Chapter 741

Rumble. Rumble. Rumble.

Evenson no longer needed a telescope or a scouting spell like Eye of Kilrogg to see what was happening in the distance. Thick smoke blotted out the sky, and flames surged high enough to paint the horizon orange. The shock waves were powerful enough to make the ground tremble beneath his feet, leaving his soles tingling from the vibrations.

General Sheffield, meanwhile, had barely realized what was happening before it was too late to call off the bombardment.

He knew exactly what those three artillery battalions were equipped with: 155mm self-propelled howitzers, each capable of firing ten rounds per minute. With all three batteries firing in unison, the target had probably already taken more than a hundred shells.

Thank goodness they weren’t using 76mm rapid-fire cannons. At three hundred rounds per minute, the results would have been even more entertaining.

Evenson stared at the distant inferno, his mouth hanging open.

"Regular shells, high-explosive shells, fuel-air explosives, napalm! What exactly are you trying to accomplish here?"

He turned toward Sheffield, whose expression had become the picture of utter misery.

"If this weren’t happening in your own backyard, would you have considered nuclear artillery shells, too?"

"That’s twice now, isn’t it?" Evenson continued when the general merely opened and closed his mouth without producing a coherent response.

He gave a helpless chuckle.

"The last time Thor helped Earth repel a Chitauri invasion, he nearly got a nuclear warhead for his trouble afterward. Now he’s helping Earth fight another alien threat, and this time he hasn’t even made it to the battlefield before getting buried under friendly artillery fire."

Evenson pointed an accusing finger at Sheffield.

"If I were Asgardian, I’d never let you get away with this!"

Under normal circumstances, Sheffield would have taken offense at someone pointing a finger in his face. Right now, however, he couldn’t have cared less about manners.

Never let him get away with it?

He was already finished.

NATO forces had a reputation for occasionally shooting their own side, but this operation had taken friendly fire to an entirely new level. Before the battle had even begun, a carrier-based air wing had launched dozens of missiles at Asgardian property while making an armed incursion across the border.

And now they’d buried a royal prince under hundreds of artillery shells.

Sheffield could practically see his career disintegrating before his eyes. His own position and that of the First Sea Lord were almost certainly finished. Once the Asgardians demanded answers, both men would find themselves facing a military tribunal, assuming they survived the diplomatic fallout.

The British government would have to offer an explanation, too. The Prime Minister would probably resign, the Cabinet would be dissolved, and a new government would be assembled. Depending on how badly things deteriorated, even Her Majesty might feel compelled to abdicate to demonstrate accountability.

Sheffield’s expression suddenly shifted.

Wait a moment.

Prince Charles...

Could it be that after six decades of waiting, the universe had finally decided the prince had suffered enough? Had even the gods themselves taken pity on him and arranged this entire disaster to clear his path to the throne?

"Why are you still standing here?!"

Sif’s furious shriek shattered Sheffield’s train of thought.

She looked ready to cut the general in half with her sword. Loki was already dead. If anything happened to Thor as well, Odin would never forgive Earth. The All-Father would wage a war of annihilation against the planet, and Sif had little doubt about how that would end.

She seized Evenson by the arm.

"We need to get over there! Now!"

"W-Wait!"

Evenson reacted just in time, pulling his arm free before she could drag him away.

"I’ll ride there myself!"

He immediately summoned his Nightmare and swung into the saddle.

After what had happened the previous two times, he had absolutely no intention of letting Sif carry him again. For all he knew, she’d get excited and throw him across half the battlefield by accident.

Sif took off at once, her already impressive speed apparently greater than ever. Evenson urged his mount after her, and the Nightmare proved fast enough to keep pace.

They reached the bombardment site in short order.

The fires were still raging when they plunged straight into the inferno.

Sif relied on her formidable Asgardian constitution to withstand the heat. Evenson, meanwhile, activated a fire ward.

Being a Warlock with extensive fire resistance wasn’t just a title on his character sheet. Ordinary flames weren’t going to stop him.

Once they entered the devastated area, even Evenson found himself staring.

The destruction was appalling.

Modern, electronically controlled self-propelled artillery was frighteningly accurate. Hundreds of shells had rained down, yet their impact points were packed tightly together, concentrating the bombardment over a relatively small area.

The surrounding buildings had been reduced to rubble. The ground was a maze of overlapping craters, and the air was so hot and acrid that breathing it would have been hazardous even without the lingering effects of the fuel-air explosives and napalm.

The asphalt covering the road had vaporized under the extreme heat, filling the area with a cocktail of toxic fumes.

Without his Endless Breath ability, Evenson suspected he would already have passed out from the stench alone.

He took a few more steps before something caught his eye.

Every building around them had collapsed.

Every building except one.

