(This entry to the series picks up shortly after the events of both Age of Ultron and the AoS season 2 finale. Spoilers will occur in the form of some references and background details, although the story itself is not centered on those events.)

The Janus Paradox: A SHIELD Codex

In me there are two souls, alas, and their

Division tears my life in two. ~ Goethe's 'Faust.'

1. Sanctum Violatus

This is the place in the grey, where countless beams of perfectly formed rainbow light cut through the fine grey mist that stretches within and beyond both space and time. Each beam is a song woven of pure magic, thrumming its crystalline, harmonic rhythm through the bones and soul of anyone who might pass through this secret nexus. The light always strikes against the blackness that forms below the the grey, where a chaotic rumble comes and goes as it pleases. An obsidian storm of unformed, untamed will, screaming its own raging song in defiance of the light. One moment a crashing river, the next boiling black lava; its true shape is a whisper lost in madness. It is a battle that neither may win for long, there is only a tangled co-existence for mindless, implacable eternity.

As above, so below.

This is the heart of that oldest rule of magic.

This is the nexus of Order and Chaos, the hidden hall within the middling veil, the most secret core of the Sanctum Sanctorum. This is the home of magical extremes – and the home of the sorcerer that must stand astride them and not waver from the needful balance between. This is a place of power, and so it must be forever tended, watched over by someone devoted. Someone who understood the potential of magic, who has embraced it supreme above all other art.

That someone stood calmly in the center of the magical storm, untouched and yet formed utterly by that maelstrom. The storm of light and dark stretched through time. He anchored himself firmly in the now, and focused himself on what was to come. In that place, he was power itself.

The sorcerer was tall and slim and the angular lines of his face seemed ageless, his swept-back dark hair streaked with startling grey at the temples. He wore a sleekly tailored black suit with a jaunty red tie, and a grim smile sat on thin lips within an equally dark goatee. He regarded the endless depths of the grey in serenity, waiting for the power that called him here, the spirit of eternal Agamotto. One of three great Gods that knew his name, and he theirs.

Within the nothingness formed a mighty Eye, massive and full of knowledge, and the glistening iris of no color that could be seen by a human's vision alone sharpened tight to regard the sorcerer supreme. It saw everything, lost nothing, gave nothing back for free.

"Yes," said Doctor Stephen Strange, looking steadily back into Agamotto's impossible Eye. His hands clasped together before him, long-fingered and fragile within thin black gloves of the finest leather. Gloves that hid the scars of a past that still lingered close to him. His voice was low and stentorian, a trained orator's voice that carried him through a thousand medical presentations, frightened away a dozen jumped-up bureaucrats from interfering with his once-unparalleled medical practice. "I know. I see the flaw in the pattern. The crack in the cycle."

You see, whispered the Eye, its voice neutral. Always you believe you see, Sorcerer. But you do not FEEL.

A muscle jumped in Strange's jaw at the sonorous warning that rumbled through Agamotto's last dully spoken word. There would be no informality in their meeting today, no easy banter between steward and magical deity. He kept his response clinical, and chose to expand only on the obvious at first. "There is a disruption in the balance, some subtle fluctuation. It has been plain to me for some time."

It grows. It CHANGES.

"I intend to investigate the situation thoroughly." Strange's lips pursed together, already personally certain of the imbalance's cause. That agent of change, a whisper of chaos within an ordered path that had long since been written and bound. And, he remarked to himself privately, bitterly, once the cause of an almost full reconstruction of the house that bordered the edges of the Sanctum on the Earthly plane. His home, that quaint mansion that loomed over bohemian Bleecker Street, shattered and violated by a pair of intruders. That it had been well-intentioned was one thing – the other was the principle of it.

You intend to observe this matter.

"And I will take action if it is so deserved." Perhaps it would not be. Still and all – the lost demigod was at play in lands that were not meant for him. Strange's fingers tightened against each other. The balance was everything. The demigod lived now in a kind of open defiance of that rule; the myths and legends of old rewritten with each step he took in a mortal world. It would take study to know what that meant. But first, Strange would be neutral. That was his duty.

We observe that the door opens. See to it that you do not fall prey to the mistakes of arrogance, Sorcerer. Heed not the sound of our words but the meaning underneath. Listen clear, look within. We weary of replacing our chosen. The Eye closed and disappeared into the grey, leaving behind only the incongruous scent of a soft meerschaum pipe and something else that was clean and green. Then that was gone, too.

