I do not own any of the source material for this story. Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated.
...
Kamar-Taj, Kathmandu, Nepal, September of 2003
Tom sat cross legged on the meditation mat in his room, slowly sipping a steaming cup of aromatic tea as the small tv in his room played a news cast. Outside, the sun was starting to disappear behind the Himalayas, casting long, looming shadows over the city of Kathmandu. Despite the altruistic nature of their organization and its activities, the Masters of the Mystic Arts had no qualms about pirating communications networks and hacking into secure databases when it suited them and, as a result, had free access to any news networks that they wished to view. Tom was shamelessly taking advantage of this to watch the latest reports on the developing scandal in Washington DC concerning the troubling actions taken by one general Thaddeus Ross in Canada, the widespread political backlash said actions had triggered, and the shocking assassination of Senator Jasnah Grant, who had been leading the calls for Ross's resignation.
The news anchor, an attractive brunette woman who looked to be in her late thirties, wore a grim expression as she said "Continuing our coverage of the so-called Hulk Scandal, General Thaddeus Ross has been summoned to another Senate hearing to address his unsanctioned decision to take US troops into Canada to apprehend the fugitive Dr. Bruce Banner. That decision resulted in an encounter with an unidentifiable figure known to the government by the alias 'Phoenix' with inexplicable telekinetic powers. WHiH's Maria Martel has more from Washington DC."
The image on the tv changed to reveal a red headed correspondent standing in front of the US Capitol Building. "As leaked dashcam footage of the incident reveals, Phoenix warned General Ross of the illegality of his actions and urged him not to start a fight, claiming that the general could not win," she began. "General Ross ignored the warnings and fired on the unarmed Dr. Banner, who responded by transforming into some sort of green Hulk and proceeded to attack Ross. Phoenix appeared to attempt to separate the Hulk from Ross and his troops, but if any footage of how the battle ended exists, it remains locked in a secure government database.
"Since the incident was made public by an anonymous leaker, General Ross has declined to comment and continues to decline WHiH World News's requests for an interview, but inside sources on Capitol Hill report that General Ross has been highly agitated and that he has been calling in political favors from his many allies in hopes of having the Hulk Scandal dealt with quietly. However, in the wake of the assassination of Texas Senator Jasnah Grant, who had been leading the call for an investigation into General Ross's activities, many of the general's allies appear to be distancing themselves from him. The FBI has issued a statement that there is no evidence that Ross or any of his known associates had anything to do with the Senator's dramatic murder at the Houston Police Department Headquarters last week, but the opinions of both the public and officials in Washington DC have clearly been affected by the event, and calls for Ross to be held accountable for getting several American soldiers killed and souring diplomatic relations with Canada are growing.
"This is not the first time that General Thaddeus Ross has been the subject of controversy. Just a year ago he was recalled from managing Guantanamo Bay Detention Center after he was accused of authorizing the use of the inmates as subjects of human experimentation. The objective of these highly unethical experiments was to replicate the infamous Super Soldier serum that created Captain America. Such experiments were declared violations of basic human rights and subsequently banned by the United Nations in 1992, but rumors of continued attempts to replicate the serum by multiple countries continue to persist more than a decade later. How General Ross managed to retain his position in the military despite these human rights violations remains unclear, but this latest scandal has aroused the wrath of many humanitarian activist organizations as well as the American public.
"An anonymous source from inside the White House issued this statement: 'The United States is supposed to be the leader of the free world, a role model for other democratic countries who value the freedom and the rights of their citizens to rally behind. Yet now we are seeing evidence that the United States government is willing to violate human rights in the name of gaining military power. The pledge of allegiance includes a line about liberty and justice for all. For all, not just for our citizens. If our government has such a disregard for the rights of its prisoners that people like Ross, who experimented on them like guinea pigs, are allowed to remain in positions of power, then just how free are we, and how just is our society?'"
Tom shuddered and turned off the tv with a wave of his hand. The remarks filled him with a sense of dread and made the back of his neck itch, the way it sometimes did when he encountered something that reminded him of his lost memories. His meditation sessions with incense had allowed him to slowly recover the missing pieces of his past, and he wasn't sure he liked the picture they were forming of who he was and what kind of family he'd grown up in. The screaming of someone he knew he cared about deeply once upon a time had only been the beginning. Next had come memories of a woman he figured was his mother alternating harsh "lessons" about how the world worked with cruel jabs at his character.
Worthless. Stupid. Weak. If this makes you squeamish, then you'll never be able to do what needs to be done. Might as well make it easier for us and jump down the well, if you can remember how to find it.
In a detached way, Tom recognized that the remarks were cruel, petty attacks on the self esteem of a child who desperately wanted love and approval, but the knowledge that they had come from his own mother, and that they weren't even the worst things she had done to him, made it difficult not to feel stung by them. He knew he wasn't the next leader of the free world, nor did he wish to be, but he wasn't worthless. The Masters of the Mystic Arts wouldn't have accepted him into their ranks if he was worthless.
Tom had remembered that he had siblings. At least one brother who he hated with all his heart, and a sister he dearly missed, but any other details still eluded him. For the umpteenth time, he wondered why his family had been so cruel and how he'd gotten away from them. With a sudden surge of anger, he sprang to his feet, nearly dropping his teacup before setting it down on his desk and donning his sling ring. By now he had developed the ability to conjure eldritch shields and weapons, but he was still struggling somewhat with the sling ring. As a novice, he wasn't supposed to leave the compound without at least informing the master on gate duty, but he was tired of his struggles with the sling ring, and whatever instinct his ire had awakened would not last long enough for him to obtain permission.
