Chapter 142: Meeting the Enemy

5th June 2006, New York City

(Jasmine Sayre POV)

The man smirks at me, and I suddenly feel his power. I hadn’t felt something like this since the fall of Atlantis, this was a cosmic entity, and with a fully materialized body.

“Oh, my dear Morrigan. We’ve been playing together for years, trying to get the better of each other. It was quite entertaining, our little game of chess. It’s sad that it had to end with no winner. One piece of advice, young Morrigan, when you’re not sure whether you’re going to win, then cheat. There are no rules about playing fair.”

Oh shit, this was the cosmic entity that I have been fighting all this time. What the fuck am I supposed to do now?

I suddenly receive a distress call from Wanda. This was not the time for this. I need to get her, quickly. I was going to teleport, before I heard, “Ignore the message, Morrigan. You have bigger problems in front of you, now.”

Before I could think about responding, the world around us shatters.

I look around, not just with my eyes but with my senses. This place, wherever it was, was dead. There was no life here, not a single blade of grass, not a single insect. There was a lack of warmth in this wasteland. There was nothing but the void.

With my eyes, I saw nothing but stone and sand. There was nothing here but death and misery. Looking at the large stone in front of me, I noticed that it looked weird. I come closer and gasp. This wasn’t a stone. This was a bone.

“Impressive, isn’t it? It belonged to the Jörmungandr of the last iteration of Ragnarök. He was particularly powerful during this iteration. He really lives up to the title of World Serpent, doesn’t he?”

Fucking hell, that thing was huge. Still, I had to keep my guard up, “Where are we?”

The man looked smug, “This is Nifleheim, one of the so called nine realms Odin conquered. A dead world. Nothing will ever grow in this place; everything here withers and dies. The Asgardians think that this is where they would be going if they die a dishonorable death, but that’s not true. This is where the remnants of the previous cycles of Ragnarök are stored. A place where all the evidence of the doomed cycle of the nine realms is just dumped to be forgotten, until they are destroyed by time.”

“Why are we here?”

“After so much time trying to one up each other, I thought that it was time for us to meet, don’t you agree?

I didn’t believe a word he said. This was someone who was far older, far more experienced and far more powerful than I am. Cosmic entities, no matter how they act, just think different. The concept of meeting your enemy is just foreign to them, “No, I don’t believe you. This isn’t just a meeting. You’re planning something, you think that you’ve already won.”

The man burst into laughter, “Of course I already won. I won the minute your visions of the future stopped. It was always a weakness of mine; while I can exist in multiple parallel universes, I am still bound by the chains of time. It’s one of the core principals of my being. This, and the Living Tribunal’s rules were the only advantages you had. You have lost both of them, us fighting is meaningless, for you have already lost.”

“You still didn’t answer my question. Why did you bring us here?”

The man chuckled, “you know, this iteration of Odin’s daughter, Hela, is being held on this world. She’s in an isolated island called Hel, alone with nothing but her thoughts. She has no possibility of escape, no way to distract herself, quite the punishment, I would say so myself. Odin can be very cruel when dealing with threats of his reign. It’s also funny that Loki’s daughter was reborn as Odin’s first born. The old man really hated her, you know, in every iteration. He thought that she was an abomination. But now, she was his pride and joy when they conquered the nine realms together and then he sealed her away for being too cruel, while he had enslaved worlds and killed millions. What a hypocrite.”

I am starting to lose my patience, “Again, answer the question, what am I doing here?”

The man’s smile turned sinister, “I was thinking about what to do with you. You need to be punished for stopping me for so long. I have been planning this for eons, manipulated events for thousands of years. You could have undone everything. You would have undone everything. But I was very lucky, I found a way to manipulate the events to my favor.”

I blanch, what is he talking about? Seeing my face the man laughed, “Oh, you’re starting to understand. Wanda’s time travel was my idea. It was a way to give myself a second chance. I was so close, yet so far. You turned me into a shadow of my former power; the Living Tribunal had bound my power. You might have perished by overloading your connection to Death. No mortal could channel powers like that for more than a second, but it was enough for you to trick me.

“No matter, I found a little despaired witch, one with more power than sense, your precious Wanda. I made sure that she would find the Darkhold, I manipulated her into falling more and more to depravity and darkness, trying to find her precious mother. I gave her the idea to modify a time travel spell, to make it destabilize the timeline that she would send out my memories of the next couple of decades. It was just a piece of data, so insignificant that the universe itself ignored it and suddenly I understood that my plans were doomed. The only thing stopping me, is you. I was underestimating you; I’ll admit to it. What could a silly human avatar do against a cosmic entity?

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“But now, I see how dangerous you truly are. You had planned everything to the last detail just to defeat me. You sacrificed your life, just to slow me enough that the other cosmic entities would notice my actions. I’m done underestimating you. This is me deciding how I should punish you.”

I was floored. This was him; it was all him. He corrupted my daughter; he used her grief, her despair, just to change his past failures. For the first time in a very long while, I started to feel pure rage. I wanted to kill him. No, I wanted him to suffer, to lose everything that embodied his existence, his very purpose, just so that he would suffer as I had.

I snarl at him, “What gives you the right to undo your own failures. You had lost, against a mortal no less, and instead of trying to move on, you go back in time to undo what has already been done. Fucking coward.”