Stephen Strange sighed, unclasping his hands and tweaking the bridge of his nose with two long fingers. "The door opens? That's less arcane symbolism than usual, Agamotto." He looked up at the sound of creaking wood, thin and distant as if from across ranging hills. A thin eyebrow arched, finding wry amusement. "Or perhaps merely literal."

"Doctor?" His assistant's voice crept through the Sanctum. "I apologize for interrupting your communion with the Vishanti."

"It's quite alright. I learned nothing I wasn't already preparing for." He glanced over his shoulder at the silence that answered him. "Is something wrong?"

"Sir." It was not the sweeping grey that made the door's creak so distant, nor his assistant's voice so hesitant. "We've been robbed."

Strange whirled in place, a flick of his hand peeling away the Sanctum's veil to show him the tight, frightened face of his assistant only a few feet away. Now instead of the vast emptiness, there was only a comfortable, utterly earthly room around him. His first thoughts went to the sacred Book of the Vishanti, long since restored to its white marble alcove deep within the rebuilt Spiral Libraries. The tension in his voice was clear. "What was taken?"

"Only a key, sir. The Promethium Key. From the Hall of Curios."

"And that's all?"

The head tilted downward. "I will continue to look, but I believe so. No wards are otherwise troubled."

Strange lifted both eyebrows near to his high hairline, relaxing slightly. The key in question was inert, a relic of a lost otherplane whose power was rendered null on this one. Harmless in almost anyone's hands, and those that could affect it were all well gone. The key's door was sealed forever, and nothing lay on the other side except the eternal void. "A magical theft of a pointless trinket."

Still, Agamotto's warning flickered through his memories – the opening door, and now some matter of a key set adrift in the world beyond. Questions of symbolism wrapped themselves tight around what should be only a minor incident. Disquiet lingered. The words of the Vishanti triumvirate – and of Agamotto in particular - seldom held one meaning alone. And even a pointless artifact lost was a violation of his trust and duty.

"The theft was, I believe, not magical, sir." The hesitancy returned to his assistant's voice. "I think you should come and see."

. . .

Director Coulson looked his most unusual SHIELD agent up and down as he arrived, noting that the distracted demigod kept fiddling with something tiny in the pocket of his black cotton hoodie. "You're straight back from your, what, galactic parole hearing?"

"Not so much a hearing exactly. More of a routine check to ensure I've not conquered any galaxies of late. Nor would I call any aspect of my travel particularly straightforward." The latter sounded particularly grudging. "Asgard was well enough, but I already tire of boondock airports and sharing space in cargo holds with beasts of burden." Loki rolled his eyes up to the ceiling of the Playground's hallway. "Not as if I thought Miss Romanoff jested with me, but I had at least hoped to rate better than steerage. I filed your damned reports, however. Your little tasks are done and the world is yet again safe for whatever it is you people do for fun. Democracy, I suppose the line goes." He shrugged, every syllable amiably sarcastic. "Your spy dramas miss all the incredibly boring bits of this duty, I note. And I have been interminably bored for some few weeks."

"Sorry about that." For once, Phil actually did sound apologetic. He then grimaced, drawing Loki's careful, considering study. Then, to underline his point, the demigod lifted his head with dramatic slowness to regard the recent battle damage along the halls and the handful of new, unfamiliar faces in side rooms. A few of these looked curiously, warily back at him.

Loki then looked the director up and down, his sharp gaze resting for a long time on the sling Phil still wore. He followed up his assessing stare with a blandly even tone of voice. "There was some matter not shared with me before my temporary departure. This besides whatever nonsense that was with the latest crisis of Stark's making, which I note, blessedly, had relatively little to do with me. For once. That all was obvious. I chose to be tactful and not question it at the time, but unless you've engaged in a particularly enthusiastic form of remodeling... of both body and building, I note..."

"Kinda needed to keep you on a low profile for a while." Phil cleared his throat, thinking over recent events as he kept moving down the hall. The Ultron crisis indeed had relatively little to directly do with the demigod before him now, but indirectly? The matter of the infamous pointy stick would probably take some time to go over. "We... had a few hitches while you were out. Sort of a scheduled cleaning. Not so much my scheduling, though."

Loki arched a single eyebrow. "Dare I ask?"

