Chapter 4

Okay, yeah, that actually sounded really bad when you said it out loud like that.

Risking a glance backwards, I saw the four other sorcerers had spread out around us. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest as my fight-or-flight instinct started to kick in. I felt trapped. Boxed in. We needed to get out of here.

"Wanda?" Pietro hissed, bouncing on the balls of his feet, ready to spring into action.

I held up both my hands in a placating gesture, arms trembling slightly. "You don’t have to kill me." I stumbled over my words a little as the Ancient One took a step toward me. "I can see how you might reach that conclusion, but you made a lot of assumptions just there and if you just give me a chance to explain…"

"I’m not going to kill you," she said, giving me a tired smile. "I told you, you need my help. You can’t stay here. I can send you home."

"Oh." I paused, then shook my head. "Uh, no thank you. Sorry."

She smiled again. "Perhaps I was too generous in my phrasing. I will be sending you home. Your cooperation, while helpful, is not necessary."

"Can we please just talk about this?" I asked plaintively. This was… unfair. I liked this body. I liked having magic superpowers. I didn’t just put up with a full year of HYDRA’s ‘training’ to be unceremoniously dumped back in my old reality with nothing to show for it.

"Of course," she said brightly, taking another step forward. "Let’s talk, face to face." Without missing a beat, she lunged forward in an attempt to slam her palm into my chest. My hands came up reflexively, misty coronas of red energy flaring up and catching her an inch away from my body.

"Lookyoureallydon’thavetodothiswecanjusttalk," I said, the words blurting out so fast they smeared together, but the Ancient One hadn’t stopped moving, bringing her second hand up through my shield with a fan-like wedge made of orange sorcerous energy, shredding it before following through with another thrust to my chest.

My astral form exited my body forcefully, flying back several feet. The Ancient One looked up at me, a flicker of surprise on her features as she took in my astral body. I glanced down, then back up at her. The sorcerer tilted her head curiously and started to say something, but was cut off as my body almost reflexively raised its hands and thrust them forward, hitting her full in the chest with a blaze of red energy. The sorcerer was blasted back with enough force that she smashed clear through the wooden wall behind her, landing in a heap of debris in the next room.

Things were moving around me—voices shouting in alarm and flashes of energy lighting up the room—but the dizzying double-vision from controlling my real and astral bodies at the same time meant I was slow to react to it. Instead of trying, I pulled back from my body and forced myself deeper into the Astral Plane, slowing my perception of time to a tiny fraction of normal.

With everything around me moving at a barely perceptible crawl, I turned to watch Pietro as he slowly darted around the periphery of the room. Normally, at top speed he was almost impossible to track with the naked eye, but with my perception altered it was like watching someone underwater or wading through molasses. Kaecilius was already in a heap on the ground—I had no idea exactly what had happened there—and Pietro was ducking to the side to avoid the burning geometries Mordo was conjuring before he lunged forward. The larger man caught Pietro’s shoulder full in the chest, hard enough to displace him a foot in the air, before starting an agonizingly slow tumble across the room.

Pietro reached out and grabbed the sling ring that hung from a leather thong at the sorcerer’s waist, yanking it free before continuing around the room to slam into the two black-robed attendants. Honestly, I was a little worried he was going to accidentally kill someone. He hadn’t had a lot of practice at moderating how fast he was going when hitting an opponent, and we’d been training to fight the Avengers. HYDRA’s preference when exploring his abilities was, of course, for him to always go in as hard and fast as possible. I had almost forgotten how powerful he was, but watching him almost casually dismantle four sorcerers in slow motion was a pretty strong reminder.

I let my perception return to normal as I slipped back into my body. My stomach lurched slightly as I looked forward at the hole in the wall that the Ancient One had gone through. Apparently, Pietro wasn’t the only one who hadn’t learned to moderate their hits. If my sucker punch had just killed the Ancient One by accident, we were so fucking screwed.

"Shit," I said, the panic in my chest building even further. "Shit. That wasn’t supposed to happen."

