Leaving the courtyard behind, Master Mordo led the small group of Avengers down a wide, dimly lit corridor into one of the deeper parts of the monastery. As they walked, Nat gently bumped her shoulder into Carol’s and the two of them exchanged a tight smile.
“Thanks again for the rescue, and for accommodating us at short notice,” Steve said to Mordo.
“The Ancient One had asked that we be prepared, even if she did not tell us for what,” the sorcerer replied. “We would not have been able to respond as quickly as we did, had she not foreseen events.”
There was a note of discomfit in the man’s tone—well-concealed, but still present to Nat’s trained ear. The Ancient One’s use of the Eye of Agamotto to monitor and guide events was not something that had been known amongst the masters of Kamar?taj until Wanda had effectively forced her to reveal it in front of Mordo and Wong. Realistically, something like that was bound to cause tensions. Paranoia, even. In retrospect, it was highly likely that the Ancient One had known exactly where Wanda was when the Avengers approached Kamar-taj regarding her disappearance and had chosen not to share that information. It was hard to extend blind trust to someone who made decisions like that.
“So that means she knows what’s going to happen now, right?” Sam asked, oblivious. “Using the Eye thing? Can’t she just tell us what’s next? Why’ve we gotta jump through all these hoops?”
“The Sorcerer Supreme has her reasons. Guiding history is not an easy task, and even small actions can ripple outwards into larger consequences,” Mordo said, somewhat tersely.
“Butterflies,” Steve said.
The sorcerer gave a small nod. “Just so.”
As they talked, Nat was doing what she always did whenever she was in a new place—taking careful note of the details, building a mental map, pre-planning escape routes, marking the intervals between side passages and doors and estimating how long one could quickly move between them to minimise visibility… Though that, in particular, would be difficult here. The interior walls here were of an odd design: carved wooden lattices that allowed anyone to see through to the rooms beyond, should they wish to. Physical barriers to divide space into discrete, usable chunks, but without granting any sort of true privacy.
During one of their previous conversations, Wanda had wondered aloud why Kaecilius had even felt the need to steal the ritual from the Book of Cagliostro in the first place. He was one of the order’s masters, after all, and ‘no knowledge was forbidden in Kamar-taj’. Even the Ancient One’s private collection of tomes and the Eye of Agamotto were, technically, in an area that was available and accessible to any initiate rather than locked away.
Now that she was seeing more of the monastery and had a bit more of a handle on the Ancient One’s MO, though, Nat was starting to understand the subtleties of how she kept people in line. Everything was symbolically open and accessible, but there was a cautionary element there, too. The sorcerers were given freedom to do as they pleased, but the openness was also designed to ensure that everyone was subject to the prying, watchful eyes of their peers. Hard to plot behind the Sorcerer Supreme’s back when there’s no privacy and everyone can see exactly what you’re doing.
…The problem with being a master spy and social manipulator is that it meant Nat knew she was just using the habit to try to distract herself from her concerns about Wanda, rather than out of any real need. Ironically, something that might have been a healthy bit of self-reflection for someone else—seemingly recognising and acknowledging that she had just been put through the wringer and needed some time to disconnect and process—felt like a bit of a red flag when it came to Wanda.
More normally, Nat would have expected Wanda to press on regardless—to push herself until she started breaking down, even if just so that she didn’t feel like she was abandoning or failing Carol by taking a ‘selfish’ moment to herself. It didn’t matter that Carol wouldn’t feel that way… it was just who Wanda was. That was pretty obviously why she’d asked Nat to go with the others in the first place. She needed someone she trusted to be there for Carol while she didn’t feel like she could be, so she could relax and give herself permission not to stress too much about not being there herself. Nat would have preferred to stay with Wanda, of course, but she trusted Bucky and Pietro to look after her in the interim.
It wasn’t too long before they reached their destination, Mordo leading them through to a wide, two-storey atrium that the Avengers had quickly colonised upon their arrival and turned into a temporary base of operations.
“Look, can we just move the brazier? I mean, I respect the aesthetic you’ve got going on here, but I need the extra space.” Tony was complaining to a white-robed initiate who’d been assigned to help them. “And do you have any actual proper, non-mood lighting we can steal? It’s a touch too romantic in here, makes me feel like Barry White’s gonna start playing any second. It’s distracting.”
Tony had set himself up in a corner of the space with a couple of mismatched tables piled with equipment they’d managed to snag from the compound during their retreat, including Ikaris’s severed hand and an assortment of scanning and analysis tools. The Iron Man suit stood in sentry mode nearby, watching proceedings impassively.
Shuri was sitting on a floor cushion next to the lower of the two tables, her Kimiyo beads’ holographic interface hovering above one hand and the components of the Eternals’ magic-suppressing handcuffs arranged in front of her. Nat kept her expression carefully neutral. That was… not a problem, per se, but something to watch. The Eternals were priority one, and the benefits of Shuri understanding and potentially working out a counter to that particular piece of technology outweighed any other concerns right now.
