Max looked at Death across the white expanse, and after a moment, he walked toward her. The Celestials watched him go, and a few of the Watchers turned their heads to follow him.
"Death," he said.
"Ion." Her voice was cold, and she did not look at him.
"I looked for you after I came back," Max said. "Why didn't you come to Oa?"
"I was occupied. I do have a job to do."
"Oh, please. Like that's ever stopped you before." He glanced around at the gathering, at the thousands of Celestials, the Watchers, and the Living Tribunal hanging above them all. "What's all this about? Why are we..."
Death did not answer. Before Max could press her, Infinity spoke, and her voice carried across the white expanse.
"Now that all are present, the high beings of the multiverse are gathered here in the Dimension of Manifestations. We are assembled to give testimony concerning the event now known as the Black Night, its causes, the interventions made during its course, and the consequences that remain unresolved."
Max's eyes widened. So that was what this was. He turned back to Death and lowered his voice.
"Did you get into trouble because you helped me during that battle?"
Death finally looked at him. "What do you think?"
"Ah." Max winced. "That's why you're angry."
Death gave him a look of deep annoyance and turned away again.
"Ion, the Entity of Will, was the primary witness to these events," Infinity continued. "Lady Death, Galactus, and several lesser beings were also present. Their testimony will be heard."
Max stepped forward. "Yes, about that. With all due respect, Tribunal, I don't understand why this needs to be discussed at all. Knull was a mad dog, and he had to be put down."
A voice answered him from among the Celestials, and Max's annoyance with the entire affair rose before the speaker had even finished his first word.
It belonged to the one being in this gathering Max truly disliked. This was not the One Above All, the true Creator who stood beyond even the Tribunal, but the leader of the Celestials, who had taken that name for himself. Max considered him a cunt, and judging by the expressions around the gathering, he was far from alone in that opinion. He caught the eyes of Master Order and Lord Chaos, who both looked about as irritated as he felt, and gave them a small nod. They returned it.
Max was already in a foul mood. He had been pulled here a second before activating the device that might have brought him to his daughter. Every part of him wanted to rage about that, but he did not have the luxury.
The Celestial stepped forward from the ranks of his kind. "Knull served a purpose," he said. "Through your reckless actions, Ion, the multiverse may now stand in danger."
"Oh, please. The multiverse is always in some kind of peril." Max folded his arms. "Knull was using the Black Spectrum to a dangerous degree. Who knows what would have happened if he had been allowed to continue? The Black Light could have breached containment entirely."
"The Black Spectrum is dangerous," the Celestial replied. "Knull was intended to help contain it."
"Well, he was doing a fucking great job of that," Max said. "He used it to kill billions of my people and nearly destroyed everything I had spent billions of years building."
A low rumble of disagreement rose from the Celestials. Some of the Watchers shifted, Lord Chaos laughed outright, and Master Order said something sharp to the Celestial nearest him. Within moments, the entire gathering had begun to descend into argument.
"ORDER."
The Living Tribunal spoke, and the word fell over the gathering. Every voice stopped at once.
The leader of the Celestials waited until the silence had settled before speaking again in a more measured tone.
"We could not destroy the Black Spectrum. We sought to contain its expression. Knull possessed an affinity for the primordial darkness, so we altered him, bound him to the Black Spectrum, and appointed him its custodian."
"Yes, yes, to prevent it from becoming conscious," Max said. "And from what I saw, Knull wasn't doing any of that. It looked to me like he was helping it."
"Knull abandoned the purpose for which he was made, but his domination of the Black Spectrum still imposed a singular will upon it. He did not contain it as we intended. He prevented it from becoming something independent of him," the Celestial said. "By destroying him, you removed that imposed direction. His death removed one of the conditions that prevented the Black Spectrum from forming an independent consciousness."
"What I wanted was to stop the Black Spectrum from forming a consciousness."
"That was never his purpose by the end, and you know it." Max turned toward the Tribunal. "What Adara and I did was right. Knull is gone, and the threat is contained now."
"Don't be so sure about that," Death said quietly.
Max turned to look at her, and so did most of the gathering.
The Living Tribunal's three uncovered faces shifted toward her.
"CAN THE BLACK SPECTRUM AGAIN BREACH THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN ANTI-LIFE AND CREATION?"