Tom took a wide stance beside his meditation mat, focusing the instinctual itch and the anger he was feeling into a stream of power. He could feel the cosmic energies flowing through the sling ring, and he forced himself not to try and seize control of them. Instead, he allowed himself to surrender to the current, like a leaf drifting down a river, and as he did so, his consciousness became the river. Closing his eyes, he let his thoughts and emotions flow like water, letting his subconscious mind guide him towards the destination it had in mind for him. For a moment, nothing happened.
Then, Tom felt something deep inside him give, like a chunk of ice stuck in a partially frozen river finally slipping free, and the telltale sizzling sound of a portal opening filled his ears. He opened his eyes and saw a portal just large enough to accommodate his height filling the center of his room. It was a miracle that it hadn't cut through any of his belongings in the relatively cramped space. Tom didn't step into it immediately, though. He was smart enough to know that there was a real risk of getting into a dangerous situation if he stepped into a portal he'd conjured blindly, so he took a moment to conjure a pair of eldritch shields and studied the sparkling gateway. It opened into a forest of some sort, which was utterly dark. That meant that it was somewhere on the other side of the planet, in the Americas.
Tom wondered if it was the same forest where Harry had found him, but he couldn't be certain with his memories still elusive and muddled. After a moment of contemplation, he adjusted the energy strands that composed his shields so that they formed the, for lack of a better term, code of an inactive stunning spell and stepped through. As the portal sizzled shut behind him, he turned on the spot, searching for signs of something, anything in this forest that might provide a clue about its significance to his past. He didn't have to look very hard.
Rising from a small hill nestled in the trees was a fancy log cabin of some sort. The sight of it should have filled Tom with hope, but all he felt instead was trepidation, even dread, as if he were a prisoner looking at the gallows where he was fated to be hanged. He wished he could examine the place through the Mirror Dimension, but he wasn't nearly advanced enough in magic for that, nor was he capable of projecting his consciousness into the Astral Dimension. If he wanted to approach the place undetected, he would have to do it the hard way. He took a moment to try opening a portal back to his room, and found that he was able to do it after only a few seconds; he'd finally broken his block, and he'd done it on his own. Pleased with himself, he closed it and turned back towards the house.
Tom wove a series of magical sigils out of fiery energy, casting a series of interlocking spells designed to conceal him from as many forms of detection as possible. The spells silenced his movements, hid his footprints, blurred his features, hid the telltale sparks of his magic from both biological and technological detection past a distance of two meters from his body, and camouflaged him against the scenery. As long as he didn't walk into someone or trip a motion sensor, no one would ever know he was there. He had always been good at stealth spells.
A sudden thought struck Tom as he contemplated his surroundings. Now that he could use his sling ring to open portals, he should be able to utilize its secondary function as a kind of multiversal GPS. Fingering it with his off hand, he focused his feelings on the ring and gave them a kind of interrogative twist, as if he were asking where am I without using words. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the answer popped into his mind, as if he'd always known it. He was still in his native reality, in the state of Massachusetts.
Satisfied, Tom approached the house. As he approached the perimeter, he cast a series of detection spells designed to scan for devices that overcome the stealth package he'd applied to himself. Judging from the feedback, he guessed that the exterior walls were laced with motion detectors, while the doors and windows were equipped with pressure sensors. If he could get a visual on the interior of the house, he could easily bypass those defenses with a portal, but as he stalked around the house, he was dismayed to find that all the windows were painted with a reflective glaze that made it impossible to see through the glass at a distance.
Tom really wished he knew how to enter the Mirror Dimension, or even astral project, but he didn't, and without a scrying artifact he had no to see inside the house. He would have to do this the hard way. His next spell disabled every piece of technology within a hundred meters. Unless the owner of the place was somewhere nearby, it would be quite a while before any security forces detected the anomaly and showed up to check on the property.
With increasing trepidation, Tom strolled right up to the front door and let himself through with a simple unlocking spell. The interior of the house was furnished with old fashioned yet comfortable cabin style furnishings that matched the exterior design. Judging from the dust, he guessed that it hadn't been inhabited for quite a while, but was still occasionally visited by cleaning staff to keep it habitable. There were no photos on the walls or furniture to indicate who might own the house, but Tom eventually found the office on the second floor. The entry doors were equipped with an electronic deadbolt that was held open by an electromagnet, causing it to automatically seal the room when the power cut out, but Tom was able to bypass it easily with a conjured portal.
Inside, several family pictures hung together in a cluster on one wall, and below them on a storage cabinet rested one of those sets of carved letters that could be set up to form a message as decoration, this one styled like a Scrabble set. The message read "The worst memories teach the best lessons."
Tom raised an eyebrow at that, then studied the pictures. In one stood a man and woman who were clearly husband and wife. They were smiling at the camera, but there was something cold about their smiles. Their eyes weren't crinkled properly for genuine mirth. They looked calculating and hard.
The next picture showed four kids standing together with the same husband and wife. The sole girl was the eldest of them, while the youngest boy looked no older than four, but there was something oddly forced about the smiles they directed at the camera that made them look like plastic dolls. The parents wore the same cold not-smiles of their first picture together, but here they showed more teeth, giving them an uncanny resemblance to sharks. Tom was fairly certain that the second youngest boy in the picture was him. He glanced down at the odd decorative message on the cabinet, then at the pictures once more. The other photos on the wall depicted the four siblings alone or with each other in pairs, and in all of them they wore the same fake smiles.
