"Peter, what happened? What's wrong with you?"
Wong's voice was over me in an instant and I felt strong hands lifting me up from beneath my shoulders. My first thought was confusion because only milliseconds before, I had been in the upstairs hallway with Dan, Rocket and Thanos.
Dan. My best friend who'd only moments ago had a massive fist-shaped hole burned straight through his torso.
I jerked my head to the side and attempted to shake my vision back but for some reason my head was lost in a fog. The hands caught a firm grip on either of my shoulders and tried to still me from my panicking outbursts on the ground.
"I can't see!" I finally protested, reaching up to my face with one hand, feeling a dull pain burning in my shoulder. I cringed as the familiar wound made me realize that I was once more in my own body and no longer swapped with Peter. "Wong?!"
"…Alexander?" Wong said in slow surprise. I looked up towards the sorcerer's voice, my eyes still unseeing to what was presumably right in front of me. I felt the hands grasping my shoulders move away and assumed that Wong had knelt beside of me as his hand turned my head in his direction.
"Why can't I see?!" I exclaimed, trying and miserably failing at remaining calm. My chest was tight and I felt like I couldn't breathe. The space around us was eerily silent and that fact caused me to panic even worse as I had no idea what had transpired in the short time Thanos had been facing off down here against the Avengers in an attempt to get to me with the decoy.
"Woah Alex…calm down a second…" Bruce's familiar voice sounded from nearby.
"What just happened?" A gruff voice demanded from above Wong.
"They switched back…" Wong said thoughtfully, removing his hand from my jaw. I felt a small whoosh of air just in front of my face, imagining that the sorcerer was waving his hand there to check if I really was blind. Angrily, I shoved his hand away and struggled to my feet, nearly falling when I found no wall or anything around me.
"Yeah, I know! Now tell me what the hell is wrong with my eyes!" I demanded, looking in the direction I thought Wong stood. I heard the now familiar hum of a conjured spell directly in front of me and I held up my hands to ward against him, feeling the warmth of my golden mandala shields form over my fists.
"Did you mean to swap back?" Wong asked me calmly when he realized that I was still in full panic-mode and had no intention of letting him perform whatever spell he had ready before explaining what was going on.
"No, it was – Dan…" I stammered. My chest hitched painfully as I fully recounted what had just happened in the upstairs hallway. "Dan hit me with a spell and knocked me backwards and…I guess I…I let the illusion fall…"
"Then you weren't ready for the reversing process. You returned to your body too quickly and it's forcing itself to slow down. Normally it would take another few moments to regain your sight, but…"
Since I was unable to see, it was very easy for Wong to take me by surprise and my shields went down in an instant as I felt him strike towards me forcefully with whatever unseen weapon he had conjured. Before I could react again, I felt a blast of warm energy shoot through me and barely had enough time to catch myself before I was knocked to my knees once more by Wong's directed energy. I saw a flash of golden light before I blinked several times in a row, each time noticing that my vision thankfully grew clearer.
"But we have methods of speeding up things like that." Wong finished curtly as I looked up in surprise to find the sorcerer helping me to my feet from where I had fallen.
I was once more in the dining room, shoved in a corner along with Wong, Bruce and the Black Panther-suited man. I glanced around at the destruction of the once elegant room, seeing that the Avengers had moved out, hopefully in pursuit of where Thanos had gone up to the second floor of the mansion. I jolted myself into motion with the purpose of reaching that destination as well.
"Stop." The Black Panther ordered, throwing his arm in front of me, claws bared and all before I could dash past him.
"Dude, don't try to stop me…" I protested sharply, throwing the masked hero a hate-filled look when he refused to let me past. "I have to get back to them!"
"Uh Alex…you might want to be careful how you act in front of a king…" Bruce said slowly, nodding towards the Panther-man. The masked man stared levelly at me and my eyes widened as I fell silent for a moment before I shook my head unquestioningly.
"I'm – sorry, but I really need to get up there to help! He just killed Dan, Wong! You don't understand…" I said tearing my gaze away from the Panther-king guy in front of me.
