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Kamar Taj[August 2015]
–Jack Sullivan–
"So, who is coming with me?" He asked the Ancient One since it was still a day for Thor's coronation and he didn't have a lot to do, in his opinion. No bigger threats that needed his personal attention, aside from his regular patrolling around the world.
So far, he had rescued a giant ship that was blocking the Panama Canal, saved a small tropical island by shielding the entire thing from a thunderstorm, while he sipped martinis on the island. Also, the world was now rid of a possible demonic invasion by demons inhabiting Inhuman bodies and also taken care of the Inhuman village led by a woman who held a deep seated hatred for humanity.
Jiaying's hatred might have been justified if she had just chosen to target it on Whitehall and his ilk but blaming all of humanity for the actions of a small faction? That was wrong, no matter how one looked at it.
"Master Sullivan, you are a Master of the Mystic Arts and should act like one,"
He deadpanned at her, "So..no one? I'm going by myself?"
The Ancient One didn't even change her expression as she stood up, clapped him on his shoulder, and went on her way, but not before telling him, "Kamar Taj cannot spare additional manpower at the moment, Master Sullivan, and you are worthy of representing Kamar Taj. I wouldn't worry too much about the ceremony. Regent Thor seems to know what he's doing,"
He opened his mouth to reply but when he turned around, she was not there and the door was even locked. Damn her theatrics.
"Alright, think!" He said to himself as he tried to think of what could have happened and what he could do to keep himself busy for at least the next 24 hours. He didn't exactly know how to relax and especially not for just a day. He needed to be back in work mode for the Coronation and after the Coronation was done, he and Thor were going to leave to look for Eitri.
Then, a metaphorical light bulb lit above his head, "Oh! Wakanda!"
He grinned, "Wakanda Forever," and then stepped through a portal that opened up straight above the cool ass shield that Wakanda had above their entire country. He could feel the slight thrum of the energy shield and he could also feel the distinct presence of magic, not of dimensional kind, all around Wakanda.
He wondered why he did not feel something like that when he first came here. It was not as if his senses had improved dramatically since then. Oh wait, they did improve ever since his body was literally rebuilt using fluids from the strongest species in the entire universe
Oh. Oohh.
Another metaphorical light bulb lit up above him as he ignored the incoming Raptors and opened another portal and flew straight through. What greeted him was a large white landscape filled with sharp pieces of ice that hit his barrier constantly. Visibility was near zero as well, even for someone like him with enhanced eyesight. He couldn't tell where he was but he knew that somewhere, deep in the Arctic, something was buried.
A Celestial Corpse. An intact Celestial Corpse.
Something like that was rarer than finding a shard of Eternity in the vast universe. Arishem should have immediately snatched this body up but for some reason, it continued to remain buried in the deep areas of the ice, where the really old ice was.
He didn't know when the celestial was killed but he did know that it was before humans were even a thing, so a really long time but for Celestials? A drop in the ocean that was their natural lifespan.
He didn't even know if Celestials had any natural lifespan limit or not. Usually, they were either killed, left the universe because of boredom, or roamed the universe or the multiverse, aimless. The only real mass death of the Celestials occurred when Knull, the Death God, or the Symbiote God hunted down a bunch of them, forcing the strongest of them to band together and seal Knull or something.
Wasn't that a scary thought though? Knull escaping his seal.
So there was no reason to leave the celestial here, except if it did serve some purpose, an unknown purpose that nobody knew about. A lot of theories were thrown around in his previous world, some of which he did agree could be true but he was here now, with substantial power and also a little bit of time to kill, before he was whisked off on his next mission.
So he could be forgiven if he could indulge in his curiosities for a bit. Wakanda would have been as a sightseeing option and also because he could enjoy the Royal Treatment without any guilt and also it would be nice to see the changes that Wakanda has brought about in its internal structure in how they interacted with the rest of the world.
But this? This could be something else. IT almost made him feel excited, something that hadn't happened for a while now. A new mystery to uncover? Something that he didn't know through his meta knowledge?
Hell yeah.
