Doctor Strange's Cloak of Levitation occupied the centermost display case. Daisy circled it twice. Nothing. Not a flicker.
She sighed inwardly. Apparently I was never destined to be a cape hero. She turned to the other side of the room.
The Wand of Watoomb wasn't the towering staff you'd picture in a fantasy game—it was barely twelve inches (30 cm) long, with two short horn-like protrusions jutting from each end. Holding it probably felt less like wielding a weapon and more like gripping a dumbbell.
The wand ignored her too.
Moving on to the third cabinet, Daisy found what would one day become Baron Mordo's signature relic: the Staff of the Living Tribunal—an artifact whose name alone could make multiversal heavyweights flinch…
Classic case of false advertising. She had no idea how the Sorcerer Supremes came up with their weapon names. Did they just pull them out of thin air?
To Daisy, this "staff" looked about as impressive as the iron rod that Black Daniel had been swinging at her during the ambush. If this really was something the Living Tribunal had personally used, then Baron Mordo could probably one-shot the Ancient One and take out the whole universe on a lazy afternoon—no Infinity Gauntlet, no Infinity Stones required. Her distant cousin Thanos wouldn't even need to bother collecting stones. The Staff alone could carry him all the way to the Heart of the Universe without a single equipment swap.
She shook her head at the Sorcerer Supremes' naming department and moved on.
The Demon Eye—shaped like a telescope. The Cauldron of the Cosmos—shaped like a charcoal brazier. Both looked at her with absolute indifference.
The artifacts broadcast feelings she couldn't quite put into words, but her psychic awareness read them clearly enough: you're not wanted here.
"What's so great about knowing magic?" she muttered, and moved on.
Dismissal. Indifference. Rejection. Every single relic in this room had made its stance toward her perfectly clear.
Hm? She was already doing a final lap before heading downstairs when a faint, irregular sound caught her attention.
Daisy looked toward the far wall. Unlike every other artifact on display in its cabinet, this one hung directly on the stone—a heavy, weathered axe that looked like it had seen better centuries.
She glanced left and right, half-convinced someone was pranking her. What is this supposed to mean? Everyone else got cloaks, swords, and mystical eyes. She got an axe.
Axes were for dwarves. For barrel-chested brutes. That was her mental image of the weapon.
If it was truly meant for her, she'd take it—reluctantly. But right now the axe was only sort of interested, the way two people of a certain age might grudgingly consider marriage when every other option had run out. The enthusiasm was precisely zero.
That sat poorly with her. She had a feeling walking out with an axe would look deeply wrong on her. Which female hero or villain uses an axe? None that she could think of.
She knew this axe—the Axe of Angarruumus. By rights it should have been Doctor Strange's weapon; it was technically an astral weapon, limited in utility, mostly good for hacking away at demons and ghoulish things when you needed to play butcher. Daisy privately felt the axe clashed with the Long-Faced Doctor's aesthetic anyway, but it'd still look stranger in her hands than in his.
The axe's interest was weak, and it probably came loaded with some drawn-out trial quest. She gave the wall a little wave. Thanks. Pass.
Then another tremor pulled her attention.
Daisy turned. On the opposite side of the same wall, a rope—crimson as blood—was layered under multiple binding seals. It had clearly noticed her. Constrained by the seals, it could only manage small, restless oscillations, but the intent was unmistakable: look at me.
She took an involuntary step back. This one wasn't an artifact. It was something else entirely—a demonic artifact.
The Crimson Bands of Cyttorak.
From the same source as the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak—the gem that had turned an ordinary man into the Juggernaut. The Bands' practical function, as Daisy understood it, was brutally simple: throw them, bind your enemy, done.
The Sorcerer Supremes had reverse-engineered the principle into the famous spell of the same name. The physical Bands themselves had since been decommissioned and sealed here.
Cyttorak was a demon-god—part demon, part deity. Doctor Strange could draw on his power as a source, and by alignment he fell into a neutral category; he also never left his own dimension, which made him difficult to classify as a villain outright. But the word demon was right there in his resume, and that was enough for Daisy. She wasn't getting close. She took the stairs two at a time, pushed through the front door, and walked out of the New York Sanctum.
Back at her villa, it was already the small hours of the morning. Time inside the Mirror Dimension clearly moved at a different rate than the outside world. The chef had kept dinner warm. She ate, showered, and went to bed.
"You're late tonight." In the nameless space, Dark Phoenix had already been waiting a while. The two of them had been trading observations on capital plunder—a small fraction of the hostility between them had dissolved, at least from Daisy's side.
The moment she stepped into the space, her memories synchronized completely. Communication was seamless. But tonight Dark Phoenix finished her greeting and immediately frowned.
"What did you drag in with you? Something reeks." There was displeasure in her tone, as if blaming Daisy for contaminating her space.
Daisy looked down. Her stomach dropped. A deep crimson ribbon was coiled tightly around her leg—and even as she watched, it was working itself deeper, threading toward skin and soul alike.
"The Crimson Bands of Cyttorak? How did they follow me here? Have they been tailing me the whole time?"
A chill ran straight to the root of her soul. She felt genuinely stupid. She'd dispatched those small-time lackeys and gone home like a sensible person—all would have been fine. But no. She'd had to go browse relics.
She broke into a Cheshire Cat grin and laid on the flattery thick: "Big Sis Phoenix—we're pretty good friends by now, aren't we? Surely you know how to deal with something like this? You're the Phoenix."
"Hmph—" Dark Phoenix lifted her chin in lofty satisfaction. Every day she'd been subjected to the ideology of wealth plunder. Now, finally, she was back in territory she actually excelled in, and she was not shy about it.
"The Phoenix is capable of anything. This is a minor problem—it's not as though we're fighting Cyttorak himself." Dark Phoenix's palm ignited with roaring fire, and the already-scorching air climbed another thirty percent around her.
She made it sound casual. But neither the Dark Phoenix nor the White Phoenix could claim to represent that true omniversal Phoenix. Against a demonic force famous for its stubbornness, her Phoenix flames flared again and again—the black smoke burned away in one second and came crawling back from somewhere else in the next.
Dark Phoenix poured on more power, unleashing immeasurable annihilating fire in wave after relentless wave, scorching the Crimson Bands over and over.
The Bands seemed to register the threat. They abandoned Daisy and lunged for Dark Phoenix, wrapping her from head to foot with almost artistic thoroughness.
"Sacrilege. Let me show you what the Phoenix can do!" Dark Phoenix, now trussed up with considerable flair, thrashed furiously—but the harder she fought, the tighter the Bands pulled.
Her rage was absolute. Fire erupted from her hair, her hands, her entire body. She was going to burn this wretched rope to nothing.