Happy Friday the 13th everybody! I know this is kind of a short chapter but I'm hoping to make up for it in the next one. Filler chapter, I guess you'd call this one. ^-^
Proxima Midnight's grip on the front of my shirt instantly released and her voice was a reverberated scream from a little ways beneath me. My hands flailed forward to grab onto something as my backwards somersault reached its full rotation but I already knew that grabbing onto the ledge of the doorway like I had planned to was out of the question. I muttered a curse under my breath and pushed myself forward anyway, feeling the odd floating sensation as it levitated me slowly downward. My hands grasped for anything in the darkness around me, but I figured that the entrance to the inescapable prison below would have no such crevices or ledges for a potential criminal to use to aid their escape.
I suddenly remembered the Time Stone where it was wedged into the makeshift pocket of my robes and I clapped my hand over my side as I felt for it. I was relieved when I found that through the haphazard flip I had pulled Proxima Midnight in with, the Time Stone was exactly where I'd left it. I closed my eyes against the pitch blackness and the falling sensation and attempted to pull the necklace from my pocket for a last effort's use. My eyebrows knit together in confusion however as I found that, though the chain dangled lazily outside of the folds of my robes, the Eye-shaped pendant refused to leave the safety of my pocket. I could distantly feel the burn of its waiting power, but in the magic-protected elevator shaft, I couldn't even attempt to use it.
"Human's shouldn't possess these abilities…" Proxima Midnight's voice echoed, her presence drifting further and further away from me as she seemed to be falling faster than I was. Then she seemed to turn her face upwards to shout up to me where she knew I was floating above her. "This is why my father is going to rectify your universe!"
I blinked against the sudden mental slap to my face at the villainous woman's words. He was coming for the Stone…but if both me and Proxima Midnight and the Stone were lost to a place where it couldn't be found…
"We'll see how his plan goes without this Stone…" I shouted down to her.
There was no immediate response from her and as I tried to steel myself for whatever magical prison lay at the end of our fall, I felt the weightless floating sensation make me suddenly sick to my stomach. I pressed a slow-moving hand to my forehead and could feel my tremoring fingers as my nerves began to register the thought of my coming death or imprisonment. Also…an eternity spent with Proxima Midnight wouldn't seem so bad as what I'd heard would happen if Thanos acquired all of the Stones.
"Thanos will win." I heard Proxima Midnight's growl from below me in the forever falling elevator shaft.
I clenched my hands into fists floating by my sides as I tried to come up with a retort and cringed as my knuckles brushed against the wall with a static shock that shot through my body. I pulled myself back from the wall where I had grazed my knuckles and froze as the current of magically placed electricity shot through my body. For a few mere seconds I was floating away from the wall I had accidentally touched and then my left foot tapped against the opposite wall with the exact same effect. I screamed in fearful pain and felt myself flip in midair as my falling began to feel even faster.
"I'm falling…and I don't really expect any help here…but why can't it be easier?!" I muttered under my breath as I pulled all four of my limbs in closer to my nerve-wracked body. I closed my eyes against the overwhelming darkness and allowed the uneasy sensation of floating to carry me further and further downward, careful to stay in the center of the space so I wouldn't hit the surrounding walls.
After several long minutes of falling in maddening slow motion, I began to feel a cool presence start to overtake me. It started deep in my shoulders and back and slowly moved outward from there, finally reaching my fingertips and toes through my weird slipper shoes. My eyes flew open but the pitch darkness was still there, with seemingly no change aside from the frigid cold that now surrounded me. I hesitantly flexed my fingers and chanced at stretching my arms and legs from where I had wrapped them around myself protectively. The cold feeling suddenly seemed to grow tighter with my slight movements and I froze obediently as my own limbs were forced back to their original positions.
"Try not to move, apprentice. It's a struggle for us right now as it is."
My eyes widened in the darkness and I nodded in disbelieving understanding while I trying to remain as still in my motions as possible. The spirit people that had previously seemed to recluse themselves from the others residing in the mansion were actually attempting to help me like they had unwillingly promised. I suddenly frowned against the knowledge of my possible return to safety and began to try and move out of the spirits' hold.
"W-Why are you trying to help me? This – This is the right thing to do…the Stone will be protected for good if you let me fall…" I protested. The cold intensified and I shivered as the chattering of my teeth forced my protests to cease.
"You asked us for help and now you're refusing it."
"How typical of the living."
"No…I'm appreciative, really…but it's just that…I had already kinda decided that I was gonna do this…" I finally muttered unsurely. The spirits' cold presence suddenly jerked me upward with a sound of deafening cannon fire and threw me roughly against one of the walls. I shouted out a pain induced curse from the electric shock that jolted through my body in addition to the frigidness from the spirits' presence. The feeling of moving upward slowed a bit and when my tremors finally died down a bit, I was greeted by the spirits' sour voices.
"You were alright with taking the Stone to the magical prisons along with one of the children of Thanos?"
"Your thought process baffles us."