"…Dan?" Bruce asked in disbelief, wide-eyed sorrow written in his face. The scientist looked between me and Wong for a long moment before wrapping his arms around himself unsurely. "Oh this is bad…"
"Yeah, it's bad!" I said sarcastically, once more attempting to move away from the small group so that I could return to face off the alien villain again myself. "When I get to the Thanos I'm gonna…"
Wong struck out hurriedly to stop me from moving away and gripped my injured shoulder intentionally to bring me back to rational thinking. I let out an angered curse before I could finish my threat.
"Alexander…the decoy was sought after by Thanos according to plan. Let the Avengers take care of him while we finish what we were trying to do before you caused Peter to lose consciousness." Wong said calmly. I shook my head and whirled on him angrily.
"No…I messed up, okay?! Let me go so I can try to fix it!" I said hurriedly, not hearing him.
"You cannot let the Time Stone be seen!" Wong shouted right back to me, and I cringed beneath his critical gaze. He glanced to the side and sighed deeply before continuing at a lower volume. "I know for a fact that you used the afterimage of the Stone to heal Daniel before, and I'm actually surprised at how well that technique worked to draw Thanos to you and away from the real Stone. But I am warning you…do not stray from this plan again. Try to keep your mess ups to a minimum until we get through this."
Wong's face was a mask of genuine pleading and I looked in the direction he had briefly glanced to. I could see that Natasha Romanoff lay unconscious just a few feet away from us, along with the woman who had only moments ago held her magical shield up between my small group and Thanos to bar us from him as we tried to form this said plan. Thor's lightning had blown out the whole wall that had separated the dining room and kitchen from the hallway and there were small fires and singe marks lingering nearly everywhere in the wreckage of the room.
"This was no time for mess ups in the first place." The Black Panther said lowly, turning his dark masked face up to Bruce accusingly. "I thought you said he was the one that this Doctor Strange felt could handle this?"
"I am..." I muttered as I felt my emotion welling up in my voice.
"I am Groot…?" A voice called meekly from a few yards away.
I looked around hurriedly to see that the tree man had wandered over to us quietly, scanning the wreckage as well. I offered him an unknowing glance before leaping to the floor when a booming crash sounded from above the hallway across the room and something large fell through the ceiling. A very large axe fell from the hole just milliseconds later, and I saw a muscular arm shoot up from the ground to catch the weapon before it could harm the body who had fallen before it.
"I am Groot?!" Groot asked once more, glancing at Thor as he seemed to recognize him. The tree man then turned to look between the thunder god and our small group on the other side of him.
"He wants to know if the rabbit is safe." Thor's deep and demanding voice spoke after a second. I uncurled myself from the ball I had huddled into behind Wong's mandala, seeing that Thor had picked himself up from the wreckage of the fallen ceiling.
"Uh…" I answered dumbly, noticing that Groot was still staring at me hopefully.
"Rocket was with you when Wong portal'd you away from Thanos." Bruce answered thoughtfully, looking to me. I looked back at Groot and shrugged my shoulders unknowingly.
"Rocket was upstairs with me and Dan before Thanos came…I assume he's still up there. I'm sorry, I don't know…"
"I did not see your friend anywhere in sight when we got to Thanos. I assume he is in hiding since he's weaponless until I return this to him." Thor answered after another moment, picking up Rocket's abandoned gun on the floor of the hallway where the raccoon had left it before. Thor nodded to us curtly before raising his axe with a rumble of thunder. He then leaped back up in a single bound to the second floor and the battle that presumably raged up there. As soon as the god of thunder had gone, something in my memory clicked.
"The secret passageway…what if he ran to hide out in there? I told them about it as I was trying to come back…but then Thanos had already found us." I said thoughtfully. Groot moved closer and I noticed that his features looked expectant as if he were eager to get up there to investigate where Rocket had gone.
"That's unimportant at the moment, Alex. We need to finish the spell that will bind the Time Stone to the Mirror Dimension before we focus on stopping Thanos." Wong said quickly. The Black Panther suited man, who was seemingly acting as our defense in addition to Bruce and the timid looking Groot behind me, stepped swiftly away from us as Natasha Romanoff stirred on the ground a few yards away.
