Discimer - All the owners have their respective rights. I only own the characters that came from my addled brain (don’t worry, I am pletely sober).

  Kamar Taj[August 2015]

  –Jack Sullivan–

  He was ba Kamar Taj, after going through a few days of sparring, drinking and partying with the Asgardians as Asgard was in a full celebratory mood sihey finally had a new King now. Even the death of Odin that was announced did not seem to dim the mood for any of the Asgardians.

  In fact, they seemed to party harder because of the fact. When asked, they told him, “Why would we be sad? The All Father reached Valhal. It is an occasion to celebrate!” Before p down copious amounts of alcohol dowhroats and then trying to do the same to him as well. His enhanced stitution did allow him to mate of the Asgardians in their drinking capacity but even he was no match for the veteran drinkers, who could outdrink even Thor somehow, or so they boasted iavern he frequented.

  There were still no signs of Sif or the Warrior Three ba Asgard and Thor had sent out more search parties. Thor was quickly sifting through the nobles who were actually running Asgard when Loki was King and was s them out, so to speak. Thor’s legitimate rule made sure that none of the nobles dared lie to their King, so all of the gold that they collected fell right bato Asgard’s treasury.

  Trade was reopened. Entire tis of Einherjar were sent through the Rainbe, probably to all the other Nine Realms, to annouhat Thor has bee King or something.

  If he was n, there will be aravagant ing ceremony that every single Realm’s ruler will be io. He just didn’t knoas going to be invited from Earth. The A Oold him that Kamar Taj was just the protector of Midgard, not its ruler. Earth teically didn’t have any single ruler and while SWORD should be the one who would represent the phey were not really set up for that.

  OR, he skid to a halt, from all the pag he had been doing in his quarters, were they?

  He immediately made to get out of his quarters, only to e face to face with Wong himself.

  “Oh, Hello Master Wong. What I do for you?” He asked Wong si was very rare for Wong to approayone of his own accord. He was a very reserved individual who loved listening to Beyon his spare time.

  Well, he could uand that. She really made everyone feel her musid that was what ted the most when it came to music.

  “The A One has givehe duty to inform you that you will be representing Kamar Taj for a in the Realm Eternal”

  He paused at that. Realm Eter— “Oh, you mean Asgard? Yeah, sure, I’ll go. Who else is ing with me?” He asked since he was very junior when it came to the Masters and he expected someone else, probably another old fogey, who was going to e with him to “rein” him in.

  “Great. I will inform her about it. In the meantime, she has told me about some pest problem in the “Afterlife,”

  He gave Wong a fused look for a moment before his superpowered brain caught up and he immediately gave Wong a thumbs up before flying up in the air. Ever since Wanda’s atta Kamar Taj, the wards had been raised to their highest settings without triggering war time wards which meant that no opening portals right in the middle of the pound.

  He broke the rule sometimes but he received a backsh for it, which was manageable for him but not so much for all the other decidedly baseline human Masters.

  H right above the pce where the pound used to be, he pondered on what to do. Ever sihat fias Australia which was still being used to try and push the Accords into the UN, he hadn’t heard of Wanda or any signifit event that would give them any clues to Wanda’s location.

  The A One had informed the Avehat Wanda was Kamar TAj’s problem exclusively but as far as he khere had been no crete attempts on her end to catch Wanda. Not that it would be easy but between him and her, along with some other mystically resistant members providing support, he was sure that Wanda would be captured or even killed in the ensuing battle.

  Then again, the very fact that nothing of note had happened in the world that would draw their attentio that Wanda had either goo hiding or was living in a reality ed area where anything outside of the ordinary was summarily ignored.

  Even that should have been traced by Kamar Taj so it probably meant that Wanda was currently in hiding. It had been over a year since her st sighting so he should probably go look for her once he was done resolving the issue that was the Afterlife.

  He didn’t kly why the A ONe had taken i in Inhumans but if she warned him about them, then there must be something happening there.

  He didly know the exact location but he khat Jiaying lived somewhere near Hunan vilge in a. Browsing the location on his phone, he saw a high resolution photo of a nearby vilge and opened a portal straight to the pce, and found himself floating in front of a forest.

  “Well, nobody said it would be easy,” He said as he resolved to fly over a vast area at high speeds to see which area the Afterlife was situated in. He had to be quick about it as well sihe ation ceremony was in two days and he had no idea if he o prepare beforehand or something.

  Also, he o make at least a token effort towards reising SWORD as the premier authority of Earth when it es to extraterrestrial matters. Giving them the Helicarriers was the first step and now that most of the red tape was gone and they were actively hiring, mostly vetted previous SHIELD staff for their roster, he hoped that they could make some differen the upi.

  After flying at very high speeds for over 2 hours, he finally found a pce that could be the Afterlife. It was hard to tell because it was naturally camoufged and the only reason he found it was because he sent in hundreds of his micro barriers in all dires and one of them found itself embedded in a red arch that was right in the middle of nowhere. The arch was well maintained and as well, further providing him proof that someone did live in the middle of nowhere.

  He slowly floated down to the area of the arch, covered in a cloaking spell. He couldn’t risk anyone else ing in too soon. As far as he knew from his memories, Jiaying was the de facto leader of the entire pace, being the eldest out of all of them. She was the one who pulled the entire unity together and she was the ohat held the most hatred for humanity, which was not justified since she aimed it at the ey of humanity instead of the animal who experimented on her.

  All the others in the unity were either brainwashed into believing that Jiaying was the one who would lead them all into salvation or had no other choice because they were all rejected and Jiaying, along with her brainwashed people, were the only ones who took all of them in.

  Gordohought, was the biggest asset of Jiaying and he robably the one he would target first, either incapacitate or worst case sario, separate a few limbs and then cast the stro sleep spell he knew, which was not that good because, once again, he really focused more oing his barrier powers up to speed instead of learning new and plex spells.

