The Avengers burst through the portal from the New York Sanctum, stepping out into the main courtyard of Kamar-Taj.
They immediately saw a lone, bald woman in yellow robes standing her ground. She was fighting off Mordo, Belasco, and a swarm of demons all at once. Steve quickly scanned the area — there were ten large demons circling her with varying colors, a few even had wings that made them fly; whenever there's an opening, one of each demon would lunge and try to attack her from a blindspot.
"That must be the Ancient One," Natasha assumed as she readied herself.
The Sorcerer Supreme was a blur of motion, her golden mandalas clashing against Mordo's chaos magic and Belasco's hellfire and manipulation of the terrain.
She looked exhausted, but every move she made was precise and was holding herself quite well. She wasn't even on the defensive, it was Mordo, Belasco, and their swarm of ten demons that were constantly on the defensive whenever she fired off spells. But, it can't be argued she's slowly getting overwhelmed.
"Avengers! On me!" Steve shouted, raising his shield. "Sam, Rhodes, take the ones in the air! Tony, Pietro, clear a path to the woman!"
Wanda and Illyana stepped forward with determined expressions. Seeing their home in ruins and the Ancient One under fire was all they needed to push past their injuries.
"Leave the demons on the ground to me," Illyana hissed, her hand reaching for her Soulsword.
The Avengers didn't waste a second.
They charged into the courtyard, catching Mordo and Belasco completely off guard when they noticed them, but they seemed not to mind as the Avengers being present seemed to not matter for their plan.
Besides, what can humans without sorcery nor magic do against them?
Tony and Rhodey opened fire from the air, their repulsors and mini-missiles slamming into the outer circle of demons.
Steve lunged forward, his shield clanging against a demon's jaw that charged at him. The vibranium shield groaned under the weight of the demon's attack.
Steve stumbled back as he was sent on his knee with surprise on his face. He thought. 'Illyana wasn't kidding. These demons are no joke.'
He tried to push the demon with all his superhuman strength, but the demon has more physical strength than him. So, he decided to fight dirty.
While that was going on, Natasha and Sam moved to flank the creatures.
The sudden influx of firepower forced Mordo to break his concentration on the Ancient One to throw up a crimson-dark shield of haze.
Belasco, however, didn't look annoyed, on the contrary, he looked delighted.
He turned his head slowly, his eyes locking onto the small blonde girl standing behind Captain America.
"Hehehe!" Belasco's raspy laugh echoed through the courtyard. "You actually came back, little Rasputin? You barely escaped this place, and yet you have the gall to walk right back into my arms?"
Illyana gripped the hilt of her Soulsword, her knuckles white. "I'm not here to hide this time, Belasco."
"We shall see," Belasco smirked. He snapped his fingers. "Boys, greet our guest of honor. Especially you, S'ym. Don't let her feel lonely."
From the shadows of the burning library, a massive, purple-skinned demon stepped forward. S'ym was twice the size of the other demons. He was Belasco's strongest henchman.
Ilyana narrowed her eyes in anger, recognizing S'ym. This demon helped Belasco torture and train Illyana when she was first brought into Belasco's castle before her eventual escape from the castle. S'ym had hunted her throughout the years in Limbo as well.
S'ym let out a deep growl. He didn't bother with the Avengers, the other demons will take care of them.
"Darkchilde..." S'ym rasped, his voice like grinding metal. "Time to go back to the cage."
"Wanda, Pietro," Illyana turned to Wanda and Pietro who was beside her. "Take care of the other demons for me, I still have a grudge to settle with this one."
Wanda and Pietro nodded.
Pietro moved first, becoming a silver blur that swept across the courtyard. He sped around and punched two demons in their eyes and joints at high velocity. Every time a demon tried to lunge at the Ancient One's exposed back or any of the Avengers that were fighting the other demons on the ground, Pietro was there to shove them ten feet in the opposite direction before they could even blink.
The Ancient One parried a bolt of dark energy from Mordo and glanced at the two siblings. She looked at their bruised faces and the way they stood protectively around her despite their own injuries.
"You didn't have to return," the Ancient One said, her voice calm despite the chaos. "This was your chance to stay safe at the Avengers Compound."
Wanda didn't turn around, her focus entirely on a four-armed beast charging toward them. She raised both hands, seizing the demon's momentum and slamming it sideways into a stone wall.
