Show Yourself Into The Unknown
Summary: The one where Thanos is dead, Tony has weird dreams instead of nightmares, the Avengers watch dubious Disney movies and mystical creatures are more than real. Oh, and the Cloak totally ships it.
The temperature within the Temple, while cold on a normal day, was actually a lot warmer now than outside, even though the temperature change didn't mean much to Tony. Elsa's magic may have accidentally struck and harmed him before, nearly indeed freezing his heart in a twist of irony fate should really have grown out of playing with, but that was due to loss of control when her magic was forced to stop for a moment and the immediate rush back had also had a lashing out. Other than that one instance, Elsa's promise that cold will never bother him again stayed true.
He just appreciated that the violent winds weren't whipping him anymore.
The Northuldra warriors in charge of keeping guard today were all huddled around the fire wolf elemental spirit when he got into the main chamber and rushed to the Well, their half-made bows of respect stopping short and worry freezing - not the best choice of words, but appropriate all the same - their movements the second they spotted the unwell dragon in his arms. Tony didn't so much as spare them a glance, instead running straight to the Well and leaping down without hesitation. The fall was so familiar by now that it didn't even feel all that long this time around. It felt like it was only seconds before he found himself on the icy floor, running past the ice boulders and into the ice 'forest' until he was at the altar where Elsa's egg had once been.
This is where he came upon his first problem. He had no idea how to summon any of the spirits or how to get into Ahtohallan - or whatever memory and energy of it that was left, the knowledge hoarded by countless dragons since they lost their home world but continued living elsewhere - to search for a cure for his partner.
"Hello? Anybody there!? I really need your help!" His voice echoed off of the surrounding ice, be it pillars or boulders, but no answer came. He ran a hand through his hair in frustration and tried to think beyond his worry for Elsa and his panic for Earth, because an ice age will definitely be bad for their planet right now. "The last of your kind is dying and I don't know how to help! You've kept us silly mortals alive and our reality intact for billions of years! Are you seriously going to let it all go to shit now!?"
But there is no answer. Unlike the times he has been down here in his dreams or when he had finally jumped into the Well to find Elsa and bring her into the world, the place felt dead. The magic was still and almost stale, as one would expect the air to be in a tomb. The thought alone makes him shiver, a cold feeling seeping into his very bones that was far worse than anything space or Siberia could ever accomplish. This had been Elsa's cradle for centuries, waiting for him to be born and to finally come to her when the time was right and the universe would allow them to be together. Now, he fears this will be her final resting place as well and it would be because he had failed as her summoner.
"Please!" He pleads, begs, his voice echoing in the space that usually looked so beautiful and breathtaking. Now, it looks haunted, like something out of a horror movie. A fantastic place of otherworldly beauty that will suffocate you.
It is so very lonely.
"I don't know what to do," Tony whispers, though whether it was to himself or to the Well, he does not know. But it gets a reaction and that is more than he could have hoped for. A few of the pillars around the clearing for the altar vibrate and out comes the familiar vibe and melody that has Tony freezing. The pillars do it again, a faint light passing through them, so dim he would have thought he was imagining it if he hadn't been paying attention, searching for any hint, any clue as to what he could do to help Elsa. And now that he has it, he doesn't hesitate.
He puts his hands around his mouth to act as a megaphone and sings as loud as he can while still maintaining the pleasant sound. The song that Elsa first hummed to him, before he even properly visited her in his dreams, the tune that Ahtohallan itself had sang back at them when he had been reaching out to her to drag her into this world out of her little comforter that was her egg. He has not had the time to ask Aidna just how much the Northuldra tribe has actually influenced the information that Disney got for their princess movie, if the songs were made as they are under their influence or not, but one thing he knew since this whole mess - consciously - started was that Frozen and Frozen 2 hid many answers to a lot of his questions.
As his voice echoed through the cavern-like bottom of the Well, the ice and its magic responded, lighting up the place in a semblance similar to how it usually is. It was still too dim but he figured that might be because Elsa was not well and the world was slowly tearing itself apart for it. The first thing to go would, obviously,be magic itself and what used to be a ritual basin had been turned with pure magic into a practically bottomless well that hid the last remains of what used to be a world far removed from the rest of existence, a world made of pure, unadulterated magic. This place was suffering from Elsa's 'illness' the most.
'At least it's responding,' he thought as he picked up Elsa again from where he had put her on the altar as he tried to seek out help. He kept singing, but the light show didn't get any stronger and that kind of pissed him off. And it pissed him off even more how many tries to get a better reaction it took him before he realized something very important.
Whether he had realized it or not, every time he sang here, searching and calling out for help, he had unconsciously channeled a little magic into the call. That is what the Well was reacting to, not his voice. 'I'll need to do something about this new power of mine after I get Elsa all good and take her home.' Stephen was sure to help him. It was his duty not only as Sorcerer Supreme to govern all magic and help all potentially dangerous magic users stabilize and learn how to use their power, but also as Tony's new soulmate.
