Present day…
After spending most of the last twelve months cooped up in the HYDRA research base, Kathmandu was a bit of a sensory overload. It wasn’t a particularly large city—its history and the crowds of people just made it feel a lot bigger than it actually was. Even though it was a little bit overwhelming, our first day there still felt more like a holiday than anything else. It felt really good to be able to be outside again, without having to be constantly looking over my shoulder.
We found a nice hotel on the edge of the city—paid for with some cash Pietro had stolen along the way—and then set out exploring, figuring it was a good idea to get the lay of the land before we started looking for Kamar‑taj in earnest. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving the sceptre unguarded, so its duffle bag stayed on my shoulder as we moved through the streets. There was a fair amount of people out and about, locals and tourists both, and the air was filled with the mingling aromas of exotic street foods and incense.
Much to Pietro’s annoyance, I was easily sidetracked marvelling at the city’s array of temples, their ancient façades colourfully painted or adorned with intricate carvings and fluttering prayer flags dancing in the breeze. I’d always loved visiting these sorts of historic sites, and up until now my travels hadn’t taken me to Kathmandu. We wasted more than an hour basking in the vibrant chaos of Durbar Square, the wide plaza sheltered by the looming shadow of the old royal palace, gorging ourselves on curry-dipped dumplings from a nearby stall.
When we needed to stop and rest our feet… well, when I needed to stop and rest my feet—Pietro hardly seemed to tire at all when moving at normal human speeds—we found pockets of tranquillity hidden between the busier parts of the city. Courtyards adorned with intricate wood carvings, insulated from the streets, the bustling background noise of the city fading to a gentle murmur mixed with the sounds of chanting from nearby temples.
When it came down to it, I just didn’t actually mind that I had no idea where Kamar‑taj was. I could spend weeks here—months even—just exploring and soaking up the culture, and be perfectly content. Despite the fact that the Avengers would definitely be looking for us, for some reason it just didn’t feel like we were in that much of a rush. This was the first time in a long time that I felt free, like I could actually do whatever I wanted to. Part of me was even hoping it might take us a few days to find Kamar-taj, just so I could make the most of the opportunity to relax and recharge after the last year.
When we retired to our hotel room for the evening, Pietro flopped down on his bed, stretched his arms out and wriggled into the mattress happily with a small smile. To be honest, I couldn’t help but feel the same way. The hotel room was generic but homey, and was easily leagues better than the dump we’d stayed at in Sokovia. We had two actual separate beds, with comfortable mattresses and everything. It felt a bit pathetic to be this happy about a comfortable mattress, but it had been so long since I’d slept on one that part of me worried it’d be too soft and I wouldn’t be able to.
“So,” Pietro said, rolling onto his side so he could look over at me. “We’re looking for a magic monastery. I assume this isn’t going to be easy as looking the place up?”
“Unfortunately not. They don’t advertise, and from the front the place doesn’t look like much.”
“But you’ll know it when you see it?” he asked hopefully.
I winced. “Uh, it’s pretty generic-looking so probably not, no.”
“…but you know where to find someone who knows where it is?” he asked, somewhat less hopefully.
“Also no.”
He rolled his eyes and muttered something in Sokovian that I didn’t understand. “Well,” he sighed. “At least the street food is good.”
“But!” I said, holding up a finger. “I do have a kind of plan that might work. I’ll astral project this evening and take a look at the city from above. If I’m lucky, I’ll see a sorcerer or two flying about astrally and be able to work out where they’ve come from.”
“And if you don’t?” Pietro asked, looking at me sceptically.
“Then tomorrow we hit the streets and start asking people. And tomorrow night I’ll try looking astrally again.” I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter if it takes a little while. This is important.”
“If you say so.”
“We should also talk about what to expect.” I said hesitantly. “I want to ask the Ancient One to teach me, or at least share any knowledge they have about my type of magic. And I want to ask for advice about handling the sceptre.”
Pietro frowned. “Teach you? How long will that take?”
I considered the question for a moment. It was a good one—I had no idea exactly how much the Masters of the Mystic Arts knew about witchcraft, so it was really up in the air as to what they’d be able to teach me about Wanda’s innate powers. Could I be taught sorcery as well, independently of my chaos magic? I had no idea. “I don’t know,” I hedged. “It might be a while, depending.”
