Hello! Yes, your irregularly scheduled chapter, the last of this story, the end of which will allow us to return to the main fic (at long bloody last), is here! It was a complete and utter monster, over twice as long as the last one, making the whole story... *checks notes* nearly 125,000 words long. And about 4 times longer than it was meant to be. Oh dear.

Unsurprisingly, it was a nightmare that consumed much of my life, but, I think, it was absolutely worth it – if only thanks to my maniacal determination not to split this one. Truthfully, it could have been a little longer, but only a little, and I don't think it suffers for all that. It's also finished just in time for Easter, which is nice, especially since I'm going on holiday tomorrow.

There's lots of action, a bit of heart-warming stuff, and all the appropriate – and inappropriate – comedy that one might expect. Also some poetry. I really, really hate poetry, it took almost as much time as half the rest of it and I have to thank the inimitable Thunder Stag and the rest of the mind hive at The Magic of Torchwood Facebook group for their patience, because a lot of trial and error (mostly error) was involved. I am a really, really bad poet.

Anyway… let's get this party started.

"I can't take Nimue in a fight, not as she is now – though I suspect you know that," Wanda said.

"Yup. Well, actually, there's a chance that you could get through her defences and use your chaos stuff or your mutant stuff to fry or disconnect Pandora's Box. If you do that, then everything becomes way easier. Well. In theory."

"That could work. It could also go horribly wrong, but it is an option, if I can pull it off."

"Yeah. Anyway, I'm not expecting you to beat her. If you do, it's a bonus, but I'm not holding my breath. No offence."

"None taken."

"Right. Thanks. What I am expecting is that you'll scare the crap out of her and keep her busy. When it comes down to ground-level and Merlin gets involved – wow, can't believe I actually just said that."

"Carol?" Steve prompted gently.

"Right. Sorry. Bit excited. Anyway, once you're both committed, plus Strange and me, that's going to keep reinforcing the idea that she should focus on us."

"Unless she sees through the double-cross," Liberty warned. "And that much power in such a concentrated space… our wards can handle a very great deal, but they have limits. Reality is frayed enough as it is, especially right now."

"I don't think she will," Merlin said thoughtfully. "Nimue suffers from tunnel-vision, she always has. She ignored everyone to focus on Uther, even when her visions should have warned her of Arthur – or me. Then, she realised the threat I represented, and instead focused on me."

"She focuses on the obvious threat," Steve said, nodding.

"Yes," Merlin confirmed. "Which is why the plan will work."

OoOoO

Wanda floated above the city, feeling the throb of the magic around her. It was… well, frankly, it was intoxicating. Any practitioner would feel magic pouring into them, just begging to be used, that was true. But she was the Sorceress Supreme, and that particular office came with more perks than a few powerful artefacts.

She reached out and tugged delicately on the swirling currents of power in the sky, feeder lines from the intersection of dimensions that made Earth such a magical dynamo. A dynamo that was spinning faster and faster, almost out of control, flaring off power in a desperate attempt to avoid exploding under the stress. Power that responded to the call of the Sorceress Supreme in a way that few others could.

Of course, she mused, as Nimue's serpentine elongated arch snapped back into her mostly-human form, she just happened to be facing one of the very few who could also make that particular claim. While that power obeyed her willingly, rather than under compulsion, with a will as strong as Nimue's, the difference was academic.

She flicked her fingers, hurling a streaking storm of cantrips at the fallen Priestess, who blocked them all and then shrieked like metal being torn as the veiled probability warp snuck under the radar and fried her nervous system.

Well, she thought with some satisfaction. Mostly academic.

"I trust that I have your attention?" she asked politely, bending sound across to the other witch. Who was now bleeding from the eyeballs. And the ears. And the nose. Poor lamb.

A howling distorted face in the form of a thunderstorm the size of Everest screamed down from the ether, with eyes full of dark rain and fangs of raging lightning descended upon her, jaws snapping shut hard enough that the shockwaves reversed the tides for twenty miles along the coast. The massive change in air pressure hurled her down, then up, a gullet miles long and miles wide, blasted by hail driven by winds of strength previously unseen on Earth, surrounded by screeching many clawed wind-demons, each howling for her blood.

Really, Wanda thought critically as the attacks struck golden-red sparks off her defences, it was all a bit overdone. Full marks for raw power, bonus credit for presentation and spontaneity, yes. Even at her best, she could never have whipped anything like this straight off the bat. It was all very impressive. But was it efficient? Practical? Even remotely effective? No, no, no.

Honestly, it was all style, no substance. Worse, it was just so very, very… sloppy.

She rolled her eyes and sighed in disgust. "All mouth, no skirt," she said, shaking her head, then spoke a word.

Crimson power lanced up and outwards, striking along mystical faultlines in the hastily stitched together spell. Like a diamond struck at precisely the right again, the spell-storm fell apart, declining hurricanes and tornadoes spinning off at wild angles, while lightning struck out every which way. Or, indeed, every witch way, since a lot of it had earthed itself on its source, who also happened to be the nearest route earthwards.

"Well," she added mildly. "I'll take that as a yes. I see that you at least had the sense to ward yourself against lightning this time," she continued, surveying her opponent through a magnification enchantment. "Piece of advice, though," she added critically, looking her somewhat scorched and furious nemesis up and down. "Next time, make sure you ward your clothes too. Trust me, it's both uncomfortable and deeply embarrassing when your underwear catches fire."

That, she would later reflect, was the point when Nimue really started trying to kill her.

OoOoO

"So, my brief is, essentially, to keep her busy. I can do that."

"If you can, lure her downwards, stick her in a kill-box with the rest of us. The higher up she is, the more likely she is to notice something's off – or, you know, actually spot what's off."

"Kill-box?" came an uncertain voice.

"Not literal, Pete. In this case. Probably."

"Do not worry, Master Parker," Strange said softly. "I don't intend anything half so kind as killing her."

There was a long silence as everyone absorbed this comment.

"You are an exceptionally scary man, do you know that?" Monica said eventually.

"He cultivates the reputation," Wanda said.

"And he's holding a grudge," Merlin added, with a hint of rebuke. The look he got in return was Arctic. It was utterly ignored.

"He's not the only one. We get her down, we make her eat dirt."

"She won't cooperate with that for long. She may still be fumbling her way into the implications of her power, the scale of it, but if we force her, she'll start testing her limits."

"That's where Operation Energy Sponge comes in."

"Energy Sponge?" Steve asked sceptically.

"It's accurate, and if you have a better name, trust me: I am all ears."

OoOoO

Nimue didn't know the Chaos-Child's upper limits. As far as she knew, nobody did – and frankly, she wasn't minded to be the one to find out, because as she had learned long ago, what she didn't know absolutely could hurt her. The Chaos-Child wasn't her equal, but she didn't have to be, not even close.

As she was acutely aware, her connection to Pandora's Box was relatively solid, but not even close to being invulnerable. She had proven how the Green Lantern itself could be destroyed – a far older and more stable artefact, using power far less fundamentally… unstable than chaos magic.

As she was rather more grudgingly aware, she was also not an expert duellist. Facing fellow sorcerers in direct magical combat had never been her area of expertise. Wanda Maximoff, by contrast, had cut her teeth on such combat. She had also been trained by the walking, talking reason that several large chunks of her soul had ventured to pastures new. She shuddered a little, her skin literally rippling with discomfort as she remembered the things he'd been saying, bound by the utter certainty that the Doctor Did Not Lie. The annoying quips were positively comforting by comparison.

Of course, being lectured like an errant acolyte by a woman who was barely half her age even if you discounted her years under the earth was utterly galling, and far more irritating than those quips had ever been. Especially since it was now a running commentary on her technical deficiencies.

"BY ALL THE PUSTULENT GODS IN THE SKIES WILL YOU SHUT! UP!" she screamed.

"Touched a nerve, have I?"

"TOUCHED A NERVE? TOUCHED A NERVE? I WILL TOUCH ALL YOUR NERVES AND TURN THEM INTO KNITTING!"

"Oh, you knit? That's nice. I hope your knitting isn't as tangled as some of the enchantments you've been trying, though. That would just be tragic."

Nimue threw back her head let out a sound beyond human registers, a volcano's worth of lava roaring out of her mouth in a column a hundred miles high, the shockwaves spawning Hyper-Canes across the Tropics.

There was a distinct pause.

"You've never been very good at accepting criticism, have you?"

OoOoO

"Anyway, Nimue's playing for keeps. Actually, she always has been, because she's a psychotic bitch, but I digress. We split the Ring, she's looking for the original, she's going to want to narrow it down."

"By killing people."

"Or turning them into things. She likes doing that," Carol said darkly. "Which, again, is why I am assigning myself to the face-punching part of this mission."

"Carol –"

"I've got it, d – Steve. She caught me cold last time. I wasn't using the Ring. She doesn't make the same mistakes twice? That's fine. Neither do I."

"All right," Steve said, after a moment. "You think the Ring – the Rings – won't be enough."

"If you let her bring her power to bear on you, no," Strange interjected bluntly. "And I will be a little busy. In other words, if Humpty-Dumpty falls, then I will not be available to put him back together again."

"That's where Jean-Paul comes in. The Rings aren't just amulets to prevent you from being warped up to a point. They give you a boost. A big one. That's what the main Ring is, really – it makes you more of what you are."

"Which means, cherie, that since I presume a Ring will allow me to run on air, I am the rescue service."

"Pretty much. You're the only one who can outrun Nimue's magic. You and maybe your friend in the red and blue."

"You can call me Kal."

"Oh, you're that Kal. That makes sense. I can see the resemblance to… you know."

There were several audibly raised eyebrows. 'Kal' shuffled his feet awkwardly. Carol ignored them.

"Anyway, you're meant to be pretty quick. You think you're up for it?"

The tall boy seemed deep in thought for a short while. Then, he looked up, expression resolved and shoulders squared. "It doesn't matter what I think," he said. "I have to be."

Carol grinned. "That's the spirit."

OoOoO

Clark forced himself into a dive, as fast as he could, bulling through conjured Chitauri raiders and trying to ignore the splattering. It was only ectoplasm, or so he'd been told, they weren't anything more than ghosts of memories given life by magic and a warped witch… but it still didn't sit well with him. Harry might casually turn monsters to chunky kibble or splash marks, but despite their many resemblances, that was an area in which they couldn't be more different. Of course, his cousin (and that was a nice thought, if not a very relevant one) was thankfully very understanding about that. Almost a little wistful that he wasn't the same, really.

He shook his head, refocusing. The problem with both his recent boost and his current magi ring based supercharge was that when he dropped into super-speed, his brain seemed to jump tangents a lot more. It was very distracting, like super ADHD. Except probably also not. He wouldn't really know.

It might have comforted him to know that his mind was not the only one like that. Peter's, for instance, was currently rattling along at a million miles per hour, with even more tangents and distractions, thanks to his newly discovered danger sense. At this point, though, Clark mostly just wished that he had Jean-Paul's enviable – if somewhat terrifyingly applied – focus.

He shook himself again, and braced as he hammered through a Chitauri Leviathan and oh god it was so incredibly disgusting, gaze focused entirely on a falling figure.

Tony Stark had made the unfortunate mistake of getting a bit too close to Nimue and then actually successfully hurting her. Only his ring had prevented this from being a terminal mistake – though given that he looked decidedly concussed, and had now reached terminal velocity, it was only a matter of time. Unless Clark could get him. So he poured on all the speed he could, and tried not to think about how insanely difficult it would be to replicate his rescue of Lois when he had about a fifth of the space and time and most of the world was apparently trying to eat him.

The world blurred, he ducked and weaved, almost spinning out of control as the very real-feeling energy bolts from a group of Chitauri replicas poured into his side. Ignoring the stinging feeling in his side, he swooped low, then up, letting the inventor's weight be cushioned by his descent. Which, conveniently, put his back towards the ground and his eyes to the sky. Right at his pursuers.

Clark's heat vision was a little hit and miss, as he would admit himself. Triggering it took either a fair bit of focus, or what he could only describe as a passionate feeling. Lust, unfortunately, fell into that category. So did anger. Clark didn't like being angry, as a whole. That did not mean to say that, when given incentive, he was not good at it.

His world turned red, and the tempestuous night skies gained a new flare, this one a strobing last blast that could have bisected a battleship like morning mist. What it did to the Chitauri constructs was indescribable. Angry or not, Clark did not like the smell of burning ectoplasm in the early morning. Even if it did smell like victory.

"Nice work, kid."

Clark startled, nearly dropping the man he'd been rescuing in the first place. Thankfully, they were now only about three feet off the ground.

"Mr Stark," he said, before getting a reproving look. "Tony. You're okay!"

Tony grimaced. "I've been better," he said. "Better that than splattered, though. Thanks. Seriously. I've been working on getting this thing –" He waved his ring. "– to fix my concussion, mostly by thinking of it like it's real fancy nanotech. I know, magic, but it's easier for me to understand that way. Anyway, the downside is it took a while for me to focus long enough to make that work. Without that, I couldn't focus for long to…"

"Not go splat?"

Tony grimaced again. "Yeah," he said, then crunched his neck, wincing.

"Are you okay?"

"A few bruises, couple of cracked ribs," Tony said, and waved away Clark's guilty expression. "The price of physics and not being street pizza. You did good, kid, and this thing's fixing it up. I'm at about 70% at the moment."

Clark, following his train of thought, blinked. "Wait, but… your Iron Man suit was destroyed," he said.

"The suit? Sure, Nimue took away my biggest toy, but when she did that, she took away my biggest limitation," he said, as green light flowed over him. "I don't need a suit. The suit is just a tool. The suit isn't Iron Man. No. Tonight, more than ever…"

A metallic burr entered his voice as lightning flashed overhead, then lashed downwards the flare blinding Clark for an instant. When his vision adjusted mere instants later, he beheld a vision in red and gold, gleaming in the mage-light, sleek, powerful, and deadly, with lightning crackling between the tips of a five-pointed star that emerged from its back – the platonic ideal of the Armoured Avenger conjured from the mind of its creator.

"I am Iron Man."

The points of the star turned upwards, focusing on a conjured Leviathan and its swarm of escorting fighters that soared downwards, breaking off from the harrying X-Wings to zero in on the flare of Lantern power. The lightning stopped dancing, and the suit began to glow with the distinctive Arc blue, and golden repulsor blasts roared out with impossible intensity, tearing not holes but highways through the Leviathan, slicing it into five neat pieces that degraded into tons and tons of flying ectoplasm mid-flight.

That done, the arms of the star folded away, apparently into nothingness in armour as close-fitting as a business suit, as Tony turned to Clark. He folded his arms with a faint click, not a clink, of something smoother and more solid than metal.

"Now," he said. "I don't know about you, but I've got a lot of ideas to try out, and a point to make to Ursula up there. Feel like being my wingman?"

