“Ikaris,” Thena said mildly, stepping past the half wall that semi-enclosed the patio. “This is a surprise.”

  Our new arrival had landed on the ground just beyond the edge of the flagstones, on the red earth between the homestead and the low stone fence that enclosed it. He wasn’t particularly menacing-looking—handsome, with a square jaw and a perpetual five o’clock shadow, casually well-dressed. A little taller than I had expected him to be, maybe. The way his trim-fitting shirt clung to and outlined his body was annoyingly distracting, and I had to give myself a little mental kick to stop myself from looking. Absolutely not. I did, however, take note of the small holes that appeared to have been burned in the black fabric. Had he been in a fight? If so, there was no other trace of it on him.

  “Thena,” Ikaris responded warmly, a small smile tweaking the corners of his mouth as she approached. “It’s good to see you.”

  “And you, my friend,” Gilgamesh said as he stepped out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a small dish towel as he ambled past me.

  I stayed where I was, hovering indecisively near the door, a small knot of anxiety in my chest as I watched the Eternals greet each other. Thena and Gil had said that they only really saw the others once a decade or so, so Ikaris just happening to show up now, while I was here, was raising a few alarm bells in the back of my mind. Why was he here? Had I knocked something unexpected out of whack?

  “Unfortunately, this isn’t a social call. Ajak sent me to collect you.”

  Thena and Gil exchanged a careful glance. “Why? Has something happened?”

  “There’s a situation. Ajak will explain when we’re all together. We need to head to the Domo.” Ikaris looked past Gilgamesh at me, a slight crease to his brow. “Who’s your friend?”

  Gil shrugged, not even glancing back. “Human,” he said dismissively as he tucked the dishcloth he’d been holding into a pocket. “No one important. Been living with us for a while. Keeps the place clean. You know how it is.”

  I knew it’d be best just to keep my mouth shut for the most part and let Thena and Gil handle this, but a tiny part of me rebelled a little bit at being referred to like I was a pet or servant. If that was the way we were playing it, then… I bowed my head, clasping my hands in front of me reverentially. “My only wish is to serve the gods,” I said solemnly.

  I thought I felt a hint of amusement through my connection with Thena, and Gil groaned. “Can’t get her to stop saying stuff like that,” he muttered, playing along. “Bit dramatic, but she means well.”

  Ikaris raised an eyebrow, shooting a brief glance toward Thena. “You’ve been doing well, then? It’s been a long time since you’ve had a supplicant.”

  “I have,” she responded easily. “She’s aware of the risks, but she’s also proven quite stubborn. I’ve grown rather fond of her.”

  Ikaris’s eyes continued to linger on me. I recognised his expression—it was the look of someone who knew my face but wasn’t sure where from. It was a look I’d seen a lot lately, given my recent fame as an associate of the Avengers. I gave him a small, awkward smile in response, not saying anything. Ikaris had no reason to suspect anything was amiss here, and acting suspicious would only give him one.

  “What’s your name?” he asked after a moment.

  “Wanda,” I responded easily, with only the briefest instant of hesitation.

  His gaze sharpened slightly, recognition flickering in his expression. “Wanda Maximoff?”

  “Yeah.”

  Ikaris didn’t look particularly impressed at that. He tore his gaze away from me to look between Gil and Thena. “She’s been living with you here? For how long? What has she been doing?”

  The worry that was clawing at my insides intensified. There was a pressing intensity to his questions that rubbed me the wrong way. His reaction to my identity felt off. Something was definitely wrong here.

  The others felt it too—Gil shifted almost imperceptibly, positioning himself just a tiny little bit more between Ikaris and me, disguising the movement with another shrug. “I told you, just odds and ends. Nothing important. There’s—”

  “She’s not a servant,” Ikaris cut him off. He had turned toward me fully now, squaring off over Gilgamesh’s shoulder. “She’s a spy.”

  I froze, not sure if I should respond. A familiar panicked feeling was bubbling up in my stomach. There was only one reason that I could think of that would make Ikaris accuse me of spying—something or someone had alerted him to the fact that I was aware of the Emergence and trying to stop it. Was this what his visit was about in the first place? He’d said there was a ‘situation’. Was it just me, or were the Avengers in danger?

  Gil let out a small laugh, but there was a forced edge to it. “Who, Wanda? Nah, she’s fine. Look, you said we need to see Ajak? Alright, just let Thena and I pack up a few things and we’ll—”

  Ikaris cut him off again. “You don’t understand. She’s with the Avengers.” A little bit of golden energy was glimmering in the irises of his eyes, but he didn’t move just yet. “She’s been spying on you, feeding information to them.”

