Chapter 32: Antarctica

'I am just going outside and may be some time.'
The others nod, pretending not to know.
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.

He leaves them reading and begins to climb,
Goading his ghost into the howling snow;
He is just going outside and may be some time.

The tent recedes beneath its crust of rime
And frostbite is replaced by vertigo:
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.

Need we consider it some sort of crime,
This numb self-sacrifice of the weakest? No,
He is just going outside and may be some time—

In fact, for ever. Solitary enzyme,
Though the night yield no glimmer, there will glow,
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.

He takes leave of the earthly pantomime
Quietly, knowing it is time to go.
'I am just going outside and may be some time.'
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.

~"Antarctica", Derek Mahon

Wind hissed across the ice and rocks. The sun, perched at the horizon, played peek-a-boo from behind feathery clouds. The cold penetrated even through the layers and layers of winter gear, but only when the snow goggles around her eyes or the scarf across her nose and mouth shifted to expose a few millimeters of skin at her forehead or cheeks did Wanda realize how absurdly, devastatingly freezing it truly was.

And this was late spring in Antarctica.

They were on the ridge of an unnamed mountain in the Shackleton Range, heading toward the coordinates Vision had provided. Strange and Wong had recruited a few dozen other sorcerers to join the expedition. They all trudged up the hillside in silece.

Wanda was terrified. She knew what they were about to face more intimately than the sorcerers, having seen a world that had once been overrun by this being. And it was her job to destroy it. She couldn't help but question whether she was up to the task.

They crested the ridge and it came into view before them. She remembered Vision describing this to her. He had no idea what it was, but it hadn't even crossed his mind that it might be alive. It was huge, about the size of the mountain it perched on. It was a tangle of the faintly glowing lines that they were familiar with from fighting mind lice, a slight distortion of the colors and shapes of the landscape and sky behind it. The glow outlined tendrils, dots that might have been thousands of eyes, thousands upon thousands of thin filaments spreading from its body.

And it was surrounded by mind lice.

"Keep them away from Wanda, but otherwise don't worry about the smaller ones," Strange ordered the other sorcerers. "Once we take down the Source, the others will disappear."

He made it sound like such a sure thing.

Wong opened a portal that he and Wanda jumped through. They came out right beneath the Source. Close up, the sheer enormity of it took on new dimensions.

The rest of the sorcerers emerged around them and formed a defensive perimeter around Wanda, keeping the smaller mind lice and the Source's writhing tendrils away from her.

She wished she knew what to do. But she didn't.

All she could do was try.

Summoning her power, she began tearing into the gargantuan entity, attacking it the same way she'd destroyed the mind lice in previous battles.

With each blast, chunks and tendrils disintegrated, but it was no more than a papercut to this thing.

Make it smaller. Cut it with a thousand little cuts. Keep at it until it's gone, however long that takes.

But the Source was not about to wait passively as she tore it apart by papercuts. A bulge extended from the bulk of its body and burst apart into hundreds of tendrils that shot towards her. Wong opened a portal that swallowed up and cut off about half of them, but the rest engulfed Wanda, lifting her off the ground, away from her defenders.

Chaotic images flooded her mind.

The apartment building that was her childhood home collapsing around her as a bomb detonated.

The HYDRA lab where she and Pietro had lived during the experiments collapsing around her as the Avengers attacked.

The Avengers compound collapsing around her as Thanos attacked.

She fought through it, rejecting the images, pushing through the sense of pain, loss, and fear.

Summoning a fresh wave of energy, she blasted the tendrils surrounding her.

She had to stay sharp and focused; this being wanted to feast on her mind, but it was also entirely capable of destroying her body.

She could see the sorcerers below, fending off the mind lice. Doctor Strange levitated behind her, keeping out of reach of the Source's tendrils while using his powers to keep them away from her as much as he could. But only she could truly destroy this thing, once and for all. She had helped save the world before, from Ultron and from Thanos, but those times she'd been part of a team. This time she would be on her own. The only time she'd ever felt like that was when she destroyed the Mind Stone to try to stop Thanos, and she'd failed. They had eventually stopped Thanos, but that had only been through the deaths of Nat and Tony. And Pietro had died saving the world from Ultron.

Maybe saving the world always demanded a sacrifice. Maybe this time it had to be her.

With that thought, that acceptance, something flowed into her. Not a sense of peace, but a firm resolve that was calming. She didn't have to plan how to destroy this thing and survive. She wouldn't.

"No one follow me!" she shouted at the sorcerers, unsure if any of them could hear her, but pretty sure the warning was unnecessary anyway. She quietly added, "Forgive me, Vizh."

Enveloping herself in as much power as she could summon, she flew straight into the Source.