The "G" Shield

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Kamar Taj [August 2015]

–Jack Sullivan.–

"So, let me get this straight, the magic cult that you are a part of,"

He opened his mouth to reply but before he could get a word in, Tony cut him off, "Oh, how could I forget? Silly me! Not just a part of the cult, you are the bloody freaking High authority in the cult."

He settled on just nodding, not knowing if Tony would let him speak or not. He had checked on the New York Sanctum and found a pretty rattled Daniel Drumms who described feeling death itself approach him, forcing him to cocoon himself in the Sanctum since he believed it to be the safest place for him. 

And it was, considering that Drumm had been the Master of this Sanctum for the better part of a decade now, more than enough time to know where the traps were laid down and how to trigger them to trap an unsuspecting intruder. Kaecilius was not an unwitting fool though. He would do his homework and even if he didn't, Dormammu's powers would allow him to escape unscathed from even the most complex of traps.

The only reason Strange managed to capture him, even temporarily, was because Kaecilius was sandbagging and also because Strange had plot armour. Well, there they were now, with no Protagonist with them. It was fortunate that Drumm had a non combat oriented relic but something that allowed him foresight in the future, up to a couple of minutes, depending on how much the future affected its wielder. That allowed him to get a warning ahead in a couple of minutes.

The warning must have been quite severe as well because Drumm didn't hesitate in severing all the connections to the outside world. All in all, the New York Sanctum was safe, as was the London Sanctum. He hadn't told them to reconnect the network because frankly, they were better off isolated as of right now, mainly because the wartime wards mandated no portal usage.

He was lucky that his barriers enveloping the entire thing didn't count as an attack as the Sanctum wards were capable of some pretty nasty stuff, especially to energy manipulators. He did not want energy cancers that could pop up at any time and burst apart inside him, no thank you.

"Hello? Heeelllooo! Are you even listening? Do you have any idea how big of a bomb you have dropped on our laps? What even happens if all three of these Sanctums fall? Armageddon? Can't you make more or repair any that falls?" He looked around the room and yup, everyone had the same question regarding it.

He sighed and stood up, "All good questions Tony. Unfortunately, damage will be quite severe, quite irreparable if all the SAnctums fall. No, we can't make more, not without some pretty serious work, work that cannot be done by us. Yes, we can repair those that fall but right now, we need to focus on protecting the ones that are standing as repairing the fallen one will take a lot of time."

"Time we don't have?" He looked at Steve and nodded.

"Fine. Where are the Sanctums?"

He stood up and flicked his fingers, fetching a note that had the coordinates of all the Sanctums. "These are the locations of the two remaining Sanctums. I want you to guard them but only from afar. There are only two people in these two buildings, both of them quite capable of defending themselves,"

"You don't think we can win?" Romanoff, ever the more observant of the Avengers, quietly remarked as she saw, as did all the others, as Jarvis pulled up a map and then all the cameras around it that showed two very different but old looking buildings with the common glass on both the buildings with the logo of the Vishanti printed on them.

He looked into her eyes and then nodded slowly, "No. As you are now, the magical enemy will crush you. Well, except Hulk," Bruce nodded at that. "But that doesn't mean that he won't manipulate the Hulk into causing even more damage."

There were frowns all around the room at that. Ever since the last debacle in Australia where they both fought, he hadn't had any interactions with Banner. He didn't blame the man, he was under the control of Wanda who was still nowhere to be seen, and that fight didn't result in a single casualty, well, aside from some really really old people dying of heart attacks and panic attacks.

Even those deaths had weighed quite heavily on Banner, who refused to go out of the Tower, even for important missions, instead preferring to pilot the large HulkBuster armour from the safety of the tower.

"I think I'll sit this one out," Bruce whispered and practically fled the room. He sighed at that, that was another third of their high tier fighting prowess. With him, Thor and Bruce, they made up almost 90% of the Avengers' fighting prowess. Thor was currently busy being King, and Bruce didn't believe in himself or the Hulk, not believing both of them to be capable of any good. 

That just left him and as powerful as he was, especially with his Power Stone, he was just one man, and there were two Sanctums as of now.