Phil winced. "Save it for later, when I can have a drink." He waved his tablet at the demigod. "Also, new odd job." He laughed at the demigod's heavy sigh. "It's probably small, and it's even relatively local. Maybe it'll be a laugh. Come on down to the office once you're done checking back into the system, I'll fill you in."

. . .

Coulson didn't look up when Loki let himself into the Director's office. He kept shuffling around his files instead, still feeling clumsy even though it was his good hand he'd kept. Both the stacks of thin paper and a handful of digital displays flickering in midair above the desk were at risk from his fidgeting. "I was thinking."

"Well, there's your trouble." Out of the corner of his eye, Phil saw the ersatz Asgardian fall into the chair across from his desk with lazy grace. What he could see of the pale face looked distantly amused.

Phil lifted a finger in a mild warning, chuckling. "Going through a fair bit of reorganization around here. Some new projects on the slate." He paused, waiting for another smart-assed remark and vaguely surprised to not hear one coming. He looked up and found the demigod's attention wandering for a moment, one slender hand toying with his chin as he looked away at nothing. "You okay?"

"Mmm." The hand left his face and gestured at the Director. "Pardon." A thin, humorless smile. "Family matters. Regardless, your reorganization."

"The rate things are going around here, I was considering the idea of setting up another small division specifically for things a bit more in your wheelhouse. The arcane stuff. Supernatural antics, things like that." He grinned; he'd been sitting on this wisecrack for a week while its intended target was away. "We could call it W.A.N.D."

"Or we could not." Loki's voice was derisive, quickly dismissing Phil's joke with a wave of his hand. He snorted. "What brings that up? This next menial task you prepare to set before me?"

"Kinda." He plucked a file out from the middle of one of the shorter stacks and finally sat down. "So, you remember that time we broke into some guy's really nice house to rifle through his magic library and ended up breaking New York again in the process?" He looked up to see Loki giving him a remarkably hairy look. "Yeah, he called."

"I recall you told him you owed a favor, which he was not made serene by."

"And he's cashing it in."

Loki's head slumped back against the chair, where it proceeded to shake back and forth in an explicitly slow, sardonic denial. "What does this florid 'sorcerer supreme' claim to want?"

"He had a break-in and a theft at his house yesterday. Wants us to investigate it. Under the circumstances, when I say 'us,' I really mean 'you.'"

The response was immediate and curt. "I suggest you throw it back, have that drink, and forget about the matter entirely."

Phil's shoulders went back in surprise. He leaned back against the plush cushion of his chair to consider the reaction. "That's blunt. Why?"

"No mage goes to the police when their artifacts go a-wandering, no wizard calls for help from the bureaucracy. We take care of our own matters in our own way. If he's called to us to clean his errant mess for him, then it's just as likely he believes we're part of that mess somehow."

"Loki, even for you, that's unduly paranoid."

"Magicians keep their own counsel, Coulson. In any world, in any discipline, this I've seen. I've already tangled with Latveria's secrets this year, I'm not interested in wandering into the unmapped field of a man that could well bear an honest grudge." The dark eyebrow arched again as he still stared at the ceiling, the thin lips grimly amused. "It was a very nice house we wrecked, you and I, and though it's surely well-rebuilt, that's not easily forgot."

"You were content to make sure his magic book got back and SHIELD has him on the list as a beneficial resource. He's not that Doom guy. I don't know where you're getting this. Look." Phil laid his good hand down on the desk and leaned forward to fix the demigod with an earnest expression. He saw a sharp green eye flicker down to note him, already unmoved. Phil kept going anyway. "I'm kinda curious. He seems to think this is something more in our corner than his. So we go and we look it over and if you still think it's a bad scene after we find out what the deal is, we'll detangle."

"My call on that." That made the sleek head lift to regard him more carefully, hearing something new in Coulson's voice. "Who else are you putting to this?" Silence. "Who's in charge?"

The question got an unexpected response. "You are."

That hung in the air for a while, Loki's eyes narrowing in a way Coulson couldn't read. "Historically, Coulson, allowing me overmuch responsibility does not end well for all parties involved."

"Do I have another sorcerer on staff?"

"...You do not." The words sounded reluctant.

Phil knocked his knuckles on the top of the desk and slouched back. "Well, there you go. It's delegation season. Try to not split the planet before the weekend." That got him the dry snort he was looking for. The next got him a look like he'd lost his mind. "Pack a lunch, we're gonna go see what he thinks is so weird. Also, you get to drive."