Tom felt his stomach sink as he contemplated the photos. If this was his family, it had not been a happy one. Suddenly, he found that he didn't want to be here anymore. He'd disabled all of the surveillance equipment, so he dropped his various stealth spells, took a portal back to his room in Kamar-Taj, and collapsed onto his bed, burying his face in his pillow.
Potter Redoubt, Scilly Isles, September 2003
They could have been a group of socialites recently returned from a night on the town. Nick Fury, Phil Coulson, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, and Phoenix sat at the hidden mansion's dining table, eating desserts and drinking tea or coffee as they studied a series of files to develop a plan to deal with HYDRA and its infestation of SHIELD. Their information had been provided by Alexander Pierce, who Phoenix had apparently mind-whammied into becoming a sleeper agent for the good guys a week earlier (and wasn't that an unsettling thought). The sweets came courtesy of Phoenix himself, who was apparently a skilled baker, and ranged from chocolate cookies to treacle tart. The wizard himself was at the head of the long table, sipping a cup of tea, a distinctly odd sight given the shadow that concealed his face.
Natasha and Fury had both awakened from their induced death comas the previous day and were in robust health, to much relief, and were now freely indulging in the sweets, all paranoia about Phoenix seemingly left in their beds. Fury's physician, Dr. Fine, had been sent back to SHIELD by portal after consenting to a tongue-tying spell that would keep him from cracking if he was subjected to an interrogation. For Clint, the glut of sugar was a welcome balm to the sting from the revelation that he'd essentially been working for the bad guys. He suspected that was Phoenix's intention.
Clint's life had never been easy. His father was an abusive alcoholic. His mother, though sweet and supportive, had given up on escaping to a better life, and his brother was… complicated. Growing up, he'd had to learn quickly how to read people and situations in order to avoid getting beaten, and he'd even gone so far as to steal one of his father's butcher knives and taught himself how to use it, just in case the worst happened.
Clint was fourteen when his father's drunk driving got him and Clint's mother killed. Less than a year later, he and his brother had fled from their atrocious foster home and gotten into an orphanage, where they'd stayed until they'd been picked up by a traveling circus. Clint had been sixteen when he'd taken up the bow, knives, and even the sword, his extraordinary natural talents honed to perfection by years of training. It wasn't an easy life; his trainers set brutally high expectations, and the earnings were meager, but he'd formed a warm camaraderie with his fellow circus runaways, and his trainers, Trickshot and Swordsman, had acted like real fathers to him and his brother, despite the difficulties of their lessons.
Clint was nineteen when he caught Swordsman in the act of embezzling from the circus, resulting in a vicious fight that ended in Swordsman's death and Clint's subsequent expulsion from the circus. His brother, who perceived Clint's actions as a betrayal, had done nothing to help him afterward. For the next two years, the only person Clint had been able to rely on was Trickshot, who eventually led him in joining another circus. Unfortunately, their new gig had been a front for a band of criminals who had been all too eager to exploit their abilities. And that was when Clint realized the truth; everything Trickshot and Swordsman had done for him, from the training to the parenting, had been for a single purpose.
They were killers, and they had wanted him to be just like them.
Still, while his trainers had taught him the skills of a remorseless murderer, they had failed to teach him the mindset of one. One fateful night later, Trickshot and his fellow lowlives were dead, and Clint was a freelance mercenary, knowing then that he was destined to spend the rest of his life killing. He didn't like it, but those were the skills he'd been given.
Even so, Clint had stuck to as strict a code of ethics as such a profession would allow; he only went after people who were genuine pieces of shit the world would be better off without, he took pains to keep innocents out of the crossfire, he never prolonged the suffering of his victims, and he never hurt kids. Ever. Hell, his displays of ferocity towards people who did harm kids was the primary source of his fearsome reputation in the criminal underworld in those days, rather than his strange habit of using a bow and arrow as his primary weapons.
Clint was twenty-two when SHIELD caught up to him. He could remember it as vividly as if it were yesterday when Phil Coulson had approached him one afternoon, informed him that he'd been caught, and offered him a job, complete with a therapist. That had been a turning point in his life. For six years now, Clint had worked for SHIELD as a spy and assassin, using his unique talents to execute missions that regular agents simply could not handle. Sometimes that meant killing a powerful crime lord protected by corrupt law enforcement, or dismantling a den of arms dealers who had access to particularly dangerous materiel.
Other times he was sent to deal with mutants, whether that meant rescuing them from a bad situation or confronting them as criminals. He recalled his first solo mission, which was to investigate a suspicious orphanage that turned out to be a front for human experimentation with the intent to create super soldiers. At the time, he'd been horrified by the depths people were willing to sink to in hopes of creating living superweapons, but comforted by the assurance that it was his job to protect people from such atrocities. His own talents, however gruesome, could be used to make the world a better place.
Now, however, that sense of accomplishment was in shambles. SHIELD wasn't just compromised. It was infested with Nazis. He'd effectively been working for HYDRA, the people who had escalated World War II into a meaningless bloodbath the like of which hadn't been seen before or since, the people who had terrorized the world for years even after the war had ended, the people whose atrocities had haunted Clint's dreams ever since his middle school history classes. Captain America, idolized by millions for the sacrifices he'd made to stop them, including Phil Coulson, had given his life for nothing. The revelation had made Clint feel sick and raw. For the third time in his life, he'd been betrayed. His only consolation was that the few people he'd genuinely trusted and liked as true friends were all in the same boat as him.
Nick, Phil, and Nat were all he really had now. He supposed he could still count on Laura, the cute nurse he'd been dating for the last few months, but their relationship was too fresh for him to risk it by dragging her into this mess. There was Phoenix as well, but Clint wasn't pretentious enough to think that he and the wizard were friends by any stretch. Absently he took a bite of treacle tart as he scanned the document laid out before him, which listed the names and secret ranks of HYDRA's sleeper agents. Some, like Jasper Sitwell, came as no surprise. Others, like Phil's old friend John Garrett, felt like a slap in the face.
