from the gate. I need time to develop June and the Enchantress before I delve into action. Don't worry, I won't drag it on for several updates. This will occur concurrently with Winter Soldier.


Prologue

Archaeologist, Dr. June Moone. Born August 12, 1994 to a single mother. One of the youngest prodigies in the field of archaeology, acquiring her doctoral degree when she was 18 years old. No one in the world had ever achieved her expertise in such a short time, especially in the field of the study of the old world. Her choice of study? Mesoamerica. Nowhere in the world interested her more than the forgotten world of the ancient Americas. Colonialism had taken such a toll on the ancient American cultures that there are comparably few sites and ancient works than compared to those of Europe.

However, all was not easy. When she was sixteen, she heard voices in her head. Her parents briefly pulled her from school to receive treatment, fearing schizophrenia, but she never recovered from her psychological condition. Fortunately for her, June would only hear a voice saying her name. Over and over like a glitching microphone revealing a singer lip syncing. She did have some periods where she would never hear it.

At 19, she suffered the most devastating loss in her life. Her mother was in a car crash, one that did not immediately kill her, but from which she could never recover from her wounds. As she lay dying, June made her a promise.

"I promise you. I will be everything you want me to be. I will make a discovery and name you for it," she said.

"You haven't anything to promise me," her mother said. "You made me proud every day. I don't want you to be what I want you to be. I want you to be you...I love you..."

Those were the last words they shared before June's mother finally succumbed to her injuries, leaving her alone in the world.

Now, at age 20, she set off on an expedition through the jungles of Peru.

Her partner was supposed to accompany her, but he ended up stuck back home, having lost his passport. For a couple of days, she warred with herself, having to choose between going to accomplish her life's dream or to stay behind because of a friend's foolish error. She chose the former, and traversed the jungles of Peru by herself. She wasn't idiotic enough to come unprepared, she still had her satellite phone in a worst case scenario and enough food and water in her bag to last for several days.

As she wandered the lush jungle, she came upon a cave, one that she'd never seen before. Not in pictures, not in historical texts, nowhere. It was the remnants of an ancient Incan temple, but it wasn't one that was famous, or maybe even been discovered.

"What are you? I've never seen in you before," she said at the cave's entrance. Right in front, there was an enormous hole, a shaft leading down. June hooked up climbing gear directly to the cave entrance wall and lowered herself in slowly but surely. With every few feet, June had to catch her breath and calm down. Climbing was not one of her strong suits.

Her fears became justified when her anchor gave way, causing her to fall through the hole.

The impacts against the walls of the hole and the floor knocked the wind out of June. It took her several moments to even move, and even longer to stand up. But miraculously, she was relatively unharmed, aside from cuts and scrapes. She oriented herself and got her bearings. The shaft led down to a large cavern, an empty one. There was almost nothing in the cavern. It was like an endless field, she couldn't see the walls of the cavern.

Much to her horror, she saw the remnants of skeletons, several of them nearby. She was not a mortician, but she could tell that some of these people had been here for decades. Some of them had visibly broken bones, and a couple of them had their skulls cracked open. Some of the skeletons looked fresher, some of them with traces of flesh still on their bones. The most horrifying ones for June to see were the skeletons that had visibly broken spinal columns.

June hyperventilated in utter horror, realizing that she didn't stumble on a discovery. She fell right into a deathtrap. She backed up and kept backing up, screaming in sheer horror. She ended backing up into an altar, not realizing that she had knocked a totem-like doll to the ground. She only noticed it when she heard maniacal laughter echoing through the cavern.

"EH, HA HA HA HA HA!"

A large trail of ominous smoke emerged around June, pushing away the skeletons. The smoke collected in one single place, until it gathered to make the human woman. Or rather, something that resembled a human. The creature resembled June herself, down to her body's proportions, her likeness, and her shape.

However, June was of golden pale clear skin, with beautiful blue eyes, and naturally light brown hair that extended to her mid-back.

The female creature was of light pale skin covered with black patches of ash and tribal tattoos all over her skin, glowing orange eyes, and pitch-black messy hair that extended to her thighs. She was also wearing beaded chains and a bikini made from tiny chains as well. Adding her to her ominous presence was an aura of ash complemented with floating embers.

It moved in a feral crawl, inching its way toward June ever so slightly. She could only stand there, paralyzed, her face blank of any emotion. She only stood there, trapped in her own body as the feminine creature approached her little by little. As it came closer, it stood upright, walking in a sultry position. With a slight smile on its face, it placed its face right in front of June's. One second later, and the creature dissolved into ripples and flowed into June's body.

It was only then that she finally reacted. She reached for her mouth and her nose, vainly attempting to keep the creature outside of her body. She fell to the ground, writhing, clawing at herself, desperately wanting the creature out of her body.

"There is no point in struggling," it said.

"You...you're the voice I was hearing," June muttered in utter shock.

"I am, my dear. I have waited so long for someone like yourself to come and free me from my prison."

"You're the one who tormented me, made me believe I was crazy."

"Forgive me, my dear. You are the only one with whom I am compatible."

"You're just in my head. You're just a hallucination, a figment of my mind trying to process this," June stammered.

"I am not a figment of your mind. Your mind is quite intact."

"None of this is real. None of this is real, June."

"If you want evidence, say my name. Enchantress." The voice goaded and goaded June, breaking her resistance more and more until she finally relented to what she thought were hallucinations.

