"We have no idea what they're planning," Max said, staring at the ceiling as he lay on the chair he had made.
"They're coming for us," Firehair said from across the room. "Aren't they?"
"Almost certainly."
"Then let them come." She said it simply. "We defeat them, and then we make them talk."
Max laughed. "Let's hope it goes that cleanly."
"It won't," she said. "But we'll win anyway."
He couldn't argue with that.
It had been several days since they had found Reed in Egypt. Several days of discussions and theorizing. The barrier project was close to completion. Months away at most. And Agamotto was certain that as it neared completion, Mephisto, or whatever collection of interdimensional threats had been watching and waiting, would make a move. The window was closing, and they all knew it.
If the invasion came, Max had a plan to fight it and make sure to save as many lives as he could. He had grown stronger in the last two decades. He could create constructs in the tens and hundreds of thousands now, detailed and functional and self-directing. He could reinforce the Avengers with this army of constructs. It took a lot out of him, which Jade had theorized was because his body had a limit to how much energy it could channel.
A sound came from down the hall.
Aurora had woken up.
Firehair left and then returned with their daughter, Aurora, settled against her shoulder.
She saw Max.
Her entire face changed.
"Hi, baby," Max said.
Aurora made a sound of considerable enthusiasm.
"You missed something yesterday," Firehair said, a small smile at the corner of her mouth.
Max sat up slightly. "What?" He paused. He had already missed her first steps when he was on Xandar a month ago.
"Watch."
She crouched slightly, settling Aurora on her feet, steadying her with both hands.
"Go on," Firehair said softly. "Show him."
Aurora considered this for a moment with great seriousness.
Then she lifted off the ground.
It was a lurch and a wobble and a determined, slightly alarming trajectory that went approximately forty degrees off from where she was probably aiming, her small arms out at her sides, her expression one of profound concentration.
She crossed the room in three seconds and hit Max squarely in the chest.
Max caught her on reflex.
"When," he said.
"Yesterday," Firehair said. "She just started doing it. I looked away for a moment and she was on the ceiling."
"She was on the ceiling."
"Yes."
Max looked down at Aurora, who was very pleased with herself, one fist wrapped around his finger.
How powerful is she? Max wondered.
We could run some tests, Jade offered helpfully. I have several ideas for how to test the range of her—
Maybe in a few years, Max thought back.
Reasonable, Jade replied.
Max looked at Aurora for a long moment. Her black hair. Her brilliant blue eyes.
"Alright," he said softly. "Show me again."
Aurora needed no further encouragement.
She pushed off his chest and launched herself back across the room, listing slightly to the left. Firehair caught her.
Max was already in the air.
He hovered at the center of the room, holding out his hands. Aurora saw him, recalibrated her trajectory with admirable intent, and flew directly at him again.
"A flying toddler won't be that easy to deal with," Max quipped.
"Don't remind me," Firehair responded as Aurora once again flew toward them both, giggling happily.
Max hoped she would remain this happy for the rest of her life.
He would make sure of it.
========
Kamar-Taj had never been so crowded.
Every corner of the Sanctuary held someone doing something. In the eastern courtyard, Tony and Reed had claimed a stone table where they were fixing Tony's armor. Tony had improvised in the Arctic and made a functional suit once more, and now, with Reed's help and also with some constructs Max had made, he was able to fully fix his suit.
Max walked over. "Looks like it's working."
Tony picked up the reactor which contained the suit and looked at it for a moment. Then he pressed it into his chest.
Liquid metal spread outward from the reactor in a smooth expanding wave, flowing across his torso, his shoulders, down his arms and legs, the faceplate sliding into place last. The suit assembled in under three seconds, seamless and complete, the repulsors humming to life at his palms.
Tony stood there in full armor.
"Oh yeah," he said, and the voice modulator gave the words a particular resonance. "I am back."
He launched himself straight up without further announcement, the repulsors firing cleanly, and shot into the sky above Kamar-Taj in a long arc, banking hard left, then right, testing the response.
"More advanced than the suit I saw his variant use," Reed said.
He looked to Max. "I've been wanting to talk to you."
"You found something," Max said.
"In my recordings of the invasion," Reed said. "I reviewed everything. Frame by frame. There was a moment, brief, between two of them, where they mentioned what their masters might be after, something about gaining access to a quarry." He paused. "Whatever Mephisto's ultimate goal is, it appears to be called the Quarry."
"A quarry," Max said aloud.
Jade. Anything?
A pause.
Nothing, Jade said. I have no record of anything called the Quarry in any material I have access to. You have no knowledge of it.
Shit, Max thought.
"Agamotto," Max said. "Has he found anything?"
"He's been consulting his most ancient texts since I told him," Reed said. "He hasn't come out yet."