"She didn’t see that coming," Pietro commented wryly. He held up Mordo’s sling ring so I could see it and tilted his head. "Shall we go?"

Part of me wanted to linger long enough to see if the Ancient One was okay, but the much more sensible part of me said to flee before the sorcerers had time to reorganise and attack us again. I nodded a confirmation and squeezed my eyes shut as he picked me up. There was a rush of air and sound and, when I opened them again several minutes later, we were in an alley near our hotel, clear across the city.

Hurriedly extracting myself from Pietro’s arms, I stumbled forward and leant heavily against the brick wall of the alley, breathing deeply as I tried not to vomit. Note to self: moving at that speed while I was already a bit dizzy was significantly worse than it normally was.

"So what the hell was that?" Pietro asked. "What was she talking about? Why did she say you don’t belong in reality?"

I didn’t respond right away, continuing to focus on my breathing until I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to empty my guts all over the alley. When I felt well enough to turn back to Pietro with an answer, however, my eyes widened and I started to back up rapidly. "I would really love to have this conversation right now," I said, red energy swirling into being around my hands. "But we don’t have time."

A dozen yards away, sparking, spiralling threads of orange and yellow started opening up into a pair of sling ring portals. I turned, intending on running in the opposite direction, but the air in front of me cracked like a mirror that had been struck by a hammer, fissures rapidly spreading like a curtain draped across the alley and adjacent buildings before shifting and transforming into an enormous wall of glittering, glasslike facets.

Mordo and two new, red-clad sorcerers emerged from one portal, with the Ancient One and another sorcerer in blue following from the second a moment later. Pietro starting moving almost instantly, but the Sorcerer Supreme was already gesturing as she arrived, sending a carpet of orange geometric shapes crackling across the ground under our feet. Pietro lost traction immediately, slipping like a cartoon on a banana peel. He landed hard on his shoulder, skidding forward as though the ground had become completely frictionless.

I felt my feet start to slip as well and I thrust my hands downward in a panic, sending myself hurtling upwards and listing to one side with a blast of power. Stumbling as I landed on the low roof of the adjacent building, I looked back to see Pietro on the ground, most of the sorcerers closing in around him. Not sure what else to do, I whipped out my hands and flung bolts of red energy at the Ancient One and her companion, trying to distract them.

Both managed to pull up shields; sorcerous, burning mandalas unfolding in their hands. The sorcerer in blue tried to tank the hit straight on—it tore through his defences, blasting him backwards to land in a heap—while the Ancient One deflected hers to one side. It smashed explosively into the alley wall, showering her fallen companion with shards of smouldering brickwork. She gestured toward herself with a pulling motion and the faceted wall behind us shot forward, engulfing us all and transporting us to the Mirror Dimension.

"Fuck," I swore, looking around at the fractured version of the city around us, my voice echoing hollowly in the liminal space. This was literally the worst thing that could have happened.

Pietro had mostly managed to clamber to his feet—hands held out for balance as he tried very hard not to slip again—as Mordo headed toward him, stepping quickly through the air on tiny magical platforms that appeared and disappeared below his boots. The dark-skinned sorcerer had unshouldered a staff that separated into five sections held together with orange sorcerous energy, lashing it out like a whip as he moved toward Pietro.

I hesitated, mind desperately racing to figure out some way of de-escalating the situation, when the Ancient One gestured and the building I was standing on folded like a man bowing at the waist, the reality of the Mirror Dimension distorting as it obeyed her command. I stumbled toward the edge of the roof as it tipped forward, just in time to see Pietro dodge to one side. Grabbing Mordo by the arm faster than the sorcerer was able to react, he yanked him off his feet so that both of them landed heavily on the ground. Pietro kicked off the fallen sorcerer, sending the other man skidding to the far end of the alley along the magically-frictionless ground while using the opposed momentum to bowl himself into the Ancient One, taking out her legs. "Go!" he shouted. "I’ll catch up!"

