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"Hmph!"
Agatha held nothing back.
Dense, nearly tangible purple magic erupted from her body like a raging tsunami, flooding the entire ruined church in an instant. The air hummed with unsettling energy. Purple runes flickered in and out of existence, carrying a devouring aura as they swept toward Hermione.
Hermione's expression didn't change. She raised her wand.
A point of deep black light bloomed at the tip. Then vast, silent black magic spread outward and met the surging purple tide head-on.
BOOM!
Purple and black, two entirely different, equally enormous forces, collided in the air above the church floor.
No earth-shattering explosion. Just the sound of energy annihilating energy.
The purple magic surged and battered, trying to devour and swallow the darkness whole. The black magic didn't budge. It absorbed every wave without flinching, and then, slowly, steadily, began pushing back, forcing the purple energy to retreat inch by inch.
Agatha's face darkened by the second.
She could feel it clearly: her power being suppressed.
Good thing I leveled up to Rank Six, Hermione thought. Without the Power Stone, relying on magic alone, this might've actually been a fight.
This Agatha Harkness wasn't widely known across the universe, but Hermione knew exactly who she was. This was the woman who could casually suppress the Scarlet Witch, the Scarlet Witch who, after Endgame, had been strong enough to tear Thanos apart with her bare hands. In terms of pure magical power and centuries of combat experience, she was nearly unmatched on Earth outside of the Ancient One. And she had that absorption ability on top of it all, the magical equivalent of a black hole. A nightmare for any sorcerer.
"How is this possible?" Agatha cried out, even as she kept pouring power forward. "My dark magic — why can't it absorb your power?!"
Her signature technique had completely failed. Hermione's magic simply wouldn't resonate with her own. It couldn't be drawn in. It couldn't be consumed.
"A wizard's power comes from within," Hermione said, her tone conversational. "It's endogenous — self-generated. Your power, and the power of those sorcerers at Kamar-Taj, is borrowed. Drawn from dimensional demons, cosmic energies, external sources. The two systems are incompatible."
Agatha's pupils contracted.
She had never once considered the possibility of a magical tradition built entirely on internal power, with no external dependency whatsoever.
Her purple magic was losing ground. She could see it.
Agatha's hand snapped out.
An ancient black book materialized at her side, radiating wrongness from every page. It fell open with no wind to move it.
A low, resonant HUM filled the church.
Something deeper surged from within those pages, darker, more sinister, more chaotic, and poured into Agatha's magic. The purple energy that had been steadily retreating swelled back in an instant, pressing forward, faintly beginning to push against Hermione's black tide.
Hermione's eyebrow lifted.
"So the Darkhold is yours."
Agatha stared at her.
Silence.
She had gone completely numb.
How does this witch know everything?
She'd seen the videos, footage of this girl dismantling the Chitauri fleet and the Dark Elf armada. She'd been impressed. But not worried. She had been confident she could do the same.
Standing here now, she understood exactly how wrong she'd been.
How does someone train to this level?
A girl barely fifteen, sixteen at the outside, more powerful and more learned than a witch who had lived for centuries. The title "Dark Witch" had apparently been earned. No wonder prophecies kept surfacing everywhere lately.
The Scarlet Witch? Compared to the one in front of her right now, they weren't even in the same category.
Agatha gritted her teeth. Today was not going to end cleanly.
She gathered what she had left, bracing for her strongest strike,
And Hermione dropped all of her black magic at once.
The sudden reversal nearly threw Agatha off her feet. She lurched, barely caught herself, and came within a breath of wrenching her back.
She stared at Hermione, completely lost.
"Look," Hermione said, spreading her hands, relaxed. "We don't actually have any deep grudge between us, do we? Is it really necessary to fight to the death the moment we meet?"
Agatha blinked. She couldn't find words.
Hermione didn't wait for her to find them. She turned to Strange, who was still sitting on the floor looking thoroughly confused, and jerked her chin at him. "You. Explain. What happened?"
The moment she'd spotted the red-clad girl standing beside him, she'd already pieced together seventy percent of it. But she wanted confirmation.
Strange had recovered enough to speak. He straightened immediately.
"I was passing through Sokovia a few days ago when I sensed an extremely unusual energy signature, powerful and latent, unlike anything I'd encountered before. I followed it and found this young lady." He gestured toward Wanda, who was still standing slightly wide-eyed at his side. "Wanda Maximoff. She's a natural-born caster — practically made for this. So I began helping her awaken her abilities."
He glanced at Agatha.
"Then, just as we were getting somewhere, this old woman appeared out of nowhere, sniffed her way straight to us, and tried to take her without a word of explanation."
"Alright, that's enough." Hermione cut him off.
Agatha, to her credit, didn't even flinch at being called an old woman. She simply spread her hands, expression calm. "That's essentially accurate. I was passing by, I sensed Chaos Magic, I came to investigate, and I found more than I expected."
Hermione studied her. The woman's composure was genuinely impressive, steady and adaptable, unruffled even in defeat.
She turned her attention to Wanda, who hadn't spoken a word since Hermione arrived. The girl's eyes were full of confusion and barely-concealed fear.
Blue light flared in Hermione's eyes. She looked at Wanda carefully, taking in every detail.
Her face arranged itself into a perfectly calibrated expression of surprise. "No way. The Scarlet Witch?"
She'd recognized her the moment she walked in, of course. But a performance was a performance.
It worked exactly as intended. The instant the title left Hermione's mouth, Agatha's eyes lit up like lamps. She actually clapped her hands together.
"You see it too! Yes! This girl is the Scarlet Witch of legend, the destined one, the perfect vessel for Chaos Magic! If I could guide her to a full awakening and then absorb her power, I could, "
She stopped.
The excitement fell off her face like a mask being dropped. She looked at Hermione, something equal parts resigned and rueful in her expression.
"Though it seems, with you here protecting her, this Chaos Magic and I were never meant to cross paths."
Hermione blinked. Something turned over in her mind.
She looked at the witch in front of her, ancient, powerful, experienced, and holding the Darkhold, and smiled.
It was a slow smile. A considering one.
"Who said anything about never?" Hermione said. "Agatha Harkness, how would you feel about joining the Witch Cult?"
➤ Next: Big Bad Seed and Little Bad Seed
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