"Not now," Death said. "But since that battle, I have become more and more connected to it. It is as though the two of us are fighting for the same domain." She lifted her chin. "I have the makings of a plan to ensure that the Black Light remains contained. One day, I may need Ion's help to enact it."
The Celestials protested at once, and several of them stepped forward as their voices rose. The Tribunal ignored them and turned toward Galactus.
"DEVOURER. CAN YOU CORROBORATE THESE EVENTS?"
"I can," Galactus said. His voice rolled across the white expanse, and the Celestials fell quiet. "I was there to assist Ion. I helped destroy the undead Celestial Veridion, and I watched Ion and Adara destroy Knull together." He looked toward the leader of the Celestials. "I stand with Ion on this matter. Knull was a failed experiment of the Celestials. He is dead now, and it is done. Whatever consequences followed his destruction, allowing him to continue would have produced greater ruin."
Max grinned up at him. "I knew you loved me, Galan."
Galactus did not reply. For an instant, a small smile appeared on his face, but it vanished so quickly that Max almost thought he had imagined it.
The Living Tribunal was silent for a long moment. When it spoke, each of its three faces seemed to speak the words together.
"VERY WELL. THE DESTRUCTION OF KNULL WAS NECESSARY UNDER THE CONDITIONS ESTABLISHED HERE. NO SANCTION IS IMPOSED UPON ION OR ADARA FOR THAT ACT."
The leader of the Celestials began to protest, and the Tribunal spoke over him without raising its voice.
"DEATH'S SANCTION FOR HER INTERVENTION DURING THE BATTLE STANDS. IT WILL BE LIFTED ONLY WHEN SHE HAS ESTABLISHED A STABLE BOUNDARY BETWEEN HER DOMAIN AND THE BLACK SPECTRUM AND SECURED THE BREACH THROUGH WHICH ANTI-LIFE ACTS UPON CREATION."
Max opened his mouth. He had told Death before the battle that if the Tribunal ever came for her because of him, he would take her place, and he had meant it. Death looked at him before he could speak and gave a small shake of her head. Then she turned toward the Tribunal and bowed in acceptance.
Max closed his mouth again, though it did not sit easily with him.
"FURTHER," the Tribunal continued, "ION, ADARA, PARALLAX, THE BUTCHER, OPHIDIAN, PROSELYTE, AND PREDATOR ARE PLACED UNDER DIRECT OBSERVATION. NOTICE OF THIS DECREE WILL REACH EACH OF THEM."
Max's arms lowered to his sides. "What does observation permit?"
"EXAMINATION OF ACTIONS THAT THREATEN THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN THE SOURCE AND CREATION, THE INTEGRITY OF THE FUNDAMENTAL COSMIC PRINCIPLES, OR THE CONTINUED FREEDOM OF LIVING MINDS."
"And what does it prohibit?"
"WAR BETWEEN THE ENTITIES THAT IMPERILS CREATION."
Max stared up at the Tribunal. "You do know what Parallax and the Butcher did to Predator."
"I DO," the Tribunal said. "THAT CONFLICT IS AMONG THE REASONS FOR THIS RULING. THERE WILL BE NO FURTHER ALLOWANCES FOR ESCALATION ON SUCH A SCALE."
Max said nothing.
"ION," the Tribunal continued, "YOUR HISTORY DEMONSTRATES RESTRAINT BEYOND THAT OF SEVERAL OF YOUR COUNTERPARTS. YOU ARE EXPECTED TO ACT WITHIN YOUR CAPACITY TO PREVENT THEIR CONFLICTS FROM REACHING THIS SCALE."
"You've met Parallax, right?"
Lord Chaos made a sound that might have been amusement.
"YOU MAY ACT WHEN THE OTHERS CAUSE HARM," the Tribunal said, ignoring the remark. "YOU ARE NOT TO BE THE INSTIGATOR."
Before Max could reply, the Tribunal turned its three faces outward over the gathering.
"THIS MATTER IS CONCLUDED. THE COURT IS DISMISSED."
The light surrounding the Living Tribunal grew brighter until its vast form became the brightest thing in the Dimension of Manifestations. For an instant, Max could see nothing beyond its three faces and the radiance pouring from them, and then the Tribunal was gone.
The gathering did not vanish with it. The Celestials began to withdraw in groups, passing through openings that appeared in the white expanse, while the Watchers left one after another with far less ceremony. Several of the great abstracts remained behind to speak among themselves now that the judgment had been delivered.