If I had more than half a second to think about it and wasn’t about to fall off the edge of a roof, I might’ve realised that splitting up was a terrible idea. However, at this point I had no idea what I could actually do to defuse the situation, so I desperately latched on the clear directive. Go. Escape. I thrust out my hands to launch myself forward, narrowing catching myself before I fell from off the roof and landing safely at the far end of the alley. One of the red-robed sorcerers, a severe-looking Asian woman, sprinted toward me as she conjured a long, geometric design and hurled it like a spear.

I was still finding my footing and barely had time to throw a hand up, but the shield that started to form was a fraction of a second too late and I knew it. Instead, I let the wisps of red energy diffuse, curling them around the sizzling projectile as I wrapped telekinetic energy around it. I stepped to the side, spinning in a full circle as I guided the spear around with me before launching it back, twice as hard, along its original trajectory. My attacker audibly gasped in surprise and dropped flat to avoid it, but Mordo—still struggling back to his feet—was pretty much directly behind her. He only just barely brought up his staff in time to intercept the attack, which smashed the relic from his grip and sent it skittering away along the ground, out of sight.

I didn’t stop to watch. Darting out of the alley, I turned right and started heading down the thoroughfare, trying to ignore the confusingly fractured landscape and reflections of people in the real world around me. As I moved, my hands glowed and I sent myself hurtling forward at a 45-degree angle again, boosting myself faster than the sorcerers could run. This was bad. I really, really hadn’t wanted us to get trapped in the Mirror Dimension. While I knew it was possible for me to learn to get out of here, I also had no idea how long that would take and it didn’t seem like the sorcerers would be willing to wait patiently while I figured it out.

Almost as if in answer to that thought, another portal sparked into being ahead of me, Kaecilius stepping out into the middle of the street. I landed a dozen feet away from him, my hands wreathed in energy, hesitating uncertainly when he raised his own in a placating gesture. "We should talk, you and I," he said. "Not here. Later."

"Okay?" I said warily.

Slowly reaching into his robe in the same careful way that a man at gunpoint might retrieve his wallet, the sorcerer produced a small object and gently tossed it toward me. I caught it out of the air, kicking myself mentally almost immediately as I did so: don’t just grab random things sorcerers throw at you! What if it was a trap?

Luckily, it seemed relatively harmless—a ping-pong-ball-sized bronze sphere inscribed with geometric designs. I looked back up at him and he stepped aside, gesturing for me to pass with a small smile. "A light singeing only, if you please."

I nodded, tucking the ball into my bra, then blasted him with a small bolt of red energy. The sorcerer went down like a sack of potatoes and lay still. Almost immediately, I heard a shout from behind. "Kaecilius!" I glanced back and saw that Mordo had just rounded the corner and was bearing down on me. Of course.

Hurling a blast of energy toward the rapidly-approaching sorcerer, I turned without waiting to see if it landed and launched myself forward again, this time angling my descent toward a nearby rooftop. I swore as I landed more heavily than I meant to, stumbling and having to spend a few precious moments catching my balance. True flight was something I was really hoping to master sooner rather than later, but I just hadn’t picked up the trick of it yet—I was even beginning to suspect that these crude super-powered hops were a complete dead end rather than the precursor that I had initially thought they were. It really would have come in handy here.

I yelped in surprise as Mordo leapt up next to me, scant feet away, the Vaulting Boots of Valtorr letting him bound through the air with alarming speed and agility. His face was fixed in a determined scowl and he lunged forward, manifesting an eldritch whip between his hands and flicking it toward me. I caught it—hand coated in wisps of red—and yanked him forward, intending on pulling him off balance and kicking him off the rooftop. Instead, he stepped in close, already manifesting a long, sword-like blade of sorcerous power, and attempted to skewer me with it.

