My Cosmic Awareness extended out to it, and as I came within the obfuscation of the effort, recoiled at what was beyond.
Mythos! Unbelievable amounts of Mythos power!
Thanos was already here... and so was the Magus we’d been looking for all this time. Amazingly enough, the latter was on his knees, while the former was glowering up at the Breach, and the figure floating arrogantly there, backed by... huh.
“I have brought before you the Champion of Death!” the Magus shouted out to the hovering figure, whose head turned as I came streaking in from the distance and ended up next to Thanos... who looked rather astonished to see me there.
“You were supposed to kill him, and cover your tracks. Plainly you have done neither. You are of no use to us,” the floating man replied, gesturing once.
The power reached out and twisted the Magus’ body and soul at angles to itself, the very energy that made him up being bent and riven. His scream was cut short as his existence was folded in countless directions and obliterated.
I looked at the floating figure of Captain Mar-vell, heroic warrior of the Kree, and his glowing red eyes, alight with the knowledge of things mortals were not meant to know.
Behind him, visible at the edge of the Breach, many-tentacled and multi-eyed monstrosities that didn’t exist in merely four or five dimensions waited for their chance to expand into our dimension. The Rites and powers that held that Breach open were colossal, and nothing below Eternity was going to be able to Seal it.
Except Eternity totally could, now.
“Good evening, Titan. Feels like another Wednesday to me.”
His dark eyes glowed. “Do you feel it, Courtier?” he ground at me. “From beyond him? That... Cancerverse?”
I looked back there, and the influence of the Mythos creatures seemed to part, just so they could show off what had been done, and allow my Awareness to wash out into the universe beyond Captain Mar-vell.
I turned my head and puked vivus for a few seconds, drawing Mar-vell’s arrogant, supremely confident attention at the display. “Yep. Good name,” I told him. “How’d they recruit you, Mar-vell? They definitely gave you the power...”
“I see you are another of the champions of this reality,” he responded, completely certain of his power and victory, backed directly by entities of Mythos as he was. “I will tell you! As I lay dying upon Saturn’s moon, the masters came and whispered to me as the Wasting was taking my life, telling me that there was a way to live, a way for everyone to live! To break forever the power of Death!
“They told me that in strange aeons, even Death may die!” He reached out and clenched his hand. “And so we Summoned and slew Death Herself!” he shouted in passion. “No more Death in the cosmos! The masters have come, and all across the universe, Life flourishes! Life... is triumphant! And we shall bring that success to all realms and worlds!”
I just blinked, and began to laugh softly.
It was not the reaction he was expecting. “You do not believe what we have accomplished?” he asked of me scornfully. “You, who can die so easily?” He started to stretch out his hand my way.
“Oh, of course I believe what you did. I was laughing because of just how badly you were snookered.” His hand paused as I smirked at him. “There is another old, old saying of one of the mighty Old Ones. I wonder if you have heard it?”
That gave both him and Thanos pause, both of them gazing at me in surprise that I would know such a thing.
“I was not aware Dark Knowledge was an interest of yours,” Thanos rumbled in his stone-breaking voice, ignoring the tentacles starting to extend his way from behind Mar-Vell.
I sighed, looking past Mar-Vell, narrowing in on the where and the when and... there it was.
This had happened Right After the universal reboot, like merely seconds. Entities from Outside the multiverse had seized the opportunity at Mar-vell’s deepest, direst moment of weakness, when he had found love and had children on the way, to offer him a new life, and he had taken it.
With the power granted him, he had taken control of all the heroes who had come to attend his dying hours, and together they had Summoned Death and slain Her with power from Outside Creation.
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Death had died, and with it, the ability to die. Life had exploded across the cosmos as the creatures of Mythos had modified the very rules of reality, and the stars themselves became mere food and fodder for things growing on the skeins of existence, life spreading unchecked across entire worlds and star systems, warped and changed in ways that no living thing could actually survive, but unable to die.
It was a place of pain and mutations, decay and rebirth, where death was only a temporary interruption to the madness that was life.
I looked at the realm beyond him, and I exhaled slowly.
Well, this is it.
I could feel it as clear as day. The manipulations of reality, the powers I’d been given, the way they’d let my Clones spread across other realms, learning of Underweb Casting, the Voice of Thunder, even Scarlet Witchery...
This here, right now, was the whole reason I’d been brought here to this multiverse. Everything else had been about putting the pieces in place, setting up the bait, and showing us how to handle the aftermath.