“And what if they say no? What do we do then? This might all be a massive waste of time,” he said, sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
“I’ve been thinking about that, too,” I admitted. “With any luck, she’ll just agree to help us.”
“And if she doesn’t…?” Pietro gestured impatiently, wanting me to just hurry up and say what I was going to say.
“She will. Probably. But just in case…” I pulled my notepad out and held it up, showing him the—admittedly terrible; I’ve never been a great artist—drawing I’d done of a sling ring. “Okay, see this? The people we’re looking for will have rings like these, but probably won’t be wearing them all the time. We want one. It’s really, really important. If they aren’t willing to teach me, we might have to steal one.”
“What’s so important about the rings?”
“They use them to create portals,” I said, holding up one hand while swirling the other in imitation of a sorcerer using one of the rings. “Anywhere they can picture. If I can learn to use one, we can go anywhere in the world in seconds.”
Pietro looked at me for a moment, eyebrow raised, then shrugged. “Okay, steal a ring. Easy.”
“They can do magic, remember? We need to be careful.”
“They can do the same sort of things as you? Blasts, shields? Mess with peoples’ minds?”
I made a so-so gesture with my hand. “Sort of. These people have been studying it for a long time, and they have their own martial arts as well. They’re going to have a lot more tricks than I do, though I think they prefer to create weapons out of magical energy to fight with. Oh, we need to be especially careful if they do anything that looks like it creates glass-like facets in the air—they do that, do not let yourself get caught it in. Okay?” The absolute last thing we needed was to get trapped in the Mirror Dimension.
Pietro rolled his eyes, but nodded. “Sure, glass facets bad. You think we’re going to have to fight them?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head firmly. “We don’t want to fight them. We really, really don’t want these people as enemies.”
“So why are you telling me we’ll need to steal the ring?”
“I don’t know!” I threw up my hands, dropping my notebook into my lap. Pausing for a moment, I took a deep breath then looked at him seriously. “Just in case. It’s just in case. Um. So, in the spirit of ‘just in case’, I’m pretty sure that for all of their really dangerous combat-type magic they need to do gestures and stuff with their hands, like I do.”
“…and?”
“I’m just saying, if the worst happens and we do have to fight them, basically… if you break a sorcerer’s arm, they’ll have fifty percent less arms to do sorcery with.”
Pietro snorted. “Anything else?”
“Nothing I can think of.” Tucking my notebook away, I paused for a moment before looking back up at him. “Honestly, I’m a little nervous,” I confessed.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“We could always go back to plan A.”
“Plan A?”
He sat up and looked at me, eyes suddenly eager. “We go after the Avengers. Kill Stark.”
I couldn’t help the slight moue in response. While it was already going to be hard enough to try to get on friendly terms with the Avengers, I hadn’t really managed to make any headway in the opposite direction, either. I just didn’t really have anything but empty excuses and platitudes for Pietro when it came to Tony Stark. Without Ultron to unite against, it was going to be far harder to conjure a reason to set aside our grudge. Another common enemy would be great, except as far as I knew there weren’t any major threats that any of the Avengers would get involved with for a while.
The only thing I could do for now was stall. “Not yet. We need to do this the smart way. Establish ourselves, meet them from a place of strength. Not rush in half-cocked.”
He dropped his head back to his pillow, a touch of frustration entering his tone as he sighed. “Alright then, go on, project your brain into the sky or whatever it is you do.”
--
Unfortunately, my ‘clever’ plan of using astral projection to track down Kamar-taj was unsuccessful. Astral bodies didn’t particularly stand out, so spotting a sorcerer by sheer chance was unlikely, if any of them even had a reason to be randomly flying around the city. Flying unseen over the streets at night at least let me cover a lot of ground, but it didn’t really make it much easier to find what we were looking for.
After a few days of searching, Pietro stole me a laptop from somewhere and I was able to take advantage of our hotel’s Wi-Fi to do a bit of searching around online. One of the first things I did was look up how to ask ‘Do you know where Kamar-taj is?’ in Nepali—Kamar-taj kahām̐ cha thāhā cha?—so that I didn’t feel like quite as much of an asshole asking everyone in English and expecting them to understand me.
