Crisis Infinite Marvels ch4

Chapter 4 – Loose Ends Unravel

- Dr. Strange hastily gathers as much magicks as can fit into his cloak of flight. His assistant Wong is also packing as much of the magic as they can. Dr. Strange had sensed the disturbance in time and space. Even more disturbing was that some of his magic was no longer behaving the way it should, as the beings who's power he patronized or summoned failed to heed his call. Or even worse, spells did not work the way they should. He noticed things were truly wrong when the temporal doorways of his house suddenly ended up nowhere or exploded. The exterior was in shambles, but inside the Sanctum Sanctorum everything became undone. Something was fundamentally wrong within the world of sorcery, and Dr. Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme aimed to find out what.

- From the Inhuman imperial royal chambers, Black Bolt, Medusa and Karnak were reading telemetry beamed in by the warrior probes activated by Roma. They were aware of how just one of these horrid machines, called the Fury, had killed Captain Britain, but now half a dozen of them had been found in all of existence, in alternate presents and distant pasts. They were brought together and sent out to reconnoiter for Kang's massive force, with the war machine Ultimo reassembled and acting as the device into which the telemetry was being fed into and relayed back to the Roma / Kang council. Already they had warped trans-dimensional space and were making their way towards the turmoil of universes already under attack. When they folded back into normal dimensional space, the seven androids were witness to a massive space battle over the atmosphere above an alternate earth.

Iron Man 2020, Arno Stark, was leading a vast army of Iron Men suits into combat against the Phalanx hordes. The Fury's go into cloak and observe the occurring onslaught, feeding raw data to all of Roma's gathered council. Every man woman and child from the planet earth had been retrofitted cybernetically and were engaged in combat against the techno-infected creatures. The cybernetic creature Jacosta commanded hundreds of retrofitted warships, even clunkers brought in from bottom of the ocean. These numbers and forces were for naught, for they fell with ease before advanced technology that functioned on a cellular level. With every captured or corrupted Iron Man rig, different tactics were being tried - data viruses,  null fields, electromagnetic pulses. All of these only affected several of the nearby Phalanx creatures before they had adapted and moved on. Once the planet surface was covered in darkness, then the other defenders of the worlds showed themselves.

An alternate reality Varnae, First of the Vampyre, commanded a dark horde of vampire armies up beyond the surface of the planet. They hit the Phalanx infected intruders head on. Among his generals were the lords Dracula and Deacon Frost of this timeline, using the most advanced technological and mystical weapons available to punch into the oncoming swarm. Their efforts were for not, for the cracks inside the infected Phalanx glowed with sunlight, and only the most armored of vampire warriors survived the blinding blaze. These being quickly fell, too, their numbers too small to hold back the opposition. The larger bugs that had arrived onto the planet were already processing it to replenish their fallen ranks.

All of this data the Fury's intercepted and transmitted to the royal ensemble. Their numbers were marked as coming from the Negative Zone, the pocket universe existing in all the other alternate timelines. By now most of the debris of the battle reached the Fury probes, and the microscopic versions of the Phalanx virus made contact with the cloaking fields of the Fury robots. Instantly the Phalanx forces became aware of the intruders and engaged them. Two Fury's were left behind to cover the retreat, but they were quickly overwhelmed and corrupted, the infection occurring much faster than their ability to adapt. The other Fury's turned and destroyed the infected remains and then self-detonated, taking a large part of the planetary forces with them. Only Ultimo truly broke free and cleared the destruction, the Fury's final act of universal preservation taking out the planet Earth and the bulk of the Phalanx horde before him. As Ultimo was about to make the jump when he was caught by the heel from behind. A dark hand tore into the android's hips and pulled him closer to attack. Before the robot could turn and defend itself, the hands of the In-Betweener came crashing through his torso into where his lungs would be if the humanoid shaped android had any and obliterated the mechanical titan. Roma and the other found themselves finally able to breathe through the images that they had seen.

- At Castle Doom, a set of alarms went off. The power within the main lab shut down, the symbol Doom had come to term for apocalyptic catastrophe displayed alarm in his fortress that Dr. Victor von Doom. As much as he had planned for this kind of contingency when he created his time platform, it was an alarm he had never hoped to see. He immediately ended the ceremony that the local townspeople had erected in his honor and marched straight to his command center. The his instruments and mystic devices all pointed to Doomsday. He quickly consulted his archive of prophecies and lore he had collected from the future, but nothing reflected the disaster warnings sounding today.

Such an event was entirely unexpected now but not unanticipated. With a click of a button on his waste band, the instruments on his control panel scanned his features. Four earlier versions of his mask were brought up from the castle floor, hovering before him. Information was downloaded from his computer and the instruments into the masks, as well as verbally spoken enchantments. The instruments on background display began to show distortion in the harmonics and probes increasing larger in scope.

All four masks hovered before him and in his thunderous commanding voice repeated the exact words he said. Then he activated the time platform, and the three masks flew down the castle labyrinth. Upon reaching the inner chamber, they moved over the time platform and sank into it's surface. The time platform crackled for a few seconds, and from the ultra smooth surface stepped out the Deviant High Priest Ghaur of ancient Lemuria, the sorceress Morgan le Fey, the first mutant Selene and Belasco the demon lord of Limbo, accompanied with a few N'Garai demons at his command. Each of them held the mask of Doom sent to them.

- In another mystic realm, the dread Dorammu was receiving his own visitor, a primal goddess from a much sought after and denied world. The dark lord extended every hospitality to his unusual and beautiful guest.

"To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure, Gaea?"

"We need to talk, you and I, Dormammu of the Faltine. I know you sense what ails all of Eternity and I seek your aide in securing your empire. I have come to speak to you about your rule over all kingdoms of heaven."