The man stared at me for a second and burst into laughter, “Oh, that’s cute. I don’t care if I’m a coward, if I couldn’t live with my failure. It doesn’t matter, because no one will know about it. I’m not just monologuing because I’m some sort of villain. I already won, there’s no coming back from this. I have ensured it. I have negated your greatest advantages, your only advantages, really. And without them, you have no chance to even last more than a minute. Now, what to do with you?”

“You can’t harm me; you can’t even touch me. Cosmic entities are not supposed to intervene with mortals.”

The man’s smile was still smug, and I knew that I fucked up. What did he do? The Living Tribunal, the cosmic entity that governs over the other entities had created a few rules that he enforces himself. No cosmic entity would dare disobey them, because the consequences tended to be severe. Why the hell did the man in front of me not care about them at all.

The man was chuckling now, “Oh, honey, Wanda’s little disturbance, caused the entire universe to be put in lockdown. Until the timeline stabilizes, no interference is allowed from outside, even from cosmic entities. I was able to hitch a ride with Wanda and possess a vessel, but the others are as blind as they could be. No one will ever know about what I do until it’s too late and I have already won. But the best part is, that your connection to Death is muted now. She can’t see you, and since you need express permission just to use her powers, I have removed your role as Avatar of Death for the time being. You’re just a mortal now, a long lived, powerful witch, but just a mortal all the same. Your access to cosmic energy is over. You’re on your own, now.”

The man was laughing maniacally now and I tried to do my best to contact Death, but nothing was working. This was bad, this was really bad. Words cannot express how fucked I am. I tried to find any scenario where I could escape this unscathed, while the man laughed. So far, I had nothing.

A minute later the man looked pensively at me, “Now, don’t get me wrong, you’re powerful and I need to get rid of you. Unfortunately, I can’t kill you. Death will immediately know, it’s her domain after all. I can’t just leave you here, you’re resourceful enough to escape and I can’t afford that with how close I am to reaching my goal.”

“And what is your goal exactly?” I probe, trying to find out as much about my enemy as I can.

The man’s smile turned smug again, “Oh, I haven’t introduced myself, have I. I am what awaits at the end of every universe. I am the balance of the energies of every reality, I am what happens when the universe is left with nothing but darkness and the cold. I am at the end of creation itself. When there is nothing in the universe, not even matter, energy or life, I am at my strongest. I embody the void that awaits the end itself. I am Entropy.”

Oh shit, this was a very strong cosmic entity, but this didn’t make any sense, “Why are you doing this, then? You exist, you’re a fundamental part of reality. What more could you possibly ask for.”

The man's smile was bitter now, “My existence, in itself, is flawed. I am a concept that exists, but at the end of the universe, after there are no more planets for Galactus to eat, after there is nothing alive, when the temperature almost gets to absolute zero, the moment I will achieve release, where the ultimate entropy is almost achieved, the universe is destroyed and another takes its place, with a new big bang and the cycle starts once more. My existence, my very being, is an empty promise, an unachievable goal that every universe strived to, but ultimately fails. And every time that happens, a part of me breaks. For countless universes, in countless iterations, the same thing happens. A universe is born and as soon as it achieves entropy, as soon as I start manifesting myself, it’s destroyed, and its energy is used to create a new universe. I tried to handle it, but it’s too much. Since I am bound by time, entropy happens over time after all, I cannot see a future where this doesn’t happen. Something must change. I am done waiting for something that might never happen. And since my pleas were ignored, I’m taking matters into my own hands. I will achieve ultimate entropy. I will do it in every universe that exists and that will ever exist. I will not stop until only the void exists, and I could finally rest.”

Shit, I started to understand the implication of what I’m fighting, “You’re planning to use the snap, where the dimensional walls are at their weakest to turn every universe into a lifeless void. The damages, the death toll would be immeasurable. It would be infinite. You would kill everything that has ever existed, that will ever exist.”

He nodded solemnly, “Yes. I’m sorry, but I’m so old now. I’m always ignored, underestimated by my comrades. No one could see my suffering, my pain, that existed for every second of my existence. This is the only way I can think of for me to rest. I know it is monstrous, but I am a selfish being. I’ll admit to that. I can’t take it anymore. You’re the only person that has the power and knowledge for a chance to stop me. The Phoenix Force Avatar is barely a fledgling, a child that doesn’t understand her power. However, you were the only one that ever tried to understand my plight when we fought before. So, I will grant you a mercy. I will not imprison you in an empty world with no escape. I will send you to another section of the multiverse, one so far away that it would take a cosmic entity to travel, not that I’m sending you to a world that they care about. Goodbye, Morrigan. You were a good opponent.”

The man waved his hand and a portal opened. Hell no, I’m not going quietly. I don’t care that he’s a cosmic entity. I have defied Death itself. I will do so again with him.

I raise my hand and my outfit changed. I was wearing my Morrigan armor now, with Death’s cloak of invisibility and my staff in my hand. This wasn’t going to be an easy fight and I knew it. I was probably going to lose, but I had to try. I point my staff at him and exclaim, “I’m not going anywhere!”

The man smiled at me, “I never expected you to go down without a fight, Morrigan. Let’s see what you can do without using Death’s power.”