Clint opened his mouth to remark on this, but was beaten to the punch by Natasha. Her hair was still dyed blonde, which didn't really suit her in his opinion. "So, this whole time we've been working for the bad guys," she said, her voice flat, cold, and grim.
"I wouldn't go that far," Fury started, only to be interrupted by Phoenix.
"Really? Because I would. Everything I've seen so far indicates that HYDRA has been hidden inside SHIELD almost since the beginning, thanks to the idiots who gave the green light for Operation Paperclip, and they've been feeding off it like a parasite ever since. How much of what you were doing was truly in defense of the world, and how much was part of HYDRA's plans?"
Fury winced. Phoenix continued mercilessly. "I've seen this sort of thing before, you know. Letting your enemies go after you've caught them never ends well."
"They weren't let go, they were recruited," Fury tried again, but Phoenix was not appeased.
"It comes to the same thing, though, doesn't it? Even if they were stuck working for SHIELD, they still had enough autonomy to accomplish all of this," he swept a hand over the files laid out on the table in front of him. "And you know how they were able to keep it hidden for so long? Because let me tell you, there's only so much that you can cover up by assassinating people who know too much."
"Compartmentalization," Clint said quietly. In SHIELD, information was always kept on a need-to-know basis. Everyone was expected to be content with the bare minimum of intelligence necessary to accomplish the mission. You couldn't betray too many people or leak too much sensitive info if you knew next to nothing about a given situation beyond the superficial. It also meant that it was difficult to judge the ethics of a mission before embarking on it or check up on victims and persons of interest afterwards.
"Exactly," Phoenix said. "I understand the need to keep sensitive information from spreading, but there is such a thing as being too secretive." He paused, then allowed a hint of anger to creep into his voice. "And a black budget? Really? You're already the most advanced intelligence and defense organization in the world, with resources that exceed the GDPs of entire countries. What the hell do you need a black budget for?"
Even Phil Coulson flinched at that one. SHIELD's black budget was devoted to funding its most secret projects, the sorts of activities that not even the governments that supported SHIELD were privy to. It was the source of their WMD stockpile and other assets that would be considered... controversial, if they were made public.
"Don't bother trying to justify any of this to me," Phoenix added when Coulson opened his mouth. "I used to operate under a system like that, and it got people on our side killed."
A tense silence followed this pronouncement. Natasha broke it. "Hate to say it, but I think he's right."
Clint's mouth fell open.
"When I joined SHIELD, I thought I was going straight, that I was doing the world a favor," she continued, her voice quavering with suppressed emotion. Clint realized with a chill that he couldn't tell whether it was rage or despair. "But it looks like all I really did was exchange the KGB for HYDRA. I thought I knew who's lies I was telling, but now I can't tell the difference."
Clint forced himself not to flinch. He had joined SHIELD for similar reasons. Hell, he was the one who had convinced her to join, since he'd thought it meant 'going straight,' as she put it. Instead of speaking to it directly, Clint looked hard at Fury and Coulson, letting his grim expression speak for itself.
Coulson, at least, looked somewhat contrite. "I, for one, have always believed in what SHIELD is supposed to be about," he said gently. "I've dedicated my life to this job and this organization. I'm not about to let HYDRA ruin it or the world any more than they already have."
"Neither am I," Clint agreed.
Fury nodded and said "Everyone in here is on the same side. We do what we do to keep people safe. On that, at least, we can all agree."
"The four of us are on the same side," Natasha amended, suddenly looking wary as she fixed her gaze on Phoenix. "But I'm not sure about him."
If Phoenix was offended by her insinuation, he showed no evidence of it in either his posture or the tone of his voice as he responded. "I've done nothing but help you, Agent Romanoff," he pointed out. "And besides, this is your mess, not mine. Any other sorcerer would hardly care."
Clint's stomach dropped. "So there are more of you?" he asked, knowing he wouldn't like the answer.
"Well, if by 'more of you' you mean more wizards, then yes. Magic takes just as much study and practice as any other discipline, if not more. It would never have developed as much as it has without many generations of practitioners to hone it." Phoenix stood up. "Since we're all supposed to be honest with each other, I'll give you the same information I gave your bosses over there when I first met them."
Phoenix conjured a wisp of golden flame from his hand and made it dance around with twitches of his fingers, fashioning it into a serpent that slithered around his body without burning him or producing even a hint of smoke. The flames seemed to shimmer and began changing color, going to white to blue to green to violet to a constantly shifting rainbow. It was quite beautiful, and yet it was also difficult to look at due to its sheer brightness. Oddly, it emitted no heat. If anything, it seemed to radiate cold, as if it were sucking the warmth out of the air to fuel itself.
"Magic is not as dissimilar from science as most people think. It has rules and limits that must be respected, and you can experiment with it to learn new things. The difference is that while traditional science is about understanding and working within the laws of physics, magic is about changing physics, rewriting reality to suit your own needs. It's not like you can just wave your hands in the air, say a few funny words, and make stuff happen. You need to be able to harness energy from an appropriate source and combine it with the right... formula, if you will, of words, energy, and intent, and you have to understand exactly what it is you're doing in order to maintain control of whatever effect you're aiming for. The sorcerers of antiquity called these formulas spells, but if that offends your modern sensibilities you can call it a program, I suppose. The source code that shapes reality."
