The Sage of the Mind

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The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 26

Somewhere in the cosmos

–Ancient One–

Mediating between faes and their numerous enemies was always a chore, always has been and always will be, one that Agomotto took upon himself and then thrust onto the role of the Sorcerer Supreme.

While the work itself was very menial, it was in regular intervals and also required one to have a patience and calm attitude, one that could only be gained by having their minds subjected to the flow of time thousands of times by using the powers of the Eye of Agamotto.

Every 26 years, she had to come to this realm, to negotiate a deal of non-interference between the fae and the people they had passed off in their long existence. Time didn't really mean anything to the fae since they were essentially entirely conceptual in nature and thus, had no risk of dying until the eventual heat death of the universe.

Killing the fae in their own realm was impossible and they rarely ventured out, so it made addressing grievances that much more difficult. But the fae did, sometimes, venture out for various reasons. Entertainment, boredom, to kill themselves.

Oh yeah, some of the fae do eventually get content or frustrated or bored with their lives and seek to end their existence by venturing out of their safe abode and into the dangerous maw of the universe. The thing was that they could not really have that happening.

As mentioned, Fae was entirely conceptual in nature, and providing a conceptual snack to a demon lord, or a hell lord, or Vishanti forbid, Dormammu, would mean that they were just adding to the arsenal of their enemies.

Thus, the treaty of non-interference, allowing the Fae to move around in a safe environment, whilst limiting the number of deals that the Fae could make with the ones from the other realms. That was how the Fae had been safely withdrawn from Earth and kept in a small artificial dimension where they could do all the stuff they wanted, without the risk of empowering a demon lord, or making a deal with a ruler and then prompting him to slaughter the people under his rule. Stuff like that.

Unfortunately, this stuff was important. More so than killing yet another demon that had slipped through the nets or hunting down another rogue sorcerer because if the Fae were ever to be allowed to make deals with humans. Well, she knew what humans were like and the results would not be good.

Every time she tried to see into that future, it was so terrible that she had to erase part of her memory, to function properly, because apparently, Fae's empowered avatars' influence could travel back through time as well. If she had not cut the connection at the right time, her soul might have been damaged a bit.

"I suppose that marks the end of this summit, then?" She stood up and looked down at all the creatures that had assembled here. They all looked comically small in comparison but that was only because of the rules imposed on this dimension. As the rule enforcer, she was exempt of course but the rest of the species were not. Even the Dragons, known to reach sizes rivaling some small countries back on Earth, were not spared and turned into sizes that would more be suited for a 2-year-old kid rather than a hundred thousand-year-old Dragon Elder.

The deal was the same as before, nothing much changed in it except the date for the next summit, which, thankfully, she would not have to attend. The mere thought of it brought back a muted flash of happiness before that too, was dulled by her mind. See, for centuries, more if the time spent lost in the timestream was counted, she had not really felt anything.

No pain, no happiness, no sadness, and no grief. Nothing. It was as if, for the vast powers she had gained through looking through millions of timelines with the Eye of Agamotto, she had to sacrifice something.

She had to sacrifice her name, her feelings, and even her sense of time because even today, she had to use specifically calibrated temporal anchors to help her ascertain whether this was the reality or just another temporal simulation she was seeing using the Eye of Agamotto.

She smiled as she thought of one such temporal anchor, one who came into the timestream very recently.

Axle Riddle.

Somehow, in the vast multiverse of timelines she was able to witness, he was not there in anyone, aside from this one. The chances of his existence were so low that it would have been better to call them zero, and that was coming from her, who knew that even the infinitesimal possibility had the potential to become true, overcoming all odds set against it.

And that was why she had decided. When she would go back to the New York Sanctum she would—

Hmm? What was this?

She hastily exited the summit after greeting the Queen Fae, and as soon as she was out of the artificial dimension, she swiftly took out an artefact from her personal storage. 

Communication within alternate dimensions was tricky at best if you didn't have a portal open between the two places. So, for one side to contact the other, you needed the help of artifacts forged from the broken parts of smaller dimensions, allowing them some leeway in skirting the rules regarding interdimensional communication.

One such artefact was the one in her hand. It was unnamed, because the moment somebody tried to name it, it stopped working for them so they figured that it did have a name, they just didn't know it yet. It was primarily used by Kamar Taj to ascertain the threats that any Sanctum could be facing at any given moment in time.

Right now, the threat rating was at the deepest red, something that hadn't happened in the past few centuries. And the Sanctum was the New York Sanctum.

Well, that complicated things.

She would have to make haste, lest Axle pick a fight with some demon who could shrug off his powers, however unlikely as that may be.

_________xx_______

–Axle Riddle–

Ah, this was so amusing.

The girl must have been completely unprepared for something like this if she fainted at the mere sight of a pen and paper, confirming that his attention was on her.

To be honest, she wasn't really dressed as an agent either. Clad in comfy pajamas and fluffy slippers, she looked the epitome of lounge material as she had just face-planted on the coffee table.

He had not intervened for two reasons.

One, it was hilarious, how her head thunked on the table and had yet to come back, meaning that she truly had fallen unconscious.

Secondly, he didn't want to make it look like he did anything to her. Non-interference and all that. The last thing he wanted was for Fury to come hound him for supposedly tampering with an agent.

Ah, there they were, he thought to himself as he saw or rather felt the three blacked-out SUVs hauling ass, burning rubber, as they rushed to the safehouse, probably worried about their agent.

He could not recognise anyone in the cars, so it was some agent with high enough clearance to interact with him but not important enough to be mentioned in the MCU. They were also packing in some serious firepower. 

Sheesh, it was as if they expected him to attack them and if he did attack them, they expected those toys to do anything to him. What a bunch of fools.

Did they learn nothing after all this time?

He once again inspected the safehouse and found cameras at every angle. All of them were currently pointed at the unconscious agent and the floating pen and paper.

Soon, the SUVs reached the safehouse building, and judging by the way the doorman just slid the door open, not even pausing to blink as heavily armed men entered the building he was supposed to guard, he might be in on the whole safehouse thing as well.

He looked at the pen and paper and thought of the new trick he had learned in the spare time he now had because of his second mind thingy.

That was how once the agents cautiously opened the blast door and entered in, just the one unarmed agent, he noticed, he saw a bizarre sight of an unconscious agent in a vulnerable position and a floating bobblehead, composed entirely of torn paper shaped into a vague replica of a human face.

And for the extra dramatic effect, he had a bunch of rubber bands inside the floating paper bobblehead. Once he made the rubbers vibrate at the specific frequency he wanted to…

"Greetings, SHIELD," 

A very robotic, unnatural, and slow voice sounded out in the room.

Up until that point, Agent Ross was the perfect picture of calm and wary, as was written in the SHIELD handbooks about handling such situations. The second that creepy sound was made in the room, his face warped in terror as he pulled out his service weapon and fired two rounds into the floating white nightmare-inducing head.

The sound of gunfire brought the agents that were on standby, into the safehouse, who then proceeded to unload their magazines into the bobblehead, with one of the agents scrambling to get the now very awake and scared Random Beautiful Agent 1.

All the while, he laughed back in his apartment. 

Ah, what a shitshow!

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