"Definitely."

"Great. I'll return the favour next time you need a date."

OoOoO

"Okay, so, I'm pretty sure things are going to get even more profoundly weird than they already are. Right, Wanda, Strange… right, all magic people?"

"To put it mildly," Liberty and Wanda said in eerie unison, before sharing a wry, surprised smile.

"Especially if Nimue learns how to control the pieces of decaying soul she vomited up," Strange remarked. "I give her fifty-fifty odds."

"70-30," Merlin said. "I think she's proved that she's very good at making use of the tools she has, no matter how limited they are."

"Right. Magic plus freaking out people's dreams plus bits of a wicked witch's soul. It'll be like the Battle of London. Or the Red Room. And the fact that I have even two examples to call on of a world gone nuts off the top of my head says far too much about my life, but either way: weirdness intensifies. You're all on dealing with it, but I think we should also try to cut it off before Nimue starts really bending it to her will. Thankfully, we've got the two strongest psychics ever, right here. Jean, Maddie, say hello."

Steve cleared his throat. "We've also got some back-up," he said. "Heavy back-up."

"Really?"

"Really."

OoOoO

Pale blue fire and red lightning clashed in the skies, a deadly dance that bent the world, carving tools of imagination and weapons of concept out of the fabric of reality, waging a war where even the slightest misstep consigned the mistaken to a terrible fate.

Immense forces surged, both vast, but one was an ocean as compared to a sea loch – while the difference was not obvious to most, only really to the most detached, but it was one measured in orders of magnitude. As a result, while the mingled, they never truly met, scarlet spider-webs swirling around cerulean storms.

It was a mystical judo match, between a brawny amateur fresh from their full growth and a master of precision.

It was an exemplar of how a weaker practitioner could handle a nominal superior, one that would be played and replayed for years to come.

It was also driving Nimue up the wall.

Though it had to be said, the music wasn't helping.

"I WILL DROWN THE WORLD IN YOUR BLOOD!" Nimue screamed.

"And where will my exsanguination fit in my schedule?" Wanda asked. "I mean, what with my nerve-knitting, ritual flaying, spit-roasting, infestation with flesh-eating fungi, rendering down for tallow, transfiguration into a wooden henge, and transformation into – by my last count – thirty seven different animal species, I'd say it's pretty full up."

She cocked her head, reconfiguring the ectoplasmic matter of several very large and extremely tentacular demons into a rain of rose petals with a flick of her fingers.

"You know," she said. "I'm beginning to wonder if you even intend to follow through. Don't get me wrong, dear, your control is quite remarkable, but your spells are quite… how do I put this kindly? Ah, yes. Prosaic."

"… Prosaic?"

"Bordering on unimaginative," Wanda said blithely. "Really, all you've done so far is throw bad weather, elemental manipulation, and gibbering monsters at me. Oh, and then there was some self-transfiguration. All very serviceable and well-executed, I'm sure, but really? Really?" She shook her head. "I'm sorry, but you've had decades to plan, and this is the best you can come up with? You thought you were going to overcome me with this? I'm a reality warper, darling. This is what I do. I'm afraid you're going to have to be much more creative if you want to get the better of me."

Nimue stilled, her rage reaching its peak. So, for a moment, did the entirety of the solar system, even the sun itself pausing for a moment in its eternal dance, in an instant of absolute tension and utter silence. Then, she looked at Wanda through eyes made of purest darkness and irises of burning gold.

"Creative, you say?" she whispered, in a voice all the more terrible for its sudden quiet. It travelled into ears via the skins of every living thing in the Americas, burning its way into consciousness and dreams like smoke into lungs, and all who heard it shuddered. "Very well."

The gold in her eyes burned bright as stars, and an enormous cracking boom of a vast amount of air suddenly being displaced rolled over the city, shaking it to the foundations.

On instinct, Wanda's eyes were drawn upwards, as a colossal shape slipped through the soul-storm like a knife through flesh. A cold white wedge the size of a mountain, it bore down upon her and the city, scattering the remaining Chitauri constructs and dwarfing even the Leviathans, which swarmed around it. It was something born of dreams and nightmares, a cold and deadly engine of destruction that did not belong in the real world.

Yet it was here now, as real as if it had just slipped out of a ship-yard among the stars, radiating the same impersonal and inexorable malice. Wanda recognised it, and under other circumstances, she might have laughed at the absurdity of it. A dream this large could hold more power than any Nimue had yet summoned, it was true, a formidable spearhead that she'd have to work to break down, but she could manage it. And since countering her moves would keep Nimue all the busier, so much the better.

However, she didn't, for three very important reasons.

Firstly, it was not alone, surrounded by an escorting cloud of remembered Chitauri and other things, creations of Pegasus. Animated by magic, they were bio-mechanical war-machines, tentacled, clawed, and laser armed, many coalescing into larger versions of themselves – armed to the teeth and ready for war.

Secondly, that malice it was radiating… she was wrong. Very, very wrong. Because it was personal. Nimue had moulded this dream and powered it with a piece of her soul.

Thirdly, and most importantly… Nimue was not pointing it at her.

"I will save this world, Wanda Maximoff," the Priestess said, an inner inferno of rage turning her words to ash as they left her mouth, and enough power behind the remnants that even merely her saying Wanda's name sent sparks rising from every defence the Eye of Agamotto could muster. "I will save it, even if I have to rain fire from the skies and fill the seas with blood. I will save it if I have to make my people anew from clay and ash and tears.I will save it, Sorceress Supreme. By any means necessary."

"What will you be saving, Nimue?" Wanda asked, dropping all façade of mockery. "What will be left? I know what you've been trying to do, why you started to do this. Listen to what you're saying. Can't you tell the difference between destroying the world and saving it?"

"How many times has the world ended? How many times has the end of days come and gone? On this world alone, Sorceress Supreme, how many? I can tell you, because I can see them all. All the species that have failed, all the ones whose time came, by chance or by malice or by pure blindness to what was coming. Gaia plays no favourites. But I do. I will do what needs to be done. I will reforge this world in fire, if I have to. And if it ends? So be it. What is born from that ending will be fit to survive."

"You have no idea what that man is willing to do, Nimue," Wanda said. "None at all. You aren't the first to think this way. Like those before you, you have taken an incomplete glimpse of what could be, and you have panicked. You have panicked, and you have acted without thinking of the consequences. Do you know what happens if you leave something in fire long enough, Nimue? It falls apart."

"And what does that matter if I can make something better from what remains?" Nimue retorted. She flicked a finger, and the Imperial Star Destroyer levelled its guns at the city below, preparing a salvo that would scour it to its foundations. "You can stand in my way, Sorceress Supreme. Or you can try to stem the tide. The choice is yours."

Wanda glared at her, then dived into the cloud of war-machines and Chitauri, plunging through them to place herself between the Horcrux of Dreams and the hapless city below. Nimue watched her in satisfaction, then dived downwards, her last obstacle removed. Because they both knew, that choice was no choice at all.

Of course, there was always the matter of a third option.

OoOoO

"Okay," Tony said thoughtfully. "The Chitauri? Not a surprise. The robot apocalypse? Not entirely unexpected. An Imperial Super Star Destroyer? That's different. Fictional, for one thing."

Clark, somewhat less sanguine, let out a strangled gurgle.

"Of course," Tony continued, casually nailing one of the flying war-machines right through its main weapon without missing a beat, ignoring the resultant explosion that took out three more with effortless ease. "It's also powered by a piece of her rotting soul, so that's different too. And a little horrifying."

"Oh. Good. Glad it's not just me who thinks that."

"Yeah, which makes it a lot for Wanda to handle, especially with the back-up it's got," Tony said. "Which makes us her back-up."

Clark nodded, then paused, watching the dark sorceress diving towards the glowing Spire. "Shouldn't we –"

"No," Tony said firmly. "Lemme guess, you usually work solo?"

Clark nodded.

"Well, teamwork takes a bit of getting used to. Point is, Wanda's done her job. She's slowed Nimue down, kept her distracted, and forced her to go to the bench. Everything's going to get much messier, but that's in hand. The Spire? That's covered. Our job is protecting the city. That means helping her out. Got it?"

Clark nodded again.

"Good. I'll take point," Tony said. "We'll need to take it apart fast, though, so…" He gave the impression of scanning his surroundings. Clark rather suspected that he was, though given that he was now wearing a suit he had literally imagined into existence, he wasn't sure how that worked. "… back-up. Big back-up is on the way. Bigger back-up, though, is right here, which you're going to get." He cocked his head at Clark. "You ever play baseball? Football?"

"Both. I'm a quarterback."

"Well, this is a Hail Mary if ever there was one, so you'd better be good," Tony said. "You good?"

"Very."

Clark got the impression of a smirk. "Better," he said. "You're on the big guy."

"The big guy?"

Tony pointed. Clark followed his finger.

"Oh."

"Yeah. Don't worry, he likes kids. Oh, and one more thing: first rule of the fastball special – don't talk about the fastball special?"

"What?"

But Tony was already gone, trailing a sonic-boom in his wake.

Clark swallowed, and prepared to dive.

He was about to try and persuade the Hulk into letting him throw him like a football, into a magic Star Destroyer conjured by the wicked witch to end all wicked witches. As this sunk in, he voiced a question that had been dancing around his mind for a very long time.

"Why can't I have normal problems?"

OoOoO

"Okay, so heavy back-up and our fliers cover the skies, Nimue eventually gets down to the ground because we're not lucky enough for her to not get down…" Carol's gaze shifted to Merlin. "I'm ready for round two. Are you?"

"I don't want to fight Nimue. But if I have to, I will."

"Yeah… you're probably going to have to. I kind of got the impression that she's holding a grudge."

"She probably is. But that doesn't mean I won't try." He shrugged. "If nothing else, me being there will keep her attention."

"I can work with that."

OoOoO

Nimue zeroed in on the Spire and the girl defending it, descending like a meteor strike, shaking the entirety of the Earth. As soon as she stood, she cast her senses about. She couldn't immediately sense the girl, but that was unsurprising, given how much of the surrounding magic was under Strange's control (something she would soon rectify). Frankly, that didn't bother her much. Or at least, not any more than Strange's interference did anyway, which was a great deal. Her very presence would smoke the girl out, a mixture of duty and a desire for revenge compelling her to come forth.

Honestly, Nimue could understand both of those feelings. She was acting out of her own duty, and she did not begrudge the girl her devotion to her own, misguided, beliefs. It wasn't like she was in a position to know better, after all. Strange, on the other hand, Maximoff, and Merlin… oh, they were a very different story.

Speaking of the latter two… Merlin was still nowhere to be seen, which was, admittedly, a worry. Perhaps he was just occupied, protecting the mortals he valued so much. As for Maximoff, she was definitely occupied. Nimue smirked as she watched the girl struggle with the colossal soul-imbued nightmare that rained destruction down on the city, furious enough even to evade the Chaos-Child's counter-measures and defences. She would give humanity this – they were very good at coming up with horrors to harness. It saved her so much effort.

"Hardly anyone to protect you now," she murmured. "Hardly anyone at all…"

A moment later, she regretted it. Because while there was no obvious response, the music seemed to stutter for an instant. Normally, she would have celebrated at something like that. However, Nimue's already considerable paranoia had ratcheted up several notches. And besides. That stutter had sounded very much like a chuckle.

The music shifted again, this time smoothly, into something dramatic and orchestral, backed by a soaring invisible choir. With subtle speed and steady urgency, something began building as Nimue whirled around and about, trying to see where this latest attack was going to come from.

Then, the spire flared, vast snapping sound, followed by a hiss like cold water on a pan the size of an Olympic swimming pool, and Nimue reacted, but too late – a beam of light had shot upwards and slashed through the clouds with a buzzing hum, a searing silver-blue that burned through the darkness, the shockwave sending even her stumbling. But it wasn't an attack – half of what had made her stumble was the fact that it wasn't directed at her, or even her spells. All it was, was a beacon. A beacon, and a hole. And it was familiar, ominously so, it was… oh no.

He wouldn't.

Above, there was an immense crack of displaced air, and a flare of power that was both alien and familiar in a whirling flash of light, followed by a groan of straining metal.

The recently restored SHIELD Helicarrier had arrived, its Nexus Engine piercing the warped veil around the city as it followed the beacon, tearing open an envelope through which poured an escort of every fighter that could be scrambled at short notice, all zeroing in on the conjured Super Star Destroyer.

An instant later, it was followed by a primal bellow of rage and challenge and a scream of tearing metal as the emerald avatar of wrath known as the Hulk was hurled with pinpoint precision into, no, through, the tip of the conjured ship, followed by what – to her cosmically enhanced ears – was the sound of serious mass destruction.

Nimue, considering that her creations and suborned creatures could more than deal with it, would normally have barely spared such things a parting glance. Even the fact that they were all attacking an animate piece of her soul would have occasioned little distress, since she was damn sure it could look after itself – it was her, after all. It would chew them up and spit them out, and show the true majesty of her power and her dreadful wrath.

The fact that they were doing so to what sounded like music from Star Wars completely ruined the whole thing.

Of course, it had to be said that Nimue retained enough self-awareness to know that this was probably the point.

This did not mean that she had to like it.

"Do you have to ruin everything?" she demanded.

Once again, a shift in the music provided an answer, a mocking riff amongst an epic chord.

"Enough of this," she hissed, and reached up through the earth, a massive hand of stone and water surging up into the sky, snatching the Helicarrier mid-firing sequence, crushing nearly half its guns. "I will –"

But what she would have done went unanswered, as a pulse of golden light, whisper quiet and bright as the break of dawn, raced through the ground and up the arm of stone and water, lines of gold tracing eerie patterns right up to the very top. Then, they flared, and what had been a skyscraping mountainous fist became nothing more than a rain of dust and dirty water.

Rage.

Frustration.

Fear.

Exultation.

Nimue turned, slowly, leisurely, to the source of a power she remembered intimately, one now standing right between her and the Spire. At first glance, he was as unassuming as he'd ever been. But the poise, the resolution in his stance, and the way in which he was utterly unfazed by all that was going about them, they would warn all but the greatest fool that there was more to him.

Nimue was no such fool. She knew very well what she was facing, as she hadn't before. Then, he had been a boy. Now, the boy had grown into a man, and the man… had grown into something far, far more.

Merlin Emrys spoke, and when he did, it was as soft and pervasive as the heartbeat of the world, magic itself thrumming to every syllable.

"Yes, Nimue. Enough."

She smiled.

"Hello, Merlin. It's been a long time."

"It has. Long enough that the world has changed," Merlin said.

"Oh, not this speech again," Nimue said dismissively. "I heard it from your former student already – I assume he was a student of yours? Or was he one of Gaius'?"

"A little of both," Merlin said.