The serpent of rainbow fire slithered off of Phoenix's hand and into the air, where it looped around itself, hissed, and transformed into a ring of silvery liquid, like mercury, which then molded itself into a metallic bird, an owl of some sort, that flew around the room and actually hooted before alighting on the back of an empty chair, where it dissolved into a cloud of glittering dust and glowing blue vapor that sparkled and vanished.
Clint raised a hand with exaggerated timidness, like a child in a middle school science class conducted by a particularly prickly teacher. "Uh, professor, what kind of energy are you talking about, exactly? Where do you find a power source that can rewrite the laws of physics?" he asked, genuinely curious.
Phoenix shrugged. "There's a lot more to reality than what your senses can perceive. There are multiple layers and dimensions beyond the three dimensional space that we experience. The Astral Plane, the Mirror Dimension, hyperspace, and so on."
"I'm sorry, hyperspace?" Natasha interjected. "What is this, Star Wars?"
"Excuse me?" Phoenix asked in evident confusion. "What does Star Wars have to do with hyperspace?"
Everyone stared at him.
"What?" the wizard said, a touch defensively. "I'm not exactly in touch with popular culture."
"You said 'meep meep' when we first met, like Roadrunner," Clint said, incredulous.
"I wasn't always out of touch… Look, can we get back on topic? Do you want me to finish explaining magic or not?"
No one answered him, which he took as a cue to continue. "In addition to harnessing power native to our own reality and its many layers, sorcerers can learn to draw power from other parts of the multiverse, and sometimes directly from extradimensional entities."
"Multiverse?" Natasha asked, sounding skeptical. "Explaining magic away as a kind of science is one thing, but parallel worlds are a theory."
"Who knows more about how the world works, Agent Romanoff? The scientist who only understands how to work within its laws, or the sorcerer who knows how to change or circumvent those laws?"
She hesitated, then nodded. "Ok, fine. The multiverse is apparently a thing."
In an effort to keep himself from freaking out at this revelation, Clint took a slightly oversized bite of treacle tart. As he swallowed, Phoenix made a few more gestures with his hands, which created a swirl of faintly glowing vapor that drifted over the dining table and fashioned itself into a beautifully detailed holographic representation of the Earth, set against a nebulous expanse of black space.
"People didn't start studying magic just because it would improve their lives," Phoenix continued. "They did it because magic is our best and most reliable defense against extradimensional threats. Our universe is just one of an infinite number that all exist alongside one another." To illustrate his point, Phoenix manipulated the image of the Earth, causing it to shrink and pulling in new images until it was replaced by a representation of the Milky Way galaxy, which in turn shrank to reveal the multitudes of other galaxies surrounding it. The shrinking continued until what was clearly meant to be a representation of the entire universe was visible.
"They group up together in a cluster that forms a multiverse, which is in turn one of an infinite number of multiverses, sometimes referred to as the omniverse," Phoenix continued. The representation of the universe shrank into a point of white light the size of a period. More pinpricks of light appeared around it, each identical to the others. "Now, when you have an infinitely vast reality, it's inevitable that some portions of that reality will develop different physical laws than others, with varied layers and aspects. Some of the worlds that comprise the multiverse are almost identical, while others are completely alien to one another."
The representation of the multiverse shifted. Some of the period-sized points of light that represented individual universes grew larger and changed color. The locations of the globes changed, and the countless realities depicted within arranged themselves into patterns, forming webs and clusters. Many of the represented universes now ranged from the size of a fingernail to bigger than the globe that sat on the teacher's desk in Clint's fourth grade classroom. White, period-sized worlds were still the most common, but every imaginable color of the rainbow was present, and many of the larger spheres glowed in a medley of shifting colors.
Phoenix indicated a grouping of larger, multicolored worlds. "The larger an alternate universe grows, the weaker the barriers isolating it become, and the stranger its native laws grow. Alien realities of sufficient size tend to develop extraordinary, strange, and powerful lifeforms and cosmic entities, capable of harnessing the unique energies of their homeworlds or drawing power from abstract concepts like servitude, honor, or malice. These entities vary drastically in power and disposition. Some are little more than insects, some can eat planets, and some are living avatars of their own universe. Some are benign, some are indifferent, and some are hostile. Werewolves, vampires, demons, mythological monsters, they're almost always either visitors from extradimensional worlds or the spawn of interdimensional entities.
"Shuma-Gorath, Belasco, Chthon, Mephisto, Dormammu… These are entities so powerful that their mere presence can rewrite or destroy the fabric of reality in a universe other than their own, and they take advantage of their power to spread their influence wherever they can. Mephisto likes to trick his victims into making deals that allow him to steal their souls, Chthon thinks reality is a toy for him to play with according to his whims, and the less is said about Shuma-Gorath, the better. It's the duty of the Masters of the Mystic Arts to protect the Earth from the threat posed by such entities and their offspring."
Phoenix changed the hologram back to an image of Earth. As it revolved, a series of sparkling orange gold lines materialized around it, tracing themselves into a trio of gigantic mandalas, each with a different symbol at its heart, which were connected by more lines of fiery light to form a hollow sphere that encased the planet like a cage.
"This barrier is created and sustained by three Sanctums, which are repositories of magical power built nearly 10,000 years ago by Agamotto, the first Sorcerer Supreme. Since his death, they have been maintained, reinforced, and protected by the Masters of the Mystic Arts," he explained. "The barrier protects Earth, and by extension the rest of the universe, from transdimensional incursions. Extradimensional entities beyond a certain power level cannot pass through it, no matter how hard they try.