A tall structure stood completely untouched in the middle of the devastation, despite being well within the bombardment zone. Not a single window had shattered. It was as though some invisible force had wrapped the entire building in a protective barrier.

Evenson raised an eyebrow.

He recognized that place.

It was the building where he’d first spotted the strange woman in the qipao.

He looked up.

Sure enough, she was still sitting calmly beside the window, taking a leisurely sip from a can of soda while watching the destruction below with obvious interest.

Evenson was beginning to suspect that the woman had a very different understanding of what constituted an entertaining afternoon.

"Thor!"

Sif’s horrified cry snapped his attention back to the battlefield.

She was digging through a mound of rubble, pulling the thunder god out from beneath the broken stone.

Thor looked dreadful.

His golden hair, previously tied into a ponytail, now hung in tangled, disheveled strands. Several sections near the ends had been badly singed, and his face was blackened with soot.

Fortunately, he didn’t appear to have suffered any serious physical injuries. As a high-born Asgardian, Thor possessed a body considerably more durable than that of an ordinary human.

His current condition was nevertheless concerning.

His eyes had rolled back into his head, and Sif’s increasingly frantic attempts to shake him awake produced absolutely no response.

He had apparently been knocked unconscious by the sheer force of the bombardment.

How long it would take him to wake up was anyone’s guess.

Then a furious roar erupted from the rubble.

A heap of shattered stone burst apart, and Malekith climbed out.

The Dark Elf king didn’t appear to have suffered any serious injuries either. His complexion was already dark, so the soot and smoke hadn’t made much difference.

His hair, however, was another matter.

His once-white locks had been reduced to almost nothing.

Malekith turned toward his flagship, his expression twisted with lingering alarm.

Unlike Thor, he couldn’t simply shrug off a bombardment of that magnitude. Had he not reacted quickly enough to shield himself with the Aether, he would probably have been blown to pieces.

This was supposed to be the glorious culmination of his grand campaign, the moment when darkness would finally triumph and the universe would tremble before him.

Instead, a pack of pitiful mortal insects had nearly turned his triumph into a farce.

Rage surged through him.

He raised one hand and pointed toward the battlefield.

At the center of his flagship’s prow sat an enormous red gemstone. It immediately blazed with light, releasing three brilliant crimson beams.

Back at the command center, a civilian staff officer stared at his console in disbelief.

"General! The three artillery positions... all three have been destroyed!"

The aliens were terrifyingly powerful. They had endured a bombardment of hundreds of shells without any defensive fortifications and had retaliated by wiping out three artillery positions almost simultaneously.

Under different circumstances, Sheffield might have been stunned by the report.

Instead, he merely grunted.

"I see."

He had already accepted that his career was over. Three destroyed artillery positions were hardly going to make his situation appreciably worse.

Back on the battlefield, Evenson watched Malekith seethe with barely contained fury and sighed.

His original plan had been simple enough. Let Thor take the lead, allow the thunder god and the Dark Elf king to settle their differences in a spectacular fight, and clean up whatever remained afterward.

Unfortunately, Thor had been taken out before the fight even began.

Evenson glanced at Sif.

Would you like to handle this one instead?

Before he could act on the idea, his brow furrowed.

Something had changed.

He wasn’t the only one to notice. Sif and Malekith both sensed the shift in their surroundings.

The battlefield was still the same place, but the flames had vanished. The air had grown unnaturally quiet, as though someone had reached over and muted the entire world.

More importantly, Malekith’s flagship had disappeared.

Evenson’s eyes lit up.

The Mirror Dimension.

Excellent. Our designated scapegoat has arrived.

He turned around.

Standing behind him were the Ancient One and Clea.

Clea, however, looked quite different from the last time he’d seen her.

Her complexion seemed even paler than before, and she had abandoned her usual yellow Kamar-Taj robes in favor of fitted black armor. In her hands, she carried a helmet crowned with a lion’s face.

Evenson’s expression brightened.

"Clea!"

He hurried over and pulled her into his arms, showering her face with enthusiastic kisses.

"That outfit is incredible!"

"Of course it is!"

Clea planted her hands on her hips, practically glowing with pride.

Evenson knew his girlfriend well enough to recognize the quickest route to her heart. Appeal to her dramatic streak, give her something cool to wear, and she was practically unstoppable.

Sure enough, she immediately launched into an explanation.

"This armor is one of my senior sister’s prized possessions. It took quite a bit of persuasion to get her to lend it to me."

"Your senior sister? Lily Grant?"

Evenson paused.

That didn’t sound right. Lily was Chinese, but this armor was unmistakably European in design, complete with the heavy plate and heraldic helmet of a medieval knight.