"We'll overlook your feelings only a little because we were once young and alive too, but…your decision-making process may need a little bit of tweaking."
I fell into humiliated silence for a few moments as the spirits carried me upwards and back to the secret passageway where I had lured Proxima Midnight. I absently stared downward through the darkness where I knew the alien woman still remained in an almost endless descent, feeling a fearful chill run through me that wasn't entirely caused by the spirits' presence.
"…Thank you." I murmured to the coldness around me after another few moments of rising in silence. The frigid presence of the Sanctum's spirits seemed to pulse a little tighter around me as if the spirits were consoling me of the stresses that were overtaking me.
"You're a brave one for sure…just a bit touched in the head."
I smiled at the spirits' lighthearted teasing. I was about to come up with some joking retort but then my body was flipped in midair once more and my skydiving position altered when my feet were thrust back underneath me. I pushed my hands out in front of me and the cold presence suddenly hurled me forward onto the floor at the top of the elevator shaft.
"Woah – easy!" I protested in surprise. The frigid sensation had disappeared and I looked in every surrounding direction in the darkness for a sign of where the spirits had gone. "Hello?"
"Quiet now, apprentice."
"What you've feared has now arrived."
"T-Thanos?" I asked, my voice cutting off as I climbed back to my feet, dizzy from my gravity-defying experience. The spirits were instantly gone, their movement signaled by their familiar cannon fire that echoed in the dark passageway.
"Alexander…how many times do I need to rescue you from the secrets of this Sanctum?" Wong's voice called quietly from directly in front of me. My shoulders sank as I walked quickly and quietly towards his voice.
"Sorry Wong…I was trying to help." I tried to explain. I felt his hand clap firmly down on my uninjured shoulder and he lightly pulled me forward towards where his conjured portal was waiting.
"I know you were. And it was actually not a bad idea you had to pause Time to rid us of Proxima Midnight." Wong said. I paused before we reached the portal.
"Oh?" I prodded him, catching on to the unsaid tension in the air before he could even give me the horrible news.
"Yes," Wong answered calmly. "Because as soon as Time restarted again upon your entry of the secret passage, Thanos made his appearance."
I stared through the darkness to where I knew Wong stood by my side as he confirmed what the spirits had told me. I placed my hand over the pocket in my robes where the chain of the Time Stone necklace dangled by my side. I squinted in confusion and then shifted my blind gaze to the ground near my feet.
"And…what's happened? Why aren't you out there trying to protect the Sanctum?!" I nearly exploded, my nerves switching into the overreacting stage. "You could have sent Daniel or Grayson or even Peter to come and get me out of here, why waste your master-sorcerer skill on coming to get me?"
Wong was silent for a long moment and I could almost visibly see the unrest on his face through the blackness of the passageway. I felt his hand fall from my shoulder and heard the swish of his robes as he turned away from me.
"Thanos is holding everyone else until I return with you and the Stone. He's already slaughtered many of the remaining sorcerers and apprentices from the other Sanctums…"
"But Dan and Peter…?!"
"They're fine for now, Alex." Wong's voice murmured quietly. I felt my heart wrench in my chest as I thought about the last few dozen remaining sorcerers that had stood ready to face Proxima Midnight with us down in the foyer just a mere fifteen or twenty minutes ago. Our numbers had greatly been reduced then and now…
"I tried to tell the spirits to let the Stone fall to the end of that tunnel with me…" I started, my voice welling up with fright and then finally levelling off. "Maybe this isn't what Doctor Strange wanted."
"What do you mean?" Wong asked gently and patiently as if we had all the time left in the world to discuss this.
"One of the last things he told me…was that everything that happens is what's meant to happen. You guys really need to speak more plainly so you get your points across better." I said anxiously.
"I'll try to keep that in mind." Wong said lightly. I suddenly felt him lean closer towards me and his palm rested briefly over my eyes and forehead. When his hand fell away, I blinked and could see the sorcerer standing just a few feet away from me as if I were looking at him in broad daylight.
"Woah…uh…thanks." I said, looking around at the newly revealed secret passageway. It was almost an exact mirror of the hallway outside, just with a giant hole blown through the wall behind me. The elevator shaft of doom where Proxima Midnight would spend the rest of her alien life was still shrouded in darkness, and not even my own curiosity would let me move closer to inspect the seemingly endless drop. I noticed Wong's expectant yet pitying expression as I finished my quick glance around the secret passageway and I reached for the necklace that still rested lightly in my pocket.
"What's your plan this time, Alexander?" Wong asked with a halfhearted smirk. "You're becoming quite good with improvising…another trait that Strange possessed."
"Well…Strange told me that whatever we decide to do…things are going to turn out how they're going to turn out. Win or lose we just fight, right? Does that sound good with you?" I asked, extending my hands hopefully as I finished my heroic speech. Wong offered me a humored eyebrow raise and clapped his right hand into mine in an accepted hand shake.
"Sounds like a plan to me."