"Think your suits can handle the situation?" He asked Tony who didn't seem even a bit surprised at Bruce's departure. It made sense since Bruce practically lived in the tower for over a year at this point.

Tony deadpanned at him and left the room as well. Captain and Romanoff followed suit. Clint was not in the tower itself, something about a long vacation after all the craziness he had experienced. Ah, these people hadn't yet met the mini Clints yet. That was…fine.

He had come to realise that he had changed a lot of things and a lot of people's fates. Some for the better, and some for the worse. He felt some fear at the beginning, of having the ability to alter the fate of some people but then he reminded himself that the fate he knew was not the predestined fate of these people.

That was some alternate timeline that he saw and knew of. This could easily be yet another timeline where things went as they went, with no fault of his own, well, aside from his direct actions. Nowadays he barely cared about the so-called Canon timeline. It had mostly been butchered anyway, and all he cared about was taking care of that Purple Scrotum.

That's it.

Once that was done, the world would have plenty of crises but he was not going to stay around for all of them. Maintaining a minimal presence on Earth, taking a hands off approach, and semi permanently moving to a tropical utopian planet somewhere in the Universe.

Now, that's the dream.

Seeing that everyone was gone, he spoke up, drawing the attention of the one individual who was ever present in his life, "Jarvis? Any progress?"

"No sir. Aside from having multiple drones keeping a close watch on both the Sanctums, I have not been able to find any digital evidence of the attacks happening. The digital penetration in the city of Kathmandu has been quite behind,"

He chuckled at that. Wasn't that the understatement of the century?

"Alright, just keep me posted. I'll go look around," He opened a portal and went back to Kamar Taj, specifically the Library., where he met the group of Masters who had gone to China to seal away a faulty demon seal. Wong was among them as well, who was looking quite stormy as he looked at the missing books of the Restricted Section.

Technically, in the words of the Ancient One, no knowledge in Kamar Taj was forbidden. Only hidden behind levels of competency for the sake of the safety of the Masters. Even senior Masters did not dare look too deep in some of the books in the Restricted Section. Most of those books were semi sentient and had recognised the Ancient One as their master, following her will and allowing lesser beings, according to them, to read through them. It did create quite a few interesting discoveries but nothing groundbreaking.

In fact, in the entirety of the time that the Ancient ONe had been the SOrcerer Supreme, the innovation factor of Kamar Taj had gone down by quite a lot. Inversely, the Dark Sorcerer, the magical villains had gotten increasingly creative in their applications, sometimes stumbling upon or inventing entirely new ways of molding their dark magic to achieve their goal.

He attributed it to the overwhelming power that the Ancient One seemed to possess. The people on her side becoming lax enough that they didn't bother doing anything new because they knew that their big boss would come to rescue them, and the bad guys knew that the good guys had overwhelming firepower in their hands, so they got a little creative and that was how they had 72 different ways they could use CHI to cast spell like reality changing effects into one's surroundings, using one's lifeforce, or others as well, given that it was given willingly.

"Wong, I assume you know everything?" He went ahead and asked Wong, subtly dismissing all the other masters who bowed at him and left the library as well. WHile he was quite young, the youngest Master in the history of Kamar Taj, in fact, he was well respected within the community. Strength was respected in Kamar Taj and more importantly, the spirit of self sacrifice was looked at with reverence here.

It was somewhat disturbing at first but now he was used to everything.

"Who?" Wong asked calmly and he had to admit, that was quite badass.

"I don't know," He admitted truthfully because the attack was all kinds of confusing to him. He had no idea on where to get leads. The only lead he had was that whoever it was, would attack another Sanctum and that was why he had both of them under heavy surveillance.

While the Avengers could not hope to fight Kaecilous, they could warn him and he could be at their location instantly and take care of the big bad, once and for all. He swore to the One Above All, that if this was some twist, he would go mad and hunt down every single villain of Kamar Taj that was on Earth and was unlucky enough to still be breathing.

"Once you find out, tell me." Wong said and walked deeper into the library, a catalogue in his hands as he took stock of all the books. He did not have the heart to inform the poor man that the entire library of the Hong Kong Sanctum was gone, probably looted from it. 