  Thena had been quiet for a little while, and I could feel through my connection with her that she was getting tense, gauging whether she should act. My heart was pounding in my chest. We weren’t ready to fight Ikaris! When the Eternals had fought each other in the original timeline, Thena had only managed to keep up with him for a handful of seconds, even when he’d been distracted by fighting several others all at once. Ikaris was too strong for me to be confident that Thena, Gil and I would be enough to handle him. We needed Thor. We needed Carol.

  If I started to draw on my magic, Ikaris would see it as an attack and react, I was sure of it. He’d be fast—almost certainly too fast for me to get my spell up before being blasted with eye beams or have him straight up in my face. What if I did attack? Could I hit him first, knock him off-balance for a second, long enough that Thena and Gil could intervene and give me a chance to get a protection spell up and running?

  “What are you talking about? Don’t be crazy, she’s not a spy.”

  “Tony Stark—Iron Man—is already dead. The rest will be marshalling to come after us. It’s a good thing I got here before they came for you,” Ikaris said.

  His words hit me like a punch in the gut. Like all the air had just been knocked out of my lungs and I was struggling to breathe. That… that couldn’t be true, could it?

  “Ikaris,” Thena said firmly. A long, polearm of cosmic energy glimmered into existence, held loosely in one of her hands. “Enough. We know.” Ikaris had been cagey about Ajak’s reason for sending him, but there was only one thing that made sense, and Thena had reached the same conclusion that I had.

  The movement and statement were enough to make Ikaris tear his eyes away from me. He stared at Thena for a moment, his brow furrowed. “What do you mean, ‘you know’?”

  Gilgamesh sighed. “About the Emergence. Ajak. What we really are and why we’re on Earth. All of it.”

  Ikaris was silent as he processed this. A few tense seconds crawled by, then he nodded slowly. “Then you understand why we need to move quickly. The Avengers know about the Emergence. Ajak, she—they—” he stopped, eyes widening fractionally as he looked back and forth between them, a perplexed look on his face. “You told them?”

  Thena shook her head. “They already knew when they came to us. But they’re right, Ikaris. We can’t just let the Earth be destroyed. We have to figure out a way to stop it.”

  “Stop the Emergence?” he asked, shock evident in his voice. “Thena, you have to know that’s madness. It’s the birth of a new Celestial. Part of Arishem’s grand design. You’d be responsible for countless lives, countless worlds, not being created.”

  Gil let out a derisive snort. “And you’d rather be responsible for the deaths of all the humans that already exist?”

  “Humans die. It’s what they do. You of all people should know that.”

  I couldn’t see Gilgamesh’s face from where I was standing, but he stiffened at that, his hands tightening into fists at his sides. “How long have you known?” His tone was low, deadly quiet.

  “Centuries. Ajak confided in me a long time ago. I’m sorry we kept this a secret from you for so long, but this is our purpose. We exist to serve the Celestials.”

  “We don’t have to. We can choose our own path,” Thena said.

  “I can’t let you betray Arishem,” Ikaris responded, his voice hard. “Don’t make me kill you, Thena.”

  “You can try.” She bared her teeth as she settled into a loose, ready stance.

  There was a tense moment as that statement hung in the air, no one moving or saying anything. Then everything exploded into motion at once.

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  Ikaris shot straight up, his eyes glimmering golden. Twin beams of cosmic energy erupted from them, aimed directly at me. I was already drawing deeply on my well of power, but the other Eternals were moving as well, clearly having anticipated Ikaris’s opening move.

  Gilgamesh bounced backwards on his heel, golden lines of cosmic energy tracing across his arms even as Thena darted in to join him, a shield coming together in her free hand. Together, the two of them created an impassable wall between Ikaris and me, his eye beams blocked by their protections. I ducked in low behind them, hurriedly weaving threads of chaos magic into the form of my protection spell.

  The beams cut off, and an instant later, Ikaris dropped out of the sky like a meteor.

  The two other Eternals braced together to meet him, but he was so fast. His fists crashed into Gil’s crossed arms with a brutal impact that cracked the flagstones beneath our feet. Gil grimaced and held firm, but Thena had to shift, rebalancing her stance as Ikaris hammered at her shield with a flurry of blinding punches. One, two, three—cracks began to web across the golden plane of energy before she dispelled it, letting it dissolve just before it shattered.

  Ikaris didn’t give them space to breathe, driving a knee toward Thena’s ribs—she caught it with a flat construct, sliding to the side and retaliating with a swipe of her glaive. He twisted around it, grabbed the shaft just long enough to throw her off balance, and sent her stumbling back with a backhand. Gil surged forward to take advantage of an opening, both his fists glowing, and caught Ikaris square in the side with a thunderous punch. He went flying, smashing through the ancient, heavy wooden table in the middle of the patio and the half-wall behind it like they weren’t even there, disappearing momentarily in a shower of shattered wood and mudbrick fragments.