"No, not that senior sister." Clea grinned and glanced toward the Ancient One. "I’ve recently accepted a rather unusual mentor. That makes the Sorcerer Supreme and me senior and junior sisters, technically."

Evenson’s mouth twitched.

"Senior and junior sisters? Well, aren’t you moving up in the world? Have you considered how your father, Olivian, is going to feel about this?"

Clea waved the concern away.

"That’s a separate matter. We’ll sort it out separately."

Separately?

Evenson could already picture the family reunion.

Clea would call Olivian her father, and the poor man would then have to turn around and address his own daughter as Grandmaster’s Mistress.

Kamar-Taj’s seniority system was a masterpiece of organizational chaos.

"Do you have so little faith in my people?"

The Ancient One’s voice interrupted their reunion.

She regarded Evenson with mild disapproval.

"I gave you a token that grants you the authority to mobilize the resources and personnel of the Three Sanctums. Yet you left my people on standby and brought in an army of ordinary humans instead. Do you really have so little confidence in their abilities?"

Evenson offered her a perfectly courteous smile.

"Yes."

The Ancient One stared at him.

"If any of them could wield the Eye of Agamotto, or possessed your ability to transpose an area of this size into another space, I wouldn’t have needed to bring in so many human soldiers."

The Ancient One sighed.

She couldn’t even argue with that.

The truth was that the people under her command...

Well, there was little point in discussing it.

"Didn’t you go to R’lyeh to deal with something?" Evenson asked, recalling her departure several days earlier.

"Have you finished everything there? The celestial alignment is nearing its conclusion, but we’re approaching the most critical stage. Shouldn’t you still be there, reinforcing the defenses? What brought you here?"

At that question, both the Ancient One and Clea grew solemn.

For a moment, neither seemed inclined to answer.

Finally, the Ancient One spoke, her expression impossible to read.

"A special visitor arrived. The situation there has been resolved. The matter of Cthulhu is finished, once and for all."

A special visitor?

Someone capable of resolving the crisis at R’lyeh completely?

Evenson’s mind raced.

No. It can’t be.

He slowly raised his eyes toward the woman in the purple qipao, his thoughts suddenly filled with unease.

The Ancient One followed his gaze and gave the woman a slight nod of acknowledgment.

Then she turned back to Evenson.

"Some matters can wait until later. For now, we should deal with the problem in front of us."

She raised one hand.

A magical construct resembling a protractor appeared in her palm. As its angles shifted and its intricate markings rotated, the surrounding space began to twist.

The ground rolled and folded like the surface of a gigantic globe. Buildings, debris, and the landscape itself revolved in every direction, as though the entire world had become an enormous machine whose gears had suddenly begun turning.

Only the building occupied by the woman in the purple qipao remained perfectly still.

Malekith watched the transformation with mounting alarm.

Who was this bald woman?

Her power was so far beyond anything he had anticipated that he began to wonder whether she, rather than Thor, was the true enemy he had come to confront.

"Who are you?"

Clea stepped forward before the Ancient One could answer.

"This is the Ancient One, the Sorcerer Supreme and guardian of Earth. She is also the recognized ruler of Midgard’s independent domain, a status personally acknowledged by Odin, King of Asgard."

Malekith had never heard of a Sorcerer Supreme.

Had the Dark Elves remained hidden for so long that a being of this caliber had risen without their knowledge?

No matter.

He wasn’t about to surrender.

"You intend to imprison me here? Don’t make me laugh!"

The Aether began to flow out of his body, its dark power gathering as he prepared to tear the Mirror Dimension apart by force.

"It won’t work," the Ancient One said calmly. "You cannot leave this space, and no one can enter it."

She had barely finished speaking when something unexpected happened.

The ground beside them continued to turn, and a section of the shifting landscape suddenly carried a new figure into view.

The entire battlefield fell silent.

For several seconds, everyone simply stared.

The newcomer appeared to be an elderly human man. He had short, snow-white hair, a pair of sunglasses perched on his nose, and a small white mustache beneath it. His frail body trembled slightly as he moved.

At first glance, there was nothing particularly remarkable about him.

And yet everyone present, friend and foe alike, felt an inexplicable sense that they were standing before someone extraordinary.

The old man held a car key in one hand and was making the motions of unlocking a vehicle, apparently unaware that he had just materialized in the middle of a battlefield inside a magical pocket dimension.

He looked around in confusion.

"Kids have all the fun with their drugs. Old age comes around, and suddenly I’m the one losing my mind."

The Ancient One froze.

Then, with an awkward expression, she hurriedly adjusted the surrounding space and sent the old man back where he had come from.

"Take care, sir."

She cleared her throat.

"That was... a minor mistake."

"I understand," Evenson replied immediately.

Everyone else nodded in agreement, including Malekith.

Nobody had the slightest objection.

Not one.