And that, too, was something to get used to.
Later, when he's not nearing an anxiety attack for every second that Elsa remains unresponsive.
He and Stephen can talk about it later.
Since he's been doing some smaller magical feats by some sort of instinct that came from his connection with Elsa, Tony tried to focus on her and what little he could feel from their bond when he sang next. The echoing, haunting call that had whispered to Elsa in the movie answered him back, every time a bit louder the more magic he managed to put behind his own voice. Honestly, he felt like he was playing silly game of Marko Pollo to which he only vaguely knew the rules of, specially when he realized that the voice wasn't echoing aimlessly. Rather, it came from a specific direction, which had him speed-walking as carefully as he could on the ice - someone had been an idiot to take off his nanite housing unit and he hadn't noticed or bothered to grab it before he ran through his own rift in space, so now he was walking on the ice in his socked feet and there were not nearly enough resistance between them to make even a single step comfortable - as he followed it. He thought his throat will get sore or that he'll lose his voice before he finds what he's looking for, but thankfully, that is not the case by the time he finds the source.
A big boulder with a cave entrance almost the size of a regular door, a staircase leading further down and here Tony had thought that there was no lower to go. "Dive down deep into her sound
But not too deep or you will drown." He snorted, carefully climbing down the steps. "Might as well. The world is already going to shit so gambling it won't make much of a difference if this is the only way to help Elsa." The staircase is long and spiraling and the ice around him is monotonous and mostly see-through enough for him to make out the infinite darkness that always lurks underneath his feet when he walks on the level of Elsa's altar. He doesn't understand why he's going further down when he clearly remembers being lifted up, beyond the veil of chilling darkness to enter the ghost memory of Ahtohallan, but he trusts the Well and the spirits that seem to cling to it.
Elsa started shaking by the point the stairs stopped spiraling and they were exiting the pillar made around it, opening up a view to a river of blue flames likes Elsa's, of all things, the undercurrents closer to the bottom red and scorching. How the two contrasting elements existed in such a tangle, he didn't understand, but there was an interesting humming coming from the fiery river. It was a new sound, nothing from the movies, which made him hesitate a bit before he remembered that there were simply things in this world meant to stay between dragons and their Ib. Elsa's shaking was good, at least, as this was the firs reaction she'd had at all since they were struck down. Tony couldn't help but sigh in relief even as he continued to carefully make his way down the stairs.
When he stepped off of the last ones, he felt his feet pricked through his socks by many sharp points. Looking down, he saw that the banks of the river were covered in numerous, countless breathtakingly beautiful crystals that reflected the light in the most intriguing of ways, lighting up the place even better than the forest of pillars did upstairs. This level, al least, didn't seem to be as affected by Elsa's condition as the rest of the Well was. Looking up to where the staircase was hidden inside of a huge tower of ice, Tony tried not to be disconcerted when he saw that at one point, it just disappeared into the darkness. A sight that should be expected, given that's how all of the pillars disappeared on the level of Elsa's altar, but it was still unnerving because he had come down that way just now.
An extra hard shiver from the dragon had him shaking off the disturbing thoughts and focusing on Elsa and on why he was here. He ignored the pain in his feet and the bloody footprints left in his wake as he walked towards the fiery river. The closer he got, the more Elsa shivered and if this was anything like hypothermia, that was a good thing. When he was besides the river and the blue flames were licking near his toes, he hesitated, unsure as to what to do.
"I wish all of this shit came with an actual fucking manual for once in my life."
"You are to submerge the dragon all the way down to the red flames and bathe with her until the fire burns you and you emerge from your own ashes like a phoenix reborn." A sudden, new, unrecognizable voice has his head snapping up from where he had been trying to glare answers out of the river, his eyes zeroing in on a person standing on the other bank. A creature whose gender he couldn't decide on, if they even had one, alien to him in every way and yet feeling like kin in the most important one sat on the other side, stirring the freezing fire with a bare hand. Their skin was completely white, more so than snow, like an utter lack of color, with huge green eyebrows, a thin red mouth and small, round black eyes with pink pupils. They were dressed in something that looked a lot like armor. Not like his own armor, but maybe more like a knight's suit of armor. They wore a headdress of sorts with a face-guard, long, rabbit like ears pushed down and to the side of their face.
They were so completely, utterly different from any human or any humanoid creature he'd seen so far and yet they were kin.
He knew that in the very depths of his soul.
