Chapter 207: Cut Off One Head
13th March 2012, New York City
(Jasmine Sayre POV)
I have to say that the last few days have been quite relaxing, especially after a very long day where I pretty much traveled through the multiverse, fought an alien invasion, went to Asgard, secured an alliance with Odin to help during Entropy’s inevitable attack, and for some reason acted as some kind of a therapist to the King of Asgard. After a day like that, I needed a few days of just sleeping in and staying at home with my family.
Speaking of family, I have to admit that I didn’t see Rose’s presence coming. She had grown into a fine young woman, and she had gotten a lot better at using her magic. I had underestimated how much I missed my sister in the last few years, and it was heartwarming to see her taking care of Wanda and Jean.
Another thing I didn’t see coming was her meeting Wanda and Jean. I did my best to keep the magical world and the non-magical world separate, but Rose seemed insistent on breaking the walls between the two worlds and taking care of my daughter in my absence. She had done a very good job too, Wanda was now an emotionally stable adult, with some very slight abandonment issues which my disappearance didn’t help in the slightest.
Unfortunately, without me being there, Wanda couldn’t advance properly in her reality magic. Selene had done her best, but this branch of magic is one that only Wanda and I seemed to have the ability to use, and I was very careful not to write down too much about it in books in case someone realized the potential danger that it possessed and would kill anyone who had the slightest inclination to that type of magic, or even any magic in general.
As for Jean, she seemed to have hit a mental block in the use of her abilities, probably in fear of accidentally hurting someone or losing herself to the power. It was something that I could understand, at the very least, whenever I had used Death’s cosmic power, I ceased to be human, well, I haven’t been human in a very long time, but what I mean, is that it was like I was standing in front of ants. I didn’t care about their little anthills, their little weapons or their lives. They were unimportant. When you possess that kind of power, anyone would change. Everything feels small, meaningless. The beauty of the universe starts to fade into a blank wall. It creates a sense of apathy that I always hated.
That was the main reason that I never even tried to gain more power. I was afraid of how little of me would be left afterwards. I could understand Jean not wanting to submerge into her powers. She was afraid, and she was right to be. Once she inevitably takes that jump, nothing will be the same for her. She will be different and she will see the world differently.
Even now, after I stopped being Death’s avatar and returned her gifts, I still feel the imprints that she left me, small abilities that I subconsciously used when I channeled my cosmic powers. I started to notice them during my first trip into the multiverse. I didn’t realize what had happened until I returned to my universe. Perhaps, I had but I just didn’t care, being stranded away from my home and my family. But now that I have returned, I started to think back and realized how ridiculous my actions in the Harry Potter Canon universe were. Yes, I was powerful, I was very knowledgeable, but what I had planned was beyond any seer. It involved months of subtle manipulations that resulted in the exact outcome I wanted.
It was mind blowing that I didn’t realize what had happened to me. Somehow, Death’s cosmic energy imprinted on my magic. One of the gifts that required cosmic energy to use had latched itself on to my magic. It was a very dangerous gift and a very agonizing one, for me at the very least.
Because Death wasn’t just the end of life, it was the end of everything. Anything that is created in the universe will die. That’s one of the most fundamental laws of reality, and that’s just not people. Any object has an identity. A table is a table, and when it ceases to be one, it dies, in the metaphysical sense. Death is the end of all things, alive, dead and nothing is spared, not even groups and ideals.
My little gift allows me to see how to kill anything. I learnt how to destabilize the Ministry of Magic with a few words, I learnt how to destroy Harry’s loyalty to the world and to the magical world. I learnt how to destroy his suicidal tendencies by getting him to meet Daphne Greengrass, I knew exactly how to dismantle the prophecy strand by strand until only a single one would be left, and I would rupture it violently, gaining Fate’s attention.
I hadn’t even realized what I was doing. I was a very good manipulator. I could be cunning, but not to this extent, no one could. But now, I realized that my gift was growing stronger, and it hurt.
It hurt so much. I couldn’t even turn it off. It was so hard, to not only see the world, but to also know how to destroy it. I was barely holding on; a mind, even one like mine, was never meant to process information like that without outside help, in my case it was Death.
I had used my Death sense before when I was serving the cosmic entity. It was how I could destroy wards and traps without even trying to. It was how I was able to dismantle armies, commit total genocide without a single survivor. Couple that with the rest of Death’s powers, and nothing could survive me, let alone hurt me.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
But now, without cosmic energy helping me process the data, I was constantly in pain. I had it somewhat under control, but it was getting worse. Fortunately, I had a plan for that, one that I had planned to enact properly. But this was still a very bad sign, because what else could have been imprinted into my magic, into my soul?
It was a horrible conundrum, one that Selene seemed to share as well. Unfortunately, I had to make a public appearance at the company. Selene was able to fake my disappearance using illusions, but now, she wanted to catch me up on what has been happening.