  My protection spell finally settled into place—it had only taken a handful of seconds, but so much was happening, so quickly, that it had felt like forever. Gil darted after Ikaris through the hole in the wall he had left, Thena and I vaulting over to join them in front of the house.

  Ikaris had already recovered, none the worse for wear as he leapt forward to meet us, laying about him with his fists. One caught my shoulder painfully, a glimmer of red magic flexing dangerously as it knocked me back—it felt like I’d been clipped by a train.

  I twisted around the hit and continued past him, trying to put a little bit of distance between us as I hurled a bolt of chaos magic at his flank. It struck, knocking him sideways in the air, but he turned with the momentum and used it to roll and reorient, gaining some height again. His eyes burned golden again, and I narrowly managed to drop out of the path of a pair of searing golden beams. They raked past me, ploughing a long, deep furrow through the red earth of the yard, dirt and shattered stone fountaining into the air.

  Thena used the low stone fence as a stepping stone, bounding up onto it before stepping onto Gil’s waiting hand, who was winding up like he was about to slap the air. An instant later, he flung her upwards like she was a shotput—a classic fastball special! Golden wireframes came together into a pair of golden daggers as she ascended, cutting across Ikaris’s line of flight.

  He twisted to block, distracted by her attack, and I gathered my magic in my hands, drawing deeply on my well of power again. Ikaris grappled with Thena for only a couple of seconds before tossing her away, but it was enough for me to focus my own attack. Flickering wisps of red magic flared up around the edges of his body, and I wrenched downwards as hard as I could, a raw pulse of telekinetic force slamming downward like an anvil dropping onto him from above.

  Ikaris dipped hard, bobbing drunkenly in the air for an instant before letting himself drop to the ground. He rounded on me, furious eyes glaring golden, and I released my hold of him as twin lances of cosmic energy once again carved through the air toward me. I had already started redirecting my energy, weaving a proper barrier between us, raising my hands and catching the beams in the dead centre of the shield, a couple of feet in front of my face. Ikaris advanced a step toward me and I felt the intensity of the blasts increase, but my shield held as I fed more power into it.

  His assault cut off abruptly as Thena darted back in at him. I didn’t even see where she’d drawn the spear from, it was just there in her hands, silver-black and unmistakable—my spear.

  Ikaris stepped back, anticipating a thrust, but instead, Thena twisted and slammed the weapon downward, right through his foot. He screamed, the vibranium weapon parting flesh and—with the strength of an Eternal goddess behind it—overpenetrating to staple his foot to the ground like she was pinning a butterfly to a board.

  Gil was already beside her, grabbing at the haft of the spear with one golden-gauntleted hand to drive it forward in a brutal follow-through punch straight into Ikaris’s face. I heard the crack from where I was standing, and Ikaris reeled back, his nose bloodied—for a moment, I thought he’d pulled his foot through the blade of the spearhead, but the weapon was yanked from the ground and clattered aside as his eyes flared golden again. Thena already had a shield up, the beams raking across it and Gilgamesh’s blocking arms.

  Threads of chaos magic flared up around my vibranium spear where it lay on the ground and I flicked my fingers, sending it shooting forward, aimed straight at Ikaris’s chest. He saw it coming and was airborne again, bobbing to the side to avoid the attack. I thrust upward, the spear arcing up and rounding on him again like a giant version of Yondu’s Yaka arrow. I hadn’t done this in a little while! God, it felt good to have my spear back. Thena started flinging daggers at Ikaris as well, a few of the small constructs scoring hits that cut shallow lines across his arms and torso.

  We weren’t just distracting him, though—we were boxing him in, forcing him into position. Right when his back was turned, Gilgamesh leapt upwards, launching himself with tremendous force. Even with Thena and I harrying him, Ikaris still managed to twist and drop down, aiming to have Gil overshoot him, but Gilgamesh caught him with an overhand, open-palm slap that sent him smashing down with enough force that I felt the ground shake under my feet, the earth shattering from the impact.

  As Gil landed, his hand clamped around the ankle of Ikaris’s injured foot and he wrenched him through the air, trying to ragdoll him and slam him into the ground again, but Ikaris managed to halt himself in midair. His other foot slammed into Gilgamesh’s face, causing the other Eternal to lose his grip as he went flying, bouncing across the rocky ground several times before managing to stop several dozen metres away.

  Thena closed with Ikaris again, swinging a golden glaive in an overarm strike that caught him a glancing blow to the shoulder as he rapidly gained height to evade. I flicked my spear at him again and he caught it this time, visibly angry as he flung it back in my direction as hard as he could. Dodging to the side as the spear buried itself a good foot or so in the earth, I flung three bolts of chaos magic at Ikaris in rapid succession, and he twisted toward me, cutting them out of the sky with a sweep of his eye beams before throwing himself forward at me. I was already moving, hands moving as I started to weave a barrier between us to catch his next attack, but he was just too fast.