I let go of the whip, Mordo’s blade skidding off a hastily manifested telekinetic shield as I staggered backwards. Time seemed to slow, my eyes widening in horror as the deflected blade sliced through the duffle bag hanging off my shoulder, sectioning it neatly into two pieces with a hiss of burning fabric and sending the sceptre tumbling through the air toward the street below.

Flinging my hand out reflexively, red energies swirled across the surface of the artifact as I magically took hold of it and reversed its direction. It flew back up and into my outstretched hand just in time for me to use the bladed head to intercept Mordo’s follow‑up—an overhand slash that would have otherwise probably killed me. The force of the blow almost overwhelmed me anyway, numbing my arm and sending me reeling back again. Mordo didn’t let up, continuing to press me with another dizzying flurry of blows.

The sceptre felt completely natural in my hand, moving like it was an extension of my arm. I wielded it like a sword, desperately parrying and deflecting his attacks. My magic was bubbling up inside of me—responding to my panicked mental state—and I screamed a wordless challenge as I released it outward in an omnidirectional blast of red energy, trying to give myself some space.

As Mordo was forced back, his foot caught on a stray piece of brickwork and I saw an opening. I lunged forward without thinking, the tip of the sceptre pressing directly into the centre of the sorcerer’s chest. We both froze for a moment as a connection was made, tiny traceries of blue energy crawling their way up his neck and jaw. Mordo’s eyes clouded over black for a moment before clearing—bright blue now, in the wake of the sceptre’s power—and I cautiously straightened up, looking from him to the sceptre clutched in my fist and back again in alarm. I hadn’t meant to do that.

The sorcerer lowered his arms and we just sort of stared at each other for a few seconds. He broke the silence first. "We won’t be able to escape from the Ancient One so long as we remain in the Mirror Dimension, and we can’t leave it quickly without a sling ring."

I grimaced, fingering the sceptre uncomfortably. "Pietro still has yours."

"The Ancient One may have already contained him; you would be wise not to underestimate her," he said, turning to scan the direction we’d come from. "You broke at least one of her ribs earlier. I may be able to best her if I catch her by surprise."

A blur vaulted over the roof and Pietro stopped dead in front of us, breathing heavily and bleeding from a long gash on the side of his head. I held out a hand as he hesitated. "He’s on our side for now."

"Is he?" The Ancient One’s voice called out from the other side of the roof as she stepped through a portal. "That’s unfortunate."

I turned toward her grimly, Pietro and Mordo taking up positions on either side of me. "Well, so much for the element of surprise," I said. "But I still think three on one is pretty good odds."

The Sorcerer Supreme stood on her guard, eyes flitting between me, Pietro and Mordo, shimmering battle fans made of burning sorcerous energy held at the ready. I tilted my head, a triumphant smile curving my lips as I brandished the sceptre. I knew I’d committed to not using it, but everything had gone off the rails at Kamar-taj and the Ancient One was right there. Alone, with no support. Whatever mental defences Mordo might have had hadn’t stood up to the sceptre’s power, and I doubted she would fare much better. Once I took her, it’d be simple to expand my control over all of Kamar-taj. I’d have the biggest repository of magical power and knowledge in the world at my command, and from there… from there…

I paused and forced myself to look at the sceptre, my hand clutching it in a white-knuckled death grip. Glancing around, I could see that the swirling eddies of red energy around me had been joined by wisps of blue, my magic naturally drawing out and incorporating the power of the artifact.

Oh.

It was almost physically painful to lower the sceptre, every instinct I had screaming at me that I couldn’t afford not to use it. I looked back up at the Ancient One, my mouth suddenly dry. "Truce. Please? We don’t need to keep fighting."

"Free Mordo from your enchantment and return the ring. Then we’ll talk," she responded. Despite the situation she sounded completely confident, as if she were still the one with the upper hand.

"… I need the ring," I said plaintively.

She shook her head. "If you know what it’s used for, then you also know why I can’t let you keep it. I’m sorry, but I must do my best to stop you."