"Hmm. That would make him… the boy," Nimue said. "That little boy that was always scampering after the two of you. I thought there was a touch of the Old Religion about him." She eyed the Spire in distaste. "If I'd known what it was going to become, what he was going to become, then I would have eliminated him long ago."

Merlin just smiled. "You wouldn't be the first to have that idea, Nimue. And you won't be the last," he said. Then, the smile vanished, a look of solemn gravity replacing it. "This must stop. You are tearing the world apart."

"You exaggerate, as always," Nimue said. "Merely stretching."

In between words, in between moments, she lashed out, a testing blow. It would have levelled a mountain range. Instead, it struck like lightning upon a rod, grounding itself back into the Earth. And much to Nimue's disturbance, it did not come back to her. Instead… her eyes narrowed, and she began scanning in earnest.

"Where is she?" she snarled, now reassessing, reaching out with new probes, new attacks. Each word was accompanied by a dozen, a hundred, a thousand, and a thousand more as Nimue's assault and Merlin's counter built. The world around them began to shift and warp, as two almighty wills contended – one seeking to dominate and dismiss, the other resolute and redirecting. They swirled around each like competing currents in a stormy sea, neither able to gain advantage, in one fragment of a conflict spread across the globe.

"Near. Far. Not wherever you are," Merlin said.

Nimue eyed him. "Well, I suppose the boy had to learn irritating vagueness from somewhere," she said.

"He has since mastered the art," Merlin said calmly. "Nimue, I can feel you still at work. One piece of your soul, torn loose, incarnate as that thing. Other aspects of you, weaving spells around the world, contending with gods and demons and mortal protectors. Still others, rebuilding temples and towers of old, reshaping the world… and the people within it."

"Yes. I am doing the job you two have had a millennium and a half to do," Nimue said, defiance and pride burning in her gold and black eyes, imbuing the air around as power radiated from her alabaster skin, like moonlight made solid. "A job you botched and which I will not, because unlike the two of you, I do not accept half measures."

"No," Merlin said. "You do not accept any way but yours. You want things done your way. You do not consider that others might have the answers."

Nimue's eyes burned red for an instant, and the entire North American Plate rang like a bell, shuddering under the weight of her sudden rage.

"Others," she sneered. "Like the all-knowing Doctor Strange? You stand here and talk to me of arrogance? Of prophecy?"

"Even he is not all-knowing," Merlin said. "Even he cannot do it all alone. A lesson that he has learned the hard way, more than once. He has been punished for his pride, Nimue, as have you, and as have I. Do you think I was blind? Do you think I didn't see what was coming, that I didn't try to avert it? But in doing so, I only hastened Camelot's doom, maybe even caused it to begin with. I learned my lesson, as he did. Though I think he was a little more stubborn about it."

He turned a hard gaze on her.

"You, though… you never learned your lesson, no matter how many times you were taught. You know that when you bend the world, there is a price to pay. But in your arrogance, you believe that you will not be the one to pay it. You knew the price the Old Religion would demand when Uther demanded a son; you thought yourself above it, and ignored it."

A thousand volcanoes erupted as Nimue screamed, hurling her pain at him like a cleaver made to butcher worlds.

"I did nothing of the kind!"

"You thought you could control it," Merlin continued, implacable and resolute. A cut had appeared on his cheek, thin and deep, but he paid it no mind as blood began to sheet down his face. "You thought you could outsmart fate, and Igraine, your friend, died. Uther felt he was betrayed, and betrayed you in turn. All of your friends died, cut down or burned, and you fled into darkness. And still, you thought yourself beyond consequence. You Saw the birth of Emrys, of me, and the prophecy of the Once and Future King. You sought to bend the world again, to make me into your tool of vengeance. You struck me down, but I was brought back, and you burned."

He looked at her, blue eyes now burning gold with the constant effort of redirecting and grounding her attacks; on him, on the Spire, on everything and everyone within reach. Hundreds of thousands, millions, of lives hung in the balance, damned or reprieved by the slightest shift in focus. That was the only sign of effort, though, his voice remaining steady.

"Once again, you returned, but as a shadow of your former self. Instead of seeking help, or even simply taking the chance given for a new beginning, you schemed to gain a greater power, this power, to make yourself mistress of destiny once again. And once again all you wrought came to nothing, as Pegasus burned – your pride demanding that they would suffer for the impertinence of trying to master magic, and never believing it would get away from you. Yet you lived. You had another chance. Instead, you sat in a cottage and schemed again, for another shot at that power."

"And I got it," Nimue said, jutting her chin out. "With no help from anyone, might I add."

Merlin looked at her sadly. "No," he echoed. "No help at all. Not in your eyes. All those men and women were just tools to you, weren't they? To be used and discarded as necessary, or even remade."

"'Tools' is a generous description," Nimue said coolly. "Are you nearly done yet, Merlin? I have a Spire to destroy, half of my power to reclaim, and quite a lot of landscaping to do."

"You don't see it, do you?" Merlin asked.

"See what?"

He spread his arms, suddenly animated. "Look at this, Nimue, look! Look at what is being shown to you! Do you think it is coincidence that Magic sought its Champion tonight? It was aware, Nimue, of what you were doing. It has always been aware. It sent that girl to stop you."

"And she was decorating a rather nice orchard until about fifteen minutes ago," Nimue said. "Some people just refuse to know when they are –"

"Beaten?" Merlin interrupted. "Yes. The same way I did. The same way Alan Scott did. The same way she did tonight."

He stared her down, eyes burning all the brighter, colours within them varying and deepening like swirling nebulae, speaking of age and depth beyond time itself. And when he spoke, it was Magic itself, a ripple of sound that carried silence before it and in its wake.

"The Purge was your first lesson, Nimue. We who followed have repeated it, time after time, with less and less subtlety, because you refuse to accept it. You do not know everything. You do not understand the powers that you are trying to control. Every time you try to bend magic and destiny in ways that it does not want to go, it will strike back against you. Every time you try to evade the price for your actions, that price will find you and be extracted anyway. Magic has seen all you have wrought, Nimue, it has seen all of your arrogance, it has seen you bring this sacred world to the very brink of destruction, and it says enough!"

Nimue stared at him for a long time, the steady warp around them fading, settling back into coherent reality as her attempts vanished.

"You mean to say," she said softly, in disbelief. "That all this time… I have been fighting magic itself?"

"All the magic of the Earth," Merlin said. "And perhaps beyond. Time and time again, you have fought against it, even when pushed to the brink of oblivion." He smiled, though there was little humour in it. But perhaps there was some admiration. "Yet still you persist. Perhaps that is why you can wield all that power without being immediately consumed." The smile faded. "But it will always snap back on you, Nimue. It will always extract its price."

"Perhaps indeed," Nimue said quietly. Her eyes narrowed. "Perhaps it will try."

"Nimue," and there was a thousand years and more of understanding in that voice, of shared pain, of empathy, of pleading. It was so strong, so clear, and not veiled by arrogance and vengefulness as Strange's had been, meaning that for a single, shining moment, Nimue was touched and the world went still.

"You… care," she said, in astonishment, gold and black replaced with silvery blue. "Not like Strange, whose compassion wars with his spite, no. You lecture, warn me, but… oh, you poor thing." She blinked slowly, in disbelieving puzzlement. "All those self-righteous speeches, and yet, you really are trying to help me."

"Yes," Merlin said simply. "I do."

"Even if there may be no point to it? Even as I go against everything you claim to stand for; this steady path, shadowy manipulations and status quo and all?"

"Even so."

"Because magic does? Because it sends me all these 'lessons'?"

"Perhaps because of that," he admitted. "In part. But also, Nimue, because I have been in your position. I have lost everything. So has Strange. He let it consume him, as it did you."

"Ah. So you help me because I remind you of him," she said, tone shifting back to a sneer.

"No. Because of something you have in common," Merlin said quietly. "I am trying to help you, Nimue, because I care. And I care… because someone has to."

There was a long, long silence. Even the ever present music of Strange's workings had descended to something sub-audible.

"I underestimated you once, Merlin," Nimue said eventually. "Now, it seems that I have done so again." She looked at him. "Part of me wants to mock you for this, but… no. Foolish as it is, I respect your compassion, misplaced though it is, and misguided as you are." She turned away, surveying the world and her works. "I believe that you are right. I believe that the magic of this world has been punishing me. I even believe that it has a plan of its own."

She looked back at him, and now, her eyes burning gold and black once more, Pandora's Box alight with a new fury.

"And I refuse to accept it."

She clenched her hands into fists, and all the sky across the world burned with the electric blue flames of her power, as the foundations of the city began to crumble and groan in the face of an unstoppable rotational force, a whirlpool of rock and dirt.

Merlin raised a hand. That was all. But as he did, the city came to a halt, as tense as a tuned guitar string, two almighty forces in perfect, fragile balance, the slightest distortion enough to tear half the state to pieces. And as he did, his eyes burned gold too.

Nimue smiled, a chill, mocking smile.

"You can't stand against me, Merlin," she said, as her will bore down on his, the balance shifting – slowly, yes, but with the inevitability of a tidal wave and the sense that the pressure could be increased indefinitely. "Once, you were the stronger. But now, I have the mastery, mastery enough to bury this irritating city beneath my feet and begin to build the world anew. You cannot stop me – you do not have the strength."

Merlin's eyes flared and his knees locked, sweat beading on his forehead as even with his best efforts to ground it out and channel it back into the Earth, the power that pressed down on him like an Ice Age.

"It's not about strength, Nimue. It never has been," he said, voice remaining steady. "It is about choices, and the resolve to see them through." He straightened his back, his eyes flaring brighter against Nimue's inexorable might, her sheer force of will burning through reality itself around him, hedged out by a thin ring of golden fire. "I stand against you for the same reasons as those before me: because you forced my hand."

"I did nothing of the kind!" Nimue snapped.

"Really? Then look, Nimue, look," he urged, and grimaced as the ground beneath their feet shuddered slightly. "You have the senses of the gods. Look at what is happening, in this city and across the world. Look not at the spells, or the gods, or the magic… look at the people. Our people. The ones you claim to be defending, in whose name you intend to act. Look. At. Them."

Nimue frowned and let her awareness shift, spreading far and wide, doing as Merlin had demanded. It flew across the world, criss-crossing the dragon-lines, following magic to where it earthed. Time and time again, she saw the same thing: people, with magic, newborn or elevated beyond belief, directing barely managed powers against her purpose. Destroying monsters, shielding mortals, and banishing demons… standing against her, time and time again. As her eyes widened in disbelief, she some of them committing something she could barely even countenance – taking the power, the sacred gift that she had endowed them with, and trying to undo her work.

"They stand against me," she said in disbelieving outrage.

"They stand for their homes, their families, and their loved ones," Merlin said. "Whether they have magic or not." His eyes narrowed against another tremor. "They stand because you forced their hand."

"I gave them power! I am giving them a world –"

"They do not want a world!" Merlin snapped, showing his temper for the first time, his face pale with frustration and effort. "They do not want power! They want their loved ones to be safe! They want to live, not be made into soldiers for your millennia old war!"

Nimue whirled on him, lashing out, and he dropped to one knee. As he did, a small meadow, no, a forest full of bizarre plants that had not been seen, or would not have been seen, on this world for eons, if they were ever meant to exist in the first place began growing up around him, racing outwards like a ripple in a pond.

"Do they not think that those ordinary people, those 'loved ones', will protect them when the mobs come and flames rise high? Do they think their petty little gifts will save them when death rains from the stars? Do they not see what I am giving them?"

"They do not see because you did not ask," Merlin retorted. "You acted without thought for the consequences! How many mobs and flames do you think will be born out of this? Even if you succeed, Nimue, how many will die? How many have died already, burnt out by power they were not ready for, that they were never ready to have?"

"I know the consequences of not acting, Merlin," Nimue hissed. "I have seen centuries of them, and I say this: No. More."

Eldritch blue lightning roared across the sky. Across the globe, that same blue power flooded ancient shrines, modern temples, and even the pettiest artefacts of power, building and reshaping themselves to her will, into weapons and fortresses of material and spirit.

They were great and terrible, drawn from the most terrible speculative designs contained in Pegasus before its fall, generating living weapons and enchanted robots to wreak havoc and strike down all who opposed her will. Even people were not immune, ordinary mortals, soldiers and civilians who dared stand up to her being shaped into living weapons, from mythical monsters to warped parodies of Hulks and Super Soldiers.

Some were attacks were more symbolic than others; oil-rigs became groves spawning chlorofiends, their riggers into the birds and insects that fed them, while mines became portals to the Long Dark under the earth. In a streak of utter pettiness and mockery, nuns and priests became doves and the Pope, stirred from his bed and leading a Mass in the name of all suffering this night found himself turned into a lamb – for while they were non-combatants by any stretch, Nimue had a very long memory and some very deeply rooted grudges.

Only the best warded were immune to her caprices, caprices now directed to a singular purpose: war.

But even that was not all. For everywhere the magic she had raised was turned against her purpose, she struck back. Wands, bracelets, staves, foci of all descriptions, from the crude to the bespoke, whether in the hands of candle lighting amateurs or master mages of the White Council and ICW, all around the world they were raised in defiance. And at Nimue's will, all around the world they were either shorted out or shattered to fragments, flaring in a shower of sparks or exploding like grenades.

Some remained functional, more durable than most, it was true, and those who did without were entirely untouched. Yet others still were far less fortunate – for those whose foci were incorporated into their clothing or even their bodies, there was no escaping the savage surge of power which heralded the witch's retribution.

The lesson was very clear.

Nimue giveth, and Nimue taketh away.

"Nimue," Merlin said again, and this time it was not in entreaty, but horror and outrage, sufficient that he managed to force himself to his feet once more in a surge of power. It was the kind of power that only he could muster, and any lesser practitioner facing it would have been vaporised by the counter-strike – indeed, anything less than a Skyfather or Earthmother or the greatest of Demon Lords, would have been lamed, if not crippled. All it drew from Nimue was a twitch of the head, a few drops of blood, and a glare devoid of any kind of mercy. Her course was set, her will clear.

She reached out to both of the remaining rotting pieces of her soul, forging them in the cold flames of her rage, remaking them as avatars of her being, phantoms imbued with the power of a pantheon. One was dispatched to Arctis Tor, the other to Ynys Affalach, to gain mastery over both Summer and Winter – a pair of hands wrapping around the world's throat.

And they were squeezing.

"I love this world, Merlin," she cried, voice like the scream of the sky being torn open as a constant rain of eerie, soundless lightning poured from the skies. "I love our people. And I will do anything to protect them, even if I have to fight everyone and everything, even Magic Itself to do it! No matter who I have to kill, no matter what I have to destroy, you can rest assured of this: I will save this world even if I have to rebuild it from scratch."

In the background, the music soared once more. This could have been the beginning of an epic duel between two ancient adversaries, something ominous and stirring in equal measure. Mars, Bringer of War, for instance, would have been considered appropriate.