"We need to bind it to the Mirror Dimension? How do we do that? What good will it do?" I asked hurriedly, sensing that things were going terribly upstairs above us. Numerous crashes and shouts could be heard among the humming use of each of the different Infinity Stones as the Mad Titan used them against the heroes continuously trying to confront him.
"The Mirror Dimension is essentially a Mirror of this one. But like I've told you before, things that occur over there do not affect what happens here. So if we were to bind the Time Stone to that dimension…"
"Thanos wouldn't be able to get to it unless we let him in. That's why you told me that you never leave the Mirror Dimension open because literally almost anyone could accidentally happen to walk into it." I finished thoughtfully. Wong nodded serenely.
"Precisely. I was just explaining that all to Peter before you complicated things by reversing the body switch without warning."
"Or uncomplicated things rather…" I contradicted him slowly. "I had no control over Peter's Spider abilities and I was actually telling Dan that I was planning on switching back myself but then…you know I'm sure."
Wong studied me warily for a moment as if able to definitely tell what had transpired on the second floor just a few moments ago. Rather than look sympathetic he looked as if he were ready to catch me should I try to run off back up to find my best friend where he was either dying or already gone. I had no idea whether or not the Time Stone could bring him back from the dead, but I at least wanted to try.
"Could we get on with this, please?" The Panther man said impatiently. When I glanced over to him unsurely, his mask dissolved into the rest of his suit. His face was contorted with urgency as he knelt over Natasha. "Once the Stone is safe, we must shift our focus to retrieving the others. We can't do that while half of us are down here trying to ensure that it is being taken care of."
"I'm fine T'Challa…let me up." Natasha muttered quietly as the man tried to gently still her movements and attempts to stand up despite her evident injuries. Bruce had made his way over to the wounded woman as well and at her request, he respectfully backed off. T'Challa finally relented to allow her to stand on her own as well and once she steadied herself with one hand pressed against her heavily bleeding side, she shooed him away hurriedly. "Go…we can cover them for now."
T'Challa considered the blonde haired spy for a moment before offering her a weary smirk and a fond pat on her shoulder, the claws from earlier having been retracted back into the gloves of his suit. Without a word, he nodded and his panther mask crept back over to cover his face as he soundlessly shot across the room and towards the raging battle against Thanos. Natasha glanced back at us once T'Challa was out of sight and when she realized that we were all looking over at her worriedly, she removed her hand from the wound in her left side.
"Hey Tree, between you, me and Bruce, I think we can handle babysitting duty, don't you?" She called casually to Groot beside me. Bruce glanced nervously at the spy woman and smiled only slightly at her perseverance. I noticed by the way he was standing that he seemed to favor one of his legs over the other and that he held his left arm closer to his chest, just a few of the injuries he had sustained from one of the two battles he'd been through this day.
"I am Groot." The tree guy muttered softly in response to Natasha's lighthearted comment. Natasha nodded reassuringly to him and I heard him move to join her and Bruce a few yards away where they could keep a trained gaze on the gaping hole in the wall where the Black Panther had just disappeared.
"Okay, so how do we exactly go about binding the Time Stone to the Mirror Dimension?" I asked Wong hurriedly, eager to get upstairs and face down Thanos for what he had done to my best friend. As if able to sense my grief-stricken thinking, Wong regarded me stiffly.
"First, we need to open the Mirror Dimension, of course." He said slowly as if it were supposed to be a simple process. I flicked my wrist and flexed both of my palms outward toward the open room by my side. The air crystalized immediately, casting twinkling patterns of light on the floor and remaining bits of wall around us.
"Step one, done." I said impatiently, no longer taking the time to marvel over how amazing the conjuring process was and the magic that had been produced. Wong glanced down at my hands in slight surprise before nodding abruptly.
"Next, we must both enter the Mirror Dimension to find a safe hiding place for the Stone." Wong ordered, gesturing towards the shimmering entrance I had just unlocked.
"We need to pick a hiding place?" I repeated. "Why not just drop it on the floor in there? It's not like Thanos could even get through here without one of us opening the dimension for him."