  Ikaris smashed through the half-woven shield like it wasn’t there at all, moving faster than I could dodge as his hand wrapped around my throat like a vice, the protection spell armouring me flexing dangerously under his fingers.

  I didn’t have time to react, the world snapping into a smear of colour and wind and pressure as Ikaris wrenched me skyward. If he hadn’t had a grip on my throat, I think the sudden acceleration might’ve just snapped my neck outright. My spine stretched under the G-force, organs shoving downward like they were trying to punch through my pelvis. My chest locked up, ribs creaking under the strain, the oxygen vacuumed from my lungs like I’d stepped into space. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

  The roar of wind became a scream, then thinned into something worse: silence. The air vanished so fast my ears felt like they were going to burst. My vision tunnelled, my thoughts suddenly hazy and far away, heartbeat thundering against the fingers pressed into my throat, furious and useless. My skin burned cold, the protection spell the only thing keeping the sensation of what felt like dry ice dragging across every inch of exposed flesh at bay. When we stopped—stopped dead, like slamming into a glass wall—I nearly blacked out. Everything inside me kept moving, ribs wrenching, stomach twisting, the sky a dull, gasping blur overhead.

  And then we were still. Tears cracked and froze in the corners of my eyes. I tried to suck in a breath and got nothing—just a thin, freezing trickle that felt like breathing through a straw filled with knives. The wind was almost gone, too—thin, eerie, whispering past my ears; the world had gone quiet. Every instinct screamed to inhale, but there was nothing left to breathe. Just cold. Out of the corner of my eye, some panicking part of me noted that I could see the horizon start to curve.

  I scrabbled feebly at Ikaris’s arm, but it was like grabbing an iron girder. My magic was slippery, twisting out of my grasp like I’d been sedated, fuzziness clawing at the edges of my mind. The protection spell was holding, but the Eternal didn’t bother trying to break through it. He just held me there, face set into an impassive scowl as he watched me start to suffocate. This was… what was I even supposed to do against someone like him?

  This wasn’t fair. I’d been trying so hard. Did it really not matter? I was supposed to be the Scarlet Witch, but when it really came down to it, when it really counted? I was still only human.

  I could barely think. I needed… I needed…

  I burst backwards out of my body, hurling my soul as deep into the astral plane as I could. I was still gasping like a beached fish, but this would at least—

  My eyes widened in shock as Ikaris’s head visibly started to turn, millimetre by millimetre, tracking the passage of my astral body. Even with the washed-out nature of my perception of the world, I saw the energy build in his eyes. There was a moment of raw panic, then beams of golden cosmic energy lanced out of them. They crawled toward me like they were passing through syrup—my dilated perception of time thankfully making them easily dodged—and I yanked myself downward, dropping down toward the Earth while my thoughts raced.

  What could I even do at this point? I couldn’t use magic that affected the physical world while I was this deep in the astral, and if I went shallower, he’d just rip my soul apart directly. The Heart-Shaped Herb’s enhancement would probably keep me conscious for a little while longer than a normal person—how long did it take to suffocate a super soldier?—but after that, I’d pass out, then die. Thena and Gil couldn’t fly, so they couldn’t reach me. I…

  Wait.

  My connection to Thena felt strange. She was blazing with power, somehow.

  I grabbed it and yanked like I was reeling in a fishing line, pulling my untethered spirit toward her so fast that it almost felt like I’d teleported. Thena was… wearing a helmet?

  It was a classical Greek style, with large flared cheek pieces that swept forward and down and a crest on a ridge along the crown, formed from the same organic golden wireframes that she used to create weapons. I’d never seen her create armour before, that was Gil’s thing—but the blazing yellow gemstone sitting in the middle of the helm’s forehead made me realise the simple truth: Thena’s helmet wasn’t armour. It was a weapon.

  She’d created an interface for the Mind Stone.

  More wireframes were in the process of rapidly assembling around her, faster than her power usually constructed them—a round shield in one hand, a spear in the other, completing the Spartan look. A pair of wide, golden wings spread outwards from her back, each long feather a blade modelled in golden outline. I had a moment of double-vision once again, seeing her clad in a full-body suit of shining golden armour for just an instant, a long red cape hanging from her shoulders, before it was gone again.

  Not just a Goddess of War. Athena Nike. Goddess of Victory.

  Gilgamesh was next to her, his mouth open and moving, caught mid-yell. There was something distraught about his expression, like he was desperately screaming something at her. Thena wasn’t looking at him, though. As her wings finished forming, I saw her knees bend as she started to brace herself against the ground, preparing to launch herself skyward.

  Okay. I had no idea how fast she was with those wings, but at least this was something.

  We could do this. I just needed to stay alive long enough for her to catch up.