I spent a little time researching a few other things just to check on them: I wasn’t able to find any leaks or news about a hacker group called the Rising Tide, so it was up in the air as to whether anything from Agents of SHIELD was relevant. However, Nelson and Murdock, Attorneys at Law, had a website. Not only that, but I also found a business listing for Alias Investigations in New York City, which seemed like confirmation that that little Netflix grouping of events might be canon. I was also able track down reuploads of the SHIELD/HYDRA data that Natasha Romanov had leaked to the internet—almost all of it was either encrypted or long outdated, but I downloaded a few archives to go through when I had some spare time. There was a chance that my foreknowledge would let me notice something in the files that no one else would.
--
It was midmorning, a full week after we first arrived in Kathmandu, when a figure stepped out of the crowd toward us— a dark-skinned man wearing a weathered-looking but elaborately layered green robe. I did a double-take, eyes widening in recognition, as he reached up to take down his hood. Mordo, one of the masters of the place we were looking for. “You’re looking for Kamar-taj?” he asked.
Come to think of it, this was exactly how Doctor Strange ended up finding the monastery as well.
“You!” I said, excitement leaking into my voice for a moment before I remembered myself and cleared my throat. “I mean, yes. Yes we are. Can you take us there?” Mordo inclined his head slightly, then turned and started walking. I immediately fell into step behind him. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Pietro shoot me a dubious look, and I gestured for him to follow.
We made our way through the people thronging the streets, Mordo pausing occasionally to ensure we kept up and didn’t lose sight of him. Eventually, on the outskirts of the city, we ended up at a wooden door set into a weathered, uneven brickwork façade. I could tell that the building housed a larger complex behind it, but it was completely nondescript—almost unusually plain compared to the other temples and monasteries we’d seen here.
Silently, Mordo pushed open the door and gestured for us to enter. Pietro and I exchanged glances—he still seemed unconvinced, but I nodded eagerly and stepped forward. I heard him sigh behind me.
The door deposited us in an antechamber edged with intricately carved wooden columns, a set of unlit low-set braziers flanking the path into Kamar-taj’s large, open-air central atrium. The space was filled with robed acolytes of a variety of ages and ethnicities going about their business, equally likely to be carrying iPads as ancient tomes. I wondered briefly about the elaborate robes they all wore; while the exact cut and layering of each sorcerer or sorcerer-in-training’s robes were similar, there were only a few colour variations, which felt like it might indicate a rank system? The actual children all wore off-white, with only a few adults also in that colour. The rest wore red or blue—notably, no one else in the courtyard was wearing Mordo’s green.
The green-clad sorcerer led us past the gnarled, ancient tree—bare of leaves—that dominated one corner of the courtyard and through another door. The subtle scent of sandalwood tickled my nose as we headed up a flight of stairs and headed toward an open doorway flanked by incense burners. The walls here were carved wooden lattices, allowing you to easily see through to the other rooms around you.
“The sanctuary of our teacher,” Mordo said reverentially as he directed us forward. “The Ancient One.”
The room he led us into was open and airy, with cushioned benches and narrow tables spread around the periphery, covered with leather-bound tomes, dark ceramic tea sets, and other assorted clutter. The polished wooden floor of the hallway continued around the edge of the room, with a step down to a pattern of faded red and blue tiles that dominated the centre of the room.
A pair of black-robed acolytes moved toward us and I stepped back from them, clutching my duffle bag protectively. They hesitated, then inclined their heads in acknowledgement and moved away to stand by the entrance. I glanced around the room and stifled my faint surprise. While I was expecting—happy even—to see the Ancient One here, the room’s final occupant gave me a moment’s pause. Sitting casually behind one of the tables, wearing a set of grey and teal robes, was Kaecilius, his distinctive features immediately recognisable.
In retrospect, I probably should have told Pietro about him earlier and his eventually turn to villainy. I did think we had a decent chunk of time before he betrayed Kamar-taj, though—the crude timeline I’d been piecing together in my notebook estimated it was somewhere between six and twelve months from now. Kaecilius regarded us thoughtfully as we entered, slowing coming to his feet and inclining his head in a greeting.
I cautiously nodded an acknowledgement back before turning to regard the tall, bald woman standing off to one side of the room. “Thank you for seeing us, Ancient One,” I dipped my head to her respectfully. “It is an honour to meet you.”