"Shot through the heart

And you're to blame!

Darlin', you give love a bad name!"

It is quite possible that the entire world, awake or asleep, living or dead, heard Nimue's enraged screaming.

It is also, just barely, possible the someone very close to the epicentre might (in the moment before Nimue's barely contained and very literal explosion of rage) have heard Merlin's profoundly exasperated sigh.

OoOoO

Fury glanced down at one of the displays on the Helicarrier's bridge for a moment, taking note of both the vast power of the blast below, and the success of the containment. That is to say, it 'only' wiped everything solid between the French Quarter and the Chandeleur Sound that wasn't either the Spire or, by the looks of things, Merlin himself, off the map. Given the circumstances and power levels, though, Fury was going to count that as a win.

Unfortunately, that meant most of the force was funnelled upwards. It vaporised one a solid third of the strangely tentacular flying combat drones that were currently trying to rip through the Helicarrier's decking and escort, which wasn't a problem. The fact that one of their engines and approximately a fifth of their remaining escort, real and conjured, had gone the same way, very much was.

What was even more of a problem was the fact that despite the fact that the design of this Helicarrier had taken a leaf out of the HMS Valiant's book and been armoured with adamantium, it had also just been almost crushed by a giant earthen hand construct, crippling a number of its guns. Even though that construct had been destroyed, it was still vastly outgunned and being chewed up by an absolute behemoth. An absolute fictional behemoth. An absolute fictional behemoth powered by a soul fragment of a newly ascended and utterly psychotic goddess.

And unless he was very much mistaken, the lines of the vessel's bridge and bow were developing an alarming resemblance to said goddess. This was arguably a positive development, in Fury's view, as it made shooting it and/or watching the Hulk tear his way through it a much more profoundly satisfying experience.

Really, it said a lot about Nick Fury's life that was probably not the weirdest experience in it.

Definitely in the top five, though, he internally reflected as he maintained an outwardly cool demeanour and ordered a flanking manoeuvre followed by a "magic or not, it's still a fucking ship, so use the list, get us behind it, and shoot the fucking engines before it shoots us out of the fucking sky". The judicious use swearing as punctuation with maximum emphasis and minimal volume was a valued command skill in militaries everywhere.

Certainly, there were plenty of others tonight that were vying for positions in that top five. For one thing, he'd never previously attended a battle with a backing track. On the other hand, he had heard about the Hacking of the Valiant at the First Task from Wisdom (whose natural talent for concisely delivering orders while using as many four letter words in as creative a fashion as possible without his composure failing or his heart-rate rising over 80 beats per minute had marked him out from an early stage as someone who would go far), which had not particularly surprised him, because Tony Stark was an irreverent menace. Of course, Doctor Strange had apparently been behind that, which was even less surprising.

Now, someone had given Strange a copy of the Lantern Ring, a helpful shapeshifting elemental god made of magic and ghosts (and, apparently, plants), and a colossal magical amplifier, and told him to go nuts. Which he had, and with pinpoint precision if the global magical stabilisation, and judicious use of tracks such as (currently) Duel of the Fates, and the number of Nimue tantrums both had inspired were anything to go by.

It was, Fury had to admit, a piece of lateral thinking on Carol's part that was downright inspired. It was also utterly insane.

He had privately cherished hopes that Carol would be the voice of reason in her relationship with Harry, that she would be capable of reining in her trouble-magnet adrenalin-junkie lunatic of a boyfriend. And she was. Oh, she was most certainly capable. However, as Fury gloomily observed, that particular enterprise now seemed doomed to failure: when given the chance, she was apparently every bit as crazy as he was.

If there was any remaining doubt in his mind of this, a flash akin to that from a nuclear strike lit up the entire bridge, barely manageable by filters installed precisely for this purpose, followed by a wave of impact that nearly flipped his Helicarrier like a coin. As it settled, amidst much swearing and shouting and barking of instructions (some of them his), he cast his eye down at the display again. That, it seemed, had been the result of Carol Danvers coldcocking Nimue in the face.

As he watched, with an odd mixture of worry, vicarious glee, and morbid fascination, this was immediately followed by a kick to the groin so hard it lifted the ancient witch six feet in the air, and… he couldn't believe it. He couldn't fucking believe it. But the Helicarrier's (amazingly still functioning) cameras were very good and his lip-reading skills were even better, and he could see what she'd said as clear as day.

He shook his head as the girl blew a fucking raspberry, then took off at something like Mach Four, immediately pursued by a screaming Nimue, now morphing into something more like a Lovecraftian horror out of sheer rage, imprecations transmuting themselves into slobbering fanged and tentacled monsters as soon as they burst forth from her mouth.

Merlin, meanwhile, visibly sighed and gently smacked his face with one hand, while swatting the monsters out of existence with another. Fury felt a surge of fellow feeling for the legendary sorcerer, along with the beginnings of a truly spectacular headache. Crazy didn't even begin to describe it.

Birds of a feather might flock together, he thought gloomily, but those two maniacs fucking deserved each other.

OoOoO

"Jean, Maddie. Comms would be good, but your main role… well, it's actually kinda simple. But not easy."

"We didn't expect it would be."

"Especially not given the calibre of opponent that we're up against."

"But we don't have any problem with 'difficult'."

One speaker had followed smoothly from the latter, before the two had spoken in perfect unison. It was a little bit alarming.

"Good. I want you doing one thing, and one thing only: scorch the skies. All those things that Nimue's creating? Tear them apart. Any bits of that bitch's rotten soul? Burn them down. Show her that these skies are ours."

OoOoO

Clark blinked. He hadn't heard that. Had he? He frowned and stuck his finger in his ear, wiggling it extensively. Nope, no change.

"Kid?"

He turned to Tony, paused, glanced at where Carol – and then Nimue – had vanished into the distance, then looked back.

"Um. Mister – Tony. It's nothing. I'm just not sure if I heard something right. Something that Ms Danvers said."

"Was it part of the plan?" Tony asked, neatly herding a sizeable fraction of the flying drones into a bundle. An easy-to-vaporise-with-adequate-heat-vision bundle.

Clark complied, his expression remaining confused, then paused, delivering a double axehandle to a half-blind archangel as he did, and trying not to think about the vague splatting noise it made when it hit the ground.

"Well, it might have been part of the plan," he said slowly. "But not something she exactly elaborated on. I think it was… improvised."

Tony cocked his head, curious.

Clark told him.

After a solid thirty seconds of cackling, Tony managed to regain enough composure to relay this to everyone.

Shortly after, he was not the only one cackling. On nights like this, you took your joys where you could.

Joys that got exponentially greater when the Star Destroyer was, per Fury, finally fucking shot in the fucking engines, as it suffered a particularly large tear in the hull courtesy of the Hulk one that corresponded quite neatly with its approximation of Nimue's eyes.

This tear was widened dramatically by a pinpoint bolt of scarlet chaos, which tore through the body of the ship like chain-lightning, crippling it, and then followed by what looked like two gigantic sets of talons – one amber-red, the other a deep, burning blue – that dug in and ripped and tore.

But as they did, the tears sealed up, scabbing over with black and gold soul-steel that drew showers of sparks and clouds of acrid smoke where they and the talons met. Construct or not, it was an aspect of Nimue. And if there was one good thing to be said about Nimue, it was that she did not give up easily.

"Mr – Tony, they're," Clark began, but Tony cut him off with a wave before folding his arms.

"Relax, kid," he said, head tilted slightly, giving every impression of watching carefully. "They're just adjusting to the frequency."

"Who?"

Clark's answer came in a sound that reached his brain without consulting his ears, like the scream of a bird of prey on the hunt. An instant later, only perceptible to a mind like his, came a flash as bright as the noonday sun, as the talons burned white, flames tracing a colossal shape across the skies. It was less a bird, more the idea of a bird, a bird of prey with a beak like a battleship and wings as wide as cities, burning away the clouds like touchpaper. The ship's guns opened fire, and its hull began to writhe, tentacles bursting forth as it shed all pretence of what it truly was in recognition of a true threat.

It was not enough.

The wings swept back, then beat once, twice, and the talons flexed, widening, deepening their hold, before ripping the ship in half.

There was an awful sound, the bastard offspring of a tearing metal sheet and a woman's scream, distorted by scale and distance. Then, the great beak lunged downwards into the ship-soul's innards, and, neat as pair of Clark's mother's pruning shears, snipping out something dark and writhing and vital, and the sound was cut off, the pieces of the ship groaning as they were consumed by white flame, burnt into nothingness as they fell. Only a shadow remained, a piece of darkness that writhed and let out a tinny wail that became more and more human as it shrank and burned in the great raptor's beak, soon vanishing entirely.

The bird-that-was-more-than-a-bird spread its wings once more, vaporising most of the remaining Chitauri nightmare fleet in the process, and let out an unearthly, unspoken cry. It should have been unsettling, even terrifying, something to cow even gods.

Nevertheless, Clark felt his spirits swell and an answering primal cry of defiance break free of his throat. Courage called to courage everywhere, wordless challenges and rallying cries intertwining with the music to create a more ancient symphony, a song under a light that ignited the soul. Darkness had fallen in the War of Light; now all the city looked to the skies – for Hope burned bright.

Clark gaped in awe, an awe that got only more profound as his vision sharpened, instinctively zooming on the two specks at the heart of the colossal firebird; two young women, pale as snow and with hair like fire, beautiful as starlight and swathed in white and gold.

"Tell me, kid," Tony said, far more casually than should have been possible. "Did Harry ever mention his cousins?"

Clark continued gaping. "That… was amazing," he said.

"And you were involved in bringing that thing down too," Tony said. "Take, like, 2% of the credit."

"2%?"

Tony tilted his head up at the firebird, which was now fading, but still bright. "I'm feeling generous," he said dryly.

"I'll take 2%," Clark said. "But… wow. That was amazing. And tough."

Tony clapped a hand on his shoulder with a metallic clink. "Yeah, don't go relaxing too much, junior," he said, surveying the battlefield, both immediate and on a grander scale, picking out Nimue's other workings and soul fragments. "That? That was one."

"What."

OoOoO

Steve shifted his feet and looked Carol in the eye. "Are you sure you're ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

"Carol."

His tone was serious – not reproving, not doubting, but serious. This was not a question to be dismissed.

Carol sighed. "Yes. No. Can I really be 'ready' for this? I have no fucking idea. But yeah, ready as I'm ever going to be."

He looked her in the eye, and nodded. "Okay," he said.

"Which will still leave the rest of us with problems," Wanda said grimly. "Conjured spirits, summoned demons, constructs, whatever she can throw at us. And worse, even if Nimue does not manage to repurpose the soul fragments, she will find a way to split herself."

"Iron Legion style?" Tony asked. "Or Agent Smith style?"

"The latter," Wanda said. "Not in too many pieces, though."

"She's got the power," Merlin added, answering the unasked question. "However, her mind is too human, too subconsciously trained to believe in limitations, limitations that she does not necessarily have."

"I concur," Strange said. "Her education as a High Priestess was intensive, but limited. Her studies since? Even more so. She is not psychologically equipped to be omnipresent, because so much of her identity is tied into her individual Self. Since she cannot, will not, give power to others and remove the problem, splitting off avatars of her will, of her malice, is the best she can do. And she will have to focus to maintain them."

"But she'll still split herself," Steve said.

There was a sharing of looks among the mages, before Strange, Merlin, and Liberty tipped their heads to Wanda.

"No more than four pieces, more likely three, aside from Nimue herself," she said. "They'll also be running off of her subconscious – less focus, more general intent. Which given the power involved will still be utterly terrifying, but there won't be as much coherent thought."

"More to the point," Carol interjected. "Her focus will be split. She'll be distracted. She'll slip. Which is all I need…"

OoOoO

That slip, Carol thought, could come any time now.

Seriously. Any time would be good.

She instinctively glanced back, even though she knew she didn't need to – Nimue's presence was very, very hard to miss. And distinctly unnerving, since she had now stretched out into… something, like a human crossed with a serpent made of water. Well, if you removed all the bones, split the now clawed arms in six, gave it hateful unblinking eyes of black and gold hatred, and then topped it off with the aerodynamic sensibilities of a ramjet. The fanged, eternally screaming mouth of rage even provided an air intake.

Combine that with the eerie silence beyond the sonic boom (and they were well beyond that now), and you got something that Carol was pretty sure she was going to be seeing in her dreams any time she ate cheese before bed in the future. If, you know, she actually had a future.

As they tore across Africa (she was pretty sure they were coming up on the Indian Ocean), she considered her next move. Oh, she had a plan, yes. A fairly good one. However, various escapades with Harry, along with a few all of her own – such as this one – had taught her the true meaning of 'everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the mouth'. She smirked. Or 'kicked in the crotch', in Nimue's case.

That was probably the reason (well, part of the reason) for the various profanities and screamed threats echoing in the back of her head like an annoying radio station she couldn't turn off. It made for an interesting contrast with the outward silence. She tried not to think how many of those profanities and curses were, you know, curses.

Her armour seemed to be holding them off well enough so far, with only a few senses of heat, cold, and occasionally crawling skin dribbling through… but that did leave open just what kind of magic Nimue was throwing at her that even going full-pelt with every defence up, some of it was still getting through.

Strange, and some of the others, had been pretty derisive about Nimue's skills and imagination, and Carol understood that from a professional pride point of view – gods knew she was looking askance at Nimue's flying (all raw power, no grace, whatsoever, despite better aerodynamics, did the woman have no shame?). She also understood that Nimue knew exponentially more than she did, which included little things like how to break a Lantern or peel off her armour at close range – and, then, to go all Wicked Witch on her ass. Carol had not enjoyed life as a tree, and she did not think she would enjoy life as a flying monkey, either.

She darted another look back, caught Nimue's expression, and poured on even more speed. Forget flying monkeys – compost was looking most likely at the moment.

Anyway, so far, the plan had been going well:

First, Nimue had been fried and slowed down by Wanda. No bust-up of Pandora's Box, but it had been a long shot.

Then, she'd been held up by Merlin. That, Carol thought, had been seriously impressive – if Nimue had leaned on her that hard, Lantern or no Lantern, she'd be little bits of smoking ash. She could see where Strange got it from; magic and way with words and all. Except that Merlin was nicer about it. And he wasn't nuts. Or if he was, it didn't show.

All of that had wound her up enough that she hadn't thought twice about tearing off after Carol after being clotheslined and kicked in the crotch.

The latter, Carol had to admit, had been improvised. It had also worked like a charm. Though in her private opinion, yelling, "Meep Meep!" a moment before blowing a raspberry and vanishing in a glowing blur had probably sealed the deal.

If asked, ever, she would blame Harry's influence.

Speaking of her boyfriend, she wondered briefly what he would suggest as a next step. She snorted. She knew exactly what he'd do. It would be crazy, flashy, a bit manipulative, and a lot insane. And it would most certainly involve fighting dirty.