Pausing at the foot of a narrow set of stairs that led up to the atrium’s second-floor balcony, Mordo turned and gave them a polite bow to excuse himself. “I will go and see if Master B’sso and Master Hamir are finished preparing the space for us.”
“Sure thing,” Steve said. “Let us know if there’s anything we can do on our end.”
The sorcerer nodded and stepped away, heading up and out of sight.
As the white-robed initiate tried to wheel the brazier away as had been requested, Tony touched him on the shoulder to stop him, wrinkling his nose. “What is that, anyway? Sage?”
“Frankincense,” Sterns answered absently before the frazzled initiate could. He was off to one side, a faraway expression on his face, standing in front of a display of masks from various ancient cultures that adorned the wall nearby.
“Not happy with the accommodations? What happened to ‘In a cave with a box of scraps’?” Steve asked Tony lightly as he walked up to him, echoing a turn of phrase that Wanda had used once.
Tony shrugged. “I can always make do, but it’s not like this is the most conducive work environment.”
“It is because you are an uncultured, tasteless man, Tony Stark,” Shuri said, a faint note of amused derision in her voice. “This is much better than the greys and glass you insist upon in the labs at the compound.”
“Hey! Just because we have different tastes doesn’t mean I don’t have taste. I have taste. I just think better when I’m not stuck in the middle of—” he gestured vaguely around the room with a hand, “—budget Hogwarts.”
As they talked, Nat broke off and wandered over to the opposite side of the room, Carol and Sam following close behind her. Maria and Bruce were there, perched on hard wooden stools, a set of four laptops unfolded on the low table in front of them, each connected to a couple of extra flatscreen monitors they’d grabbed from somewhere to form a rudimentary control centre.
“Hey, Nat,” Bruce said, glancing up from his screen for a brief moment.
“Hey. How goes?”
He looked at her again, screwing up his face in one of his signature half-smile, half-grimaces. “Oh, you know. It goes. Compound’s still dark. Phastos took control of the network and locked us out. Satellite blocking is still in effect, too. We can’t see what they’re doing.”
“I’m surprised you’re still here,” Sam said to Maria. “I’d thought you’d have hopped a portal back to DC to link up with Rhodey by now, wrangle things from that end. Even with signals and scans being blocked, someone’s going to have noticed the big, green triangle in the sky.”
“I’d love to.” She sighed. “But Druig’s been in my head now, too, and we don’t know the details of how his power works. He might sense me if I leave the monastery’s protections. So I’m stuck here with the rest of you, coordinating things remotely.”
A slight frown creased Nat’s forehead. Someone was missing. “Where’s Darcy?”
“She was hungry—missed breakfast,” Maria said. “Went with one of the sorcerers to find something to eat.”
Natasha nodded. Even knowing her background and past interactions with Thor, and even with Wanda’s assurances about the woman, Nat had found herself underestimating just how well Darcy would take everything in stride. It didn’t matter what it was—gods, cosmic powers, alien robots, potential apocalypse, magic and sorcerers—she seemed utterly unflappable. As far as Nat could tell, Wanda had been exactly correct in her assessment of Dr Lewis and how valuable an addition she’d be to the team. Like she almost always was.
With that thought front of mind, Nat turned to look in the direction of their other recent addition to the science crew. Dr Sterns was still staring at the masks on the wall, seemingly utterly absorbed in his own thoughts, though he still occasionally chimed in to the conversation that Tony and Steve were having.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Natasha had assessed him as being relatively harmless when they’d brought him in. At a basic level, Sterns struck her primarily as a puzzle-solver: someone who couldn’t stand not knowing or understanding something. A little deliberately manipulative, with the way his power let him navigate social interactions—though that was hardly something that she, of all people, could fault him for. There seemed to be a little bit of an ego there, too, but again, hardly something unusual within the team.
But the way Wanda had reacted to his presence—her initial, visceral reaction, that is, not the sensible step back she’d taken once she’d acknowledged her foreknowledge was incomplete—something about Sterns had provoked that.
No one else seemed overly worried that they might have invited someone dangerous into their midst. They had other, more pressing concerns on their plate right now, to be fair, but even so. Tony seemed utterly unconcerned. Steve was a good judge of character, but he preferred to see the best in people and sometimes had blind spots when it came to people he empathised with. Bruce was too in his own head about it, feeling a lot of guilt and responsibility for what Sterns had been through. Even Clint was far more sceptical of Wanda’s concerns than Nat thought was fair.
She would need to keep an eye on the man, just in case.
--
A lot had happened over the last twenty-four hours, and even with his expanded mental capacity, there was much thinking that Sterns still needed to do.
