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Hermione hovered in midair.
Taneleer Tivan's face had gone ashen, but he forced himself to stay composed, craning his neck to look up at her.
"Cabbage Witch! You certainly arrived quickly." His voice carried the careful weight of a man choosing his words. "Surely you're aware of the unwritten rules among cosmic powers? You already possess two Infinity Stones. Reaching for the Power Stone as well, are you trying to draw universal outrage? To unite every faction in the galaxy against you?"
Hermione tilted her head. Her clear eyes held nothing but genuine puzzlement.
"Rules? What rules? I've never heard of any such thing."
"You..."
Tivan went briefly speechless. He studied her expression, unguarded and unfeigned, and a thought crept in unbidden.
Could she actually not know? Well. She was young, and she'd been buried on that backwater planet Earth her entire life. Being out of the loop was hardly surprising.
He steadied himself and tried reason.
"Take my advice, Lady Witch. Stop while you can. More Infinity Stones is not necessarily better, excessive greed invites destruction. Leave now, and I'll pretend none of this happened. But once word spreads, you'll have a target on your back from every corner of the universe."
Hermione raised one finger and tapped her chin with exaggerated gravity, as if she were genuinely working through the math.
Tivan's shoulders eased slightly. Perhaps there was still room to negotiate.
A pause stretched out. Then a brilliant smile spread across Hermione's face, and her tone turned light and breezy.
"Mmm... I've made up my mind."
Tivan's expression brightened. "You've come around?"
Hermione nodded.
"I have! I'm already here, going home empty-handed would be such a waste." She shifted, a flicker of amusement dancing in her eyes. "As for the trouble you're describing... I'd welcome it. Honestly, I've been short on obedient puppets lately. The more who show up, the better. Saves me from having to handle everything myself."
The silence that followed was absolute.
It wasn't just Tivan. Quill, Gamora, every soul in the room drew a sharp breath at the exact same moment.
The girl looked completely harmless. The words coming out of her mouth were another matter entirely.
Whatever hope Tivan had left collapsed. His face went livid.
"You refuse the easy road and insist on the hard one!" he snarled. "Do you think you can run wild in my Knowhere alone? All forces, attack! Kill her!"
Hidden defensive weaponry throughout the building snapped online in an instant. Hundreds of energy beams and physical projectiles screamed toward Hermione from every angle.
From every direction, guards poured in with weapons raised, closing around her in a tightening ring.
"Honestly." Hermione sighed. "They never listen."
She didn't dodge. She didn't even shift her weight. She simply raised one hand and closed it loosely around the air in front of her.
WUUUUM,
A faint golden barrier bloomed outward from her in all directions. Every beam, every round, every projectile, the instant it touched that barrier, it vanished without a sound.
Then she flipped her palm and pressed it gently downward.
CRACK. CRASH.
The guards who had been surging toward her a heartbeat ago crumpled to the floor in a single wave, weapons, soldiers, and every activated gun emplacement alike, all of them pinned down by a force they couldn't see and couldn't fight. Not one of them moved.
It was effortless. Absolute.
Tivan stood frozen, his whole body cold.
The defense system he had spent a fortune building, the one he was proud of, had folded in front of this girl like it was made of wet paper.
The rumors had undersold her.
"Lady Witch, please — mercy!"
Any concern for the dignity of an Elder of the Universe evaporated. Tivan dropped to his knees with a heavy thud, voice shaking.
"I surrender. The Power Stone is yours. Please — stay your hand."
A textbook display of knowing when to fold.
Hermione descended slowly to the ground. She looked around at the wreckage, then down at Tivan kneeling at her feet, and her brow pinched slightly.
"Just you? I thought Ronan would have shown up by now." She clicked her tongue. "Came a bit early. Should've waited and let everyone arrive before I made a move, would've been so much more efficient."
Tivan: ...
He had one goal now: get this catastrophe out of his collection and out of his life.
Losing the Power Stone hurt. But losing all of Knowhere would hurt considerably more.
He waved to his subordinates, signaling them to retrieve the Orb and bring it forward.
Then the air changed.
A crushing pressure fell from above. Everyone looked up.
A colossal black warship, massive, menacing, shaped like a cross, tore through Knowhere's spatial barrier and hung in the sky above them, blotting out the light and casting everything below in shadow.
A column of blue light dropped into the center of the hall, and when it faded, a towering figure stood in its place. Black battle armor. A war hammer the size of a man. Black war markings painted across his face. Eyes like frozen stone.
Ronan the Accuser.
He didn't look at Hermione. He didn't look at Tivan crumpled on the floor. His gaze went straight to the Orb.
"Tivan." His voice filled the hall like a death sentence. "Hand over the Orb. Or Knowhere burns."
Hermione studied Ronan with frank curiosity, then glanced back down at Tivan.
A slow smile curved her mouth.
"Tivan, you're supposed to be an Elder of the Universe. How have you let yourself get to this point, anyone can just walk in and wipe their boots on you?" She tilted her head toward Ronan. "Look at him. Now that's presence." A beat. "Honestly, compared to your older brother the Grandmaster, you really do fall short."
The color drained from Tivan's face and came back wrong.
Being threatened to his face by Ronan was humiliation enough. Now this little witch was mocking him in front of everyone and dragging his family into it.
He wanted, desperately, to order every man he had left to throw themselves at Ronan. One look at the guards spread-eagled across the floor, none of them capable of standing, and he swallowed it. He swallowed all of it.
Then the situation broke open.
A pink-skinned female alien in servant's clothing exploded out from behind Tivan, eyes blazing with something between madness and desperate hunger.
"Power, infinite power — it's mine!"
She lunged, hand outstretched, and grabbed the purple gem with her bare fingers.
She'd heard every word. The long-buried resentment she'd carried under Tivan's rule had hit a breaking point, and in that moment she believed, truly believed, that this one stone would give her everything. Power enough to tear down the cage she'd lived in.
"Carina, you fool! Let go!" Tivan's composure shattered. He screamed, face twisted in horror. "The Power Stone cannot be touched directly! It will kill you!"
The Eye of Agamotto. The Tesseract. The Aether. The Mind Scepter. All of them were vessels, but vessels built to channel and express the power of their respective stones. The Orb did none of that. It had one function and one function only: to keep its holder alive long enough to use what was inside.
That alone said everything about what the Power Stone really was.
But it was already too late.
The moment Carina's fingers made contact, the energy hit her like a dam breaking.
"AAAAAAARGH,!"
The scream tore through the hall.
Fissures raced across her skin in an instant, spreading like cracked glass, purple light pouring out through every seam.
BOOM,!
The explosion swallowed her whole. A blinding storm of violet energy erupted outward, light and force and violence in every direction at once. The shockwave wasn't like wind. It moved like a wall. The entire hall lurched and shuddered, groaning at its foundations, as if the building itself wasn't sure it was going to hold.
➤ Next: The Grand Brawl
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