A sound came from above. Tony was descending, slowing as he approached, landing with practiced ease on the far end of the courtyard. The faceplate slid up.
"She handles beautifully," Tony announced to no one in particular.
Reed glanced upward briefly, then back to Max. "The Phoenix did not come with you?"
"She's with our daughter," Max said.
Reed nodded slowly. "It's good that we have her on our side. The invaders have their own."
"That one," Max said, "doesn't compare to Firehair. I'm certain of that."
Reed was quiet for a moment.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"In the last few years I have observed many multiverses. Catalogued thousands of universes. Hundreds of variants of nearly every individual I've encountered." He paused. "I have never found a variant of you. The Mystery Spectrum you wield is, as its name suggests, genuinely mysterious. Its origin point is unknown to me."
"That's because I'm a multiversal constant," Max said. "There's only one of me across all of it. I'm special that way."
"Only one," Reed repeated. His eyes narrowed fractionally. Max could see it, the gears turning, something clicking into place behind that careful expression.
"Just me," Max said with a slight smile.
Reed said nothing for a moment.
"What?" Max asked.
Reed smiled. "Nothing. Just thinking."
Max was about to push on that when the main doors of the building opened and Agamotto walked out at a pace that was not quite running but was as close to it.
"Max." He saw him immediately across the courtyard. "Good. You are here."
The others were already moving toward them, drawn by Agamotto's voice.
"The veil between worlds is weakening," Agamotto said, not wasting words.
"The invasion is imminent."
"Where?" Max asked.
Agamotto produced a flat disc of golden light from his palm, expanding it into a map of the world, faint red points of light burning across it like embers. Three of them, spread across every continent.
"Here," he said, touching one.
The Carpathian Mountains, the coast of West Africa. He touched the last point. It sat directly over the Grand Canyon.
"We split up," Max said.
Nobody argued.
"Reed, you stay here." Max turned to him directly. "If anything breaches the Sanctuary, you hold it. Khenmet will back you up."
Reed and Khenmet nodded.
Tony, Azzuri, Nur, and Ghost would go to Africa. Fan Fei and Vnn would join Max in the Carpathian Mountains. Odin and Agamotto would go to the Grand Canyon, where Firehair would join them.
"Mephisto is coming, and he has been planning this for a long time. This is it. This is his moment. His final window before Agamotto's barrier goes up and this world becomes too difficult for him to breach."
"Whatever comes through those breaches today, whatever Mephisto sends, we have faced worse and we have won." Max's ring blazed to life, green light flooding the courtyard.
"So, Avengers, let's get to work."
Vnn roared. Ghost's skull ignited. Odin raised Mjolnir above his head and lightning cracked across the clear sky above Kamar-Taj.
Max looked at Agamotto.
"Motto. If you will."
Agamotto stepped forward and created portals.
The cold grey of the Carpathian range. The green heat of the African coast. The vast blue nothing above the Grand Canyon.
One by one, the Avengers stepped through.
.
.
.
Clea closed her eyes as she tried to locate Thor.
"Where are you" she muttered as she finally felt his presence on the other side of the world.
She was now stuck in the past.
Father would be here, she thought. Younger, well, younger relative to her. He was billions and billions of years old, after all. She could go find him—
And the first Avengers would be here as well. If she could find them—
A portal opened directly ahead of her.
Clea was immediately on her feet, magic crackling around her hands. She positioned herself defensively, reading the portal's magical signature before whoever came through could act.
Two figures stepped out.
Both she recognized immediately, though she had never met either of them in person.
One was Odin, younger and still possessing both eyes. He looked happier than the man she knew. The other was Agamotto himself, the legendary Sorcerer Supreme. Someone she had met only once, briefly, in the mystical plane. Now, standing before her, his mystical presence was staggering, like standing next to a sun.
Both of them were glaring at her.
"You," Agamotto said. "Servant of Dormammu."
Of course, Clea thought with a surge of exhausted frustration. Of course he senses my Faltinian heritage. The lord of the Dark Dimension was her uncle. Does he think—
"I believe there has been a—" Clea began.
"Enough," Agamotto said sharply, cutting her off. He held his head suddenly, as if struck by pain. "I know what you are planning…." "
"Are you related to Umar?" He studied her face with piercing intensity. "You look like her"
"The one that was after Max?" Odin said, sounding almost amused.
Ugh, do not remind me of that, Clea thought. The history between her mother and father was not something she liked to dwell on.
Agamotto was deadly serious, no humor in him at all. "I can feel the very fabric of reality weakening, and I find you here." His eyes narrowed. "I can feel Dormammu on you."
"Of course you can," Clea said carefully, keeping her hands visible, her energy present but not aggressive. "He is my uncle."