Max barely noticed any of it. His attention was on Death, who still stood exactly where she had throughout the proceedings, composed and still despite the sanction the Tribunal had just placed upon her. He walked over and stopped beside her while the last of the Celestials disappeared behind them.
"I'm sorry," he said. "About getting you in trouble."
Death looked at him for a long moment. "It's nothing. I knew the consequences when I chose to help you, and I would make the same choice again." She paused. "But yes, I was angry with you. I still am, a little."
Max grinned at her. "You could never stay mad at me for long, though. Remember that incident on Kyrox?"
Her eyes narrowed immediately, and Max realized his mistake about half a second too late.
"I had very nearly forgotten Kyrox," Death said. "Thank you for reminding me. Now I am angry with you again."
Max laughed, and although Death did not laugh with him, he saw the faint softening around her eyes that told him she was not nearly as furious as she wanted him to believe.
"I am sorry about Firehair, Max."
He looked away across the white expanse before nodding. "It's fine," he said, though they both knew it was not.
Then something occurred to him, and he turned back to her. "Wait. You said Firehair. You didn't say Aurora."
Death did not answer, and she did not need to. Her silence told him everything, and a grin spread slowly across Max's face.
"She's alive," he said. "I knew she was alive. I've always known it, but hearing it from you..."
Death sighed. "I cannot tell you any more." Her eyes moved past him, and Max turned to follow them. Eternity stood some distance away. "You should speak with him."
Death stepped closer and told him she would come to Oa later. She began to turn away, then stopped and looked back at him one last time.
"Listen to Eternity, Max."
Max stood there for a moment before he noticed Lord Chaos and Master Order preparing to leave. He raised one hand and gave Chaos a friendly wave.
Lord Chaos turned.
"Fuck off."
Max burst out laughing. Master Order looked mortified.
"My apologies on his behalf."
"I heard that!" Chaos shouted as he vanished.
Galactus had already gone, and within a few more moments, the last of the Celestials, abstracts, and Watchers had left as well, until only Max and Eternity remained in the endless white.
Eternity approached him slowly and stopped a short distance away. "It is good to see you again, Ion."
Max folded his arms. "You look like you have bad news for me."
"I do." Eternity's voice was calm and very deep. "It is fortunate that the Tribunal called this gathering when it did. I saw what you were preparing to attempt, and the Tribunal would not have approved of it."
Max's expression hardened. "What, saving my daughter?"
"Opening a pathway into the White Hot Room," Eternity said. "Tearing an opening into it could have produced consequences that not even the Stones would have allowed you to control."
"I accounted for that. The Time Stone would have stabilized our end."
"For a time, perhaps." Eternity's voice softened. "But that is not why I am asking you to stop, Ion. Aurora is not in the White Hot Room. She has never been there. The Phoenix is there, and it is recovering. Your daughter is somewhere else entirely."
For several seconds, Max heard nothing at all. The endless white seemed to lose all sense of distance around him, and he felt as though an enormous weight had been dropped onto his chest. For months, he had built everything around that single answer. He had believed Firehair had saved their daughter in her final moments and that the Phoenix had carried Aurora away to the one place where she would be safe. He had convinced himself that if Aurora survived, there was only one place she could possibly have gone.
Now Eternity had taken that certainty away from him in a single sentence.
"Where is she?" he asked.
"I cannot tell you that."
Max's hands clenched at his sides. "Can't, or won't?"
"Both." Eternity regarded him patiently. "But you will see your daughter again, Max. I can tell you that much."
"When?"
"I cannot tell you that either. You must not force it, Ion. If you do, the consequences will be dire."
"I don't give a fuck about the consequences."
"Then you must learn to give one," Eternity responded. "More than your family is at stake now. I am not omniscient, not as the Tribunal may be, and certainly not as the One Above All is. But I perceive enough of what is coming to know that Aurora has her own path to follow, and that she will play a crucial role in the events ahead."
"She's not some piece on a cosmic board," Max said.
"I agree. That is precisely why I am asking you to wait." Eternity moved a little closer. "She is alive, and she is loved. But if you pursue her now, if you force open realms and tear through the order of events because you cannot bear to wait, you may place her in far greater danger than she faces at this moment. For your sake, for the sake of the multiverse, and above all for hers, let fate bring the two of you together when the time is right."