"Master Gojo told us that running is for people who don't have a home to go back to," Wanda replied, her voice firm. "We aren't running anymore. This is our home now."
The Ancient One's eyes softened, and a small, rare smile touched her lips.
'You've trained them well, Satoru,' she thought.
Across the courtyard, Illyana's eyes were locked on S'ym. The massive demon lunged, his claws carving deep furrows into the ground, but Illyana didn't flinch. She summoned a stepping disk right beneath her feet, vanishing an instant before the claws reached her.
She reappeared high above him, her Soulsword held in a two-handed grip. "Hey, S'ym!" she yelled. "Fuck you!"
S'ym roared, swinging a massive fist that shattered a marble bench where Illyana had stood a moment before. "How vulgar of you, little snowflake. Why don't you just stay still and let me carve my claws on your flesh?"
"In your dreams," Illyana's voice came from behind him.
She stepped through a disk and drove the Soulsword into S'ym's shoulder. The demon screamed as the magical blade burned through his scales. He spun around, lashing out with his tail, but Illyana was already gone, reappearing ten feet to his left.
She was slowly dismantling him, by the satisfied grin on her face, it seems she was paying back the torture she had gone through from the demon.
A cut to the knee made him buckle; a slash across his chest sent black blood spraying onto the area.
S'ym was bigger and stronger, but he couldn't hit what he couldn't catch.
Illyana's movements were sharp and has that calculated glee of repaying back a grudge she had been thinking over and over in her mind for years with her eyes not showing any of the fear she had felt towards S'ym whenever he's chasing her back in Limbo.
"You're slow, S'ym," she mocked, dropping through a disk and sliding under his legs, hamstringing him with a quick upward thrust. "Limbo must have made you soft."
S'ym fell to one knee, panting, his body covered in smoking wounds that wouldn't heal. Illyana appeared directly in front of him, raising her Soulsword for a final, decapitating blow.
"Goodbye, jerk," she whispered.
"Belasco, I'm enhancing your demons!" Mordo's voice boomed. He noticed that even though the demons were undoubtedly stronger, the Avengers were slowly but surely defeating them. With one already dead from Captain America's shield and Tony's repulsor blast tandem. The rest aren't faring any better as well.
Mordo, who had been struggling against the Ancient One, suddenly thrust his Staff of the Living Tribunal toward the center of the yard. A bolt of purple Chaos Magic shot out, hitting S'ym and the other demons directly in their spines.
Illyana jumped back in surprise from the bolt, thinking the bolt was aimed at her.
The effect was instantaneous and grotesque.
S'ym's body jerked violently as the purple magic surged through him. The wounds Illyana had carefully carved into his flesh fused shut. He let out a shriek that sounded less like an animal. His muscles expanded, tearing through his scales and purple skin darkened to the color of purplish-black.
Illyana jumped back in surprise from the bolt, thinking the bolt
"This power…" S'ym murmured.
He didn't look at Illyana immediately. Instead, he surveyed the courtyard. The demon that Tony and Steve had just killed let out a wet gurgling sound as its crushed skull
reshaped itself. It stood up, its previously red skin turning the same bruised purplish-black as S'ym's. Across the yard, the other eight demons shrieked in unison, their bodies bulging and their speed visibly increasing as they began to shrug off the Avengers' attacks.
"I feel… great!" S'ym growled satisfyingly.
He turned his gaze back to Illyana, who was still in a defensive stance with her soulsword.
The demon smirked, revealing rows of serrated teeth dripping with purple ichor.
"You were saying something about 'goodbye,' little snowflake?"
Before she could respoond, S'ym vanished. He reappeared instantly in Illyana's space with pure speed.
Illyana reacted and casted a foundational mandala defensive spell on the flat of her sword. But, S'ym ignored it and slammed his claws regardless.
His claws tore through the spell, breaking it, slamming on to the flat of her Soulsword and drove it into her gut before she could steady herself.
BOOM!
She was blasted backward, her boots carving deep trenches in the stone floor as she skidded nearly thirty yards, but the force of the impact didn't stop as she was slammed hard into a statue, destroying it, and still sent her stumbling and sprawling on the grassy lawn over.
"Illyana!" Wanda screamed. She turned to help, but S'ym was already there, backhanding her with enough force to shatter her red energy shield. Wanda was thrown into a pile of rubble, gasping for air as another black-skinned demon lunged at her.