"Just…pay attention to what he tells you, kid. With the kinda things that are going on, it's probably smart to listen." Natasha said gently. As I glanced back in her direction, I noticed that she cringed in pain as she offered me a supportive nod. Bruce moved closer to her and allowed her to lean against his shoulder as she once more clamped a hand against her bleeding side.
"Okay…sure." I said in agreement, turning back to Wong who still had his hand gestured out towards the entrance into the Mirror Dimension. I stepped through the crystalline border between worlds and emerged in the all-around twinkling mirror of the ruined room. Natasha, Bruce and Groot were all looking in our direction but could no longer see us in this dimension. As we disappeared to them, they all moved closer towards the doorway between the real world and the mirrored one to protect the entrance.
"Follow me." Wong said curtly, moving past me and towards the front of the dining room and kitchen. I trailed after him quickly, finally able to keep pace with the purposeful sorcerer.
"We're leaving them?" I asked quizzically, but still following his orders. Wong didn't glance back at me but I heard his condescending sigh as he maneuvered us through the destruction of the hallway outside the room and toward the front foyer of the Mirrored Sanctum.
"They have to keep the entrance to the Mirror Dimension guarded. I thought you understood how this whole thing worked?" Wong said with sarcasm. I clenched my hands into nervous fists, chancing a small glance back to where we'd left Bruce, Groot and the Black Widow, my worries with them. If Thanos sensed me exposing the Time Stone to conceal it here from him, then that room would be the first place he'd go. And with Natasha most likely mortally wounded, Bruce very nearly there as well and Groot seeming rather lost without Rocket…they'd be easy targets.
"I placed a ward over the dining room before we left. Thanos will not be able to enter the room without tripping a psychic alarm that will alert me in time for us to close the Mirror Dimension to him." Wong said lowly as if he were able to read my thoughts. I grimaced at his superior abilities to think of everything on the spot and continued following close beside him as we swiftly jogged throughout the once beautiful Sanctum on Wong's chosen path.
"When this is all over with, you have to teach me to read minds like you can." I said seriously, peering down a hallway that looked as if it were glowing mystically with an orange light even in the already twinkling atmosphere of the Mirror Dimension.
"When this is all over with…" Wong repeated drily. "I'll retire and let you take my place."
I fell into silence and hesitated slightly as Wong turned in the direction of the shining hallway like I'd feared he would. When he held up his hand for me to pause behind him, I was almost relieved.
"This may get tricky…" He explained softly, gesturing with his other hand towards the shimmering hallway. "Through there is the heart of the Sanctum. It is heavily enforced with dozens of wards and entrapments both in our dimension and even doubly so here. We keep our most dire weapons and spell books hidden secretly there so that no enemies may reach them."
I stared at the growing brightness of the hallway before us, seeming to feel a rumble of thunder somewhere in the distance. I looked in the direction of the upstairs hallway wondering if the sound from the real world had been able to reach us through the borders of the Mirror Dimension.
"Why didn't we put the Stone here in the first place?! Why did Strange keep it out in the open like he did?!" I asked skeptically. Wong kept his back to me as he replied simply.
"Like I've told you and Dan both repeatedly, we did not expect Thanos to come for the Time Stone so abruptly. I had no inclination about Strange's full plan once we did realize what was going on. He was gone, leaving the two of you here with no hope of possibly protecting this Stone. I spent the past few days endlessly training you both with the small bit of explanation Strange had given me that the Time Stone should remain with you and you alone. You practically refused to be taught the skills without Daniel being taught as well and that just took more time and energy. I'm not one to complain, but I should have done this myself a long time ago."
My mouth was open in an exclamation of shock as Wong's words hit me. I stared at the back of his head for a long moment waiting for him to turn around and add anything else to his calm outburst but he didn't. He continued leading me forward into the twinkling hallway, and an odd coolness began to wash over us both as we grew closer to our destination.
"After you." Wong said as he flicked his wrist towards the brightest section of the hall, and the orange glow swam dizzyingly as he seemed to unlock something there. I silently moved past him and pressed my palm into what felt like an ordinary wooden door beneath the blinding brightness of it. I gently nudged it open and found that we entered another sort of library, this one not as elegant as the one that existed upstairs in the regular Sanctum.