Agamotto's expression hardened immediately. His hands moved in complex patterns, golden energy forming with terrifying speed and precision. The Crimson Bands of Cyttorak shot toward her.
"Odin," Agamotto said without taking his eyes off Clea. "We need to banish her."
Clea was already moving. She countered the Crimson Bands with a Faltinian Dispersion Ward, green energy meeting gold, the two spells grinding against each other before her counter dissolved his binding completely.
"I am not an enemy!" Clea said urgently. "Listen to me. I can feel it too. Something is coming, and it is not from the Dark Dimension—"
"Do not lie to me!"
Agamotto attacked again, this time with the Seven Rings of Raggadorr, layered containment spells that came from multiple angles simultaneously.
Odin came in from the side, Mjolnir raised.
Clea spun and opened a portal directly in front of him. Odin went through it before he could stop himself, his momentum carrying him forward.
"What—" His voice disappeared as the portal closed.
She turned back to Agamotto, deflecting the Seven Rings with the Shields of the Seraphim, the counter-magic sending shockwaves across the canyon rim.
The duel erupted in full.
Agamotto was extraordinary. Everything she knew of him felt like an understatement. His spell construction was flawless, his magical intuition decades ahead of any sorcerer she had faced. He attacked with the Flames of the Faltine, ironic, and followed immediately with the Vapors of Valtorr, which tried to corrode her defenses from the inside.
Clea countered both. She answered with Bolts of Bedevilment, precise and targeted, meant to disrupt his concentration rather than harm him.
She did not want to hurt him. That complicated everything.
"I am not your enemy!" she said again, deflecting another attack. "I am from the future—"
"Dormammu's servants have told me many stories," Agamotto said, pressing forward relentlessly.
Odin returned and charged immediately, with considerably more fury than before.
Clea gestured quickly at the massive boulders along the canyon rim. Magic flowed from her hands, and the rocks moved, reshaping, growing, taking on scales and wings and teeth.
Stone dragons, three of them, erupted from the canyon rim and descended on Odin.
"HA!" Odin roared, and began fighting them with what sounded like genuine delight.
That bought her thirty seconds alone with Agamotto.
The battle continued, spell after counter-spell.
Agamotto conjured the Mirror Dimension, trying to trap her. Clea shattered it with a Faltinian Nova burst.
She tried the Winds of Watoomb to create distance. Agamotto anchored himself with the Crimson Bands and pulled himself toward her instead, closing the distance instantly.
"You cannot win this," he said, and for a moment Clea believed him.
"I am not trying to win!" she said desperately, blocking a Sorcerer's Bolt that would have ended the fight right there. "Just stop and listen to me!"
"I have given many chances to Dormammu's servants before," Agamotto said, his voice absolute. "I will not make that mistake again. I am so close to my life's work being finished. I cannot allow you, or your uncle, or any other malevolent force to disrupt it. Not now. Not when I am this close."
"You were successful!" she said loudly, putting everything she had into her voice. "The barrier, you finished it! I know because I am from the future!"
Odin finished with the dragons, brushing stone dust from his armor with a satisfied grunt, and began walking toward them.
Clea immediately conjured ten copies of Odin himself, large and detailed, each one wielding a replica Mjolnir, each one charging at the Asgardian with full force.
"What is—" Odin's eyes widened. Then narrowed. Then lit up with something that looked disturbingly like excitement. "Ha! Come then! All of you!"
He launched himself at the copies with genuine enthusiasm.
But the effort of creating ten detailed constructs while simultaneously maintaining her defensive wards cost Clea exactly what Agamotto had been waiting for.
Her attention split.
His spell hit her before she even registered him casting it. Not a brute-force attack, but something far more sophisticated. Clea felt her magic weakening immediately. Not gone, but muffled, distant, like trying to speak through water.
Impressive, some part of her mind noted with genuine awe despite everything. This is Agamotto. The Agamotto. Of course.
"And now," Agamotto said, his voice carrying absolute finality, "you shall go back." His hands began weaving the banishment spell, a one-way door back to the Dark Dimension.
"Fuck," Clea said quietly.
"Do not try to resist. You know this will only hurt more then," Agamotto said, not unkindly.
"You can't—" Clea started.
Agamotto did not respond.
Odin was finishing with the copies now.
Clea concentrated.
Not on her magic, but on something else entirely.
On her right hand. On the ring that appeared there, something her father had insisted she always carry as an emergency measure.
Agamotto stopped.
"Impossible," he said, staring at it.
Clea only smiled as green energy flooded through her. She formed a massive hand construct and struck Agamotto with it.
Then she turned to Odin, who was almost upon her, and formed a giant mallet that connected with the Asgardian's chest and sent him stumbling backward.
She flew upward, a green aura wrapping around her.