“You’re very welcome,” she said, smiling back at me.
Pietro did a little bit of a double-take then ducked his head as well, leaning in close to me. “She doesn’t look that ancient to me,” he murmured doubtfully. I suppressed a sigh. Probably the best I could have expected from him.
Her eyes crinkled in amusement. “I’m a lot older than I look, Pietro Maximoff.”
I took advantage of his surprise that she knew who we were, elbowing him in the ribs and shooting him a chastising look. Still, this was a good start. I exhaled, letting some of the tension I’d been feeling since walking into Kamar-taj drain from my body. Of course the Ancient One knew who we were and why we were here. This had been the right decision. “We’re here because we need your help.”
“Yes,” she said. “You do. Tea?”
“That would be lovely, thank you,” I said. Pietro just shrugged. “So you know why we’re here?”
One of the black-robed attendants stepped forward to offer us a pair of rounded, antique-looking handle-less cups while the Ancient One retrieved a matching tall teapot from a side table, pouring for us as she spoke. “Yes, and I’m glad you came.” She gestured at the duffle bag slung over my shoulder. “That could cause a lot of harm if it ended up in the wrong place.”
“Believe me, I know,” I said, taking a sip. The tea was amazing—a subtly spiced black tea with a hint of sweetness. I closed my eyes and inhaled the aroma of it, then took another, longer drink. “This is really good.”
The Sorcerer Supreme smiled again. “Yes.” She continued around the room to pour tea for Mordo and Kaecilius as well, each of whom thanked her with a smile and silent nod.
“This power I have, this magic…” I gestured with one hand, summoning a small amount of mist-like red energy above my fingers. “I know it’s not the same as what you do, but…”
Nodding, the Ancient One placed the teapot back on the side table, then performed a gesture of her own. Next to me, Pietro flinched again in surprise as a mandala of burning energy began to unfold in the air, the harsh orange geometries almost electric compared to my own. “The Mystic Arts we teach here harness energy drawn from other dimensions of the multiverse to cast spells,” she said. “You could learn it, potentially, just as anyone else can. Your chaos magic, however, is drawn from an innate, personal source of power.”
“Chaos magic.” I nodded. “Isn’t it a kind of witchcraft?”
She flicked her hands forward and the sorcerous diagram dissipated. “It is and it isn’t. You were born with an innate talent, and could have developed into an ordinary witch using it.”
“But I’m not an ordinary witch.”
She looked at me and it was my turn to flinch a little, wilting under her piercing gaze. “No,” she said. “You are not.”
“Is there some overlap?” I persisted. “Whether you’re using personal power or power taken from elsewhere, are there any similarities when it comes to techniques for channelling it, or the spells that it can be used for? Even if there isn’t, Kamar-taj has the most extensive library on magic in the world. Do you have any books on witchcraft?”
The Ancient One nodded slowly. “Some. The discipline and techniques of sorcery could be applied to help you better channel your innate power. But I’m afraid that teaching you is out of the question.”
“What? Why?” I asked, caught off guard by the firmness of the rejection.
“Because you don’t belong here,” she said, dark green eyes boring into mine.
“Ah.” Well, that was disconcerting. I placed my now-empty tea cup on one of the nearby tables. “Do you mean that in a ‘the timeline has been disturbed and you should be in Sokovia working with Ultron’ way, or…?”
“No, I mean it in a ‘you should not be in this reality’ way,” the Ancient One said softly, also putting down her cup.
I noticed that I’d taken a slight step backward without realising it. “Well,” I said, stammering slightly. “I’m here now, and I can make things better. I already have. There are a lot of people who don’t need to die. I’ve already saved some.”
“What? Who’s going to die?” Pietro asked, but quieted when I held up a hand.
“You sought me out to learn more of magic, not knowing—or perhaps forgetting—that it is the duty of the Masters of the Mystic Arts to safeguard this world from threats that originate from beyond it.” The Sorcerer Supreme folded her hands in front of her and looked at me, her expression utterly impassive. “An entity from another world, possessing the Scarlet Witch and holding an Infinity Stone, approaches seeking more control? More power? I’m afraid there is only one way forward here.”
I felt the colour drain from my face. Fuck.