Dealer smiled as she waved her hand at the guy in vaguely Oriental-robes, protected behind his Chrysalis of Cyttorak while sneering at her and the Cards floating above her hand.
She didn’t have a reputation in the mystic community before today, but that was definitely going to change.
Her Argent Savancy went out, tied into the force-structure of his Chrysalis, and shattered it without much effort.
It was a powerful defensive spell, and it sent the man stumbling backwards from the feedback, shocked and stunned at how easily it had broken. Trying to shake his head free of the feeling of razored glass detonating inside his skull, he looked up just in time to see the Card arrive in front of his face.
The blast sent him flying in an explosion of silvery-golden force, totally taken out, and the Card fractured and slammed into the disciples he’d been protecting, sending them tumbling helplessly after him, also unconscious.
These mystics weren’t messing around, using all manner of Summons, servants, magical items, invocations, and Formations to fight off the assault on their Ceremony. As Dragon practitioners, they’d already inherited the Lust for Power after the Phoenix fell, and the only way for them to lose it was basically to die, or one of them to Become the Dragon.
The cold hereabouts would do that in under five minutes.
Dealer flitted over to another Dragon Caster duking it out with a White Witch, frost spears and fang-like thorns contesting, a serpentine dragon wrestling around with an ice elemental, while the two exchanged mystic blasts, blocked them with their shields, or evaded them.
An Interdiction was up, so only pre-Summoned beasts and things were present now, while nobody wanted their ability to fly impeded. Dealer flitted in close enough to take down the dragon-chased mantlets protecting the primary Caster behind layers of defense, and as the white witch attacked, waved her hand at it.
The mantlets of force energy blew apart, and all the apprentices screamed and clutched at their heads. The main Caster turned his eyes on Dealer in shock, reflexively bringing up a personal shield, and the icy blast of the white witch slammed into him and his group, burying them in ice.
A gleaming Card snapped out, lodged in the glowing shield underneath the coating of ice, and detonated, sending the mage flying limply.
“You can bring down their shields?” the white witch blurted out in astonishment, flying up to Dealer quickly.
“It’s a gift!” Dealer smiled casually.
“I shall back you up!” the witch stated, gathering more icy power between her hands. Dealer inclined her head, and zipped towards the next knot of conflict.
---
The knock-down, drag-out mystical battle instantly took on a new flavor after Dr. Strange noticed the shift, and spread word to the others. Their tactics switched from dueling to containment and delay, while Dealer went around the field, collapsed the force wall defenses, and massed attacks came in while the Dragon mages were reeling from the feedback.
The Dragon mages tried to adjust their tactics, using elemental barriers and walls, even living creatures, as obstructions and defenses instead of the force fields that were collapsing so quickly. Naturally, these defenses had their own problems, and the gathered power of the mystics could shatter them much more easily.
Dealer was also very good at Dispelling said barriers and the conjured creatures, earning her yet more cautious attention from the mystics present.
In desperation, the Dragon mages retreated into the master Formation for the Ritual they’d been about to undertake, reinforcing it with all their strength. This wasn’t exactly a force effect, more like magic-defying shells that warded off and absorbed the attacks from without.
“Hey, Wanda!” Dealer waved her over, ignoring the spontaneous meeting of Strange, M’benga the Senior Wakandan Priest, and Mother Bora, the senior White Witch, to analyze the Formation.
Wanda was looking a little frazzled at the moment. Her natural powers didn’t normally include direct attack spells, being on the line of dangerous Curses that as often as not could be fought back against by these also magic-wielding opponents. She had been taking out lesser Casters with carbon dioxide bombs around their heads, inflicting some with epileptic seizures at key moments, weakening some of the powerful monsters so they could be overcome more easily, redirecting enemy spells to their own allies, and the like.
It was her very first time being involved in a magical scrum at this level. Watching the lethal exchange of magic, Invocations to entities she’d been told about but never bothered to use herself, and seeing the deadly seriousness and focus of the men and women involved here was a definite eye-opener.
She was also wearing a Ring which enabled her to fly, simply because Dealer had flat out insisted that no Caster worth ANYTHING should not be able to fly, and so she’d been able to tag along on the attack.
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She had also been watching Dealer during the frantic melee, and was utterly shocked by how, well, serene Dealer was.
Dealer seemed to know where everything was coming from, and moved just the minimum amount needed to dodge it. She shattered reaching tentacles of force with a pointed finger, crushed gaping jaws ready to close on her with a clenched fist, and blew away swirling poisoned vapors with a wave of her hand.
She had also saved at least three of the White Witches from potentially lethal injuries, an array of Hearts floating above her shoulder which could flash out anywhere on the battlefield and burst in a flash of healing magic, shocking everyone present at its efficacy.
Wanda had never seen someone so in control of such a messy situation, and of course, all the other mystics had noticed her poise, too, the air of someone who had seen things like this many times before, and would happily do so again.
Trying to fight down her envy, Wanda hurried over to her erstwhile teacher, finally realizing why Dealer was instructing her. Her impression that because they were close to the same age they would have the same amount of power and skill was making her face hot with the fallacy of her assumption.
