## Somewhere in Pacific
Meanwhile, another party was converging on the area. High in the air, figures emerged from shimmering, golden portals one by one.
The sorcerers, Tao mused, his senses effortlessly cataloging the new arrivals. One of them's even a mutant. In a world of mutants, those with divination or probability-altering powers would be recruited into the magical path. They were about ten kilometers above sea level, probing the event with delicate tendrils of magical energy simultaneously protecting them.
How are they breathing?
Ofcourse magic.
They were seeking the source of a phenomenon that lay outside their carefully charted series of events.
How would they even know? The Time Stone? Do they still have it here? The thought was a fleeting one.
Well, you're in for a surprise. There will be a lot more unexplained events from now on.
****
The scene unfolded like a comedy of errors. One young adept, Chailius, conjured a sparkling portal directly in a warhead's path. His face was a picture of pure astonishment as the colossal bundle of objects phased through the portal's golden sparks as if they were nothing but light.
His companion, a stern young man named Amadeus Mordo, reacted with swift precision. He attempted to sequester the entire area within a mirror dimension. The result was… isolated. Perfectly so. Only the two sorcerers found themselves trapped within their own folded space, staring out at a world that continued, utterly unmoved, around them. They exited hastily via another portal.
Playing with space in front of me? The attempt was… noted.
The others throwing tendrils of magical energies like cowboys in Texas.
As this unfolded, Tao gently sifted through their surface memories. They'd come because they had detected a massive "violation of natural law" ~ an event of this magnitude wasn't supposed to happen.
He saw that the ambient energy mutants used and what magicians wielded weren't the same in definition, though they overlapped in application. He couldn't find any in-depth, foundational theory of magic from them~ no core axiom of what it is~ but there was a vast repository of knowledge on how it can be utilized~ the Techniques.
****
## Nature of Magic
< PoV shift >
What I gleaned was fascinating. Before it was from the Loki's Asgardian Magic and now it is from midgard magicians. Their texts describe magic as flexible and subjective, "weird and twisty," capable of being altered, sacred and corrupted. It operates by utilizing multiversal energy drawn from other dimensions, ambient energy, and even contracted energy from entities known as Elder Gods.
This very "paradox"- the ability to wield it without fully understanding it or its source - seems to be its foundational nature. Their learning process is a cycle: They see it work -> they know it works -> they train based on the subjective will that it will work -> and it somehow does. So at its root, magic is grounded in the belief that one's spells will function.
" .... "
This led him to a profound consideration.
".... So it's just mental conditioning to form intent?"
Is the whole system essentially rigorous training of the human mind or 'will'? A method to adapt their inherent consciousness limitations to understand and utilize the boundless nature of cosmic reality? Unlike other energies he'd sensed, this ambient magical energy possessed no sentient nature of its own but still operate on the sentient reality. It could be described as an on-demand production from a thought shared with reality.
Perhaps it's best defined as utilizing a flaw in order of reality, or a potential that's actualized as they enforce their will upon existence's fabric. Does the energy merely mediate the thought?
He compared it to his own nature.
When I first entered this reality and adapted, unlike these mortals, I could directly observe the foundational nature of laws and higher principles in the deeper layers. As a being who wields power in its rawest form, he knows what can work. His will forms an intent - a defined cultivation concept.
When my intents are shared with the sentient operational matrix of reality, they're refined. There's less guesswork; the application is direct and points to the core of how to achieve the effect, making it instantaneous. There was no middle layer.
***
The techniques these magicians use, I realized, arise from the same fundamental reason that Qi or innate energy techniques exist in cultivation worlds.
It's not easy to know everything first and then apply it. So what have they done? They've reduced the application down from how it works to what makes it work. It's an optimization, a simplification - call it what you will - but it's a brilliant framework that enables practitioners to improve themselves and interact with cosmic forces.
***
I decided to make myself known. My invisibility dropped. My template body appeared, hovering casually above the churning sea. I rose slowly to their eye level, expecting a reaction, but the magicians were far too preoccupied trying to save the world to notice the man floating next to them.
I shifted my focus back to my thoughts, analyzing them up close.
Look at the names of these spells, I mused, parsing the information from their memories ~ Spines of Sal-Gotha, Burning Ember of Cyndrion, Flames of Faltine, Scarlet Sutures of Cyttarok... It was fascinating. Many of them were essentially frameworks borrowing power from higher magical beings ~ effectively just APIs being invoked by users who couldn't hope to understand the full complexity of the source code in one go.
Their specific techniques ~ the enchanted walls, the fiery constructs, the Tao Mandalas, and the portals ~ were evidence of this.
They're not guesswork anymore. I can literally see the dimensional energy being drawn in, seeping into their souls, being refined by their own innate energy, and then projected outwards with a defined structure. These aren't wild prayers; they've been honed into refined, repeatable formulas.