"Enchantress..."

The transformation was slow. First, Enchantress's aura of ash and embers engulfed June. Then, her skin turn pale, and areas of her skin darkened with ash. In a cloud of ash and ripples, the rest of June's body and clothes changed to the witch. The witch stood up slowly, walking around, and summoning small balls of magic using June's body. She could only watch as her body was used without her own input.

"Do you still believe I am a figment of your mind?"


June awakened in her apartment back in New York City. All of her stuff was there, her bag, her satellite phone, her previously broken camera... and the pajamas she was wearing the night before she left. She looked around her apartment, a mixture of relief and confusion creeping its way inside of her. Slowly. Like a dripping bucket with endless water dripping itself into a room sealed room. Drip. Drip. Drip.

With a growing sense of trepidation, she stood up from her bed. Was everything that happened to her nothing more than a dream? Could it have been? It felt so real to June. She didn't remember falling asleep or anything of the sort. She walked around her apartment, ensuring that her door was still locked, that her windows were still intact, and that all of her things were in the right place.

She went to the bathroom to splash some water on her face, hoping to wash away the pain of the nightmare that she endured. She looked at herself in the mirror. There were no injuries on her face, no cuts, scrapes, or bruises consistent with falling down a hole in the middle of a cave in the Peruvian jungle. She washed off the stress born of the nightmare. When she saw her reflection once more, she realized that it wasn't imitating her movements. It stared at her, standing still with a creepy mischievous smile on her face. June backed up until she fell headfirst into the tub.

Except that she didn't. She fell into a pair of arms. June instinctively sought out the face of her catcher. It was the creature, the Enchantress.

"Just a dream. Just a dream," June muttered to herself.

"Darling. If this were a dream, would this hurt?" Enchantress said, pinching June's shoulder.

June still refused to believe that this was real. She stood up and ran to the medicine cabinet in the kitchen. She dug out the basket full of medicine bottles, spilling everything onto the floor. She frantically dug around for her medication designed to help with her auditory hallucinations. She finally found it and spilled all of the remaining pills onto the counter, frantically panicking and hyperventilating. She grabbed several pills and a bottle of water. Before she could take one pill, the pills floated from her hand.

The bottle for them floated, too. All but one of the pills returned to the bottle which was sealed shut with an invisible force. June followed the bottle as it floated right into the hands of Enchantress.

"If you take that many pills simultaneously, you could die. Of course, you knew that."

The lone pill left out of the bottle floated into June's hand, as did the water.

"Go ahead, take the pill. I will still be here."

She didn't take the pill.


"Last I remembered, I was in the cave, with you inside me," June said.

"You remember correctly. What you don't remember is that when you called my name, I took control of your body. I brought you here."

"But if you were inside me, why are you out of me?"

"I can leave my home whenever I want, just like you can. My problem is that I can only be away for so long until I must return. I also can only go a limited distance from my home. The more I use magic out of your body, the amount of time I have lessens."

"How long do you have?"

"Roughly three hours with no magic usage. There are ways of increasing that time."

"How did you know to bring me here?"

"Your driver's license."

"I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that you can teleport," June said quietly. The witch's response was to disappear in a flurry of ripples and ash, reappearing standing next to June, and then return to the chair just the same. "Okay. That's impressive."

"Why are you still afraid?"

"All of the skeletons. What were they all about?"

"Others who found my resting place. Many of them found my prison, but none of them were compatible. Unfortunate souls who wandered into a cave they should never have found," Enchantress said sympathetically. "Dozens who died slowly and painfully because of a group determined to keep me hidden."

"What do you mean?"

"Millennia ago, when the history of your modern world was but a dream of a few, there came a monster. A nameless, formless monster that was determined to consume the Earth. They called it Hive. It was so powerful that I and many other beings of power worked to banish it from this plane of existence. A group sprung in the wake of this creature with the sole purpose of bringing it back to this world. This group would allow wanderers and stragglers to fall into the hole that led to my altar, and would ensure they could never escape."

"Wait," June said in horror. "Are you telling me that the reason I fell into that hole was because someone cut my rope?"

"Yes. You were one of many who found my tomb, but you had something none of those other stragglers did. Compatibility."

"What do you mean?"

"I am immortal, I do not age and I am difficult to harm let alone kill. However, my various bodies are not immortal. I must change bodies once my current one ages and withers. I can sense compatible hosts. However, from my totem prison, I could only call to various compatible hosts over the years. Some people spent their entire lifetime hearing my voice."

"So... your voice. You saying my name over the years. It was a call for help?"

"It was. My last host... she was powerful, but alas she fell victim to the blade of a member of the group determined to bring back Hive. With her death, my powers were weakened, and I was vulnerable. They sealed me away, not possessing any weaponry with the power to kill me. And for thousands of years, I waited for a compatible host to find and free me as you did."

"This group... the ones that sealed you away... how long until they realize that you escaped that hole?"

"They probably already know. Whenever a stranger comes into the cave, they come to make sure that the person is dead. If not, they finish the job while the person is begging for their help, in the tragic belief that the person was there to help them."

"Shit..." June said flatly.


A HYDRA agent named Michael Moore drew his gun and turned on his night vision goggles.

"Find anything sir?" asked one of his fellow agents. As Moore examined the cave, he found no fresh body of a young woman. Instead, he found the totem, broken on the ground.

"This is Moore. The totem is broken. She's free."