Hmm. Fighting dirty. There was an idea.

She looked back. Nimue was slowly hauling her down, and they were – huh. That must be India, receding into the distance. How time flew.

All of a sudden, every instinct in her body still stood up and screamed, but too late – a blanket of pure darkness had manifested of mid-air in front of her and snapped around her, drawing sparks and flames where it came into contact with her suit. It was like someone had reached out and pulled the plug. The blanket burnt under contact, holes tearing through as Carol thrashed and struggled, cursing her complacency, acutely aware of how rapidly her momentum was leaving her and her trajectory was dipping and Nimue was closing in.

She twisted and writhed with greater urgency, tearing holes faster than they could repair. Hope surged, and then she was almost knocked out of the sky by a colossal shockwave - a thunderous, deafening, balance-rattling boom. Of course, part of her thought bitterly, she'd dropped below the speed of sound and the sonic boom finally caught up with her, oh and holy shit Nimue was here!

The witch had now collapsed back into something approximately human in shape and was all the more alarming for it. Her proportions were still elongated, almost vulpine, and her skin was like ice, while her movements flickered with hideous, liquid grace as one long arm reached out. Time almost seemed to slow as Carol saw it coming. With almost unnatural calmness, she realised two things.

First, she was going to get out of the stifling shroud.

Second, she wasn't going to get out in time to get away.

As she realised this, one of the strange intuitions that had come with this power (a glimpse of the future, perhaps) told her exactly what would happen when Nimue made contact. She wasn't going to peel her suit off her as she had before, oh no. Nimue wasn't going to take any chances: she was going pour her remains out of it like soup.

The calm vanished like popped bubble, replaced by fear, fear enough that she could barely prevent herself from throwing up.

"No more running," the witch hissed, madness and rage and glee warring for prominence in her insane black and gold eyes, as she reached out to take Carol by the forearm and seal her doom. A lightning storm of electric blue power roared down Nimue's arm, into Carol's suit, so bright that it shone like a second sun.

Nimue's lips curved into a rictus smile.

Then, she noticed something very unsettling.

Carol had matched her grip, metal-gloved fingers trapping her forearm like a vice. The power pouring into her wasn't slowing down as it did its work – in fact, the flow was only increasing. And the blue light around her was beginning to change, pulsing brighter and brighter… and greener.

A dagger-slash smile of white light emerged from the emerald inferno, followed by three chilling words.

"No more running."

OoOoO

Nimue could hardly believe her eyes – or any of her other senses, for that matter. Yet they were telling her loud and clear what was happening, and she had long since learned not to ignore the apparently impossible. The last time she had done that, it had got her killed.

She tried to unbind the girl's suit, but this time, it would not respond. She tried to break free, but the girl's grip only tightened, her slickening skin pinned by now claw-tipped fingers that bit into her flesh and exposed the burning blue fires beneath.

She twisted and writhed, spinning the two of them through the skies, the seas, the crust below, and the magma below that.

She took a thousand-thousand different shapes, forms both natural and not, beings that had never seen the light of day and whose faces had driven men mad. She became acid, she became water, she became steel and she became stone.

She threw spell after spell, summoning the fire of stars and the cold of death. She conjured acid to dissolve flesh, she brought down lightning to boil blood, and she reached out to rip the girl's soul free from its housing.

She threw all her Will that there was to spare into it, to reverse the terrible tide of receding power, calling up more of her own from the earth to make up for it.

But it did no good, none of it. For no matter what she did, no matter the scorching and frostbite, the pain (she was hurting the girl, she knew she was hurting her) and even the fear (and the girl was afraid, too, she was not that stupid), the girl endured. She didn't fight back. She didn't try to counter spells. She just weathered them with dreadful resolve, holding herself together through sheer Will. And that agonising grip, like five nails made of white-hot ice, only dug in tighter.

They whirled through the world, bound together, magic pouring through one into the other in an endless torrent, and all that changed was that the girl's dagger-slash smile of glee and relief became a rictus grin of utmost resolve.

"What are you doing?!" she screamed.

"I'm draining you," the girl hissed through clenched teeth, voice echoing, emerald flames burning brighter. "I'm taking you for everything you have." The grin, if anything, grew even sharper and there was an edge of wildness to the girl's voice that frankly terrified her – it was the sound of someone who had gone beyond fear. "Maybe even enough to drain. You. Dry."

Nimue's eyes widened, and she made a desperate renewed effort to get away.

"Are you insane?!" she howled. "You're a child! A mad, stubborn, mortal child! You couldn't hope to control that kind of power!"

The response was dripping with contempt.

"I don't have to, moron. I'm currently connected to the Earth – and guess what? That connection goes both ways! Everything I can take, I can just dump back where it belongs!"

"Where it flows straight back into me," Nimue snapped, irritation spiking through fear.

"Yeah. Through that rift in Pegasus. Into that toy lodged in your chest. We're both running on jury-rigged Lanterns, Nimue. Yours? Yours is a fucking toy built by people who didn't have a fucking clue what they were dealing with, running off a rift on the other side of the planet. Mine? It's Uru, the same stuff as Mjolnir. It was blessed by Odin himself. I know it can take the power because I gave up a big chunk to everyone else earlier. It was made for this. And you know what else, Nimue? One other, very small, but very, very important difference: It's. Right. Here."

She learned in as chills of horrified realisation ran up and down her spine. The girl let out a mocking laugh as she saw the expression, tightened her grip still further and bared her teeth.

"Are you getting it now? I don't need to out-magic you, Nimue: all I need to do is to hold onto you until I burn your little box out and drain you dry! And you know what?"

She snapped her head back, then forward in a brutal headbutt, one that blinded Nimue's senses with red blood and agony as the impact registered on seismometers across the Pacific.

"I can do this all day."

OoOoO

"So," Monica said. "My job is to essentially wait until Nimue's really, really busy."

"You won't be waiting on the ground, if that helps."

"Danvers, given what you just said about what I'm actually waiting in, that does not help."

"The logic is sound," Carol said evenly. "You'll be in something fast enough to outrun trouble, hard-hitting enough to deal with most things that catch up – if any do at all, and outlandish enough that it'll be overlooked as just another construct."

Monica frowned. "Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy? Not just the hiding place, but relying on me to solve this? We've got super-wizards by the dozen, some centuries old. We've got superheroes of all varieties. The sort of people who handle this sort of thing on a regular basis. And, oh yeah, Merlin."

"And it has to be you," Carol said. "I've got –"

"If you tell me that you have a feeling in the Force, I will smack you."

"No. But I do have a feeling. You have powers, Monica. Powers that, like mine, tie right back to Pegasus. I'm no magic expert, but if there's one thing I do know, it's that one way or another, it tends to come full circle. I'm half the solution. You're the other half."

Before Monica could do more than frown, Strange cleared his throat.

"Carol is right," he said quietly. "If we had an appropriate moment, Ms Rambeau, I would explain to you just what your powers mean, the truth of what they are, and how significant they could be. Destiny likes its echoes and its encores. Pegasus is in your hands."

"How will I know what to do?"

"You've broken one of Nimue's spells. This is little different."

"… I'm beginning to see why people don't like you."

"You only just started?" Carol asked wryly. "He's right, though. Which, full disclosure, is usually why people don't like him. Just… wait. Pick your moment, when Nimue's gone and the deck is clear. And don't worry…" Her gaze settled on someone else. "… you won't be alone. For one thing, your pilot should have a pretty good idea of when to go."

OoOoO

Monica eventually sighed.

"Is it always like this?" she asked.

"What?" the pilot said, without looking away from the screens.

"Waiting," she said.

"Pretty much."

"I hate it."

"Makes two of us, kiddo."

Monica eyed him. "How are you so calm, anyway?" she asked. "My friend, your niece, is out there, fighting the wickedest witch of all time, and we're just sitting here."

"I know," said Jack O'Neill, highly decorated fighter pilot, special operative, and Air Force General who had been quite literally summoned out of a Very Important Meeting to be present. He spoke in a calm monotone, but his hands held the controls in an easy grip, and his gaze was sharp, picking out details, analysing combats, spotting which flashes of light would burn bright and which would burn out.

He did not seem like a man worrying about his niece. He also did not seem like a man particularly bothered by how hideously vulnerable he was, steadily circling the sprawling battlefield in a machine that was famously a flying junk heap. His only concession to the madness was occasionally nudging the controls up and down to evade contact. They weren't going weapons hot, not yet.

Monica shot him an incredulous look. "Doesn't that bother you?" she demanded.

His dark eyes swivelled over to her. At first glance, he didn't look that much like his niece – a bit of stubbornness in the jaw, perhaps, something about the quirk of the mouth, but only at close examination. However, here and now, with that hard, cynical look on his face, the resemblance was unmistakeable.

"It bothers me," he said levelly. "It bothers me a lot. Carol's tough, smart, and with guts to spare, but we've already found out what Nimue will do to Carol if she gets her hands on her. She's a kid – you both are. Neither of you should be anywhere near this, and if I had my way, you wouldn't be. But that's not in my hands. What is in my hands is the execution of this plan. Which, as these things go, isn't actually a bad plan. It's insane, but it might just work. And if it works, it'll get this absolute horror show over as quickly as possible. Then, I can hug my niece, tell her off, and then drink myself under the table to deal with the fact that someone turned her into a fucking tree."

"Oh," Monica said, sliding down in her seat, a little chastened. "Right. Sorry."

"Apology accepted," O'Neill said. "The waiting's always the hardest part. Especially when you have to watch other people getting stuck in, without being able to help."

There was a rattle from back in the main body of the vessel, and Monica twisted to see Peter and Gambit. The former was looking nervously excited and like he was repressing a year's worth of babble (unsurprising, given that General O'Neill had threatened to tape his mouth shut), while Gambit was looking sombre.

"Still waitin', then," he said.

"Yup," O'Neill said, then glanced over his shoulder. "You stop that one from eviscerating the engines?"

Gambit smirked briefly and Monica snorted as Peter made some outraged noises about how 'the engines were so interesting, though!'

"Ah did," he said. "Can' blame 'im for bein' tempted, though. Ain't every day that y' onboard the real Millennium Falcon."

"No, Mr LeBeau, it is not," O'Neill said levelly. "For one thing, this is not the 'real' Millennium Falcon. This is something that my Star Wars nerd of a niece conjured up out of her demented imagination that, somehow, works as intended, in blatant defiance of the laws of physics, god, and man."

"Oh, ah think ah know at least one god dat would bend de rules f'r her," Gambit said, smirk widening.

"And don't lie, you're enjoying being Han Solo," Monica said.

There was a very long, very reluctant pause, as Gambit stifled a mixture of amusement and protest of his own claim to that particular role.

"… I might be."

Before anyone else could add anything, two streaks, one green, one blue, shot away from the battlefield.

"That's Nimue and Carol off the battlefield," O'Neill said, a hint of tension still in his voice. "Which just leaves a big honkin' piece of Nimue's soul."

At that moment, said big honkin' piece of Nimue's soul opened fire. Any other pilot, so adeptly targeted, wouldn't have stood a chance. But Jack O'Neill wasn't any other pilot, and the merest millisecond that he'd sensed trouble, he yanked the controls back, standing the Falcon on its end and sending it rocketing upwards and away at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light.

"Strap in!" he bellowed.

Monica did as commanded, but Peter and Gambit – the latter stuck to the ceiling and holding Gambit like a child with a teddy bear – shared a look and a nod, before scrambling towards the gun emplacements. Monica, feeling she should do something useful, poked the screen in front of her. Thankfully, Carol hadn't gone too far in on the authenticity and had instead made interactive and in technicolour, showing that their break for the skies had caught the wrong sort of attention.

"What have you got?" O'Neill barked over the roar of the engines.

"Chitauri and… TIE Fighters," Monica finished. "If I'm really asleep, this is the weirdest fucking dream I've ever had."

O'Neill shrugged, wrenching the Falcon construct into a spin, as Tesseract blue and sickly green energy bolts went flying past and were answered with a storm of red lasers.

"East Germany was weirder."

Monica decided, there and then, that she did not want to know.

"Well, I know that mom's going to be jealous when she hears about this," she said.

"Your mom's Maria 'Photon' Rambeau, right?" O'Neill said,

"You know her?"

That got a chuckle with bared teeth.

"Like I was going to forget the woman crazy enough to roll a B-52 over Iraq."

This proclamation was all the more impressive as it was made in the midst of pulling a neat Crazy Ivan, before slamming the throttle forward and Monica back into her seat as the Falcon dived.

"The boys are picking off most of our chasers," she managed, studying the screen. "The ones that we aren't outrunning, anyway."

"She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts," O'Neill muttered. "Have you got comms?"

Monica frowned and poked through the screen a few times, before pausing, eyeing the green ring on her finger, then pressing that to the screen. Almost instantaneously, a series of green-tinged screens popped up.

"Hello?"

"I'd say that's a yes," Monica said. "Hello? This is, uh, the Falcon." She shot a pleading look over at O'Neill, who sighed.

"This is O'Neill," he said. "Is that you, Stark?"

"It is. You're making your approach too early."

"I know," O'Neill said irritably. "Unfortunately, a few strays decided to latch onto our tail. We're shaking them. What I want to know is an ETA on neutralising that…" He sighed. "That Star Destroyer."

"Super Star Destroyer, actually."

"Like I care. ETA?"

"Well," Stark said casually. "I'd say… about thirty seconds."

As he spoke, a pair of colossal talons, one made of amber-red flame, the other flickering deep blue, manifested and lashed out, digging into the colossal soul-spaceship and drawing a mind-jarring sound, like a woman's scream filtered through tearing metal.

"What. Is. That," Monica managed.

"That, kids, is what happens when you make the Grey Twins mad."

Monica paused, then shot O'Neill a look, noting as she did that the man was keeping an eagle's eye on the situation while guiding the Falcon through what amounted to a light dog-fight with the same casual ease that someone else might park their car on a lazy Sunday morning.

"Grey Twins?" she asked.

"The redheads, Harry Thorson's cousins."

"Oh," Monica said, casting her mind back to the round-up briefing, memory conjuring two redheads with their cousin's striking emerald green eyes and figures to die and/or kill for. One of them, the slimmer one with the awesome face tattoos, had stopped for a meaningful talk with Gambit about staying safe, which had led Monica to mark her down as 'mostly ex-girlfriend'.

The screen suddenly lit up as the talons went an incandescent white and dug in deeper, while flames flew out and up, tracing out the shape, the essence, of a colossal bird of prey. As she watched, dumbfounded, the bird flung its wings back – forcing a sudden dive – and burnt away most of the lingering clouds, letting out a cry of challenge, before ignoring the desperate counters of the Soul Fragment Star Destroyer and tearing open its skin to feast on its insides.