"While the barrier protects us form the worst the multiverse can throw at us, lesser demons and monsters can still occasionally slip through. It's kind of like how a fishing net can only catch fish of sufficiently large size, while smaller ones can still slip through. Some of these transdimensional small fry are harmless, but just as many are malicious. They prey on local populations to satisfy their cruel and unusual appetites, and if they answer to a master, they will attempt to enact an agenda of some sort, usually with the end goal of destroying the Sanctums so that the barrier will go down and grant an entity too powerful to defeat unrestricted access to our world. The Sanctums protect the world, and the sorcerers protect the Sanctums."
As Phoenix paused again to take a breath, Clint interjected with another question. "What exactly do you mean by Sorcerer Supreme?"
"The Sorcerer Supreme is the leader and the champion of the Masters of the Mystic Arts," Phoenix replied evenly. "The title is given to the most powerful, knowledgeable, and tactically minded sorcerer alive, because whoever holds it is the most important line of defense against the most potent threats to the Sanctums. They are also responsible for guiding the training of new sorcerers between insurrections by hostile entities and policing sorcerers who misuse magic."
"You're not the Sorcerer Supreme," Natasha said without making it sound like a question.
"Definitely not," Phoenix confirmed. "The current Sorcerer Supreme has been my mentor for the last few years, though. She's a Celtic woman known only as the Ancient One, and she's held the title for the last 700 or so years. She's been around for so long and devoted so much of her life to her duty that she can't even remember her own name or exactly when she was born."
Clint whistled. "How many times would you estimate she's saved the world?" he asked.
Phoenix thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. "I can't say for certain, but there's generally one major insurrection by an extradimensional entity every decade or so, and plenty of smaller ones in between. The very worst attacks always have particularly nasty aftereffects, though. The Black Death, for example,was a parting gift from Dormammu when the Ancient One's predecessor defeated his insurrection in the fourteenth century. Make of that what you will."
Fury scowled. "You know, that was a much more polished explanation than the one you gave us," he complained.
Phoenix shrugged as he retook his seat. "That was the first time I ever had to explain this stuff to someone unfamiliar with it, and details like that weren't exactly necessary for getting the point across. You know what they say, practice makes perfect."
"I still don't get one thing," Clint said. "Why are you sorcerers so determined to stay hidden? And what made you decide to reveal yourselves?"
Phoenix sighed. "Look, one thing you have to understand is that the sorcerers haven't decided to reveal themselves collectively," he said. "I have the blessing of the Ancient One to liaise with you, and am doing so of my own initiative. I highly doubt you'll ever meet her or any of her other disciples. As for why we choose to hide, well, there are several reasons.
"First and foremost is the fact that our knowledge of magic and the multiverse is dangerous . The ability to learn the mystic arts is a lot like the ability to learn to play the piano. Everyone can learn it to some degree, but very few can become proficient, let alone true masters. Unlike musical talent, mystical talent can be used to literally reshape reality. You can't go around giving that kind of power to every single potential trainee who might want to learn. Think of what could happen if knowledge of magic fell into the hands of HYDRA, or the KGB, or some random psycho with an agenda. Keeping the existence of magic a secret allows us to control who learns it. We can't guarantee that every sorcerer out there will turn out alright, but this way we can minimize the chances of corruption and perform damage control if something terrible happens.
"Second, the world has not been kind to magic users over the centuries. When the mundane population realized that they couldn't control magic users or force them to share their knowledge, they responded with hatred, superstition, and violence, most often directed at people who were completely innocent. The Salem Witch Trials, for example. Nowadays, governments and intelligence organizations have a nasty habit of interfering in matters that are none of their business. The last thing we sorcerers need are nosy government agents and military leaders who know nothing about us or our job butting into our affairs and acting like they're in charge."
At the last sentence, Phoenix looked pointedly at Fury, who narrowed his one eye but nodded in reluctant agreement. Clint was no expert on the internal politics of SHIELD, preferring to focus on doing his job, but Fury's clashes with the World Security Council were legendary. Everyone knew that if the Council had their way, the vast majority of enhanced individuals that SHIELD dealt with would be dead or imprisoned. Clint suddenly had a nasty feeling that HYDRA was a major influence on their attitude.
"Third," Phoenix continued, "I hate to say it, but the sorcerers are a touch arrogant. It's subtle enough that even the Ancient One isn't always aware of it, but it's there. The plain and simple fact is that the mundane world is virtually helpless against magic and magical entities, and the sorcerers know it. They're so hyper aware of it that they tend to treat non-magical people like… well, like children. We're so much more powerful and know so much more about how the universe works that we subconsciously forget that we're ultimately still just as human as the masses we're charged with protecting. We tend to regard those under our protection the way most people think of their pets; cherished, but inferior. Even I'm guilty of that at times."
"Well, thank you for admitting it. I never would have guessed," Fury remarked dryly.
Coulson gave him a look of minor reproach. "They've been around doing what they do since the dawn of human civilization. We call ourselves the best of the best at what we do, yet we had absolutely no idea that magic was real until it was explained to us like we're toddlers. Of course they're not impressed by us," He inclined his head towards Phoenix, inviting him to continue.
Phoenix continued his explanation. "Since the sorcerers are so focused on the mystical side of things and dismissive of more mundane problems, they only pay minimal attention to political issues and wars. They keep an eye on world leaders to make sure none of them have been possessed by demons, but little else."
"Ok, time out," Clint cut in. "Demonic possession is a thing?"
"Yes," Phoenix said slowly, as if he were speaking to a child. "An infinite multiverse inevitably results in infinite dangers. All the myths are at least partially true, you know. The last thing we need is a demon possessing the president of the United States and starting a nuclear war."