I hadn’t really thought about it too much until just now, but when it came down to it me keeping the ring was a massive security risk for them. If I could use it, I could open a portal anywhere I liked… Kamar-taj included. Which put their library and artifacts at risk if I decided to take what I wanted by force instead of asking.

"When we have a few minutes, I can ward us so we won’t be followed. There are precautions that can be taken so she cannot easily find us," Mordo said, looking sidelong at me.

The Ancient One’s eyes snapped to him. "Mordo…" she murmured, a hint of concern creeping into her tone.

I nodded absently. It made sense that there was some way to ward against the ring’s ability to portal directly to people. Otherwise, the Ancient One would have been able to easily hunt down Kaecilius in the original timeline. "Sounds good. Give him his ring back."

Pietro hesitated for a brief moment before wordlessly handing the stolen sling ring back to Mordo, who slipped it onto his fingers.

"Last chance," the Ancient One said, her voice quiet.

I bit my lip. "Sorry. I’ll return Mordo as soon as I can, once he’s made sure we can’t be followed."

Instead of responding, the Sorcerer Supreme snapped her fans out in a wide, elaborate gesture. The rooftop buckled beneath us as the surrounding buildings began to morph and flow into each other, twisting and replicating themselves in endlessly repeating fractal patterns. We started to react, but she gestured again and gravity reoriented itself ninety degrees, the three of us immediately falling backwards toward the new ‘down’.

I flung out a hand in desperation, catching Pietro with wisps of scarlet telekinetic energy and thrusting him back at the street so that he landed safely, if heavily, on the wall of a building rather than plummeting to his death. A second later I belatedly remembered that I was still falling and could not actually fly. Mordo caught himself as soon as he could get his feet under him, his boots letting him step safely through the air. He tracked me as I fell past him, waving a hand in a circular motion as he ‘aimed’ his sling ring—I tumbled through the portal he opened under me and landed in a heap next to Pietro—then he bounded over to join us.

There was no reprieve. The wall we were standing on suddenly expanded, iterating on itself in three directions in a deliberate effort to separate us. Pietro ran against the current, easily keeping pace with the fractalized expansion of the building, but Mordo was quickly carried off. The building above began to boil and distort as well, folding downwards between us, and he was gone.

"How are we supposed to fight this?" Pietro yelled in frustration.

"If she’s actively directing it, she must be able to see us," I said, looking around.

Almost on cue, the Ancient One dropped down through a gap in the distorted building, landing directly on Pietro. He was caught off guard, smashed to the ground and stunned, as she knelt atop him, knee in the centre of his back, one sorcerous battle fan held dangerously close to his throat. The hood of her robe was down now, and she glared at me from under it. "Enough," she said. "Surrender yourself."

I froze. She wouldn’t just kill Pietro, would she? I held up my hands in a placating gesture that was somewhat ruined by the sceptre still in my hand. "Okay, look, I’m not doing anything," I said.

Pietro, of course, was not content to be a hostage, and the sorcerer had underestimated his strength and speed. He snuck his hands under himself and pushed up, sending them both staggering up and back—anyone else would have cut their own throat on the fan of magical energy, but Pietro twisted out of the way faster than the eye could see. The Ancient One turned to track him and suddenly her back was toward me.

I channelled chaos magic to dull her perception of me even as I accelerated my footfalls, skittering forward in a jittery fast-forward type of movement—an incredibly crude and much weaker facsimile of Pietro’s power—and brought my hand up toward her temple. Wisps of red energy from my fingertips slid into her mind; I knew if I was watching her from the front, I would see her eyes flash red as the magic took hold. I didn’t really like messing with people’s heads, but at least using my own abilities was a lot safer than using the sceptre.

Instead of being plagued by tormenting visions, however, the Sorcerer Supreme spun around, seemingly unaffected by the intrusion. I was caught almost completely off guard, narrowly managing to intercept her eldritch fan with the edge of my sceptre. She stomped on my foot in response and lunged low, catching me in the stomach with her elbow. The air went out of me and I went down wheezing, barely managing to hang on to the artifact.