"Well, that's disturbing," she said.

"Welcome to the life, kid," O'Neill said, not without some sympathy. "Normalcy is out the window, and the disturbing is the everyday." He started running checks. "Stark, you there?"

"Here, there, and with this ring, more or less everywhere. Why do you ask?"

"Do you have company? And anything particularly pressing you need to be doing?"

"Yes, and no, respectively."

"Good," he said, bringing the Falcon into a sharp dive, skimming the treetops and drawing a shrieking whoop from Monica. "Can you get a bead on us?"

"Already have, oh mighty General. You want an escort?"

"I want you and your friend in the… red and blue to smash through anything in our way. So, yes," O'Neill said, before grimacing as the remaining war-machines of Pegasus, flying and ground based alike, converged on the threat at Nimue's implanted command, opening fire. He settled his hand on the throttle and focused on the curtain of rippling reality around Pegasus itself. "Now – keep up."

And the Falcon leapt forward in a blur of starlight.

OoOoO

Steve glanced up at the cracking boom, noticing the plate-like grey shape vanishing in a blue-and-white blur, followed by a red-gold blur and a red-blue one.

"They're on approach," he said, and tapped his comms. "Fury – Nimue?"

"Engaged with Carol over the South-Western Pacific, though they're all over the place at the moment," came the crackling reply. "Carol's got her: the drain's working, and Nimue's panicking."

Steve almost collapsed with relief. Unfortunately, with the array of monsters, machines, and rogue plants and practitioners on the streets, that wasn't an option.

"What about the fragments?"

"Retreating from Ynys Afallach and Arctis Tor – the Faerie Courts," Fury said. "They're converging on Nimue. She's cannibalising them and all the other power she can get, so she can try and break for the blue. Which is good, because until she did, they were winning."

Steve, who had been briefed on the Faerie Courts in the past, and the implications of them either being out of balance or under the control of a hostile actor, winced. The idea of Nimue in active control of the climate did not appeal, especially given the boost it would provide to her deranged ambitions.

"Definitely good," he said. "What's the situation otherwise?"

"Good and bad. The good is that the number of hostiles is decreasing dramatically, especially after the Grey Twins went to town. The bad news is that while Carol's got the upper-hand, she's having to dump the power she gets back into the Earth."

"Which means that Nimue can call on it," Merlin said. Steve tried not to jump too visibly, and, as he decapitated a cybernetically enhanced vampire (codenamed 'Deathlok' – apparently they'd been named during Pegasus' psychedelics phase), reflected that the awe having worn off some time ago. He also wondered, again, just how many of Strange's bad habits he could blame this man for.

"Tactical advantage for us, but strategic advantage," he said. "Until Carol burns Nimue's 'ring' out, her spells keep ticking over."

"Pretty much."

Suddenly, the entire planet trembled.

"Fury," Steve said, in an admirably level voice. "Merlin. What was that?"

"Nimue tried to break for the blue, Cap."

"Carol stopped her?"

"Not exactly. You want to know what 'that' was? That was her making sure Nimue broke for the black."

OoOoO

Carol was holding on to Nimue like grim death, the two whirling through seas and skies in a bizarre dance, revolving around the locked grip like it was their personal centre of gravity and resembling nothing so much as an emerald comet crossed with a giant green rubber ball. Carol, for her part, was fine with this as she figured that all she had to do was hold on and wait.

Unfortunately, she'd noticed something else – flecks of darkness, of oily shadow and glimmering blue light chasing them in a growing cloud, slamming into Nimue's body whenever she stopped for even an instant. Each impact drew an unearthly shiver, a twist of nausea and discomfort from the ancient witch.

This would have been worrying enough, for the simple fact that Carol didn't know what it was. But given that with each fragment, each sliver of shadow, Nimue was thrashing harder and her grip was slipping looser and looser, she was beginning to have some nasty suspicions. Nimue was getting stronger by the second, turning her full focus on this fight, bringing her everything to bear. Energy drain or no energy drain, Carol didn't fancy her chances against that.

So, she thought very hard and very fast.

A few moments later, Nimue twisted her entire body, bringing all of her Will to bear on Carol's grip and struck… nothing. Because Carol had let go. Instead, the explosion of raw Will sent the witch spiralling up and away, righting herself a few moments later in confusion.

"What are you –" she began, confused, before being interrupted by her answer.

That answer took the form of Carol, who had decided to combine the concepts of 'fighting dirty' and 'playing to your strengths' as brutally as possible. As a result, what Nimue would have registered was not just a blurred emerald green shape shooting towards her like a ballista bolt fired from a railgun, but the fact that that blur was travelling feet first in a two-footed studs-up tackle of the sort generally known as a 'leg-breaker'. And, thanks to the mutable properties of her suit, each boot was now not only inset with a set of six studs, but each stud was an average of two inches long.

Oh, and rather than Nimue's legs, all of it was aimed at her face.

The results, it had to be said, were not pretty.

Nimue screamed, blinded, contorted face streaming with glowing blood. She was beyond reason now, driven by rage and fear in equal measure, thrashing around, trying to adjust her magical senses to compensate and to prevent any further assaults by wild spells that did things like turn a 50 mile radius of sea into rippling glass. This turned out to have absolutely zero effect, as Carol proved by reaching up and yanking her forward by her hair, before pulling her into a brutal chokehold.

"Oh, not so fun when you're on the receiving end, is it?" she asked rhetorically, squeezing, draining, and ignoring the scrabbling, doing as much damage as she could before Nimue got her act together. "I'm not so good at fancy magic tricks, I'm afraid, so I have to stick with the basics."

Her eyes began to glow like stars, and two incandescent white beams lashed out into the bloody ruins of Nimue's own, drawing further screams and noises (and smells) that would put her off bacon for some time.

"And I won't lie," she added. "It's really kind of satisfying."

"Why did Magic choose you?" Nimue screamed. "What makes you so special? How can you keep doing this?"

"I'm not," Carol said. "I'm just a girl from Queens."

"Then why won't you just die?!"

Carol punched her in the jaw. It was a right cross that sent shimmering blood sprayed across the seas by a shockwave that shattered the vast glass-sheet, generated tidal waves and quieted volcanoes, new life spawning as blood met the shimmering glass-water. More pertinently, it snapped Nimue's neck like a twig, spinning her round so she was both facing away from Carol and meeting her gaze with barely healed eyes, her head facing entirely the wrong way, and Carol glared at her, eyes burning white.

"Why won't I die? Because fuck you, that's why."

Then, she wound up her arm, glaring at the stunned, agonised witch by the ankle, spun it once, twice, and a third time, before hitting her with an uppercut that launched her into orbit.

OoOoO

The local Walmart was on fire, and it wasn't my fault.

There's a number of advantages to having a Vibranium alloy focus.

The most recent one that I'd discovered was that it doesn't break easily, even when a malicious newborn godling decides to overload every focus that was turned against her and all her wicked works. On the other hand, even Vibranium needs to vent that kind of power, which was why said Walmart was on fire.

Given that the last time I'd spent any length of time in a Walmart, I'd wrecked it in a fight with a supernatural hired gun and the minions of an insane Faerie Queen, I was probably due for a lifetime ban. Of course, that rather depended on them realising that it was me, and I suspected that they had bigger problems to deal with.

I certainly did. For one thing, Nimue's spiteful little trick with the foci meant that even not taking into account the Ring copy I'd been given, I was one of only a very few who still had a functioning focus of any description, which was a problem for both Wanded and Wandless practitioners alike.

The Wanded could, with very few exceptions, hardly do anything without their wands, and the Wandless… well, the older and more skilled practitioners could manage, but the younger ones needed their foci to control their powers at the best of times. Now, with more raw power in the air than there had been in eons, often in fairly serious pain thanks to unfortunately exploded or imploded foci, and generally as highly strung as a freshly tuned Stradivarius? I was honestly amazed that we hadn't accidentally flattened the city.

All of which meant that I was the main, and often only, guard on this particular shelter. Joy.

Thankfully, though, things had mostly stabilised. Sure, magic was so thick in the air you could practically chew on it, robots, monsters, and living nightmares still fleeted through seas, streets, and skies, and Nimue had tried to suck the entire city down into the sea in a kind of mud-water vortex that I was pretty sure I would be seeing again in my nightmares, but it had stabilised.

The monsters were being picked off on the ground by a combination of SHIELD, Police, and National Guard troops, the former interspersed with the latter two to stiffen them and give them appropriate guidance. The SHIELD Helicarrier, meanwhile, now reigned supreme in the skies despite its wounds, and was scouring the skies with the remains of its Air Force escort.

The latter problem had, apparently, been solved by the friendly neighbourhood plant elemental who answered to Alec. He'd taken a break from his break out career in rock and roll, acting as a pick-up for Strange's skyscraper-sized magic music amp, and had run roots through the earth, binding it in place, with vines and branches bursting forth from under the ground to prop up buildings too.

It spoke volumes of how weird the night was that that wasn't even in the top ten strangest things I'd seen tonight. And that was even considering that Alec had formed a head out of a nearby tree to – quite politely – inform us of what was going on. It also made me feel a little bit small, despite the fact that I also felt more powerful than I'd ever been.

However, given that I also felt really, really fucking tired after a three-on-one brawl with several symbiotically enhanced superhumans and magical monsters, one I'd barely survived thanks to some very helpful tagging in from Gambit (gone to help with the Hail Mary) to Captain America (gone to lead the line somewhere else and do other Captain America things), I wasn't all that bothered.

In fact, it was actually kind of a relief to let someone else do the heavy lifting, and to just hold up my corner. Part of me was worrying a little bit about Wanda, but the rest of me knew that it was far more likely that she was happening to someone (or something) than the other way around.

"All quiet here?"

I twitched a little. The speaker had been kind enough to appear just in my field of vision, meaning that I didn't react with the kind of instant violence that you usually get if you startle someone keyed up, expecting trouble, and armed with a very deadly weapon (several, in fact), but it still made me think that maybe I should get a heart check-up. And that Strange had come by at least some of his bad habits honestly.

"Mostly," I said, sighting on a possessed National Guard light tank, and turning it to slag with a single word. Even in the pouring rain, it was no effort at all, which spoke frightening volumes of just how much power was slopping around out here. It was downright intoxicating – and all the more frightening for that. "I'd have thought you'd be after Nimue."

"They were moving too fast for me to keep up," Merlin said, shrugging, surveying the shelter and its surroundings, before nodding to himself and beginning to weave a spell, one that I couldn't identify for the life of me, beyond being a stupidly complex and impossibly powerful piece of water magic.

Given who was casting it, none of those things was a surprise. The fact that he looked younger than I did, on the other hand, was. The fact that he was bleeding definitely was. I might have known intellectually that Nimue had the power of pantheons at her fingertips, but a lifetime of being told that Merlin, the Merlin, was/had been essentially invincible was hard to shake.

Then again, Nimue had thrown pretty everything she could at him, kitchen sink included, backed by a very real grudge. And it was actually quite a small cut.

"Really?" I asked, voice heavy with scepticism. Sure, this was Merlin (the original, you might say), but I'd had practise at delaying my geeking out.

"I can keep up with them by teleporting," he explained. "But by the time I've got there, they're already gone. I can slow time if I reach them, but both of them can bypass that." His blue eyes settled on me. "Besides: I have a different job. As do you."

I grunted. "How's that going, do you think? I'm stuck on the ground and I lost my earpiece a while ago." I waved upwards. "I saw the Grey Twins' light show, but…"

Merlin nodded. "We're in the endgame, now," he said calmly, completing his water magic spell as he spoke, speaking a sharp, ancient sounding word.

I frowned, tilting my head. "What was that?" I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.

"Starting the clean-up," Merlin said. "You can see with more than mortal eyes, Harry Dresden – look."

I looked, shivering a little at the effortless investment of power into the pronunciation of my name. It was enough to get my attention, and enough to do one hell of a lot more than that if he had wanted to. At first, I saw nothing. I frowned, focusing my senses, determined not to use my Sight – god only knew what it would show me tonight. For a minute or so, there was nothing, and then… there!

Flecks of golden light flickered through the skies, from raindrop to raindrop – no, in each raindrop, I realised, with mounting awe. Slowly, I reached out, palm up, and caught a few droplets on my upraised hand. Power sparked against my palm, gentle, dispersing power.

"You're washing it away," I breathed. Running water is the go to method for disrupting active magic, to the point where some intensely magical beings that are literally held together by magic have trouble crossing rivers. Rain is a bit less effective, since it's more dispersed, but it still had an effect, even without being enchanted to the purpose.

"Leaving Wanda to hit the more complex constructs and creatures," he agreed casually, then shrugged. "It would have been a shame to let a perfectly good storm go to waste." He turned to me and clapped his hands. "Now, I believe that there are quite a few foci in this city that need fixing. Some of them right here. Shall we?"

I blinked. "Um. Sure. I think I'll just keep an eye out for trouble while you do that," I said.

Merlin nodded, then flicked a hand as if brushing away a fly. The rain suddenly stopped right above my head, and I was as dry as if I, and everything else about me, had been towelled off and run through a tumble-dryer.

"Thanks," I managed.

"No problem," he said. "That spell was probably the main reason Arthur forgave me for lying to him about magic." He smiled whimsically. "Not that it stopped him complaining about not using it before, of course." He glanced around. "Will you need any cover?"

"Another set of eyes is always good," I said.

"Done," Merlin said.

And then, he was gone.

Yes, I thought sourly, as I targeted another, rather lost looking monster. Strange had definitely come by some of his bad habits honestly. I blasted the monster, then cocked an ear as strains of music warbled along the wind.

"… It's the end of the world as we know it

It's the end of the world as we know it

It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine."

And some, he'd clearly come up with all by himself.

OoOoO

Nimue was not having a good evening. It had started very well, give or take a hiccup or two, then it had gone very well indeed, right up until it hadn't. It had since gone downhill at a rate of knots. She been drained, trapped, forced to reabsorb rotted fragments of her own soul, brutally blinded, beaten, then punched into space.

If her spatial sense, running off cosmic ley lines, guesswork, and a considerably amount of panicking because she was an earth-mage not an astronaut, was anything to go by, she had finally come to stop somewhere near Mars. The newly green Red Planet, thriving with life, an accidental achievement that she would normally have prided herself on. However, she was not priding herself on it, partly because she was concussed, partly because she was still panicking, and partly because she was now discovering the true curse of cosmic senses.

It is true that, in space, no one can hear you scream. However, with cosmic senses, even in space, you can't escape the music. In this case, a chirpy rendition of 'It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)'.

As she snapped her neck round into its correct configuration, healing her face as quickly as possible, she directed as much of her malice as she could spare into a whispered message of hate, one designed to arrow straight into Strange's heart and chill him to the marrow.

"I hate you. I hate you so much. And when I get the chance to make you suffer, it will absolutely be personal. I just want you to know that."