The battlefield had turned into a slaughterhouse.
The Avengers were being pushed to their absolute limits. Steve's shield was knocked aside by a demon that now ignored his strikes. Tony and Rhodey were forced higher into the air as the winged beasts tore at their armor plating. Even Pietro was struggling; the demons were moving so fast now that he couldn't just run circles around them anymore.
Natasha was the worst one of them all, merely a trained human with guns and batons, she sped around and tried her best to dodge and get herself away from the demons' attacks while finding a way for her to get out and launch a form of attack in another way.
The Ancient One saw the apprentices falling and the Avengers bleeding. Her face went rigid, and she reached for the Eye of Agamotto hanging at her chest. Her fingers began to glow with green eldritch light, ready to use it to cast a spell.
"Mordo, stop her!" Belasco roared, his eyes wide as he recognized the artifact. "Don't let her touch the Stone!"
"I know! I'm already on it!" Mordo shouted back.
He placed both hands on the Darkhold fastened at his waist. The book began to vibrate, and a thick and oily black liquid seeped from the pages, coiling up Mordo's arms. He tapped into the forbidden power of Chthon, his eyes turning entirely black.
"By the chains of the Elder Dark, I bind the flow!" Mordo chanted, his voice echoing with a terrifying distortion.
A massive rune of purple, crimson, and black energy erupted beneath the Ancient One's feet. Dozens of dark, smoking chains burst from the ground, wrapping around her arms and chest. The Eye of Agamotto flickered and closed itself from the golden encasing the moment the Ancient One was bound by the chains.
The Ancient One grunted in pain as she crashed onto the ground from the air she was levitating, forcing her to kneel.
"The natural order demands you stay in the present, teacher," Mordo hissed, sweat dripping from his face as he strained to maintain the lock.
Belasco laughed, walking slowly toward the struggling Illyana and the dazed Wanda. "And now, with the shepherd tied up, the lambs are finally ready for the knife."
Mordo exhaled, his chest heaving from the strain of holding the Sorcerer Supreme in her chains. He surveyed the courtyard with a twisted sense of triumph. The Avengers were battered, he left them under the eyes of the demons, for now.
He looked toward the smoke-filled sky.
"Look, teacher," Mordo sneered, glancing down at the kneeling Ancient One. "Even after all this, Satoru still hasn't come. I was actually looking forward to him arriving, just so he could see the state you're in."
"Hey, shitstain. You called?"
A ring of orange sparks exploded and Satoru Gojo stepped through. He looked entirely different, well… not really, but fastened around his head was a sleek black silk blindfold with a silver brooch at the center.
Mordo blinked in surprise, but his face quickly hardened into a mask of spite and anticipation.
Belasco, however, instinctively lurched backward. The demon lord's memories of what happened before screamed in his mind.
"You're late, Gojo," Mordo spat, though his hand drifted toward the Darkhold.
"Late?" Satoru looked around him, pausing on the Avengers, and pausing particularly on Illyana, who passed out on a pile of rubble and Wanda who was bleeding from her forehead and all over. He sighed when he saw them still alive, however. "I see you've been busy playing with trash, Mordo. And you... you're that pedophile."
"Be prepared, Satoru!" Mordo roared, his eyes glowing black. "This day is the day you and the Ancient One die!"
Mordo slammed his staff onto the ground. Simultaneously, Belasco snapped his fingers. The ten enhanced demons in the courtyard suddenly shrieked as one.
Their bodies burst into a thick, putrid purple fog and splatters of black blood.
The blood seeped into pre-carved grooves in the stone floor — a massive, intricate ritual circle that had been hidden the entire time.
The carvings began to glow with a sickly light that seemed to eat the very surroundings.
Satoru raised a brow, feeling his Infinity flicker as the atmosphere became toxic to supernatural energy.
"By the blood of the fallen and the ink of the Damned!" Mordo chanted, his voice reaching a deafening crescendo as the Darkhold's pages flipped frantically to a blood-stained ritual. "I invoke 'Curse of the Unmaker'!"
A wave of grey energy erupted from the ground, intended to strip the world of its magic.
"That's a terrible name for a spell, Mordo."
...
[Author's Notes]: After getting stoned, all I can say is... Is that all you've got? Pfft!
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This is the last chapter of the week, see you on Monday!