Max turned away from him and shook his head. Every part of him wanted to reject it. He wanted to tell Eternity to go to hell, return to Oa, gather every Stone he could find, and rip open every dimension between here and the edge of creation until he found her. Waiting no longer suited him. He had already waited for billions of years. He had done his waiting.
But one thing Eternity had said refused to leave his mind: searching for Aurora might be the very thing that put her in danger.
"Please consider my words," Eternity said behind him. "Abandon the search for now. Not forever, only for now." He was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice had become gentler still. "This is the path that gives both you and your daughter the better future."
When Max turned around, Eternity was gone.
He stood alone in the Dimension of Manifestations for a long time. He thought about Aurora and the little time he had spent with her when she had still been with him. Part of him feared that he was beginning to forget it all, that those memories were growing more distant with every passing year.
He had made his decision.
Max closed his eyes and willed himself back into the physical universe.
When he opened them, he was standing in the heart of the Central Power Battery, exactly where he had been before. The device still hummed beside him, with the Reality Stone and the Time Stone glowing in their cradles.
"What the fuck?" Odin shouted. He stood a few paces away with Mjolnir half raised, as though he had been about to fight whatever had taken his friend. "Where did you go?"
"You just vanished," Turgon said, his eyes wide. "You can teleport now?"
"One of your newly recovered abilities, Max?" Agamotto asked.
Max shook his head and looked around at all of them. "How long was I gone?"
"A minute," Odin said. "Perhaps less."
"Seventy-four seconds," Jade said, her voice filling the chamber. "Max, what happened? Shall I begin final activation?"
"No."
The word came out before he had even thought about it, and every face in the chamber turned toward him. Max could not bear to be in that room anymore. He walked to the device, reached into the second cradle, and lifted out the Time Stone. The others watched in shock as he crossed the platform and held it out to Agamotto.
"Take it," he said. "It's yours."
Agamotto did not move at first. "Max?"
"It's yours," Max said again, and after a moment, the old sorcerer accepted it. Max turned toward the device. "Jade, secure the Reality Stone."
Odin stepped toward him. "Max, what are you doing? Aurora is..."
"Not there," Max said, and the chamber went quiet. He kept his eyes on the unfinished device. "She isn't in the White Hot Room. She never was."
"How do you know?" Turgon asked softly.
Max did not answer him.
"I need to be alone for a while," he said, and when Odin said his name and took another step toward him, Max shook his head. "Just for a while, Odin."
Emerald light surrounded him, and he rose from the platform and flew up through the heart of the Battery and out through the opening in its roof.
The multicoloured skies of Oa stretched around him as Max kept flying away from the Battery. Eternity had told him to wait, and Max had already waited for billions of years. If searching for Aurora now truly put her in danger, then he could wait a little longer.
He looked up into Oa's endless sky and allowed himself a single hope.
Wherever Aurora was, whoever she was with, and whatever path Eternity believed she needed to walk, he only wanted her to be safe.
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"Where exactly are you taking me, girl?" Umar asked.
Aurora did not answer. She was walking several paces ahead, leading Umar deeper into the forest along a narrow path that wound between the roots of enormous trees. Umar had followed her for what felt like an hour already. Her robes had caught on three separate branches, and she had stepped in something soft and wet that she had decided not to examine too closely. With every step, her patience wore a little thinner. She had asked the child where they were going four times now, and four times she had received the same unhelpful answer.
"I told you," Aurora said without looking back. "We're going home. Hilde can tell you stuff. She knows everything."
Umar pressed her lips together. Whoever this Hilde was, she was certainly not the girl's mother.
She studied the forest around her, and she did not like what she found. The place reeked of magic. That alone would not have troubled her, but this was a kind she did not recognize. It ran through the soil, the trees, and even the air itself, ancient and wild and entirely unconcerned with her. Every time she reached for it, it slipped away like water through her fingers.
Beyond it, at the very edge of her senses, she could feel something else as well. Pathways surrounded this place on every side, dozens of them, perhaps hundreds, and each one led to a different dimension. They were close enough that she could almost touch them, yet whenever she tried to open even the smallest portal, nothing happened. It was like standing in a room full of doors and discovering that every one of them had been locked from the other side.
It irritated her more than she cared to admit.
Then there was the girl.
Umar watched Aurora skip over a root that was nearly as tall as her knees, and she frowned. The power inside the child was not merely strong. It was familiar. She had felt it once before, a very long time ago, in the middle of a battle she had never forgotten. It had come from a man wrapped in emerald light. Umar had wanted him from the moment she saw him, and she had never quite stopped wanting him. Now she felt that same power within a small child skipping through a forest at the edge of nowhere.