"Good," the stranger said, what must have been their version of a smile gracing the red mouth. "You are already in tune with your nature. Kin of my kin, I welcome you to the Flow of Existence." They made a flourish with the hand that had been in the fiery river, the sparks clinging to their four-fingered two knuckled hand flying and forming magical seals in the air before him. He had no idea, logically, what the seals that he saw meant, but his soul knew and he knew it was protection. Protection from drowning in the Flow. "Only we, of dragon kin, can hope to step here and not drown, not be lost in all that was, that is, that will be, that hasn't been, that isn't and that won't ever be."
He looks down at the 'water' and knows this to be true. That, however, doesn't make him any more eager to just dive right in. Not when, if he messes something up, Elsa's life was on the line and with her, the rest of everything, too.
"It is good to be cautious, my kin, as much rests on your shoulders. It was easier for me, I remember, as there had been many dragons and not much rested on mine. Our lives, intertwined as they might have been, were our own and my death did not mean his. Much has changed since then and I do believe no dragon has ever regretted it. But people are cruel, vicious and greedy and now, it all falls down to you. One last dragon with their Ib. Truly, this was not how I imagined my line will spread, how it will end."
Stark frowned, because, at first glance, none of what his new companion said made any sense. It sounded like ramblings of a senile old person, until all of what has actually been said registered in his brain. 'Easier, many dragons, intertwined lives but not deaths, change, my line!' "You're the first Ib," he said with confidence, looking at the stranger in a new, more inquisitive light now. This creature, whatever species or gender they might be, are kin because they, too, were once Ib, still are Ib in death. Dragons and their Ib are connected, never to be separated, in the very essence of their souls. But dragons all once return to Ahtohallan. So their Ib must go with them.
Tony had called out to Ahtohallan for help and it had sent help in the form of the first ever Ib. Who better to help the last Ib than the first?
"That I am." The ancient Ib confirmed, the smile widening.
"Can you help me?" He asked, desperately, but they shook their head.
"That, I cannot. I have already told you what must be done. The rest, kin of my kin, is up to you. It is up to your strength whether the currents of he Flow will overwhelm you or if you shall surface again. I shall wait for you on this side, for when you may emerge."
"Is there no other way?" He asked, even as he inched closer, hands tightening on Elsa. "I mean, you said it yourself. A lot rests on us both. We're the last ones left. If we don't make it, won't everything that the dragons have been protecting and nurturing for so long go to waste?"
"If you do not submerge, your dragon will die. If you do and don't rise from the fire, your dragon and you will die. Either option is death. The only chance you have of survival and protecting everything dear to you is to submerge, to burn and to rise from your own ashes. Phoenix are, after all, just feathery, burning dragons, no matter what differing mythologies might say." The other shrugged, sounding unconcerned. They are dead and perhaps total annihilation means nothing to the dead. "If you die or if your dragon dies and you survive their death, you will have little time to suffer from the loss, as it simply means that the time has come. You would reunite when all is lost and all is found."
"How could it possibly be found if everything gets destroyed!?" He snapped, stopping just at the edge of the water. He knows he's glaring something fierce at the other and that it's probably rude and his mother would no doubt yank on his ear for such behavior, but he's had enough of cryptic bullshit for a lifetime a long time ago, thank you.
"All that is made can be unmade and all that is unmade can be remade. You, at least, should know this." When all the genius could do is frown in confusion, the ancient Ib smiles. "Dragons have existed long before existence did. And they will do so again, when all that is them finds its way back to Ahtohallan and all of the purest energy of all returns to where it belongs. Dragons are, in a way no other mind but their own can understand, eternal. Even we Ib will never know all of their secrets. Not in eons of life and not in an eternity in death. When it is right, all will be found and Ahtohallan will form again and dragons will soar in its skies and watch over a slowly forming existence. The Flow was once so much more, but not even it is eternal. One day, its time, too, shall come, young Ib. No one may know when or how. That is for Ahtohallan to know and Ahtohallan only."
"If this is the Flow of all of existence," he starts, gesturing at the fiery river. "Then why does it look like a combination of Elsa's powers?"
"I did say it used to be more," the other Ib pointed out. "Now, it appears as all that is left. Only dragons and their kin can come here, little Ib. We watch over the Flow. It will disrupt and dry out when there is no one left to watch over it."
"Meaning I have no choice but to take a dip. In freezing and then scorching fire. Nice."
"Fire is at the core of every dragon. It is so and it has always been so and it will always be so."
Which just sounded insane to him but he knew better than to fight these things at this point. His life was too weird and fighting it would only make it weirder, which won't help him in dealing with it. One look at Elsa, though, gave him his answer as to whether he'd deal with it at all, no matter how insane. Just the proximity of the Flow seems to be doing wonders for her condition. Which also really didn't make any sense, as she was supposed to be having problems with control, but he'd long since given up on life making sense, too.
So he took a deep breath, braced himself and dived right in.
He can just hope he won't drown.