A blur sped past the Ancient One, shoving her hard and sending her stumbling a dozen feet toward the edge of the wall. Just as it looked like she was about to fall off and plummet into the warped landscape, she managed to bring a hand up and the wall folded outwards in a fractal pattern, giving her space to recover. I was still winded, barely able to flop myself around to watch what was happening while I gasped for air. Pietro lunged toward the Ancient One for a follow up attack and she slammed her foot on the ground, sending up a wave of brickwork that took his feet from under him. Stunned momentarily again, the ground beneath him started to recede, causing him to sink downwards as it tried to close over him.

The Sorcerer Supreme raised her arm to gesture again, but cried out in shock and pain instead as a long, burning lash of sorcerous energy wrapped around her wrist. The battle fan in that hand dissipated, and she wheeled around with the other to try to sever Mordo’s eldritch whip as he bounded down from above on his Vaulting Boots.

I lifted my sceptre feebly, focusing on the energy housed within, and triggered it. A bolt of sizzling blue burst from the tip with enough recoil that I again almost lost my grip. The Ancient One was forced to abort her attempt to free herself, expanding her remaining fan into a full circular mandala to deflect the attack to the side. The shield fractured from the power of the hit, dispelling uselessly into shreds of sorcerous energy.

Pietro erupted from the brickwork at the same time that Mordo pulled his whip taut and grabbed the wrist of her free hand, restraining her between the two of them. There was a sickening snap as he brought his other arm around to smash down on her forearm. She screamed in pain, her knees going out from under her, and Mordo followed up with a solid boot to the side of her head. The Sorcerer Supreme dropped to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut. Almost immediately, the world around us began to flow in reverse, the warped space she had created returning to its original state.

I groaned, forcing myself back to my feet with a burst of effort before bending over—hands on my knees—to take a few deep breaths. Mordo summoned another geometric blade of sorcerous energies and held it above the Ancient One. I slashed my hand to indicate a negative. "No, that’s enough! She’s down. Pietro, you…?" I looked up at him, face screwed up in a questioning expression.

He shrugged, the small ghost of a smile playing across his lips. "Fifty percent less arms to do sorcery with. Like you said."

I took another deep breath then straightened up and looked at Mordo. The dark-skinned man regarded me alertly, waiting for further direction, his eyes still bright blue from the sceptre’s influence. "Mordo, I’m sorry about all of this. It wasn’t supposed to go this way. This was all… just one big misunderstanding."

"It was no misunderstanding," he responded, shaking his head. "She knew exactly what you are. When she is recovered, she will likely come for you again."

"I’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Pietro, her ring?" He reached down and easily slipped the Ancient One’s sling ring from her nerveless fingers, holding it up so we could see. "Mordo, will warding us take long?"

"Only a few minutes."

I looked around at the warped landscape and nodded before sitting down heavily on a piece of brickwork that was jutting out at an appropriate height. "Please."

Leaning back, I closed my eyes and focused on breathing, trying to calm the last bits of adrenaline from my system. I could feel the sceptre thrumming in my hand, begging to be used, but I mentally pushed it away and tried to insulate myself from its effects. I didn’t want to put it down—there was always the risk that, without really knowing how it worked, I might accidentally sever my control over Mordo. The last thing I needed right now was to lose control and have to fight him again. Once we’d escaped, however, I needed to do something about it quickly. The Ancient One wasn’t going to be any help, so I was going to have to try to safely extract and contain the Mind Stone by myself.

Mordo stepped in front of me and I opened my eyes to see a small, intricate circle of sorcerous energy hanging in the air between us, no larger than my palm. "This is the enchantment. It’s relatively complex, but requires very little to maintain. When I place it, focus and you should feel it take hold—all you need to do is feed a little bit of power into it."

