Ethan preferred important conversations to be direct and without preamble, viewing preamble as unnecessary uncertainty. He felt no uncertainty about this subject.
He found her in the garden after breakfast, approached, and said, "Tell me about Limbo."
Ilyana looked at him.
Her expression shifted—not with surprise, as she rarely surprised easily, but with the recognition that someone had asked the question they had anticipated sooner than expected.
She glanced at the garden wall, then turned back and began.
"I was seven when I was taken," she said. "A demon — a sorcerer named Belasco, who had claimed Limbo as his domain and used it as a base for his operations in other dimensions. He wanted me for the same reason powerful entities tend to want children with potential — as a vessel, as a conduit, as raw material for something larger than the child." Her voice carried no self-pity and no performance. She was reporting facts about a period of her life, the way a person reports facts about places they have lived. "He underestimated what I would become while I was there."
Ethan listened, allowing the silences to remain.
"Limbo is a pocket dimension," she continued. "The geography of it is — geological in a way that doesn't map cleanly onto Earth's geology. Red stone formations that have no Earth equivalent. An atmosphere that functions but doesn't match what you'd expect from the visible sky, which is impossible colors at impossible scales. The light sources are internal — the stone itself radiates in some areas, demon-worked structures in others." She paused. "It is not beautiful by any standard I grew up with. It is real in a way that most places are not, because it was shaped by consistent intentions over a very long time, and that consistency gives it a weight that newer places lack."
"Belasco's intentions," Ethan asked.
"Initially. And then mine." She looked at her hands briefly. "The demons that populate it — I won't call them residents because that implies a choice they didn't make, they were there before Belasco and before me — they respond to whoever holds the Soulsword. Not out of affection. Out of the structure of the dimension's rules, which are older than any individual who has tried to govern the place." She met his eyes. "They answer to me now. They have since I removed Belasco."
"How did you remove him?"
Ilyana considered whether to answer this in full and decided to. "Carefully," she said. Over the years. He was considerably more powerful than I was when I arrived. By the time I chose to act, the calculation had changed. Limbo itself had changed — absorbed enough of me that the dimension and I had become mutually dependent in a way that gave me leverage Belasco couldn't counter." She said this without particular pride. "I had help, some of the time. Mostly, I was patient."
"And then Stryker's people found you," Ethan said.
Her expression hardened briefly—not with grief or anger, but with the acknowledgment of significant irritation. "I manifested my teleportation ability when I was ready to leave Limbo on my own terms. The suppression devices they used were effective. The combination of the devices and the capture happened quickly enough that I had no counter available." She paused. "That was a significant frustration."
"I imagine," Ethan said.
"You visited the facility." "You saw the cells."
"I did,"
She nodded once, accepting this as complete understanding. "Can I ask you something in return?"
"Go ahead,"
"What do you actually want from Limbo?" she asked. "Not — I know you said you were curious, and I believe that. But what specifically draws you there?"
He thought about the accurate answer. "The Ancient One told me I have no magical affinity," he said. "My physiology is incompatible with it. But Limbo is a dimension that operates on principles I don't have good frameworks for, and I find things I don't have good frameworks for interesting." He paused. "Also, you've been telling me about it for a week without describing everything, and the parts you haven't described are the parts I most want to see."
Ilyana regarded him with her usual evaluative expression, then seemed to decide he had given the right answer.
"Tomorrow then," she said. "We go tomorrow."
---
He took a quiet hour in the afternoon to consider the comparison he had postponed.
Thor Odinson. The Asgardian — the one who would, in whatever timeline this world was moving toward, arrive on Earth with the hammer and the thunder and the specific combination of genuine heroism and the particular self-assurance of someone who had been raised to be the most powerful person in any room.
Given his current power level, Ethan assessed the situation honestly rather than optimistically.
In a direct confrontation, he believed he would prevail—not quickly or easily, but through genuine effort. Thor was formidable, and Mjolnir was not a simple weapon. However, Ethan's absorption advantage, including continuous solar charging and the recent boost from the mini sun, gave him the edge in a prolonged engagement. This was an honest, not prideful, assessment.
Mjolnir itself was a different question.
The hammer possessed properties beyond the physical, including the worthiness enchantment and unique magical construction. It was less a durable object and more an embodiment of a principle. He could not destroy it at his current level and was unsure what level would be required. The question was intriguing and warranted further consideration.
Whether he was worthy of it: genuinely open.
He had considered this question before and never reached a definitive answer, which seemed appropriate. Worthiness was not fixed; it depended on actions, choices, and the alignment between beliefs and behavior. While his record was reasonable, he doubted whether the Asgardian standard of worthiness applied to someone with his unique background and circumstances.
He filed the Mjolnir question in the category of interesting future problems and let the afternoon continue.
---
He found his girlfriends in the late afternoon, and they welcomed him warmly, glad to include him in their day.
What followed between them is left unspoken.
---
The mini sun had been burning for thirty-six hours.
The containment remained stable, as if it had reached its intended configuration. The scientists monitored it continuously, but the process had become confirmation rather than active checking: readings were consistent, the field geometry stable, and the output matched mathematical predictions.
Ethan positioned himself close, let the absorption run, and listened to the evening.
The scientists' workspace was nearby. Their conversation drifted into his hearing range, not intended to be overheard but audible to someone with his abilities.
They had moved past the theoretical work.
The discussion reflected a team that had solved its primary problem and was now considering its implications. The impact was significant. Hank articulated the scale: a contained source at this output could power an entire city indefinitely if the transport issue—an engineering rather than theoretical challenge—could be resolved. There would be no fuel cost, no waste, and the energy output would be solar. The containment was self-sustaining, with an operational footprint limited to a field above a lake.
Tony's voice had the particular quality it had when he was already inside a problem rather than approaching it. "The transport containment is a fundamentally different challenge than the generation containment," he said. "The geometry that works when the apparatus is stationary becomes destabilized by acceleration above a certain threshold."
"The threshold needs to be characterized," Octavius said.
"Which requires testing," Howard said.
"Which requires a mobile version," Tony said. "Which requires solving the transport problem first." A pause. "So we need to build a version that can move before we can find out at what speed it fails."
"Circular," Hank said.
"All the best engineering problems are," Tony said.
Ethan listened attentively, appreciating the unique quality of hearing four brilliant individuals collaborate. There was a sense of real-time construction, as partial answers accumulated toward a complete solution.
He remained near the star, absorbing energy and listening as the evening progressed.
---
The thought appeared naturally, unforced and spontaneous, as often happens in the right environment.
What would happen if he entered it?
Not simply remaining nearby or hovering at the optimal absorption distance he had identified previously, but actually entering the contained plasma field—crossing from the exterior to the interior of the star.
The absorption rate at close proximity was already unlike anything he had previously experienced. Direct immersion would represent an entirely new category. He understood this as clearly as any physical principle.
Ethan did not act on the thought tonight.
He considered the thought from multiple perspectives: the risk assessment, which remained uncertain and required more information, and the potential, which was significant enough to justify the uncertainty. The thought persisted, as it was meant to.
Tomorrow, then. Or the day after.
Soon.
He left the lake in the late evening and returned to his girlfriend's, carrying the thought with him—patient and complete, awaiting the morning.