People were gathered nearby, having distracting conversations, but he screened the noise out of his primary conscious thought processes. A secondary mental instance of himself listened attentively and responded where necessary, processing data collection for his internal models of the Avengers’ personalities and relationships as he went. A useful tool, that, and not something he’d considered until forced to explore potential solutions to Druig’s mental control during the Eternals’ attack.
The Eternals. A group of ancient artificial beings that had affected and guided human history and technological development for thousands of years. The light briefing Sterns had initially been given on them had already been revelatory. The sheer amount of impact that the Eternals must have had on humanity’s development over time was almost incalculable, with so, so many implications, across all spectrums—cultural, religious, political, economic and more—to be considered and worked through and incorporated into his larger models.
But then there was Sterns’s contact with Druig’s power and realisation that the cosmic energy that these beings were powered by was of a kind with that of the Tesseract. The same energy that Wanda Maximoff subsequently used to do… something to herself, to protect against Druig’s power, and then to ward all of them from it. Sterns could almost feel the weight of the protections in the back of his mind, an unseen and unknowable structure hovering frustratingly just out of his reach.
Before, during, and in the immediate aftermath of the events that had led to the original formation of the Avengers as a team, SHIELD had believed that Loki’s sceptre had been powered by the Tesseract. However, even though the energy and gamma signatures were similar, HYDRA’s further studies of the object had revealed that it had contained a power source of its own, just as powerful and energetic as the Tesseract itself.
The Avengers had reported to the US Government that Wanda and Pietro Maximoff had destroyed the sceptre after fleeing the HYDRA research base in Sokovia. Sterns had not had the opportunity to directly study the remains that had been handed over in the wake of those events, but he’d seen SWORD’s analysis reports and their assumption that the power source had been destroyed.
But that wasn’t the case. 97.3 per cent, high confidence.
Wanda Maximoff’s pendant. When they’d first met, one of the very first things the woman had done was reach for it when she’d worried—for some still-unknown reason—that Sterns might potentially have some sort of mind control power. Say, for instance, something like Druig’s power. In retrospect, it was almost obvious. The woman had been wearing the energetic equivalent of a fusion reactor around her neck in plain sight this whole time, and she could use her own abilities to tap into its power directly.
Did each of the Eternals have access to a similar source of cosmic energy, embedded within them during their creation? 86 per cent probability. Their power expressions were tightly limited, in contrast to the flexible potential of the Tesseract and the source of power Wanda held, but the gamma radiation he’d felt from Druig’s mental leash was too similar for it to be a coincidence.
Sterns had already known that the Tesseract was not a natural formation, but it was clear now that it was built to contain and channel the energy of a power source much like the one hanging around Wanda’s neck. Built by someone or something. Perhaps the very same someone or something that had made the Eternals? Unclear. There were just too many possibilities, too many blanks in his knowledge, to give a critical assessment with any sort of confidence at this stage. Frustratingly, Sterns knew for a fact that the Avengers knew more about this than they were telling him, but then that was a problem he was working on, too.
Oh, yes, and then there was magic.
Wasn’t that an interesting development? The sorcerers of Kamar-taj, these so-called ‘Masters of the Mystic Arts’. Not only was magic real, but he’d already seen it in action without knowing what it was. Wanda Maximoff’s powers weren’t simply expressions of advanced mental evolution, as he’d theorised—psionic telekinesis, telepathy, psychoportation—rather, they were magical in nature. How many other times had his predictions been off in the past because of some magical aspect of reality that he’d been unaware of? So many of his models would need to be corrected and adjusted, but until Sterns learned more about how it all worked, it was going to be extremely difficult to fully map the implications.
Sterns’s eyes flicked over to Shuri. The Wakandan princess had set up on a low oaken table, sitting cross-legged on a cushion. A holographic display hovered over her palm as she scrutinised the remains of the Eternals’ technology with the scanners built into her Kimiyo beads. To almost anyone else, she would have seemed relatively engrossed in her work, but microexpressions and subtle shifts in her body language told Sterns a different story. While Shuri was good at putting up a front, she’d been badly shaken by way things had played out at the Avengers compound—98 per cent, high confidence—and it didn’t take much of a leap of logic to see that it was related to the still-unknown ongoing personal issues she had with Wanda Maximoff.
It was fairly clear to Sterns that, despite the precarious and potentially dangerous situation that they now found themselves in, the Wakandan princess’s interest had been greatly piqued by the potential for technological suppression of magical effects, and that that motivation was unlikely to have gone unnoticed by others. Still, a better grasp of the Eternals’ technology could potentially inform development of countermeasures, so there had been no argument when she’d taken them and declared her intent. With the social dynamics at play, it seemed most likely that it was believed to be better for Shuri to be working openly, rather than being tempted to privately pursue the matter where she could not be monitored. There were layers of trust and mistrust there that could potentially be leveraged or directed.