The music changed again. Since this was accompanied by the crunch of her neck finally settling back into its proper configuration, and the emerald blur of Carol sucker-punching her into Mars itself, wobbling the planet on its axis, she missed the first couple of verses. But, and this was, even in the new Eden of Mars (or rather, in an impact crater ten miles wide and five deep in the middle of the new Eden of Mars), she could still hear the damn music.

And worst of all, the man himself was singing along.

In a flawless baritone.

"I ain't 'fraid of no ghost!

I ain't 'fraid of no ghost!"

Oh, she hated him.

OoOoO

"Okay," Monica said. "Ghosts, scary. Very, very scary. Especially when they can fucking fly."

The Falcon had been mostly unmolested as it had entered the complex that had once been Project Pegasus, and once they had got away from the city and the pitched battle royale around it, Monica had begun to cherish hopes that their trip would be relatively simple. The plan, after all, seemed to be going off without too many hitches – certainly, there was no sign of Nimue, which would be the biggest hitch of all.

However, while Nimue had many personality flaws, stupidity was not one of them. Paranoia, on the other hand, absolutely was. That meant that the heart of Pegasus, the rift that was channelled into Pandora's Box and was thus the key to her power, was very well defended. And while Alan Scott had purged the very worst of the monsters back when Pegasus had been originally sealed, plenty of horrors had remained – Frankensteinian, cybernetic, and downright eldritch horrors that Strange's holocron had guided them around. More to the point, plenty of those horrors that Scott had purged had left ghosts. Ghosts that were now very powerful, very much not bound by little things like gravity, and, thanks to the manner of their deaths and their currently being bound to Pegasus, very, very pissed off.

Worse still, Nimue had apparently reached into the old favourites box and summoned a few creatures from her glory days as a High Priestess of the Old Religion. That meant that they were currently dodging wyverns, dragons, storm sylphs, and what looked very much like giant scorpions. Giant scorpions that, thanks to the storm sylphs, had apparently managed to get sufficient air to attack the Falcon from above.

Oh, and to cap it all, Pegasus was now demonstrating just how much bigger it was on the inside: a lot.

Needless to say, their escort – composed of an Avenger in battle armour that he'd quite literally dreamed up and one of Carol's apparently infinite number of very good-looking and very superpowered acquaintances – was being kept very busy.

"Can't bank worth a damn, though," O'Neill remarked, throwing the Falcon into a loop, and lining them up neatly for the ship's guns.

"We're fighting ghosts in a flying metal hamburger, and that's the first thing you notice?" Monica demanded, a touch of hysteria in her voice.

"First relevant thing, sure," the General replied, executing a neat spin away from something enormous, skeletal, and strewn with rusted metal spines that erupted from the fog like a breaching whale, falling short with a bellow of displeasure. Monica grimaced.

"Do we have to fly so low?"

"We're on approach now," he said, nodding to the screen. "If this is right, we're right on top of it."

Monica eyed the fog. It was full of a lot of very unpleasant things, only some of them alive, and only some of them meant to move even when they were among the living.

"Please tell me that doesn't mean we land and hike?" she asked plaintively. "Vine!"

O'Neill banked the Falcon with far too much nonchalance for Monica's comfort, pulling the ship into a tight loop and away from the morass of acid and thorn-edged vines that had thrust up from the green hell that made up the lower layers of Pegasus. "Hopefully not," he said, and shot a thoughtful downwards, focusing on a faintly glowing piece of fog. "Hey, how wide do you think that gap is?"

Monica squinted. "Thirty feet, why – oh nooooo."

Her voice dragged out into a scream, because O'Neill had rolled the ship onto its side and cut the engines, dropping it like a stone through the rift.

A couple of very long, very busy, very noisy minutes followed. And then, there was silence, broken by the soft roar of guidance rockets that held them about fifteen feet off the ground at the bottom of an artificial cavern, and by Peter's shaky voice emerging from one of the gun ports.

"… Are we dead?"

"Nngh," Monica replied. "Ngh. Ngh? Agh." Slowly, with some effort, she managed to assemble something clear and coherent and only a little scratchy from screaming. "No. I think."

"We're fine," O'Neill said, with that same nonchalance, one that reminded Monica a little too much of how comfortable Carol was with this crap. Perhaps it was genetic. "This thing has ranging equipment like you wouldn't believe." He glanced at the Ring on his finger, which gleamed smugly. "Some of which, granted, I conjured up from prototypes, but it worked." He lowered the throttle, and slowly brought the Falcon to the ground with silky grace. "Looks like a hunk of junk, flies like a dream. Which it is. Literally."

Monica shot him a slightly worried look. "You okay?"

"Oh, fine," he said. "Just… adjusting." He shot a look at the screens, then at the heart of the cavern. "I'll take point. Don't come out until I say it's safe."

Monica watched him go with a frown. "Okay," she said. "Weird."

"'e's copin'," Gambit said, dropping down from the upper gunport with catlike grace. Peter, emerging from the other gunport, also resembled a cat, except he was a) wild-eyed, b) clinging to the nearest flat surface. "Everyone does it in dere own way."

"I'll stick with sarcastic comments and screaming, if that's okay."

"Be mah guest."

Thankfully, not much of either was required. Rather, something about the chamber at the bottom of the rift, which managed to be both about only fifty feet and actually half a mile deep, invited silence. It had clearly once been a laboratory of some kind, albeit aesthetically fused with some kind of chapel, and on the same scale. Dusty scientific equipment mingled freely with strange, ceremonial looking artefacts, wiring emerging from surfaces inscribed with flowing runes, screens overlapping with murals, mobile abstract images rolling from one to the other and back again with the ease of tides.

At the heart of it, on what could be either seen as the main bench or the altar, with wires climbing up its sides like vines, was an irregularly pulsing beacon of white light in the form of a small cube.

"That's it?" Monica asked. "That is the source of all this trouble?"

"Actually, 'that' is sitting on top of the source of all this trouble."

Monica was quite proud of herself. Namely, she managed only a stifled shriek as she dived for cover and the nearest heavy object that she could detach and use as a bludgeon. Peter, by contrast, sprang straight up and onto the ceiling, while O'Neill and Gambit both whirled and fired respectively a bullet or an explosively charged pebble. Both spalled off a shimmering shield, and the green webbing that was Peter's ring-based contribution vanished in the flick of a finger. Two hands rose, and their owner stepped out of the shadows. Monica and Peter relaxed. Gambit and O'Neill did not.

"Mistress Maximoff," Gambit said.

"In the flesh," she said, pressing a nail against her palm, then removing it to reveal drop of scarlet blood. "I am Wanda Maximoff, Sorceress Supreme, and I mean you no harm. I swear this by my blood and my power."

Gambit relaxed, and swapped a look with O'Neill, who grudgingly did the same. She nodded approvingly.

"Can't be too careful," she said. "Come on."

"How did you get here ahead of us?" Monica asked, following the older woman over to the altar. "And, you know, why not bring us with you?" She half-turned and raised her voice. "The piloting was great, don't get me wrong, but –"

"Yeah, yeah, I heard the screaming," O'Neill said dryly, raising his pistol and taking a guard position, Gambit paralleling him, and Peter scuttling along the ceiling, having decided not to come down.

"The short version is that I could protect myself, not passengers," Wanda explained.

"Hence the Star Wars cosplay," Monica said, a little doubtfully.

"Hence travel in some form of sophisticated magical construct," Wanda said, voice turning dry as she studied the cube. "The precise form is entirely down to Carol's sense of humour."

"Right," Monica said. "So… what am I doing?"

"In the simplest sense, unbinding this," Wanda said, indicating the cube as she began to weave crimson limned fingers in eerie patterns over it. "From that. And then, preferably, sealing it up."

"And I have to be the one to do this?" Monica asked, then grimaced at the degree of whine in her tone.

"I could do it," Wanda said frankly. "However, it would be far more likely to do something unfortunate if I did."

"Like what?"

"Like explode."

"… that would be bad."

"On a geographic scale, yes."

"Okay, let's not do that," Monica said. "Fine. What do I have to do?"

"I'll walk you through it," Wanda assured her. "It really is quite simple – your powers are quite literally designed for this sort of thing. All I'll need to do is to show you where to undo, and retie, the metaphorical knot."

Monica regarded the cube. The thing was, she knew what Wanda meant. She could feel the power coming off it; its sheer scale, its tight containment like a wound spring the size of a mountain, and its malleability, like damp clay on a potter's wheel, aching to be shaped.

"And prevent explosions."

"And that."

Monica took a deep breath, and reached into that part of her that she now knew contained her powers, readying herself.

"Okay," she said. "Let's do this."

OoOoO

There could have been books written about the newly living Mars. Documentaries could have been made about the thriving, chattering life that had latched on to the phenomenal inflow of magic to realise barely imagined potential, filling the forests and the deserts and the seas, from highest mountaintop to deepest trench.

Landscapes could have been painted, capturing the precise reddish tinge that lingered in earth and sunlight, a burnt warmth that spoke both of potential yet to come and problems overcome. Bestiaries could have been filled with the magical creatures, wonders and monsters alike, those that had not been for eons and that had never been at all, that were staking out their little piece of eternity on what had been a frozen rock. And that wasn't even getting into the sheer number of treatises that could have been written on the fortresses and automated defences, powered by a bizarre mixture of magic and technology and magical technology, drawn from the designs and wildest dreams of Pegasus, in turn cannibalised from futuristic defence projects and Atlantean ruins.

All of these would have been worthy pursuits.

Unfortunately, neither Carol nor Nimue particularly cared to undertake them.

Instead, the mysterious Martian landscape was having seven bells knocked out of it as two balls of crackling power, one emerald green, the other blue-white, chased each other across the planet, blurring over land, sea, and sky with equal ease. Closer observation revealed that the emerald (Carol) was doing most of the chasing, the blue (Nimue) trying to get some distance – usually via teleportation – and weave together something clever.

Unfortunately, for Nimue, Carol was moving too fast to be easily evaded – especially since the older woman tended to be very bad at concealing such raw power, to lack trained duelling reflexes, and to remember near misses very clearly. As a result, she stood out like a beacon even if she teleported to the other side of the planet, she wasn't particularly good at making the best of her time, and given that she remembered the energy drain very well, she tended to panic somewhat if Carol got close to her.

Since Carol had the speed advantage, had learned more about close combat than Nimue ever had, and was mostly just using her magical boost to get close to Nimue and hurt her, it had to be said that this suited her just fine.

So the Red Planet shuddered and tore and spun, storms of ice and fire brewing under searing white light and thick void-like darkness, as two finely poised forces clashed time and time again. To any knowledgeable observer, it was quite clear that given the chance, they would tear the planet apart – even before Nimue, in desperation, tried to drop one of Mars' moons, Phobos, on Carol's head.

It didn't work.

Points for trying, though.

Then she felt it. A tremor, at first, like a flick on a strand of a spider's web, something tiny and apparently insignificant and perfectly primed to make her blood run cold. Nimue froze for the barest instant, allowing Carol to plough her face-first into the now erupting Olympus Mons.

"What's the matter, Nimue? Getting tired?" Carol taunted.

Nimue made a spirited attempt to turn her into primordial slime. All it really achieved was to make the teenager flinch briefly, pink spots and scorch marks appearing on her bare skin and suit, but it gave Nimue the barest instant to trace the tremor back, her mind's eye soaring from Mars to the Earth to New Orleans to Pegasus to… Nimue's heart stopped.

"No," she whispered in purest horror, and thrust herself skyward with explosive force, collapsing the volcano in on itself, pouring every bit of power she could bring to bear – power that was shrinking by the second – on the task of bending space and yanking her back to Earth as fast she could. The stars flexed and blurred before her eyes, the distant blue dot of Earth suddenly coming into sharp relief as she left the fortress world of Mars behind and bore down on the planet she sought to remake, the planet that she truly, bizarrely loved.

Less than twenty seconds after leaving Mars, she hit the upper atmosphere. Less than half a second after that, Carol hit her in the back of the head, wrenching her angle of descent a crucial few degrees away from where it had been meant to be, hitting the Gulf of Mexico as a furiously bright teal coloured meteor.

The force of impact cratered the sea bottom and briefly opened a chasm in the waters, parting them like Moses had the Red Sea, as Carol wrapped her hands around Nimue's throat.

"Figured it out, did you?" she asked rhetorically, teeth bared as water poured back into the muddy crater around them in torrents, evaporating into steam where it brushed against the fields of power both radiated. "Tough! You're a day late and a dollar short, Nimue – this is the end of the line!"

Nimue surged upwards, shifting shape into something pale and lithe and slippery, escaping Carol's grip for the scantest instant, but that was enough, to get some room at least. She needed to get to Pegasus!

She gathered herself to explode upwards again, then staggered, gasping. It was like someone had taken a melon baller to her soul, ripping loose a chunk of her power. As she tried to reorient herself, she heard a sharp, harsh laugh, followed by a brutal impact and a crunching splat, as Carol drove her face first into the mud and scorched stone beneath.

"Like I said, Nimue," Carol snarled by her ear, as she pulled Nimue into a combination of a half-nelson and a chokehold, iron-grip digging into Nimue's malleable flesh and locking it into place, draining the rapidly the diminishing power the witch had left as the Monica and Wanda sealed the rift away. "Too. Damn. Late. Even if I let you go now, you wouldn't get back in time."

Nimue managed to turn enough to shoot a glare at the girl out of the corner of her eye. "That as may be," she hissed. "But I didn't get this far by giving up!"

And this time, she did not shift her form. Instead, she shucked her soul free of her body, like a snake from its skin, abandoning the physical form and the remnants of the power she had fought so hard for, and blurring through air and sea and earth, from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico to the heart of Pegasus at the speed of thought, seeking to be reborn in the fount of Pegasus itself, to truly embody and reclaim that power. It was one last, desperate, gamble.

Under other circumstances, it might even have worked.

Unfortunately, as Nimue saw the flowing fount of power before her, pouring on one last darting burst of speed in an attempt to dive between the upraised hands of the Chaos Child and some mortal girl into the fount itself, she forgot to do something crucial: pay attention to her surroundings. Which meant that she flew straight into something rising the other way, perfectly timed to intercept her trajectory.

Something round.

Something metal.

Something, in fact, perfectly designed for the task, that landed in its owner's palm with a neat smacking sound.

"Close," Stephen Strange said, with eminent satisfaction. "But no cigar."

Inside the former mock holocron, trapped like a wasp in a jam jar, Nimue threw back her head, and screamed.

And someone been listening closely, they might have heard the final strains of one, last song.

"Another one bites the dust

Another one bites the dust

And another one gone and another one gone

Another one bites the dust!"