"Okay, now all we do is just find a nice place to set this down and then we're good?" I asked hastily, scanning the small library with my hurried gaze. Books littered the floor, organized in symmetrical stacks almost a head taller than my height in some places. A few glass cabinets much like the ones that had lined the front hallway upon my arrival also stood prominently around the room, though these didn't seem to be filled with nearly as many artifacts or objects.
"I wish it were that easy." Wong muttered from behind me. I turned to see that he was considering one of the smaller cabinets where an ancient-looking skull rested on a little glistening stand. The skull itself seemed to warp and pulse with a darkness that flickered from one spot to another on the cranium. Not wanting to get any closer to the odd thing, I swallowed hard and tried to imagine what dangerous kinds of magic it was laced with and why Wong seemed so intrigued by it.
"We're uh…not using that, are we?" I asked when Wong continued to study the skull without movement for another long moment. I shifted uncomfortably on my feet and then chanced a few steps nearer to the sorcerer in case there was something I was missing. I finally found myself by his side, still feeling awkward and confused by what exactly Wong was studying on the eerie object. When I looked away from his unmoving body and down towards the skull in curiosity, Wong suddenly jerked back to life and shoved me away from his side.
"You mustn't look into her eyes!" He shouted, his urgent tone reverberating around the small library-like room. I frowned at his exclamation in even further confusion, making a point to stand far away from the man and the creepy object within the cabinet. Wong took one last glance at the grinning skull, squinting as if to see something deeper in it and then nodded halfheartedly as if in reply to something.
"Can I ask what it is?" I chanced lightly, my confusion deepening.
"The skull of Karnilla the Enchantress…" Wong said by way of an explanation. I stared at him expectantly, trying to keep my gaze from wanting to look at the skull again as the sorcerer continued. "She was very talented in her practices of Asgardian skills and magic in her times. Her skull is preserved here to prevent her from returning to life as she has already once. It took Strange nearly two years to track her down once she had been banished to Earth from Asgard. She was using her magic to murder helpless humans in order to gain immortality here on this planet and when Strange confronted her, she retreated into this skull."
"…Wow." I said absently, trying to keep my gaze from drifting towards the magical skull.
"Yes." Wong said curtly, as if telling me that it would be useless for me to expect any more information than he'd given me in that short summary of the skull's history.
"Okay…so is there anything else I need to not look at?" I asked sarcastically as he once more took the lead through the winding stacks of books and cabinets. Wong didn't answer again, but I could still hear the lingering echo of the odd tone he had used to warn me away from the Enchantress' skull.
Wong led me to the opposite side of the small library and we both stopped before a strange empty space in the wall between two large shelves. Wong gestured for me to stand back a little ways and then he bowed his head as if he were looking at something in the blank wall in front of him. After a moment of watching him stand perfectly still, I leaned forward just a bit to see Wong's serene expression, noticing that his eyes were closed and that he hadn't been examining the wall like I'd thought.
I glanced around uncomfortably at some of the relics around the room, noticing that the shelves on either side of us housed not books, but animals. Taxidermy animals that looked so lifelike, I could almost see them breathing.
On the shelf to my left I spotted a black cat with bright green marble-like eyes, a large brown-colored rat with teeth that curled below its chin unnaturally and an iguana frozen with its head raised and back arched as if in anticipation. I looked away from the animals on the left shelf and switched my gaze to the right one.
In the center of the three shelves was a giant horse head that looked as if it were erupting out of the shelf with a maddened gaze despite the glassy film over the animal's eyes. On the shelf above that stood a tarantula nearly two feet in its size, and part of me honestly wished that the spider was some kind of Halloween decoration instead of the real, taxidermy piece that it was. On the bottom shelf was a large red-colored rooster and hen, both turned inwards toward each other with their wings splayed out for a powerful stance, despite being mere chickens.
The room suddenly shook with some unseen cause and I threw both of my hands out to my sides to steady myself. A book or two on one of the nearest symmetrical stacks toppled to the floor, and one fell open to a page in the center of the dusty volume. I moved away from Wong where he still stood motionless by the wall and I hurriedly picked the book up, kicking myself for the perfectionist within me.