Wong would blow a gasket at that, despite his mute expressions.

That was one of the things that tipped him off that this was not a normal thing by any means. If Kaecilius had been the one behind things, what use would he have of books? And not even books from the restricted section?

While the Sanctums did hold quite a lot of dangerous relics, the books in there were mainly copies of stuff that was not too hard or high level. Basics and a little bit of intermediate stuff, something that no Master worth his salt would ever need.

And yet, the books were stolen. The relics, he understood but the books?

He ran his mind ragged as he tried to think of any possibility that made sense but this was not a reality where sense would run things.

He left the library to tour the rest of the Kamar Taj and was pleased to find that most of the damage sustained during the attack had been reversed. The apprentices were back on their practice regimen, with a younger Master taking on the duties of Master Mordo whose body was burned by the flames of the Vishanti, basically the highest honor given by Kamar Taj to its fallen Masters.

The Ancient One was still nowhere near in sight, and she was not accepting any communication requests, as was common during any Fae incursion. Demons and Devils always took advantage of events like this, where her entire attention would be on another thing, allowing them relative freedom, something of a rarity ever since he showed up, capable of pushing back and even sealing most demons and devils that got past the barrier.

They were mostly weaker ones who were allowed by the barrier after their superiors expended an obscene amount of energy to send in the weaker soldiers, who were almost always subdued with a single barrier, sharp or blunt, it mattered not.

The ritual room's enchantments held strong but he would not risk doing any ritual inside as the building looked one second away from falling on itself. The paths were still singed with fire and some blood but the apprentices who were not in the training regiment were working hard on getting it all cleaned up with a mop.

Master Kei probably did that so their minds were occupied instead of allowing them time to needlessly speculate and worry more and more about something they had no control over. Hell, even he had no control over the overarching situation.

"Master Sullivan!" He turned around as an apprentice came running for him as if his life depended on it. He instantly flashed over to him, wary of an ambush or something.

"What happened?"

"Haa….Master…Wong, he called…" he didn't wait a second as the apprentice panted at the short jog he took. He needed to work on his cardio then, something to inform Master Kei later on. 

He soon found himself in the library, more specifically, in the section of the library where the Infinity Stone was kept, the second one in his close proximity. As soon as he entered that space, his eyes widened as he saw the Time Stone, sitting on its pedestal, in its green glory.

He instantly flew to the Stone and checked all the enchantments. He was sure that the Eye of Agamotto was real, the energy readings of that thing could not be faked, especially without having the Time Stone in hand and having substantial reserves of the thing, something that could only be done in Vibranium Ingots.

Ingots that Kamar Taj didn't have many of, despite having explicit knowledge of Vibranium asteroids roaming around in Space all around them, in the asteroid belt. It was a trivial task for him to get those to Earth but he didn't want to make an enemy out of Wakanda.

Already, they had released most of their cures or atleast the way to make those cures was proliferated. Their habit of trying to hold back progress of the rest of the world was gone as well, especially as T'Challa slowly took over multiple departments from his father, something that signified that T'Chaka was handing over the throne to his son, T'Challa.

"That is real," Wong commented from the side, hands behind his back as he toon examined the runic work on the whole pedestal. Intricate runes carved by someone and powered by the Eye of Agamotto itself.

Very strong.

'It just appeared right in front of me as I was passing to Section B," Wong informed him, and his mind paused as it considered the situation. 

The Ancient One couldn't take the Infinity Stone to meet the Fae, that could be misconstrued as an act of aggression but she also could not leave the damned thing without any protection, well, aside from the giant thousand year old organisation who were supposed to give their life for the cause, and sadly, some did give their lives.

"Some sort of protection clause?" He asked and Wong shrugged.

Well, it was just sitting here and he did need some clues about the attack. Armed with the practice of using the Power Stone, a very volatile stone, and having some knowledge of using the Eye of Agamotto, he could probably use the Time Stone reliably.

'I mean, how hard could it be? Strange did it on the first try,' He thought to himself.

....

…..

Spoiler. It was hard.

Damn, Strange was a magical prodigy.

Word Count - 2757

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