“The phrase is this, my dear Captain... ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.”
I snapped my fingers.
The explosion could have taken out a small moon. What it immediately did was launch Thanos of Titan and his status as the Champion of Death away from this location at very great speed, while cerulean blue flames ignited and filled the Void in a specific Sigil.
Captain Mar-vell and the Things in the Breach squealed and screamed and closed their eyes as the Cerulean Sigil burned forth, and even here, far from where it was born, it had power against things from Outside Creation.
And then I was past him, past the Mythos creatures filling the gateway, stealthed out, illusions lasting for just the moment I needed them to as I slipped through the opening they’d made so I could See past them and despair at their power and great works, and I was gone.
In five seconds I was past their default physical awareness of reality, and my own reached out precisely ahead to get me to where I needed to go.
---
I could feel the stirring as I came out of the Portal above Titan. Still moving at a significant fraction of light speed, I dove down on the city of the Eternals on Saturn’s largest moon below, and a specific plaza there, where something unimaginably powerful dozed.
Filling the sky around me was the rotting corpse of Eternity, unable to die, shot through with growths that encompassed stars and galaxies, weighing down all that was with an eruption of uncontrolled, maddening life. The moons of Saturn were all tied to the planet in webs of organic growths, turning their orbits into a massive web-like garden of neo-fungoid growths and creatures, while the planet itself was a single convulsing garden of life, out of which city-sized eyes on tentacles stared up at the sky and gibbered maddening praises to the countless Entities who had come to take up place out there and enlighten them.
I Blinked past the city’s default shields and was down at the plaza and the altar where Death had been sacrificed. Something was waiting there, and slowly stirred as I set down.
He had been Franklin Richards, but there was nothing left of that now. At least three Great Old Ones had Possessed him, and the six-year-old boy was now swollen to thrice the height of a man, looking no older, but backed by the intrusive bodies of the Things that had come together in him, and which looked out all six of his new eyes at the stranger come before them.
“An existence from outside.” The voice was multiple Things speaking, more mental than physical, warping and wheedling at my mental shields, and somewhat surprised when they held. “Come you here to challenge our power, little thing?” it asked, inhuman amusement seeping forth at the chance for entertainment.
“Oh, by no means, Elders,” I answered politely, bowing to them. “I’m just here waiting for your Champion to catch up. He should be here momentarily.”
Tentacles coming around paused for a moment, confused. “We feel the touch of Death upon you. What manner of servant are you?” it asked idly, clearly in no hurry to act.
“Kind of a draftee, Wisest of Sages. Someone who managed to kill something that would not normally die back home. She recognized it by sending me off to kill other things that were waiting to die. Quite pragmatic of Her, letting Her take all the credit for the kills while actually giving me nothing for it.”
“This is true. You have no power of Death upon you, merely Her touch.” They recognized the truth of it as they stared at me, still trying to get at my mind and soul and finding it impossible for the moment. “Have you come here to defeat Her? To do away with Death?”
“That answer will be coming shortly.” I looked back at the edge of the Plaza as a Portal opened there, and Mar-vell floated through, his fists blazing with energy and his crimson eyes boiling with power. “Captain, have you solved your riddle?” I asked perfunctorily.
He paused, staring at me and his Masters there waiting for me, with no sign of violence imminent. “My Masters, this one knows the Cerulean Sigil!” he called out warily.
I just rolled my eyes. “Gods and Totems, Mar-Vell, the Cerulean Sigil is known across half of Creation itself. My knowing it is hardly noteworthy. Do you think it could harm your Masters, when it could not even harm you?”
He paused at that, his anger simmering and fading somewhat. “Your words had no wisdom within them, no secrets. They merely speak of one of the honored Masters, waiting for his time to be free and stride the stars again!” he said reverently.
“Well, then, translate them, if you will,” I said casually, completely undeterred as he came closer and stared into my eyes.
He scowled at me, fully confident he could take anything I dished out, still wary and suspicious after that diversion which had literally brought me to the very center of their power, the one place in the universe where nothing could possibly contest them.
“ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn,” he repeated. “’In his house in R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming’,” he translated easily. “When the stars are right, He will emerge! All who know of the Masters know of this! What strange insight do you claim in these words?!” he demanded of me.
I nodded once at him. “Well-spoken!” I smiled, further confusing him. “ph'nglui mglw'nafh Death Titan wgah'nagl fhtagn!” I told him.
He was still translating it when I Said,
“WAKE...UP!”