Clint sat back in his chair, stunned. Magic? The multiverse? Demons? Myths? Wizards ? How was this his life now? He looked at Fury. "This is a joke, right?" he half pleaded.
Fury shook his head. "Unfortunately not. Unless you want to get sent on a trip through the multiverse at a million miles an hour, I suggest you get used to it."
"Excuse me?" Natasha said.
Phoenix cleared his throat. "Look, I understand that this all sounds crazy. I had a similar reaction the first time I found out about magic. I thought I was dreaming, or that I'd gone insane, but it was all real. I promise I'm telling you the truth."
Natasha sighed. "I suppose you are," she, sounding weary and resigned.
"Any other questions?" Phoenix asked. Heads shook.
"Now that we've covered the magic stuff," Phil cut in, "can we get down to the important part? You know, stopping the bad guys?"
No one argued.
As they plotted HYDRA's downfall, Clint paid special attention to Phoenix and his contributions to the discussion. It was difficult to gauge the wizard's mood and mannerisms, what with his shadowed face, the odd flatness of his voice that made his accent indiscernible, and all that, but people didn't call Clint "Hawkeye" for nothing, and he could tell that the wizard was more agitated and less confident than he let on.
Clint supposed that even magic users had to have their limits, though he couldn't imagine what they were if this Ancient One had spent centuries protecting the world from reality destroying monsters. On the one hand, he felt rather insulted that wizards were so dismissive of regular people. On the other hand, they had good reason to be dismissive, considering the power they seemed to command and the responsibilities that apparently came with it. He did not envy whoever had the job of keeping the president from getting possessed by a demon eager to start a nuclear war.
At one point, the discussion turned to the Winter Soldier.
"When I, er, raided Pierce's mind, I learned who the Winter Soldier is under his mask and goggles, along with a number of other nasty secrets. I'm still processing a lot of it, but this secret in particular is a priority," Phoenix said.
There was something about the way he said it that piqued Clint's interest, and not just because the Winter Soldier had been an infamous ghost story within the intelligence community. "Aside from the obvious, why?" he asked.
"Let's just say he didn't volunteer to become a super assassin," Phoenix said grimly. "He's just as much a victim as the people he's killed, but if we rescue him, he can recover from what HYDRA did to his mind."
"Really?" Fury said flatly. "And who exactly is he, behind that mask?"
Phoenix hesitated, then sighed. "His name is James Buchanan Barnes."
Phil stiffened, his eyes widened, and his jaw clenched, and Clint could scarcely blame him. Clint had gone through a long and intense "Captain America phase" as a kid, but Phil downright idolized the super soldier, to the point that some of SHIELD's more foolish agents had made the mistake of asking him if he had a crush. Both of them knew that James "Bucky" Barnes had been Steve Rogers's closest friend since childhood and had been killed in action shortly prior to the Captain's own demise. Only, Barnes had apparently survived his infamous fall from a mountainside train and been found by the worst possible rescuers.
"I know," Phoenix said, glancing in Phil's direction. "Apparently, most members of HYDRA itself don't know about him, but many of the ones that do think it's funny ." At the last word, smoke curled from his cloak.
"Why does that not surprise me," Natasha muttered darkly.
"Barnes was subjected to a version of the Super Soldier Serum, which is partly why he's so deadly, and why HYDRA is able to keep him frozen in stasis in a bunker in Siberia between missions," Phoenix continued.
"I assume," Fury said, "that you're going to mount a rescue?"
"Yes," Phoenix confirmed, "but I wanted to make sure we're all on the same page first. I can't keep recklessly tearing off to save people like I used to. It never ends well."
Clint knew there had to be a story behind that statement, but was wise enough not to ask. Instead he said "Do you want back up?"
"I won't really need help getting Barnes out, but I'm not the best with technology, and we'll need to retrieve whatever files they have. I could just extract the information from someone's mind, but it would be better to just copy their data directly. You're welcome to come along and help with that if you want."
"I'll go," Natasha said. "I'm the only field agent we have who doesn't need an alibi." It was true. Phil had craftily used his influence at SHIELD to cover up his and Clint's disappearances the previous week, but now they were relying on Phoenix's illusion magic and the significant time difference between Washington D.C. and the Redoubt in the Scilly Isles to deceive SHIELD into believing they were sound asleep in their quarters at the Triskelion. Such tricks wouldn't be necessary for Natasha or Fury to act against HYDRA, since both of them were trained to skillfully vanish into the masses of society, but the former's talents were better suited to field work than the latter, who functioned these days as a coordinator, organizer, and commander.
"Thank you," Phoenix said. "We'll go tomorrow afternoon. I'll tell you the details in the morning."
"Can you actually help Barnes recover from whatever they did to make him their assassin?" Fury asked.
"I'm not sure," Phoenix admitted. "But there is someone who definitely can, if I can get in contact with them."
"Any way we can help with that?" This from Phil.
Phoenix answered in the negative. "This particular secret isn't mine to tell. But I have a feeling you'll find out either way, and sooner than you think. Either way, the less time Barnes spends in HYDRA custody, the better."
"Agreed," said Fury.
The discussion meandered on to the matter of the HYDRA academy, where HYDRA agents sent their kids to be indoctrinated into the organization's horrid ideology. Natasha had stiffened when that came up, and everyone, even Phoenix, who barely knew her, had watched her nervously throughout the discussion. Natasha had spent most of her life under the control of the Red Room, which indoctrinated young girls into becoming assassins for the KGB, and she made no secret of her visceral hatred of organizations that trained and used child soldiers. However, she and her fellow Black Widows had been kidnapped by the Red Room, whereas HYDRA agents willingly subjected their own children to the same kinds of horrors she had endured. Clint didn't know exactly what was going through her mind, but he could make some very good guesses, and they weren't pleasant.