He took a meditative pose, took out the power stone as well, something of a risk since celestials were known to use the INfinity stones as regular tools in their work but since the celestial was dead, he figured he could do something about it.
Holding the Power Stone in his barrier was very much manageable for him, especially since it allowed him to use the stone to supercharge any spell. He personally could not hold the stone in his hand and then cast any spell since it messed up his internal energy flow. That was because the Power Stone was something that could emulate any and all types of energies, so the stone provided him the dimensional energy required, in spades.
Coincidentally, because of that power in spades, he had no filter around the entry of energy in his body, messing up all his spells. But when it was embedded in one of his barriers that he could manipulate outside his body?
That was when things got interesting. Now not all spells could be charged by the power stone since it did not hold a miracle all spell boosting energy. What it could do was provide exactly the type of energy required for the spell, regardless of its origins.
Demonic? Divine? Dimensional? Cosmic? Light? Heat? Electricity? Kinetic Energy?
EVERYTHING.
That was how broken the Power Stone was, so he used it to boost a simple search spell. The Search spell was designed with collaboration in mind. So, theoretically, the more dimensional energy one can supply to it, the more distance the Power Stone can cover. It could either give him a 3D map of his surroundings or it could ping the dimensional energy off the surroundings and give him readings based on the energy disturbance recorded in the zones where it hit.
It was also one of the simplest and the first basic spells that they taught everyone at Kamar Taj because it also helped undo the low to mid level illusions that many demons cast during Invasion or even due to the demonic mist that some high level demons use to create chaos and confusion among the defenders of Kamar Taj.
A really nifty spell, something that he was going to use to find a dead celestial for himself. He didn't know what he was going to do with the dead body of a God but he couldn;t wait to find out.
Drawing the spell rune structure on another barrier and then bringing both the barriers together, he grinned as the runes lit up before projecting a spell circle above him, which glowed so bright with dimensional energy as the Power Stone continued to glow purple due to its activation.
The spell reached its pinnacle and then it began sending out massive waves of dimensional energy all around himself. If he was in a crowded zone or in any city on the planet, for that matter, a brazen action like this would have had several species descending on him in a matter of minutes with the Ancient One being forced to intervene because every single magical race would want him and the Stone obviously, for themselves, sparking the next great magical war that would, once again, be suppressed by the Iron Hand that was the Ancient One.
But here? In this frozen wasteland, he knew that nobody existed. If they did, it would have been written in the magical species compendium that he read in Kamar Taj's library when he was curious about all the magical species that still survived despite the rapid and dare he say, rabid expansion of human activity in all areas, even the historically hostile ones, like deserts and deep forests.
In the middle of his introspection, he felt a ping in the spell, with what could only be called a magical inferno of energy, "Bingo!"
He hurriedly started the next step of the spell which dispelled the spell and the magic circle above him and he watched as a small magical arrow appeared in front of him, tilting down at an angle.
"Well, time to get digging but before that," He muttered before using the Power Stone on a barrier that appeared above his already second skin barrier, and then he used the most basic spell to use dimensional energy to generate heat. As one can imagine, using the Power Stone as an over glorified heater had very drastic effects on the surroundings as steam immediately filled his vision.
Unheeding of that, he tried his best to regulate the energy supply of the Power Stone since he could do it roughly, just not on the same level of precision as required for spells to properly work since not all people could be reality warpers and just brute force any spell into existence.
He succeeded somewhat since the steaming subsided after a while and he was only left floating above a small puddle of water that was no longer boiling. He tentatively touched his feet on the ground and smiled as the ice gave way, but not in an explosive way.
He then followed the arrow pointing him at the magical inferno, hoping that the spell couldn;t distinguish between magical inferno and an energy inferno. Ice gave way as soon as his barriers touched them, which made digging deep very easy but soon he came across a problem.
The deeper he went, the older the ice, the bluer the ice and that meant that more heat was required, so he had to stop, regulate the flow, get used to it, and then begin digging deep anew. The same thing happened after a couple of minutes as well. WIth no light coming this deep, it was mostly dark but he could still sense the amount of effort required to pierce this ice was much higher than before.