The sorcerer made a pushing gesture, sending the enchantment floating toward me, and it passed harmlessly into my chest with a slight tingling sensation. I could feel it inside of me, a slight phantom sensation of pressure, and I let it touch the bubbling wellspring of chaos magic inside of me. It ‘connected’, though I couldn’t feel any noticeable draw on my reserves. "That’s it?"

"Yes. You’ll be aware of its presence, but as you have attuned to it you won’t need to actively do anything to maintain it. It will draw what power it needs to sustain itself." Mordo turned to Pietro, who looked at him sceptically. "For your brother, things are a little more complicated—if we had time, I could perhaps teach him enough sorcery to maintain his own ward."

"We don’t," I said simply. "You’re not going to be coming with us."

The sorcerer nodded. "Then I’ll need to create a secondary enchantment—a battery. You will need to channel some of your magic into it every so often to recharge it. Perhaps once a week."

The mechanics of this sort of magic hadn’t really been explored at all on-screen, so I was flying a bit blind. My closest touchpoint was Jonathan Pangborn, the paraplegic who used some sort of ongoing enchantment to allow himself to walk again. "What happens if we get separated and it doesn’t get charged?" I asked.

"Once it fully depletes the available energy, it will start to feed on his lifeforce to maintain itself." Mordo held up a hand at Pietro’s sudden look of alarm. "There is no real danger with an enchantment this small. As I said, it requires very little energy. You will feel fatigued and tire more easily, but that is all. Unfortunately, unless you take the time to learn sorcery, you will not be able to break the enchantment yourself."

Pietro looked over at me. "That doesn’t sound great."

"I can break it if we need to," I said. "I know it’s not ideal, but we need it. Otherwise they’ll be able to track us."

With a long-suffering sigh, Pietro nodded and submitted himself to Mordo’s ministrations. The sorcerer wove another circle, the same as the one he’d created for me, over the course of several minutes, then pushed it into Pietro. The second enchantment was similar in size but much less complicated, Mordo forming the simple pattern in only a handful of seconds.

I stood up and walked over to Pietro, reaching out with a hand. Wisps of red energy flowed from my fingertips and gently caressed his chest—I could feel both enchantments on him, one similar to mine and another brimming with energy. It seemed like it would be pretty simple to recharge.

Mordo held out a hand expectantly. "The Ancient One’s ring?" I nodded and Pietro dropped it into his palm. He examined it for a few moments, then frowned. "This is unexpected. Sling rings are difficult to make, so have a mechanism built into them by which they can be easily tracked should they be stolen or lost. It’s possible to tamper with it, but this… her ring lacks it entirely."

"I guess the Ancient One doesn’t want other sorcerers to be able to track her, either," I said. That made sense—she had secrets of her own she was keeping.

The sorcerer looked back at where the Ancient One’s crumpled form still lay. "It appears so," he said, his brow furrowed.

"Well, that’s that then. I’ll take the ring. This is where we go our separate ways. Please open a portal back to the alleyway where you initially caught up with us." Mordo nodded, handing me the sling ring and opening a portal with his own, and Pietro and I stepped through. I looked back at him and pointed to the Ancient One. "Get her to a hospital. Stay with her, make sure she’s okay. Once that’s done, surrender yourself into the care of Kamar‑taj… I’m sure it won’t take long for them to work out how to break the sceptre’s enchantment." I could have done it myself, but I wanted to be far away from him when he was freed from my control.

Mordo grimaced, but nodded. "You are trying to earn goodwill, but there’s no point. She will not change her mind about you."

"I don’t care. It’s not about earning goodwill. I didn’t want this. I just don’t want to make things any worse than they already are."

He nodded again. "Very well. I will do my best to advocate for you."

"Thanks," I said, a contrite smile curving the corner of my mouth. "At least until the enchantment is broken."

"Until then," Mordo acknowledged, returning the smile, his much warmer than mine.

The portal closed, leaving the two of us alone in the alley once again. Sighing again softly, I looked at the sceptre in my hand. Pietro turned to me, absently touching the blood at his temple and wincing slightly in pain. "So now what?"