Warning, the ring's AI spoke in her mind. Unable to detect Central Power Battery. Ring cannot recharge. Current charge: twenty percent remaining.
Oh fuck, Clea thought. Why do I always forget to charge this thing?
She created large dragon constructs and other creatures that dove toward Agamotto and Odin.
Agamotto raised his hands.
"I believe you," he said.
Clea blinked. "Oh. Now you do."
"Motto," Odin said, still eyeing the ring. "What are you doing? She has Max's ring."
"No, Odin," Agamotto said slowly, his eyes never leaving Clea. "Not Max's ring. A ring. From the same source, perhaps, but—" He studied her. "She claims to be from the future." He paused. "The ring has convinced me, and other factors as well."
"Finally," Clea said, beginning to descend.
There was an uncomfortable silence between them for a minute as they stood there.
"So. From the future," Odin said, studying her with new eyes.
"Yes," Clea said. "And there was someone else with me as well. Thor. He should be—"
Agamotto opened his mouth to respond.
Then stopped.
Clea felt it at the same moment. Something pressing against the skin of reality like a hand pushing through a membrane that was never meant to stretch that far.
Agamotto went rigid, his eyes flashing gold, his head tilting upward.
The sky split open.
Not in one place. In dozens. Crimson tears across the blue, each one bleeding demons into the air above the canyon, thousands of them pouring through in cascading waves, darkening the sky with their bodies. The sound hit a moment later, a wall of it, shrieking and rumbling.
"Well," Agamotto said, with extraordinary calm. "There it is."
Clea was already forming her hands into casting position when she saw it. A red portal, different from the others, opening on the canyon floor some distance away from them.
Two figures walked through it.
The first had broad shoulders, thick arms, long dark hair swept back from a bearded face. His eyes met Agamotto's and he grinned.
The second had blue skin, a smooth bald head, and a face that carried a small cruel smirk. In each hand he held a battleaxe that crackled and spat lightning the way Mjolnir did.
Clea recognized them both.
Two of the nine she, along with Stephen and Thor, had encountered.
"It's them," Odin said before Clea could.
===========
Thousands of miles away on the west coast of Africa, it was the same scene as it was in the Grand Canyon.
Tony hit a demon at full repulsor power and watched it disintegrate, already targeting the next three. Beside him, Azzuri moved through the horde with Gram blazing, cutting clean lines through anything that came within reach. Nur drove two of them into the earth with a gesture, matter responding to his will like clay. Ghost's hellfire swept a wide arc across the sky, clearing space.
Then a second portal opened on the beach below.
Three figures walked out.
Apocalypse stepping through the Iron Inquisitor beside him the Ghost Goblin flew out cackling.
"Of course they are here as well," Tony said flatly, looking at the Iron Inquisitor.
=========
In the Carpathian Mountains, Max had been building for three minutes straight.
The emerald army spread across the sky, some leaving to reinforce the other Avengers. Emerald soldiers modeled after space marines tore through the demons.
Fan Fei and Vnn, especially Vnn, had almost stopped the endless advance from the portals, Fan moving through them like water finding the path of least resistance, Vnn tearing through them with his bare hands and what appeared to be genuine enthusiasm.
Then a portal opened at the tree line.
The Black Skull stepped through first. Behind him came the Berserker, who charged ahead at Fan.
Max was about to engage them both when he received a bone-chilling message.
He flew away without even a moment's thought.
.
.
.
Okkara felt it the moment it began.
The invasion was unprecedented in scale, and his first instinct was the same as it had always been across the long millennia of his existence.
Protect.
He reached outward through the deep tectonic connections that had always allowed him to move, to shift, to carry himself and everything on him away from danger when danger came.
He could not move.
Something was holding him in place. Something had anchored him, deliberately. Whoever had done it understood exactly what he was and had planned for it specifically.
He held Aurora closer.
She had been sleeping when it started.
She was not sleeping anymore.
Her brilliant blue eyes were open, looking up at him with confusion. Her lower lip trembled. Even at one year old, the daughter of the Phoenix Force and the Green Lantern felt the wrongness pressing in.
She began to cry.
"Shhh," Okkara said softly. "I have you. You are safe."
He was wrong.
A red portal opened in the center of the room.
Two figures stepped through.
Victor von Doom came first, orange light moving around him, the Starheart in his chest and the ring on his finger, everything glowing in sickly amber.
Then the Dark Phoenix descended through the portal.
Slowly.
Cosmic fire burned around her in corrupted violet and black, a terrible mirror of Firehair's golden flames. She touched down without a sound, her eyes moving directly to the small figure in Okkara's arms.
Aurora cried harder.
The Dark Phoenix looked at her for a long moment.
Then she smiled.
"Be a dear," she said, and extended one hand toward the baby. "And hand over the child, will you?"