We sat in my office, and I asked, “Alright, why did you want me to come here. You know how pressed for time I am with this.”
Selene nodded, “we both know that you already designed the runic array and the only thing you’re waiting for, is for the full moon to activate the ritual. I’m as worried as you are about this, but this company is important and you’re its founder, whether you like it or not, and you’ve been gone for years. You need to catch up.”
“Do we have to do it here and not at home?”
Selene gave me a wry grin, “We both know that if we were at home, you’d find a way to get out of it, probably by hanging around the kids.”
I sighed in resignation. I really hate the business stuff. “Fine.”
Selene smirked victoriously, “Look, you’re the one who created Marvel Industries, and your reputation as one of the most popular writers on the planet is what made it the world titan it is today. But now, we have a lot of problems, especially since it’s our news stations that published the leaked video between Fury and the World Security Council.”
“Are they suing us or something?”
“No, but Alfred ended up stopping dozens of cyber attacks, only half of which originate from SHIELD computers. Here is what he has been able to track so far.”
Selene handed me a piece of paper. I looked at the list of attackers. Some were expected like the CIA, SHIELD, and the FBI. Some were even foreign; MI6 was a bit of a surprise, but not a shocking one. But the few worrying ones came from Latveria, which actually came in quite far, compared to the others, Advanced Idea Mechanics, which seemed to be a small bio-engineering company contracted to SHIELD, and some very worrying attackers that seemed to be using SHIELD’s own probes to piggyback on them. It was probably Hydra.
I gave a serious look to Selene, “So, the most worrying ones are SHIELD, Hydra, AIM, and Latveria. Those are the ones we'll deal with.”
Selene looked at me questioningly, “I know of the others, but I don't know much about AIM?”
I shrugged, “There's not much to know, to be honest. It’s officially a research company that’s trying to stabilize a serum that could regrow limbs, heal any disease, and so on.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad…”
“Unfortunately, it also has the small side effect of making the subject explode half the time, like huge living bombs, and if it works, it gives the subjects some sort of heat control and unlimited regeneration that would make Logan’s look almost normal. They turned from a medicinal company into a militarized one and probably want to conquer the world or something. They haven't done anything drastic and the only human trials they had done before I left, were done using volunteers who knew the risks properly. But their leader, Aldrich Killian is very ambitions and hates Stark with a passion, something about standing him up in a convention or something.”
Selene looked thoughtful, “It seems that SHIELD hired them or something.”
I shook my head, “No, it’s probably Hydra. SHIELD wouldn’t have asked a biological engineering contractor to try to breach our servers. It’s interesting that Hydra took note of them this early. What were they even trying to achieve by breaching our servers?”
“They wanted access to everything. Like even the unaired movies and TV Shows, the unpublished books, even the magazines. But I think they wanted access to our database, to see if we had more sensitive information that they could use.”
“Were they surprised by our firewalls?”
Selene chuckled, “Yes, but it’s not like we hid how well we protect our servers, with overenthusiastic fans trying to leak their favorite movies or something. But yeah, they’ll know that something is up, considering that some of the most brilliant minds in the world can’t even crack them.”
I shrugged, “Well, they could. But do they really think that we have hidden secrets or something here? We made sure that everything we published was as impartial as possible and we were never biased for or against any party. The best they would find are the books and the movies, and not even the popular ones, since we keep those disconnected from the web. I don’t think intelligence agencies will accept this in return for the millions of dollars in hardware they used to even try to hack us.”
Selene shrugged, “Still, they’re being very persistent in this. I found five SHIELD and Hydra moles in our offices just two days after the invasion.”
“Well, if SHIELD and Hydra want a fight, they’ll get one. I was planning on keeping my hands off and watching as they destroy themselves without my help. But I guess they’re not satisfied with this; I’ll handle the SHIELD situation myself. I didn’t know what I would do with my time after I was done dealing with my current power issue.”
Selene had a very happy smile on her face, “Well, now, let’s talk about the company finances during the past five years, and the new partners we made.”
I groaned audibly, and Selene laughed at my misery. This was going to take a lot more time.
And I was right, the damn meeting took hours. No wonder she didn’t to do it at home; Wanda and Rose would have distracted me halfway through. Still, Selene seemed to have things in hand while I was gone.
Meanwhile, I was driving into the usual parking place where the portal was, so that I could teleport home. Suddenly, I felt the car being destroyed by a bomb. I had teleported out easily enough, the explosion didn’t even do anything more than surprise me. Someone had tried to kill me, or at least, someone had tried to kill Morgan Evanshade. I watched hidden as a man walked towards my destroyed car – I had arrived in Selene’s car and chose to return using one of the company cars which wasn’t enchanted in any way. He was holding a machine gun in his hand, but what was more noticeable was his mask and his metal arm.