They differed greatly from raw will-casting; they possessed a rigid structure that, in specific ways, was much closer to my own methods, albeit channeled through different mediums. They had learned to create architectures that adhered to both their own nature and reality's inherent physics ~ a commendable, sophisticated achievement for mortals.
## Playing around
The sorcerers returned through a portal, this time bringing an elder magician to the front. The Sorcerer Supreme himself. But I noted a glaring omission ~ no Eye of Agamotto, and no Time Gem hanging from his neck.
Is the Time Stone not in their possession? Is there no magician named Agamotto in this timeline, or is the artifact simply... elsewhere?
The elder sorcerer possessed a significantly greater knowledge of the various dimensions, eldritch gods, demonic contracts, and magical artifacts. And more significantly, one important mutant was also with them in the Sanctum ~ a very young girl pulsating with chaotic, crimson magical energies.
He tried the spatial shift again.
Though pulling my "little show" into the Mirror Dimension had failed, the Sorcerer wasn't done. Below, the ocean began to churn violently. Reality warped, and an upside-down ocean appeared in the sky, the water coalescing into a massive, reptilian head with a dragon-like visage. Its maw opened wide, a liquid abyss ready to swallow the descending threat whole.
A creative solution, I have to admit.
But his spatial fold was still in effect; the warheads simply phased through the watery beast as if it were a mirage, completely ignoring the hydro-kinetic trap.
That was when they finally noticed me. It took a second look ~ a human-like figure, standing on air, with not an ounce of magical fluctuation or detectable presence.
"He must be the anomaly," an apprentice shouted, already labeling me.
Leaving the younger ones to manage the falling disaster, the elder created a mirror-step under his feet and approached me with practiced caution.
"Are you the one doing this?"
"Yes."
"Why? What is your goal? What are you? Are you a mutant? ....."
"Nothing," I replied, my tone conversational. "I merely wished to observe your response. As for what I am? A difficult question. Perhaps close to a god in your texts. But not exactly."
That gave him pause. He knew such beings cannot descend directly, not with the planetary magical nets in place. But avatars can slip through ~ weakened forms, fragments of a whole.
"Stop this madness, whatever avatar you are," he commanded, perhaps hoping he can banish me like a common demon.
The attack came without warning. A Crystal Prison. Space folded into a geometric sheet, rushing to encase me in a dimension of mirrored facets. I had already pinpointed its weak point before the casting was complete. As the crystalline structure tightened, I extended a single finger and touched a specific nexus of spatial energy.
Ping.
It shattered, exploding outward in a harmless rain of light.
The follow-up was swift.
The Crimson Bands of Cyttorak. Now that was a serious spell. He felt them lash out, not through space, but around it ~ a binding energy that sought to ignore physical limitations entirely to snare the soul.
For a fraction of a second, my senses attuned to its process. I rewrote the local laws around my form. The searing energy lost its footing, swirling uselessly around me like confused smoke before I condensed it around my own hands. I yanked. The magician lost his footing, tumbling through the air until he manipulated the mirror space to right himself.
"Fascinating." I crushed the bands in my palm, dissolving the spell into sparks.
Seeing him halt to analyze, I decided the time for illusion was over. I couldn't let them harbor any hope of control. The other teams were closing in.
With a thought, the domain rules within my barrier flickered, forced to accommodate a power alien to this reality. I enforced an "Absolute Field" ~ my full law domain. The moment I did, the raging, otherworldly energy of the magicians... stopped.
Their spiritual contracts sputtered and failed. The connection to their patrons was severed. Whatever they attempted didn't fizzle or rebound; it was simply erased from local causality. Service denied.
The warheads were now only five miles up. The magicians, struggling for breath at this altitude and cut off from their source, redoubled their efforts as the threat neared Earth. Their spells grew desperate, frantic.
Down below, the X-Men's jet screamed into view. The scene that greeted them was pure chaos: figures teleporting in mid-air, the ocean churning unnaturally and flowing upside down as if gravity had been inverted, and bolts of mystical energy lancing toward the descending cluster of death.
Charles was already probing the newcomers' minds, but they were magically shielded. Their actions spoke clearly enough ~ they were allies, however ineffective.
After one final, futile attempt ~ a "Bolt of Balthokk" that required sacrificing one's own life force, sending streams of searing orange energy crashing harmlessly into my field ~ the sorcerers cut their losses.
They vanished into their Mirror Dimension, no doubt having sensed Xavier's psychic presence and preferring to remain anonymous and protected, monitoring events in real-time like spectators at a gladiator match.
Back in the jet, the mood had shifted from observation to grim necessity. "It seems whoever they are, they couldn't handle it, Erik," Xavier said, his voice tense. "It's your turn."
In a blur of indigo smoke and the scent of sulfur, Nightcrawler teleported Magneto out and back in. Using the magnetic fields in his own armor, Erik levitated, a lone, determined figure against the vast sky.
