The "G" Shield

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Kamar Taj [August 2015]

–Jack Sullivan.–

The second he opened the portal straight into Kamar Taj, it was buffed off, which was well within his expectations. It would seem that the timeline had gone completely out of whack, with Thor being who he was, Ego being killed off early, and then Kaeciulius attacking much earlier in the timeline.

Without access to the wards, something that was easily within Kaecilius' reach because one of the few Masters with runescape orientation, he only had a single other option to reach Kamar Taj, and that was flying into the ritual chambers, something that would normally be forbidden but it was on a whole other ward scheme and since the ritual room was probably not being used at the moment, the portal restriction must be off.

And he was right but that did not fill him with joy, as he flew straight into the ritual room, clad in his barriers, ready to call upon the Power Stone at a moment's notice. While Kaecilius was laughable as an opponent, the powers that Dormmamu could grant his Thralls were numerous and versatile in their application, and with an effectively unlimited power source like the Dark Dimension, who knows what they might be able to do to him.

He threw the ritual room open, ready to thrown down with any foe who dared stand in his way who also had the distinct stink of the Dark Dimension but to his horror and resignation, he found no sign of Kaecilius, only death and destruction.

With an exhausted sigh, dozens of small barriers appeared around him and then whizzed past all the corners, ready to map the entire place to tell him if anyone survived because the dead body of the person in front of him did not fill him with confidence about the state of all the other Masters.

Yup. Mordo was dead.

"Damn it!" He cursed as he flew towards the Library, worried about Wong and the others. His other barriers had already found the few initiates and journeyman apprentices that survived the onslaught and were already hauling them to the medic section. He was going to go there right after he confirmed a few things.

He warned the Ancient One to atleast get rid of the few pages from the book of Cagliostro that detailed how to connect with Dormammu's energy to extend their lifespan and how to do it discreetly and how to do it to establish communication with the Dark Lord. But no, she said that it was not her place to restrict or erase mystical knowledge, wisdom collected by the Previous Sorcerer Supremes.

According to her, knowledge that could be useful for future Sorcerer Supremes cannot be removed from the library by the Sorcerer Supreme, it would be against everything that her title stands for.

He entered the library and was thankful that there were no blood spatters, no dark energy stinking up his senses, well, more so than usual. The Reserved Library did hold quite a few books that had more than enough Dark Spells in them that if the book was anywhere other than Kamar Taj, the Sorcerer Supreme herself would have tracked the book down and retrieved it.

He flew through the entire library multiple times over, checking everything and to his relief, found nothing that would indicate that a fight broke out over here, much less a murder of the Librarian, who was Wong actually, not some other guy who Kaeciulius would kill and then Wong would take over that job.

As far as his knowledge went, Stephen Strange had still not suffered that accident and his career as a very good doctor, the best in Stephen's own words, was still going strong. He wondered if he butterfly-ed away the next Sorcerer Supreme, which would be very very bad, because that would mean that there would be no one else to lead Kamar Taj.

He arrived at the medic wing, which had thankfully begun working on its own, with some of the Old Masters coming out of retirement or more likely, hiding as they helped the surviving members.

When he entered the place, everybody paused and began staring at him, which was not odd because he was kinda sorta famous in Kamar Taj but this time, the stares were not quite the same, of awe and sometimes envy. No, this time they were of fear, desperation, and hope.

Damn, this was tough. Being put on the spot.

"Where are all the people?" He ended up asking them since he was barely seeing a hundred people alive and another 20 or so dead. He could not see a single Master in the dead bodies, with Mordo being the exception.

Even in front of him, only the Masters who had come, probably after hearing the alarm he activated that would send out a planet wide alarm, ordering all living Masters to report back to Kamar Taj for a world ending emergency, were visible to him.

Everybody shook his head and he sighed, "Alright. Just get healed up. I will check out the rest of the compound but before that, here," He waved his hand and conjured a giant barrier that covered the entire medic wing, even under the building, creating a perfect seal for them, with enough air stored as well, "-this should make sure that you guys are safe. I will be back in a couple of minutes,"

He noted the way everyone loosened and some even outright passed out once they knew they were in a safe environment, nodded at the group of Masters healing everyone, and flew right to the Sanctum entrances.

He burst open the doors, unthinking of trivial things like decorum or caution, and looked at the always floating orange globe that signaled the status of the three Sanctums that made sure that the shield that protected Earth, actually worked, and it was actually missing a Sanctum.

He winced as the Hong Kong Sanctum was not connected to the network of the shield. It was a big red spot on the globe. Damn, that was not good.

He opened a portal straight to the Sanctum since he had been there like every other Master in Kamar Taj and found…rubble. Yup, just rubble. People were beginning to look at him since he was pretty famous but there was nothing left of the Hong Kong Sanctum. He couldn't even sense an iota of magic that it once was. No relics or nothing was left behind.

Something was wrong because there should have been at least dark energy residue in this place if Kaecilius and his ilk did this.