By the time the meeting was concluded, everyone looked exhausted and irritable. As everyone got to their feet, Phoenix produced a briefcase and four cell phones out of thin air. He passed the phones out to the SHIELD agents and the briefcase to Fury without actually touching any of them. "A more reliable method of communication," he explained.
"It's not easy mixing magic and technology. Tech is meant to work within the laws of physics. It relies on the rules of the universe remaining constant, but magic is all about changing the laws of physics. I can break computers just by looking at them funny, but I managed to make these," he indicated the cell phones, "so that we can reliably stay in touch. They're all enchanted against theft, eavesdropping, and so on, and that briefcase has enough for every SHIELD loyalist you can get in touch with. The four I've given you also include a reusable portkey."
"A what now?" Phil asked, looking up from his own phone, which he'd been inspecting with great interest.
"Portkeys are objects enchanted to teleport themselves and whoever is touching them to a set destination when certain conditions are met, usually at specific times. I enchanted these to transport you to this house whenever you open that app that looks like a triangular eye, just in case you need to make a run for it."
Clint looked down, and sure enough, there was an application on the homescreen decorated with an icon that resembled a triangular eye. "Handy," he said appreciatively.
"Any health and safety issues with these portkeys?" Phil asked.
Phoenix shrugged. "Well, portkey travel is physically uncomfortable, as in 'you're likely to fall over or throw up on arrival until you get used to it' uncomfortable, but still, dead useful."
"Got experience with that?" Natasha asked as Clint regarded the triangular eye app with sudden trepidation.
Phoenix gave a noncommittal shrug. Oh, Clint had to find a way to get Phoenix to tell him the story behind that.
…
The Ancient One casually leaned to her right, allowing the whiplike black tentacle of the monster to zip past her harmlessly. Snapping her left arm upward, she tossed a war fan composed of magical sparks out at the appendage, neatly severing it. As the stump of tentacle retreated back to the body of the creature, she summoned loops of magical energy around her wrists and clapped both hands together, generated an invisible shockwave that sent the monster flying back into the Mirror Dimenion's version of the facade of the Wakandan royal palace. As it landed, her thrown war fan curved through the air, spinning like a boomerang and slicing off another four tentacles. The creature's jaws parted along four seams as it howled in pain and outrage, yet even as its deep, echoing cries crashed over the Ancient One's ears its tentacles began to regenerate.
The monster was the size of a T. Rex, with a vaguely feline body, purplish black skin, a long, triangular muzzle, three poisonous yellow eyes, and a dozen long, thin tentacles sprouting from its back. The Ancient One had been forced to use the Time Stone to erase the damage the monster had done to the Wakandan capital city before dragging it into the Mirror Dimension, and even two hours later it was putting up quite the fight, to the point that the Ancient One was grudgingly impressed by its fortitude.
She was certain she could defeat it with basic spells if she really wanted to, for she had noticed that regenerating from its injuries caused the monster to shrink; at the start of the battle it had been the size of a small skyscraper, and if she kept slicing it apart it would eventually dissolve, but she had other places she needed to be and other things to do. As the monster prepared to charge her yet again, she brought her hands together in a seal and intoned within her own mind By the Images of Ikkon! Instantly dozens of identical copies of her arms sprouted from her back, and with synchronized, circular sweeps of all of those arms, she split into hundreds of identical clones.
Self-duplication spells were always tricky and psychedelic to use, since the caster had to be able to utilize the senses of their duplicates in order to control them properly, and creating so many at once could drive all but the most powerful sorcerers into unconsciousness from the stress on their minds.
The real Ancient One directed her clones to surround the monster and bind it with hundreds of eldritch whips. As it struggled against the sparking, fiery tendrils, she focused her mental awareness into her sling ring and traced a complicated, donut shaped magic sigil in the air between her and the monster. When the sigil was complete, the Ancient One anchored her sling ring onto it and used the gateway to fill the gap in the donut, combining the enchanted item with her spell as she opened a portal into a dimension filled with nothing but a substance resembling solar plasma.
Instantly a stream of molten blue energy gushed out of the portal, like a hull breach in a submarine, yet the spell sigil on which the portal had been anchored kept it focused into a tight beam, like a giant laser, destroying only that which it directly touched. It struck the monster full in the face, and three seconds later, all that was left was a great sheet of ash spread out across the ground and the palace facade in a starburst pattern, a patch of melted, bubbling earth ringed in blue fire at its center.
The Ancient One dissipated her army of duplicates and allowed the last sparkling remnants of her spells to dissolve. With a gesture of her left hand, she rewove the Mirror Dimension around the site of the battle, enveloping the burned and smashed remnants of buildings, raised walkways, and open air markets in fractals that shrunk until everything they encompassed was erased, and the reflection of the city was as smooth as the real thing. It would have eventually happened on its own, since the Mirror Dimension naturally reflected the real world, but the Ancient One had a centuries long habit of cleaning up after herself.
Once she was satisfied that everything was back to normal, she opened an exit portal and passed into the jungles outside the Golden City and took a moment to project herself into the astral plane. She swooped around the Golden City, searching for signs of the original rampage that she'd failed to erase with the Time Stone. Finding none, she returned to her body and opened a portal to Kamar-Taj. When she arrived, she composed a memo outlining the events of her trip, including a description of the monster she'd fought, and sent it to the library. Then she returned the Eye of Agamotto to its pedestal before heading back to her chambers.
...