"Don't look into the books." Wong ordered as I peered curiously into the open page of the book I held. I hurriedly snapped the covers closed and replaced the book on the stack that it had fallen from.
"Wong, what exactly are you doing? Don't you feel that earthquake going on?" I asked him worriedly as I wandered back over to his side, stepping carefully so I wouldn't lose my balance on the trembling ground. Wong's eyes were still closed and I noticed that he had moved his hands to the blank section of wall before him.
Plaster from the wall began to trickle down from the ceiling and I cringed as a cracking sounded emanated from seemingly all around me. Wong still stood calmly against the wall as if he hadn't even noticed the room about to cave in and I chanced another glance at the sorcerer fearfully.
"Is this the tricky part that you were talking about? I sure hope this is your doing!" I exclaimed over the now deafening sounds of cracking walls and floor. The rumbles of the very earth beneath our feet threatened to give and I conjured up some glowing discs beneath my feet to stabilize myself so that I hovered just barely an inch above the floor. "Cuz if it's not…"
"It's not my doing." Wong replied quietly. I moved even closer to him, glancing around the small library in a sudden panic.
"Then what – ?!" I was interrupted in my exclamation of confusion when I suddenly heard Thanos' voice echo distortedly through the Mirror Dimension.
"NO!"
I whirled back around to Wong with his palms still pressed against the wall in front of him. The man still didn't seem to have heard or felt any of the effects of the earthquake or the presence of the Mad Titan.
"Wong, he's here! I thought you had alarms to warn you if he broke through?!"
"He hasn't broken through yet. He is still upstairs fighting with Captain America, Thor and King T'Challa." Wong said simply. My eyes were wild as I scanned the entirety of the library around us. Another slam caused a huge tremor to nearly knock one of the shelves by the wall to fall.
"If all this is being caused by him, then I think you're freaking lying to me." I muttered seriously. I flicked my mandala shields to life over my fists, feeling only slightly relieved by the reassuring glow that they cast over me.
"Give me the Time Stone." Wong said suddenly. I turned around to see that he still hadn't moved by his place against the wall.
"What? Now?" I stammered confusedly. The man nodded once, his eyes still closed. I removed my right shield from my fist and then hesitantly reached for the necklace in my pocket.
"DON'T DO THIS…YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND…!"
When my hand reached my pocket, I stumbled slightly even standing in midair as Thanos' voice shook the small library once more. I heard thundering footsteps from behind us where the entrance to the room was and I looked back up to Wong again in a panic.
"Wong?!"
Without retrieving the Time Stone from my pocket, I grabbed onto the man's shoulders to somehow get to him wake up from his deep meditation and realize what was happening around us. As my palm met the sorcerer's shoulder, my hand fell through him and his image evaporated in a cloud of golden dust. I nearly fell into the wall where Wong had been just seconds before and I whirled around as I heard the sound of a door closing.
"What the hell!?" I shouted, dashing across the room past the numerous shelves and stacks of books as I tried to return to the entrance of the enchanted room.
"Alexander…as Strange wished…you will be the last defense between Thanos and the Time Stone." Wong's voice drifted to me from the other side of the blinding brightness. I pounded my fist against the wood of the unseen door, squinting as the light pulsed when Wong enforced some sort of lock into it.
"Wong, you can't do this! I have to help you fight him! I can't just sit in here!" I called after him angrily.
"You will have your chance." Wong's voice said from far away as if he were walking away from the door. "Just as the Avengers are almost finished with theirs."
That last comment left me with a cold chill as I realized that Wong had locked me in the room. I reached for the Time Stone where it still remained in the pocket of my robes and then hesitated as I caught sight of my hand on its way to retrieve it. My heart skipped a beat as I raised my other hand to examine it as well.
My Sling Ring was still on Peter's hand from the short time I had switched bodies with him, leaving my own body with no Sling Ring of its own. That meant that I literally had no escape from the small and creepy library or a hope at escaping the Mirror Dimension at all.