She knew she wasn’t anywhere in Dealer’s league!
“What do you need, Dealer?” she sighed, then caught the dancing light in Dealer’s eyes.
She knew that light. It was when Dealer came up with something wickedly fun for her to try out.
Dealer snapped out a full deck of cards for her, while leaning in closer. “Strange and Bora and M’Benga are trying to figure out the Formation there and how best to crack it. They forgot they’ve got THE Scarlet Witch here, and that’s just a total-total-total waste of time.” She waved the cards in front of Wanda. “I’m gonna Spellflare this whole Deck, and toss it at that Formation. Do you think you could Hex it to hit that Formation in exactly the worst manner for it possible?”
Her smile was beaming, and Wanda couldn’t help but grin herself.
“Sure! Focus, focus,” she muttered, gathering her magic as she took the Deck of cards, and began injecting her Hex magic into it, playing with the laws of probability, making the almost impossibly-unlikely a rote and normal thing.
She made sure she touched every single card that was going to be sent out, crimson magic swirling around them. She gasped when she finished, her smile a little manic as she presented the cards back to Dealer.
“Noiz!” Dealer winked at her, and began wrapping the Spellflare into Wanda’s spell. The ease with which she did so took Wanda’s breath away, the scarlet Hex magic suddenly becoming a rainbow, sparkly-swirly array of tightly leashed magic as it mixed with the Silver Magic.
Naturally this attracted attention from everyone, as it looked delightfully charming and completely out of place here on the battlefield.
Dealer casually turned around and tossed the cards out towards the Formation waiting for them, calling out “Hallelujah!” with the air of a born showman.
Sparkling Cards flew into the air, separated, tumbled, and fell towards the Formation in an erratic, uncontrolled manner.
The first Card hit the edge of the Formation, and blew apart in a show of glittering rainbow sparkles. As it did, it seemed to signal all the other Cards, which flashed down onto the Formation, and proceeded to erupt in a rapidly growing explosion of magic.
Resonance waves rippled back and forth, magic eating away at binding strictures as improbable reverberations bounced around, weakening the magic, rebounding, compounding, echoing back and forth as rainbow lights swirled back and forth, darting there and back erratically, wildly, happily... and burning out all the Formation’s Nodes as they did so.
The collapse of the Formation was basically an explosion of bright and cheerful fireworks rising into the sky, completely destroying any vestiges of whatever Rituals these Dragon Mages wanted to set up.
Wanda and Dealer high-fived and turned to face the gaping Dragons in their robes and stuff, grinning at them, heads, shoulders, and hips touching, looking quite delighted with themselves as they posed for the selfie.
---
That was pretty much the end of the main fight, as the Dragons, having lost any reason to remain, promptly split up in all directions to get out of the sealed Veil and back to civilized lands. None of them particularly wanted to fight, and Strange’s team was happy enough to just harry them along and hurry them up out of the Interdiction and be rid of them.
Vivus swirled over the dead and fallen, cleaning away the flesh, while personal belongings were bundled up to be disposed of. Dragon mages had fetishes for lots of personal gold jewelry...
----------
I noted Dealer’s entry onto the world stage, Wanda’s exposure to the kind of magic she now wanted to be able to wield, and the success of their efforts, even as I continued modulating the sensor arrays.
There was a lot of data coming in here, and now I could feel the pulling on the entire strings of magic and energy for the whole planet.
The Celestial Seed was coming forth!
It was kind of drawn out of the icy soil, the magnetics in the area going completely screwball except for within the area that Lensherr and the Surfer were keeping stable. The quiescent blue particle effects were surging and roiling as it was drawn up into the center of the World-Eating Engine, completely whole and intact.
There was no attempt made to rip apart the biosphere of the world. For the next twenty-four hours, Galactus drew out the cosmic power distributed through the inner core of the world, radiated there over uncounted millennia by the Seed, and digested it as we watched and monitored.
Some zany ideas for new sensors were proposed and adapted, promptly cannibalized from the ones that were doing nothing, opening up more reams of data.
This was probably data that was actually well-known and had been witnessed many times over on a galactic scale, but our exposure to energies of this level was a human first.
When He was done with His meal, Galactus simply levitated the Engine, the Seed, and even the magnetic ring array that had made this fine level of extraction possible. He ascended into the sky and disappeared into His Worldship. The Silver Surfer swooped down to give us a wave and a final pass, and if he had somehow acquired a silvery crystal bracelet from somewhere during all of that, it was all good.
The bracelet had several centuries worth of human music and literature programmed into it, to keep him company on his long trips through space, and if there was some ability to contact him and ask for his personal help in between his Heraldic duties, well, that was always a thing, wasn’t it?
He returned the Axe to Sama, who noted that he could come borrow it whenever, totally ignoring Thor’s face nearby.
At least Sama didn’t attempt to Mark the Surfer. I could see how well that might go over with Galactus, who could not possibly miss such things.