  There were some i people in Afterlife as well, people who were just nht into the unity and were not yet ied or brainwashed into believing their Supreme Leader’s words yet. They had plenty of batants but none of them posed any threat to him.

  The electricity guy could have done something had it been anyone else aside from him. Slowly floating forward, he crossed the threshold of the ard then immediately defted, pausing mid air.

  “Of Course. Ofcourse, it had to be demons. My life just couldn’t be simple, could it?” He asked himself as he nded on the ground and removed the cloaking spell. There was no point in that sihe moment he crossed over that arch, he stumbled onto a demon encve, something of an enclosed space that could only be created by generals of Demon Lords. Only someone of that power could create and sustain this giant formation without withering into dust or beied by the various meisms of Kamar Taj.

  He hated demons, that went without saying but he hated intelligent demons even more, and this reeked of some eborate scheme that he simply had no i in. The only reason he was not fttening this entire pce was because he had yet to ascertain if the (In)humans were still alive or if they could be rescued from the clutches of the demons or not.

  Ideally, he should have been assaulted by a number of lesser demons or humans, empowered by demoniergy into being a mohat would die within a few weeks but would serve the Demons’ purposes just fine, but right now, there was just eerie silence, and that was bugging him.

  He flew through the giant pound, and then through the ke, the maze and then straight into the other se of the pce, acc to the helpful map he found right after the ard voi.

  A sacrificial altar with a single person standing in front of it, surrounded by a pile of corpses of both old and young? Check.

  Massive amounts of demon miasma being leaked into the surroundings as a direct result of the ritual? Check.

  The ritual about to be pleted, only to summon some uber powerful demon who might pose a threat to him? Check.

  “Oh, hell no!” he muttered as he sent his barriers, slig straight through the corpse of Jiaying and straight into the ritual altar, which was surrounded by demonies that pulsed red. Ofcourse, ritual powered by blood, and not just normal human blood, Inhuman blood.

  He learned in Kamar Taj that blood, willingly given was the most powerful ingredient in any ritual, be it good or bad, but blood that was taken forcibly was the best ingredient for a demonic ritual because while the blood twisted the ritual and the subject of the ritual, it was exactly what the demons wanted so they had no problem forcibly taking blood.

  Also, ahing he learned was that ead every single ability that anybody in the universe had, aside from some nominal super strength that was gained in proportion to the muscle the being might have, came from other dimensions. Yes, mutants, Inhumaernals, every single being in this world capable of maniputing energy to get some sort of desired effe the fabric of reality, drew upon some form of energy from alternate dimensions.

  Essentially, every single Inhuman was a Sorcerer, just a vastly limited and untrained one, without the knowledge of the dangers of being a Sorcerer.

  And the blood of The Masters of the Mystic Art? People whose blood has been touched by extra dimensional energy over and ain? It riceless for demons because even a retively small amount of that blood could power a rge ritual or sustain a portal for long enough that the demons could actually get an army through.

  Now, as he watched the pile of dead Inhuman husks, drained of all their blood, he realised that the demon must be having a field day, ing the lifeblood of so many pseudo sorcerers, without aig about it.

  Well, someone did a someoo do something about it.

  So, here goes. First off, he flicked his finger, creating about a dozen more barriers as they sliced through the slowly creeping up body of Jiaying, which was creepy. Then the barriers did it, again and again, until the body was nothing more than flesh, and no blood somehow. Damn, the iion must be deep for her body to be so thhly demonic.

  Then another series of barriers which disrupted the ritual, collected the blood in a single barrier which he immediately flung right into the waste disposal se of Kamar Taj which was just an uer cave built into one of the os. It was one of the pces where the Masters could dump stuff that they needed sed but could not do so immediately because of extenuating circumstances.

  The ritual let out a series sounds as the fuel surrounding the ritual was gohe altar began dimming down, as a series of curses echoed from the altar. He waited for the altar to fully dim down, colpse down on the ground and then leaned back a bit as a tendril of shadows almost reached his face, before it was caught up by his barriers.

  He was well versed in demons and their sneaky tactics.

  “Well buddy, time to meet the Light Realm, don't you think?” He smiled at the shadowy mass that was beirained by his barriers and being dragged away from the altar, and then pinged one of the Masters using their global work that could be used as an SOS, training request, or even normal messages.

  With his reputation, he only had to wait 2 minutes before a portal opened up in front of him, and Master Rick, a retively young Master, walked through.

  “Hey, Jack! What I– Hooly shit! Damn, that is a lot of darkness in one pce.”

  He nodded, “Yup! Think you do it?”

  Rick did not look fident, “Well, I certainly try.”

  “That’s all I ask,”

  …..

  ….

  “Well, what do you know, you do it,” He praised Rick who was absolutely sprawled down on the ground, breathing deeply because of the amount of Light energy it took to actually destroy the demon. Oh sure, it acted dead a couple of times but it was not his first demon hunting rodeo so he made sure that every single drop of that shadowy creature was gone.

  It was intelligent but it didn’t speak much, which was new.

  “Well, you’re wele,” Rick said and stood up from his barriers where he was lying because actually lying down on the ground that had been inated by not just forcibly taken ritualistic blood but also the shadowy tendrils had been disposed of, leaving behind who knows how many germs.

  Thankfully, Demon germs could not survive Earth’s atmosphere and usually dissipated within hours of no tact with any lifeform. Seeing that he could not sense anything alive in this pce, it saved him the trouble of hunting down any ied animal but still, he could not risk anything and leave this pce for a couple of hours.

  And that meant Master Rick had to stay with him as well.

  Ah, so much for an “iion”.

  Word t - 2614

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