Perhaps they were the same race, Umar thought. Perhaps this world was where his kind came from.
Could he be here?
"Hilde is like my sister," Aurora announced suddenly. "But she's not my real sister. She's my big sister. She's really strong, and she can fight anything, and she has an axe with lightning in it, and she won't let me touch it." She considered this for a moment. "I touched it one time. She got really mad."
"I'm sure she did," Umar said.
"And I have an uncle too. Uncle Merlyn." Aurora hopped over another root. "He has a big beard and he does magic, and sometimes he makes the butterflies glow for me if I ask nicely."
Umar's eyes narrowed slightly at the name. "Merlyn," she repeated. She had heard that name before, somewhere in the long murmur of gossip that passed between sorcerers across the dimensions.
"Uh-huh." Aurora nodded so hard that her hair bounced. "And there was a bad wizard. His name was Necrom, and he was really scary, and he had a face like this."
She stopped walking long enough to pull her face into an expression of exaggerated menace before continuing down the path.
"He wanted to take me away. But Hilde and Uncle Merlyn beat him up, and he went away, and now it's good." She paused. "Hilde hit him with the axe."
"Who is this Necrom?" Umar asked.
"A bad wizard," Aurora said patiently, as though Umar had not been listening. "I just told you."
Umar closed her eyes briefly and decided not to pursue it.
The trees thinned at last, and the path opened into a wide clearing where the afternoon light fell warm and golden. Umar stopped at its edge and looked at what stood in the middle.
It was a house.
A single great tree rose from the centre of the clearing, its trunk and branches coaxed over what must have been centuries into the shape of a home. Higher up, the branches twisted together into a second storey and then a third, while the whole structure was crowned by a vast canopy of leaves. Flowers grew along every sill, and a small stream ran past the porch steps before feeding into a pool where silver fish moved slowly through the shallows.
"That's home!" Aurora shouted, and she broke into a run across the clearing.
Umar opened her mouth to call after her. Before she could say a word, something cold settled against the side of her neck.
She went perfectly still.
The edge of a battleaxe rested against her throat. Lightning crackled faintly along its blade. Umar's first instinct was to answer it with power, and she reached for her magic out of pure habit before remembering that it would not come. Slowly, and with great reluctance, she raised both hands.
"Who are you?" a woman's voice asked from behind her.
Umar turned her head as far as she could without cutting herself on the axe. The woman holding it was tall and beautiful, with long blonde hair pulled back into a warrior's braid and cold blue eyes that watched Umar without blinking. She wore finely made armour of silver and blue, battered by long use, and Umar recognized its style at once.
It was Asgardian.
This woman was Aesir.
"I am Umar," Umar said.
The Asgardian's expression did not change. "Is that supposed to mean something to me?"
Umar's eyes narrowed. "In my home, it would mean a great deal," she said coolly. "Unfortunately, some wizards decided to interrupt a perfectly pleasant afternoon by attacking me. They cast me out of my own dimension, I woke beside a lake in this forest, and now I appear to be trapped here. So, no. At the moment, I suppose it doesn't mean anything at all."
"Hilde!" Aurora came running back across the clearing, her face bright with excitement. "Hilde, Hilde, I found her! She was by the lake and she was all confused, and she didn't know where she was, and I wasn't gonna talk to her 'cause she's a stranger, but then she told me her name, so now she's not a stranger."
The Asgardian glanced down at the child and raised one eyebrow. "Did you now?"
"Uh-huh." Aurora nodded proudly. "Her name's Umar."
"So I hear." The Asgardian looked back at Umar.
Umar drew a slow breath and kept her hands raised. "All I want," she said, "is to know where I am and how I leave. That's all."
The Asgardian studied her for a long moment before lowering the axe.
"Then I'm afraid you're out of luck," she said. "No one leaves this place. Not for now, at least."
She rested the axe against her shoulder.
"My name is Brunnhilde," she said. "And this, sorceress, is Otherworld."
.
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Aurora and the Otherworld will play a central role in the Cul Borson arc which will begin a few chapters.
Umar
Brunnhilde
Aurora
Otherworld
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You can read up to chapter 123 here.
p.a.t.r.eon.com/Illusiveone (check the chapter summary i have it there as well)