Then, he did the same thing as before.
This continued to happen about 3 more times before he came across something that he didn't think was possible.
A sheet of ice that refused to melt, no matter how much heat he pumped into his barriers. He didn't want to just destroy everything in his search for the Corpse but if the Ice refused to budge and the density of the ice meant that he couldn't see the other side hence his inability to use portals to bypass the issue, but he had no other choice but to destroy this sheet if he ever wanted to get inside.
And get inside he did want.
This close, he could actually feel the energy inferno and there was no mistaking it. He had gotten a feel of the energy that Tivan had fed his body and after he discovered one of the unused vials but that was nothing compared to what he was sensing.
It was as if his body instinctively knew that it was in the presence of a superior existence and forced him to either flee the scene immediately or prepare for a fight. He naturally did neither and then used a barrier to cover the ice sheet and his entry point, so that nothing of the outside world came in, creating a quarantine zone around the sheet of ice and then dropped the Power Stone from the barrier and right into his waiting open palm.
He gasped as he felt the rush from the energy just storming its way into his body. Something that he never got used to despite the hundreds of times he had repeated this same exercise to force his body to get used to it.
Fun fact, he could use the Power Stone to flood his body with CHI, forcing it to heal itself while the Power Stone did minor damage the longer he held onto it, creating a loop that exhausted his entire body within hours of not even using the Power Stone to do anything substantial, like blowing up a giant Spaceship of a certain Purple Scrotum.
Then, he did what he felt natural. He didn't have to do something with effort like punch a hole in the wall. Nope, that was not at all needed.
When one had one of the six building blocks of the universe, one could simply flick a finger and the sheet of ice? The same sheet of ice that refused to melt even when its surrounding ice was being boiled away, disintegrated as a rush of air hit him right in the face.
It was nice that he'd already anticipated something like this and held enough air in his barrier for days if he was not doing any strenuous activity.
With the rush of air, and ice gone, he could finally see inside and it was…dark.
He nearly facepalmed as he flew inside the hole and then used the barriers to enlighten the space and then used the Power STone to boost that aspect of his barriers as well, shrouding the entire cave, though he would hesitate to call it a cave.
"Good Lord," He muttered as he turned around, made sure the space was sealed and then slowly, gingerly began floating inside.
"How the hell did they survive?" He said, mostly to himself as he watched hundreds of small creatures, clearly non sentient scurrying on the ground, with ice spread all around the cave but with a remarkable number of trees around him.
This was literally impossible. Green trees cannot live in the absence of any light even if the Celestial corpse gave out more than enough energy to power entire cities.
He could feel the power source right next to him but due to the enormity of the power, the huge distance felt like it was right next to him. He could control the barrier from afar as well but just for safety, he used something that Jarvis gave him just in case he needed to create a hermetic sealing wall.
Not made for something like this but it worked well so he used it, on top of his barrier obviously.
He then floated deeper into the cave, the smaller creatures not having any light sensitivity because he should be appearing on their radar like the sun, and not the sunlight that gets filtered through the atmosphere. No, they should be running around, in pain as if they were getting exposed to the naked UV rays of the sun but no, they were scurrying about randomly as if it was just another day to them.
Curious and Curiouser, he made his way in and he found…it.
The Massive-MASSIVE Celestial Corpse.
These creatures really were the Gods of this universe.
And yet, he floated near the chest of the Celestial, "How did Knull even do this?"
He couldn't even make himself touch the obvious stab wound in the centre of the Celestial chest plate, such was the pressure of the Cosmic Energy that still lingered around the Corpse.
"If it is in such a state right now, just how powerful was this celestial when alive?" His voice echoed out into the cave.
"Not particularly," He whirled around and brandished the Power Stone as a series of barriers made themselves known around him as he heard a male voice speak in the cave as well, apparently in reply to his rhetorical question. He could not contact anyone from here but he could open a portal straight to the Ancient One here and he was sure she could kick anyone's ass.
"Who's there?!" He felt such cringe hearing himself shout such cliche horror movie questions.
Oh, so much Cringe.
Word Count - 2830
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