Chapter 379: Other Void Powers, and the Scarlet Witch of Darkness
Wade Wilson, mainstream-universe Deadpool, wore an expression tangled between disbelief and desperate urgency, his eyes locked entirely on the Sling Ring in Cassandra's hand.
That ancient ring wasn't just a key back home to him — it was his one and only hope of stopping the Timeline Shredder, the very device threatening to erase every reality in existence.
Then, at the worst possible moment, an unseen force seemed to seize the Sling Ring, tearing it right out of Cassandra's grip, sending it arcing away in a blinding streak of light.
Everyone froze. Deadpool shouted, unable to believe it. "WHO?! Who's messing with us here?!"
They followed the ring's trajectory and spotted a familiar figure.
"Wanda...?" Wade's voice came out uncertain, his mind flashing instantly to the Scarlet Witch he knew from the Avengers — that formidable sorceress.
But the woman standing before them radiated something far more unsettling — a swirling mix of black and crimson, a color that seemed to threaten devouring everything in its path. Her eyes were dark as midnight, carrying a resolve edged with something closer to madness.
Even more shocking: her hair, once a single vivid red, had split unnervingly into two distinct halves — one side black as ink, the other soaked in a red so deep it looked like fresh blood, every strand seeming to carry the weight of endless pain and grudge.
"This Wanda does NOT look like a good time. Oh my god, this one's actually scarier than that old bald lady."
(AUTHOR! You are NOT allowed to just rewrite the script on me like this! I love the Avengers, I love the actress who plays Wanda — that body, that fame, come ON. You have no idea how hard I cried watching her show. All she wanted was two kids, what's the crime in that?!)
(But this is MY scene right now! If she shows up, who's even gonna be watching ME anymore! What's going on here, do you have ANY idea how much creative control I'm owed? I'll keep playing along, sure — but it's gonna cost extra.)
Cassandra, seeing someone dare to steal from her, boiled over with fury.
Today, apparently, was just one interruption after another to her little game — genuinely infuriating.
"Wanda? What exactly do you think you're doing? I recall sparing your life once already. How DARE you show your face here again. Well — since you're here, you're not leaving." Cassandra snarled at her.
Cassandra's power was genuinely dominant across the Void — she basically ran the whole place unchallenged.
But there were a handful of powers and figures she preferred not to touch, or simply found too much trouble to bother with.
At the thought of the ones she avoided, something complicated flickered across Cassandra's face. There was the Deadpool army camped at the Void's borders — an entire force built from bodies that literally couldn't die. Not individually impressive, sure, but their near-suicidal combat drive combined with their immortality gave even Cassandra genuine headaches.
She'd tried to wipe them out multiple times. Every attempt had failed. In the end, she'd simply given up and let them wander the border unchecked.
Loki's forces were an even bigger thorn in her side. That mysterious Old Loki, with his masterful illusion magic, had woven a tangled web across the Void that made his true intentions almost impossible to pin down.
Even Cassandra, with her formidable telepathic reach, frequently found herself outmatched by Loki's illusions.
And then there was the one who'd already ascended to godhood — Loki, God of Stories — whose mere existence hung over the entire Void like a sword suspended overhead, a constant reminder that even the strongest among them had someone worth fearing.
Finally, there was a whole crowd of lunatics — madder even than her. Nearly everyone who ended up in the Void was, at their core, some kind of time-deviant variant.
The weaker ones typically got pruned outright, or ended up serving as her own personal cattle. Only the genuinely powerful survived independently.
And then there was another category of lunatic entirely — those who'd destroyed their own home universes, exiled here by the TVA specifically because they wanted nothing but destruction, pure and simple.
The dark witch standing before them now, fused with Wanda, was exactly one of those.
The Dark Wanda laughed, cold and dismissive, at Cassandra's disdain.
"Your power isn't all that impressive, honestly. If you hadn't been sitting on that Sling Ring doing nothing with it, I'd have escaped this godforsaken place a long time ago."
Doctor Strange, apparently, rarely ended up exiled to the Void — and when he had, he'd usually escaped fast.
Except this one time, when Cassandra herself had killed him.
"Wanda, quick, I'm an Avenger too, remember? It's me, A-Wade!"
"You might not remember me, but I sure remember you. Open a portal, please — my whole world's about to get shredded by the Timeline Shredder! As a fellow Avenger, you HAVE to save the world here, right?!" Deadpool crept toward the Dark Witch, flattering her carefully.
"What kind of trash logic is that. I'm here to absorb the Timeline Shredder's power and shatter EVERY world in existence. Every parallel universe is going to pay for Vision's death." With a casual flick of her hand, a burst of raw, chaotic energy exploded outward, sending Deadpool flying like a kite with its string cut, slamming him against a stone wall before he crashed back to the ground.
"Don't even think about it! That's MINE!"
Cassandra unleashed her telepathy and psychokinesis in full, and battle erupted between her and the Dark Witch's Chaos Magic.
As Cassandra's focus sharpened, the air around her began to ripple with a subtle disturbance, like a current stirring beneath a still lake's surface.
She slowly raised both hands, fingertips trembling faintly, as if conversing with some unseen force.
Suddenly, her eyes flew open, twin beams of dazzling light bursting from within, shooting straight toward the Dark Witch in the distance.
The Dark Witch stood at the center of a swirling black vortex of her own summoning, a cold smile on her face, seemingly unbothered by Cassandra's attack.
But the instant those beams struck the dark vortex, the entire battlefield shuddered.
The vortex churned violently, as if being torn apart by some irresistible force, letting out a chorus of agonized, keening wails.
Something flickered across the Dark Witch's face — but she recovered her composure fast, hands snapping into rapid formation, murmuring an ancient, intricate incantation.
At her words, the vortex surged with even denser chaos energy, coiling into black tendrils that lashed out toward Cassandra.
Cassandra didn't flinch, her resolve only hardening. She drew a slow breath, focusing everything she had, pushing her telepathy and psychokinesis to their absolute limit.
Rings of pale blue light began materializing around her body, radiating outward and crashing against the incoming black tendrils, each collision exploding in blinding light and deafening thunder.
Cassandra and the Dark Witch were evenly matched — the fight locked into a genuine standoff.
Unfortunately, the situation didn't allow either of them the luxury of a prolonged stalemate.
Meanwhile, down on the ground floor, Gambit and Blade's group had just wrapped up their brutal fight against the mutant army, the room littered with scattered weapons and wreckage, the smell of gunpowder still hanging in the air.
Exhausted as they were, a fierce, unbroken determination still burned in their eyes.
Just as they were settling in to catch their breath, an ominous shadow crept silently over the area — the massive storm-cloud entity, Alioth, bearing down on them like some herald of the apocalypse, its warped silhouette radiating a bottomless hunger for life itself.
Elektra stood among the group, watching the swelling cloud with mounting dread.
They all understood exactly what this meant. Alioth had come to feed. And they were the meal.
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