OoOoO

Carol soared into the sunken lab, scattering friends and occasional family members like popcorn in her wake, looking around wildly. When she saw an undisturbed Monica wreathed in an interplay of bright blue and searing white light and being guided through something complex looking by Wanda, no signs of an ascendant and vengeful Nimue, and every sign of a very smug Doctor Strange, she relaxed, powering down.

"Nimue…" she began, a wealth of questions conveyed in a single word.

"… was defeated by courage, determination, ingenuity, and allowing herself to be ruled by her fears and by a hunger for power," Strange said. "As your stratagem demonstrated, the combination gave her a tendency to not look before leaping."

He smiled a feline smile and raised a hand, rolling a familiar looking silver ball through his fingers. The mystical edge of Carol's spectrum of vision picked up golden-blue light playing around it. The mystical edge of her hearing picked up some tinny, but otherwise very familiar frustrated screaming.

"This was… unfortunate," he finished.

Carol felt a sudden snap, matched by the sudden dimming of the light in the cavern, and turned to Monica and Wanda. Both had slumped, looking tired, but satisfied.

"The rift is sealed," Wanda said.

"And long may it fucking stay that way," Monica grumbled. "I'm done."

"Yeah," Carol said, knowing – though how she knew, she did not know – what she had to do next. "I'm not."

Ignoring the silent questions, she made her way over to the altar-bench with measured strides, raising her hands. As she did, shattered pieces of dull green stone came swirling down from above, forming into a spinning mass in between her lowered palms. Splinter-rings flew off fingers, returning to their source, shifting from matter to energy in the blink of an eye, vanishing into the glowing, spinning ball.

"I don't know much about magic," she said, as the pieces began to glow brighter and brighter. "Really, I know just enough to know how much I don't know. Harry talks about how it's alive, how it's part of the power of creation. To me, what it is, is power. And power is meant for so much more than just breaking shit."

The pieces slammed together with explosive force, the whole chamber swallowed by a vast thunderclap and a blinding flash of emerald-gold light.

When the light and sound faded, they found themselves standing beneath the grand living spire – Nimue's biotechnical marvel, hijacked by Strange to Carol's own ends. There was a clearing about them, filled with all the battle's participants who had been within the city's bounds. Some were heroes, some were wizards, some were warriors, and some were the next best thing to gods. Others, meanwhile, were just ordinary people – mortal, magic, and mutant alike, people who had stepped up to defend their home.

And all of them, even those who had been trying to establish how they had got there, turned to stare at the answer, which now hovered between Carol's outstretched hands: the Green Lantern, reforged and burning like the heart of a falling star.

"I want everyone to see this," she said, in a voice that effortlessly reached all present, gaze sweeping over them all, then rising to sweep over the devastation that had befallen the city.

Even with the best efforts of all present, it was a grim view. And as more than a few of those present were aware, given all that Nimue had done and attempted, it was arguable that other parts of the world had not been half so fortunate as New Orleans.

"Everyone," Carol repeated. Perhaps it was the manner in which she spoke that held them all silent. "Because Nimue wanted to show the world what magic could do: for the world, and for all the people in it." She paused, looking down at the Lantern. "But she was so busy thinking about what she could do, that she never cared if she should. She treated it like a genie from a bottle, or a monkey's paw, wishing for everything she wanted."

She looked up again, her gaze settling briefly on Strange, then Wanda, then Steve.

"But there's one other thing I picked up about magic. It works a lot like stories. And in stories… there's always a third wish. The one that's about what should be done. The one that makes everything right again. So hear me clear, and hear me now."

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. And when she spoke again, she spoke with the voice of the world, with an authority and power that could no more be ignored than gravity.

"In Brightest Day, in Blackest Night,

Darkness fades and dawn shines bright,

What is broken shall be made right,

All shall be healed by emerald light!"

With each word, golden-green light flowed from her hands, down into the Lantern, which drifted through the air, floating to the trunk of the Spire – and then into it, the bark flowing around it like water. And all the world, power poured out of Carol, power as bright and clear as starlight, into the Lantern and then down into the world, before flurrying up the Spire, which now looked more and more like a living thing. The Spire, the great Tree, shone like a beacon, visible for hundreds upon hundreds of miles around.

A wave of emerald-gold light radiated from it, sometimes only on the edge of sight, a shimmering ribbon on the water or in the earth, against the stars or the sun. It crossed the world at the speed of light, rippling through flesh and stone, soul and bone, with equal ease.

Where it passed, the ley lines' lambent glow faded, bound and buried once more. Forests and roots, branches and vines, all retreated where they had intruded – where rubble remained from battle damage, it was repaired and restored. Where it did not, magic made do with whatever was present. Where it encountered wounds to body and soul, it soothed and sealed. And where it encountered the dead, it swirled over the bodies, weaving a cleansing shroud made of gentlest sorcery and highest honour.

Not everything was made whole, for not everything could be. Not everything was undone, for some things could not be. What had happened, happened.

And yet, to many, the events were swathed in a strange veil, like a nightmare or a daydream. They could see clearly what had happened: the towering fortresses of techno-sorcery, now silent and docile, awaiting new masters; the silver forests and shimmering lakes of the still full Moon, shining clear down on those below; and through the seas and the skies, dancing from person to person, flowing from the fingertips of even those with the meanest spark of potential… magic. Magic, remaking cities, countries, continents, and worlds. Magic, wielded time after time in defence of the needy against the monsters from the shadows. Magic… creating wonders.

Horrors from the deepest past, nightmares from the darkest present, all had come forth to challenge the hegemony of humanity. And in the end, when it had mattered most… they had fallen.

The world had changed.

"So," Carol said, voice scratchy, then coughed, clearing her throat. The resonance had faded from her voice, leaving something normal behind. Even the emerald power had retreated, a faint, warm glow playing around the ring on her finger, and shimmering golden starlight playing around the gold lines of her suit. She was the Lantern still, but no longer the Lantern Incarnate – and, had you asked her, much happier that way.

She looked tired, but triumphant, and very few would have begrudged her that.

"So," she repeated, looking out over the crowd of mages and mutants, mortals and immortals, elementals and fundamentals, half of whom were looking at her with awe, the other half with pride. "Wish made, job done. We just saved the world. And we're in New Orleans." She quirked a smile. "I say we party."

There was a long pause. Then, a polite cough, that given its source, attracted instant suspicion from everyone else, and an amused look from its source.

"All I was going to say," Doctor Strange said. "Is that if anyone was worried about clean-up, I will handle that." He looked Carol straight in the eye. "You've earned this much. You all have."

"Well," Tony said, after a moment. "I, personally, take that as a definite vote in favour of 'party'. It's like New York, but with less cleaning. Also, less rogue wizard, and I cannot be the only the one wondering about that."

"You are not," Liberty remarked. For someone whose hands and side had, until a few moments ago, been badly injured by an exploding staff, she was retaining her composure remarkably well.

Strange smiled that feline smile and flicked the silver ball into the air, catching a number of eyes.

"Rest assured, Nimue is… contained."

"Phenomenal cosmic powers!" Peter piped up. "Itty-bitty living space."

That got several strange looks, and a mixture of laughter and, though few would admit it, giggles.

"She's secure?" Steve asked, shooting an amused look at Peter.

"Very," Merlin and Wanda murmured in identical tones.

Steve glanced at them, then at Liberty, and shared a nod with her. "We'll need to arrange an interrogation soon," he said. It wasn't really a request, and Strange nodded his acceptance, while Tony waved it away.

"I'm hearing lots of shoptalk, and not enough party," he said. "Logistics and difficult parts can wait."

Strange smiled, let his gaze linger on Peter, then Carol, for just a moment. "For tonight, and tonight only," he said. "Your wish… is my command."

Then, he snapped his fingers, and vanished.

And for one last time, music reverberated up through the soles of everyone's feet, bringing gladness to hearts and energy to tired limbs, mixing hope with just a touch of irony. Anywhere else might have been baffled, or just sat back in tired amusement, taking the lyrics as a joke.

But the people of the Big Easy were made of different stuff, and where some had been drawn out of shelters by the quiet, others were now drawn out, smiles finding their way onto faces, answering the question the music presented them.

This, after all, was a New Orleans kind of challenge.

"I got a feeling,

That tonight's gonna be a good night,

That tonight's gonna be a good night,

That tonight's gonna be a good, good night!"

OoOoO

Hours passed, in a blur of light and music, as capes and civilians, mortals and mages, danced 'til dawn. Bars were opened, kegs were tapped, and many, many bad decisions were made – but, for the most part, they were the sort of bad decisions that no one really minded too much.

Granted, Steve was probably going to try (and fail) to destroy all evidence that Carol had sealed her daughterly status by shamelessly manipulating him into letting her teach him how to do the Macarena (ignoring, of course, how not so long ago she would rather have died than admit she knew how to dance it).

Likewise, Dresden was probably going to die of mortification after he sobered up and realised that he had not only done a surprisingly adept samba with his girlfriend, but, to said girlfriend's cackling delight, had then danced the salsa with Martha Liberty – both a member of the Senior Council and approximately 300 years old, and remarkably flexible for all that. Especially since, at some point before the tango, his shirt had become a casualty of events.

Tony, meanwhile, had done far worse than both, and had no intention of yielding the spotlight, especially once Pepper had arrived courtesy of… well. It wasn't hard to guess who was responsible. Since she had a phone, and Tony was Tony, within three minutes of her arrival and two minutes of Tony stealing said phone, the SHIELD Helicarrier abruptly developed strobe lighting.

It was, it had to be said, more than a little bit ridiculous.

However, as more than a few of those present could quite reasonably have said, not only were the events of the whole night a bit ridiculous – in fact, a lot ridiculous – but it was the kind of ridiculous that was sorely needed. After all, it is recommended that one should laugh in the face of danger. There is equally nothing wrong with deflating the dire. There is always time enough for sobriety and seriousness in the final accounting. In the meantime, the mood in the city was clear: the world had been saved. Party now, brood later.

However, Steve eventually found himself off away from the crowds, somewhat to his relief.

This relief was made all the greater by the fact that he had narrowly escaped being dragged into adjudicate a dance-off between his grandson and Deadpool. It was to settle an old score, apparently. After he'd noticed that the latter had somehow acquired tap-dancing shoes, the sound of which contrasted oddly with the squeaks of the spandex, Steve had decided that he just didn't want to know.

Since Monica, Gambit, and the Hulk (the latter now festooned in streamers and being considered entirely normal by comparison with everything else that had been seen that night) had happily taken over the adjudication, he thought they were all better off.

In any case, Steve had slipped down an alleyway and, glancing both ways, launched himself from street to rooftops via a couple of balconies, intending to get out the way and catch his breath. Fortunately, he got lucky first time: while the roof was not empty, he recognised the only other person on it, who seemed to be every bit as content as he was to just sit and relax. Of course, he thought wryly, she'd got her share of mischief out earlier.

"Room for one more?" he asked.

Carol looked up and smiled. "Sure," she said, closing her eyes, before pausing, considering, then adding – just a touch shyly, "dad."

Steve felt a warmth blossom in his heart that had absolutely nothing to do with anything he'd eaten or drunk, or any magic he'd been exposed to, either. He sat down alongside her, and smiled slightly as she leaned against his shoulder and yawned.

"Had enough party?" he asked.

Carol didn't open her eyes, but tilted her face in the direction of the first rays of dawn. "Not yet," she said.

Steve shot her a raised eyebrow, one that spoke volumes.

"Don't get me wrong, another couple of hours, I'm going to collapse and sleep for a week," she said. "But that's a couple of hours away." She cracked open an eye, then rolled it up at Steve. "I've never danced the sun up before. Actually, I don't think either of us has."

"You'd lose that bet," Steve said, and got an astonished look. "What? You think this is my first post-battle party?"

"Now that I think about it, no," Carol muttered. "You are friends with Tony Stark, after all."

"And I was friends with Howard Stark before that," Steve said. "Believe me, that family knows how to throw a party."

Carol hummed an acknowledgement, and Steve noticed that she was now fiddling with the Lantern Ring – now once again the only one of its kind.

"Are you keeping that?" he asked.

Carol shook her head. "Uh-uh."

"Why? I don't think anyone would argue that you've earned it."

"Maybe," Carol said, and yawned. "But part of earning it is knowing when not to have it, if that makes sense." She waved a hand at the dancing mass below them. "To know when the party ends."

"I think so," Steve said thoughtfully. "It's about knowing when enough is enough."

Carol nodded, hair rubbing against his cheek. "Exactly," she said. "And… the Ring is its own thing. I'm my own thing. We have our own things."

Steve frowned, ran it through his rapidly improving sleepy teenager translator, and nodded. "You don't want to be stuck with its agenda," he deduced.

"I also don't want to be on the hook to solve crap like this," Carol said. "I'm not Alan Scott, or the people before either of us. I'm not going to bind myself to it, and I'm not going to bind it to me, either. If I'm needed, like tonight, fine. But there's another way. A better way."

"Are you going to let it find someone new, then?" Steve asked. "Or are you going to give it to Strange?"

Carol made a non-committal noise. "Not exactly, to either," she said. "I've been thinking. The whole 'Champion of Magic' concept works. But you know what really worked tonight? Not going it alone. That was the difference between me and Nimue: all she had to fall back on was herself. She had no one to turn to, no one to cover her back… no one to warn her she was heading straight into a trap."

"Can't say I'm complaining about that," Steve said wryly, before sobering. "I see your point, though. I even think I can see what you're planning."

Carol blinked. "And you aren't, you know, bothered?"

"I trust the Ring," Steve said. "More importantly, though: I trust you."

Carol went bright red.

"My only question," Steve continued. "Is this: can you pull it off?"

"I'm not sure," Carol said frankly, standing up, using Steve as a lever in the process and ignoring the groan of discomfort, before holding the Ring out in front of her and visibly focusing on it as it hummed with power, awaiting her command. Carol, for her part, waited as the music rose, an energetic poppy beat underscored with something stronger and more steely. Then, she spoke. As she did, Steve noticed that there was something different.

"A whole world to guard and restore?

It's a new age, let's change the law!

From Chosen One to Chosen More,

It's time for a Green Lantern Corps!"

The words carried the same authority and power that they had had before, as if the world itself was speaking. Yet, Steve noticed as the Ring floated into the air and split into seven, before vanishing into the blue, the words and cadence were Carol's own, their rhythm blending with the music, a more offbeat and irreverent style. The world was speaking, yes, but through a child of the 21st century, in a way that would change it forever.

And as his daughter, content at the end of this last piece of unfinished business, would happily have told him, the 21st century is when everything changes.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where this extremely overextended side-project comes to an end. I hope it lives up to the billing. I certainly put enough work into it. And time, god, time! It was meant to take a couple of months, and took nearly the best part of a couple of years! Ah well. It was fun, I hope you will agree. Now, the ride is over, and we can return at long last to the main narrative, which kicks on from here. After I get some damned sleep…