Footsteps coming down the stairs heralded the return of Master Mordo, a second sorcerer—Caucasian, pale complexion, lengthy brown hair, well-cared for beard, American and most likely from the Southwest, judging from his accent—following close behind.
While his fellow went to speak to Carol Danvers and Captain Rogers, Mordo joined Sterns and Tony in the corner of the space they’d taken over. As he approached, Tony gestured to the wall. “I’m gonna be honest, the creepy masks aren’t super conducive to a comfortable working environment, either.”
The sorcerer let out a small huff of amusement. “I understand. We have limited space, however, and this was best suited to temporarily accommodate your needs.”
“Zande, Monpa, Nepalese, Phoenician… Sicilian?” Sterns said aloud as he let his eyes wander across the artifacts. Superficially, it resembled a display one might see in a museum, though there were no labels, and it was clear that there was some functional, deliberate aspect at play beyond the simple aesthetic. There was a mix of cultures, wooden fetishes placed alongside ones of clay and bronze, but there was some greater pattern at play, the details of which were beyond him.
“Sardinian,” Mordo corrected him.
“Mea culpa. It’s quite the collection.”
“The students and masters here have gifted many relics and items of significance to Kamar-taj over the millennia, and we do our best to care for what has been entrusted to us.” The sorcerer gave the gamma mutate a thoughtful look. “You know your ancient cultures.”
Sterns gave a half-shrug in response. “Some. How the past informs the present is of particular interest to me,” he said, a small smile tweaking the corner of his mouth. “I also minored in anthropology and have an eidetic memory.”
Tony was still looking at the wall display with a vaguely unsettled expression. “I don’t mean to be culturally insensitive, but these sorts of things always give me the heebie jeebies,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “My dad had a Balinese mask in his office when I was little—just pure nightmare fuel. I used to dare myself to go in there while he was out. Never lasted more than a few seconds.”
“It’s a natural reaction,” the sorcerer noted, a touch of amusement in his tone. “Apotropaic objects are often more unsettling than the forces they’re designed to repel.”
Tony shot him an unimpressed look. “Mordy, I’m a science guy. How about I wax poetic about negative-index metamaterials, see how you like it?”
“My apologies, Tony. Apotropaic magic wards off bad luck and malign influences, often through objects such as amulets, gargoyles,” he gestured to the wall, “and masks, among other things.”
“So you… What, scare off the monster under the bed with an even scarier one?”
“You could characterise it as such, at the most basic level,” Mordo said with a slight nod.
Letting out a long sigh, Tony shook his head. It was clear that hadn’t been the answer he’d been wanting to hear. “I mean, I know you know what you’re doing with all of this stuff, but I hated not being able to figure out parlour tricks as a kid, and I like it even less now. Makes me uncomfortable.”
“You count a literal Norse god amongst the Avengers, do you not?” Mordo pointed out with a chuckle.
“Thor’s a ren faire lightning rod with a big freaking hammer.” Tony waved a hand dismissively. “He’s an open book. But all this? What you and Wanda do? Pulling energy from other dimensions with your bare hands and entropy reversal and sacred geometries and… and sawing probability in half? I just have a lot of trouble trusting what I don’t understand.”
“Many who come to Kamar-taj initially fail because they approach studying the Mystic Arts as they would a scientific discipline. The rules of magic are not scientific laws. Magic relies on intent, intuition, conceptual influence and metaphor just as much as it does rules and structure… While science and magic both affect the universe and can interact accordingly, they approach things from fundamentally different directions,” Mordo explained. “You are a man of science, with strong convictions. While I am sure that, with time, you could learn the Mystic Arts, it would be a challenging path for you to walk, as it would also require you to unlearn things that you have spent your entire life believing within your heart and soul to be true.”
As the sorcerer spoke, his fellow came over to join them, Danvers and Romanoff in tow. Captain Rogers had remained at the other end of the room with Hill, Wilson and Dr Banner, discussing what sources they might be able to pull additional information from. In more usual circumstances, Sterns would be interested in joining their discussion, but he still had many things he wished to think through. Instead, he assigned a secondary instance to listen in.
Mordo gave Danvers a nod of acknowledgement and gestured for her to follow as he mounted the stairs. “I am not sure there is much that we can do for you—the energies you wield are often difficult for mortal magics to fully capture—but we will try.”
“…Does it work?” Tony asked.
Mordo half-turned back to him, a questioning look on his face. “I’m sorry?”
The man flicked a hand back toward the wall display. “Apotropaic magic. The masks. Do they work?”
The sorcerer’s eyes twinkled with a small spark of amusement. Very deliberately, he raised a hand toward his face, miming placing a mask over it. “You tell me, Iron Man.”