He flew around a bit and lifted a few pieces of the rubble to investigate but there was nothing left. He knew for a fact that the Hong Kong Sanctum had some pretty dangerous relics that would not be destroyed even if someone did destroy the wards of the Sanctum. Their absence meant that someone had stolen everything before the Sanctum was destroyed but that should be impossible since every Sanctum Master was quite strong. Not strong enough to defeat a Dormammu empowered Kaecillius but more than strong enough to not die without doing some serious damage.

Shaking his head, he opened a portal and flew in, to do the thing he should have done at the beginning. Interrogate the survivors.

He reached the medic wing and after entering, he found a mostly passed out audience with the Masters looking exhausted, probably due to the healing spells and also old age, discussing something amongst themselves.

"Master Sullivan," They all bowed at him for some reason.

"Masters, thank you for coming on such short notice. Were you able to gather any information from the survivors?" He doubted it because they were all low ranking members who could be taken out by some of the stronger masters with ease, let alone Kaecilius and his ilk, especially since they had the element of surprise with them.

They probably had a lot of journeymen ambush their peers, striking down and killing many before Master Mordo found them or something.

"Yes. There was a demon infestation found in China that needed the attention of many of the sealing Masters so the majority of our force was busy there. The Ancient One is out tending to some Fae that tried to force its realm into our reality, and will be there for a while,"

Yeah. The Fae were a real thing here and very tricky to deal with, even for the Ancient One. They couldn't be sent away packing with just brute force, that would just invite an even larger brute force from their side and they did have some pretty strong players and one had to be very careful when talking to the Fae, so much so that there were books written in the Library on how to deal with wayward Faes.

He didn't think that any other Master alive had even seen a Fae since the Ancient One always dealt with them before they could do any major damage.

"Who did this?" He interrupted the Masters who were giving him the summary of the property damage done to Kamar Taj and its wards. Buildings could be rebuilt, a hundred times over but not this.

He'd sent two barriers right above the New York and London Sanctums and had found them standing, and also under heavy wards, war time wards that he noted were mostly impenetrable without brute force.

The doors that led to the other Sanctums had also been shut down, but they were shut down from the Sanctum side so that was fine. His barriers also sent out the Identification magical sequence sent out by Fellow Masters, which was unique to each individual, confirmed by a central repository made by the Ancient One.

It was very odd to see the digital systems being replicated by magical means. The central repository confirmed that Master Drumm and Master Sol Rama were the ones who were inside the Sanctum, and also that they knew about the other Sanctum's destruction.

That much was enough for him so here he was, to confirm who did it so he could hunt them down, and kill them because seeing the frozen in pain face of Mordo was very unpleasant. Despite his flaws and the near certainty that he would become evil due to his very rigid moral structure, Mordo was someone who had been with him for a long time and taught him many things as part of Kamar Taj. Also, he was quite respected and had saved a lot of lives.

He did not deserve to die like this. No.

The Masters looked at each other, at his question, "Err, we don't know. Most of the Masters are missing. The apprentices just reported an explosion that knocked them out and then, a shadow went to the downed people and killed them, one by one. They reported that the shadow was wearing a white suit and had three red eyes on its face, one on its forehead."

What?

His face was set in confusion when he finally confirmed that Kamar Taj was void of any intruders, the wards were properly back on and he let the Masters out of the Medical wing to investigate.

A ghost, with clear demonic facial features but with no trace of Dark or Demonic energy?

Was it not Kaecilius who invaded and took some of the Books, alongside the Book of Cagliostro. This time, it was not just a few pages that were stolen but the entire book along with a few others from the restricted section of the Library.

The Time Stone was absent from the Library as well. The wards around the pedestal were intact, indicating that the Ancient One took it herself, to deal with the Fae maybe?

No, the Fae would take that as a sign of aggression, something that the Ancient One would know very well.

So, what was happening?

There were no signs of a scuffle happening in the Library but that was odd in and of itself since Wong did his duty very seriously and would be here in the library guarding it all the time. Entire Books being stolen from the library would have had Wong coming down here from anywhere in the world, even if said fight resulted in him being dead.

"Mater Sullivan!" He heard someone shouting his name and he immediately zipped over, fearing the worst.

"Look, here!" One of Masters pointed his hand, which was glowing blue, towards the downed form of Mordo, specifically towards the back.

His eyes widened as the spell slowly washed over Mordo's back before showing the internal structure. His heart was…crushed?

"Wait, are those…"

"...Handprints, yes. Someone managed to get to Mordo's heart without disturbing anything on the outside and crushed his heart. The only question was how?"

Yeah, that was the same question running in his mind because he scanned Mordo's body, and aside from the lack of his relic, there was no presence of any other foreign magic.

It was as if his heart was crushed by completely mundane means. 

"Keep looking. We need to find out where the other Masters went. Find the Roster. I will go check up on the other Sanctum masters." They nodded at him and he went to check on the New York Sanctum, since it was close to Avengers Tower who needed to be warned about a potential threat to reality here.

Sigh. Will the wave of threats ever end?

Word Count - 2287

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