I felt his will pouring magnetic influence into the warheads, and for the first time, they registered in his senses. His confidence wavered instantly. The influence of Apocalypse that usually strengthened him was gone, and though he had trust in his abilities, each warhead felt as heavy and unyielding as a battleship.
He saw me looking back at him, but there was nothing around me for him to manipulate ~ no metal, no magnetic signature. My armor wasn't even metal in the conventional sense.
Meanwhile, another aircraft carrier ~ a warship and supersonic jets ~ were approaching from the North Pacific direction. The carrier was already present nearby, so coincidentally, it was easy to deploy aerial reconnaissance.
Wonderful struggle ~ humans, mutants, and magicians coming together.
***
Seeing his ~ Magneto's ~ struggle, Jean didn't wait for an order. "I can feel them," she said, her voice strained with effort. "Get us closer!"
As she reached out with her telekinesis, Tao felt the difference. It wasn't just force; it was a subtle, raw manipulation of reality itself, tinged with the stray, cosmic embers of the Phoenix.
This time, when he subtly retracted a layer of the field, the entire bundle of warheads actually jerked, their descent slowing noticeably.
Interesting. So that's how it responds to a higher authority.
He decided to answer in kind. He began feeding a resonant counter-frequency into the local rules of reality, steadily increasing the energy output until it overwhelmed her tenuous hold. The descent continued. He felt her panic, that deep, cosmic well within her beginning to stir once more, ready to break its chains.
"Let go, Jean."
The message wasn't a sound, but a concept delivered directly into her soul via my divine sense. As powerful as she can be, she is now but a human child. She withdrew instantly, as if a command had been burned into her mind.
***
But it told them who they were fighting against.
I was now the new apocalyptic enemy. Under the stress of my command, Cyclops adjusted his visor and fired a concussive beam. Another form of dimensional energy, laced with psionic traces. He hasn't even mastered its routing or shaping. Having observed his genome, deflection was trivial; the beam curved back toward the plane, which swerved just in time. The energy blasted into the ocean, throwing up a geyser shower.
Nightcrawler teleported to me, trying to pull me into the brimstone dimension, but I held him by the tail from behind like a misbehaving cat and tossed him into the distance.
I felt psionic energy from Xavier trying to seep into my mind, but my consciousness was virtually disconnected. He couldn't forge a link. The wind around me began to churn and thunderheads formed, responding to the mutant Ororo's voiced request.
It felt cute ~ like ordering someone under who had their own whims. Anyway I didn't want my mortal hair to be burned.
But I did not request the world; I commanded it to dissipate. It followed my will upon seeing my breath out, the storm vanishing as quickly as it arrived.
Simultaneously NightCrawler teleported again, this time with silver hair with him. Well having super speed doesn't mean that he get to punch and kick in air. The distance between us increased while we both were standing still in 'Super Time' and a thought later he was suddenly flying down.
Blue demon found himself beneath and after teleporting back to Jet to get a grip found himself in a spatial prison without any trouble.
But this petty resistance was enough. With power enough to split the earth, this conflict felt pointless after the initial curiosity. Freezing the magicians who were planning a surprise attack from the mirror realm, I stopped playing around.
The humans were near, observing, and amidst the chaos, they came to the most logical conclusion they could muster: Nuke them all.
As if one descending cluster wasn't enough. A missile streaked toward me. I turned it back midway, imparting a hundred times its kinetic energy. It tore back through the fleet, destroying a ship and extinguishing lives in a heartbeat. The rest of the fleet and ones in air paused, seeing the explosion it formed in the far distance.
Whether it was relief that it didn't explode near them or shock at the outcome, he didn't care. He got what he needed.
But the test was over. I felt no discomfort in whatever I had done. I released my suppression.
Simultaneously, I wrapped the warheads in a barrier of pure energy. To her and Magneto, it must have felt as if the objects they were fighting had suddenly vanished from their plane of existence, their connection severed.
Instantly, the nukes resumed their fall, gravity reasserting its claim with violent acceleration. Panic erupted at the sudden change. The X-Men's jet banked hard, and Nightcrawler, in a puff of smoke, yanked a stunned Magneto back to safety.
They had less than a minute and a half until impact, and far less until the warheads' airburst triggers would detonate them all.
" ... "
But the explosion never came.
The warheads simply went into the ocean as if they were all faulty to begin with.
That's it? The thought echoed in every mind. They looked toward where I was, wondering what my plan could be. From the outside, it appeared they'd merely sunk. I had already disappeared from my position. Their fear lessened ~ perhaps the water pressure would prevent a detonation?
Cheering can already be heard. Thoughts of how to alter this events into victory narrative for human efforts are already spinning heavily on some general's minds.
***
Three hundred feet below the churning water, the entire bundle ~ a seventy-meter-wide collection of thousands of warheads ~ simply stopped. I reappeared.
Then, as if viewed through a reverse telescope, they spatially contracted, shrinking between my outstretched palms into a small, neat pile of cones.
A nuclear kindling.
Time to explode.