28 [Horus] Kingdom come

  As I stood there looking at the vast underground achieve filled with at least some of the wisdom of the ages, with all of it preserved by magic to protect it from age, dust, and vermin, two things happened.

  First, I began to suspect someone had emptied out the library of Alexandria before it burned, and second…

  Someone destroyed one of my crystallized duplicates.

  Or it had something done to it to remove the ward I had carved into it, but in either case, I knew someone was here, and had taken down one of my enchanted servants.

  The first thing I did in reaction was to transform into a cracking blue version of myself that was made of pure electricity. Then I reached out with my energy senses, finding dozens of shielded electronic devices inside the hidden city of Z’Gambo where none had been before.

  Two of the electronic signals were large and complex enough that they had to be vehicles, while several were scattering then leapfrogging each other as they moved away from their transports, and yet other smaller ones were spreading out in every direction.

  I figured the ones moving together were troops of some kind, while the others... drones perhaps?

  Becoming solid once more I tapped on one of the arrays of runes I had etched into my Unstable molecular fiber armor. With my eyes now linked to the runes marked on either side of my diamond minions, I could begin to direct them to positions from which they could both observe and conceal themselves.

  Each one of them represented a good twenty minutes of my personal time, so I wasn’t going to just let them keep working on gathering up the bones of the former inhabitants of the hidden land while someone picked them off one by one.

  Peeping through number seven’s eyes, I swore.

  While each of the intruders wore a different mask, their matching uniforms in red and gold, the spears, and not too crude, but their chests clearly marked who had come for me.

  The Dora Milaje…

  Switching back to my less vulnerable electrical form, my voice crackled and popped like an old record player as I swore. “God Dammit…”

  What the hell happened to Wakanda being hidden isolationists? I was supposed to be able to pull off faking a Wakandan accent and letting people draw their own conclusions for years, or at least months before any of those rabid xenophobes did anything regarding the world outside their sealed borders.

  But nope, right after the very first thing I try to accomplish in Africa I get what looks like two squads of four women each, plus whoever was still on the quid jets done up in Wakandan colors…

  And now yet another jet arrived with four more of them coming out of it escorting…

  Shuri?

  The Black Panther’s younger sister, but in some sort of almost mystical looking black and blue uniform, with mismatched shoulder guards, and a goofy looking headdress that involved six inch long tusks hanging from it like earrings.

  Her hair was done up in a dozen or so long braids, all of which were wrapped up in white strips along with more of the same wrapped around both of her forearms.

  …and then she just exploded into a cloud of blackbirds that began to rapidly fly off in all directions.

  I guess some things happened over these last six years since Doom had last updated the information that had been loaded into my head by my creche.

  Surprise, surprise. But worst yet, birds aren't electronic. I can’t track their energy.

  But I can track the electronics of one of the drones flying deep into the central hall of the city, and flying up to meet it in the form of neutrinos before turning back into flesh and blood I was able to snatch the nearly invisible sparrow sized smooth virbranium ball out of the air.

  “Please inform Princess Shuri that if her intentions are peaceful, I will welcome her presence in my city in the main hall at the center of this building. If her intentions are otherwise…”

  A burst of intense electromagnetic energy pumped into the drone quickly made it begin to spark and emit smoke, but I continued pumping in rapidly varying amounts of volts and currants until I felt the last of the electrical activity in the device die out.

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  I admit, I toned down on the Wakandan accent while I had said all of that, I had never intended to outright claim to be one of them, just to imply it, but then again I didn’t want to drop it entirely. What was I else was I going to do, use my old Mid West American accent? I want to be seen as an African, but without favoring any one nation here over another.

  But to be seen as a renegade, or perhaps exiled Wakandan? That would have worked… on anyone other than a Wakandan.

  Rising up from the floor above one again in the pale blue form of nutritious brought me into the sunlit grand hall beneath its still intact domed ceilings, I found eight of the Dora Milaje surrounding me in plain sight from all around the room, while two others had vanished from my senses.

  Electronically at least.

  Most likely they had stripped off anything they had that was electronic having already figured out who I was and what my powers were, at least those ones I shared with Monica Rambeau.

  Tuning my senses to heat let me pick up where the two remaining elites from where they were lurking at, with one posed at my back, and one standing next to a duller heat but still human sized heat source standing just outside the entrance to the chamber.

  I gave a polite, but in no way submissive bow in that direction as I spoke in fluent Wakandan.

  “Welcome to Z’Gambo Princess Shuri. While I do plan on receiving visitors, and eventually new inhabitants to my city, I’m afraid I am not yet prepared to welcome either, or diplomatic missions.”

  The Wakandan Princess came striding out of the shadows, her footsteps graceful but heavy as the sunlight revealed both her clothing and skin converting from being made of stone back to her normal appearance.

  She tilted her head at me with her brows raised. “Our mission here is yet to be determined, but I do not enjoy speaking with those who hide behind masks.”

  While maintaining eye contact with her, I slowly gestured to the masked Dora Milaje all around me and twirled my outstretched hands a bit to emphasize who and what I was pointing out at her.

  She winced, just a little. “Point made.” She partially turned her head away from me to glance over to the masked woman beside her who gave out a curt command of “Masks” before removing her own, followed by all of the rest of the Princess's guard a pair at a time, so that only two would have their vision impaired at once, however briefly.

  Shuri then lifted her chin at me in a wordless challenge.

  Well, if it’s that important to you.

  I peeled back my mask along with the flexible ‘helmet’ and met the woman’s eyes. In return, she gave me a considering look before the guard beside her spoke up. “You are not of Wakanda.”

  Without looking at the woman standing beside her, I answered the princess instead. “I have no nation, no heritage, or at least not one I wish to claim. You know who my father is, and I highly doubt that you have not guessed who he chose for my mother. Wakanda is the one nation in Africa that needs nothing from anyone else and takes nothing away. I have chosen to sound like one of you so that I would be welcomed as a native of this continent without any one nation being able to claim me solely as their own.”

  Changing over to English, and a mid Atlantic accent which had been created to sound like a compromise between an American and English accent, I continued. “There doesn't seem to be something similar to this, familiar to anyone who speaks a shared language without truly sounding like any one nation’s version of it. At least not for Africa. Wakandan is the closest I could think of.”

  Even as her guard tensed up in anger, the Princess grinned a little and snorted, in a rather cute and somehow ladylike kind of way, “Of all the things an outsider has tried to steal from Wakanda, I think this is something we can forgive. It cost us nothing.” She waggled a finger at me. “As long as you never actually claim to be Wakandan.”

  Then her smile faded, and her stance changed from relaxed to something more martial.

  “But now we must discuss your invasion of Z’Gambo who we hold by treaty a sacred duty of mutual defense. As well as the death of the sole remaining Z’Gamboian.”

  Well… crap.