The "G" Shield

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Kamar Taj[August 2015]

–Jack Sullivan–

He was back in Kamar Taj, after going through a few days of sparring, drinking and partying with the Asgardians as Asgard was in a full celebratory mood since they finally had a new King now. Even the death of Odin that was announced did not seem to dim the mood for any of the Asgardians.

In fact, they seemed to party harder because of the fact. When asked, they told him, "Why would we be sad? The All Father reached Valhalla. It is an occasion to celebrate!" Before pouring down copious amounts of alcohol down their throats and then trying to do the same to him as well. His enhanced constitution did allow him to match some of the Asgardians in their drinking capacity but even he was no match for the veteran drinkers, who could outdrink even Thor somehow, or so they boasted in the tavern he frequented.

There were still no signs of Sif or the Warrior Three back on Asgard and Thor had sent out more search parties. Thor was quickly sifting through the nobles who were actually running Asgard when Loki was King and was sorting them out, so to speak. Thor's legitimate rule made sure that none of the nobles dared lie to their King, so all of the gold that they collected fell right back into Asgard's treasury.

Trade was reopened. Entire contingents of Einherjar were sent through the Rainbow Bridge, probably to all the other Nine Realms, to announce that Thor has become King or something. 

If he was not wrong, there will be an extravagant crowning ceremony that every single Realm's ruler will be invited to. He just didn't know who was going to be invited from Earth. The Ancient One told him that Kamar Taj was just the protector of Midgard, not its ruler. Earth technically didn't have any single ruler and while SWORD should be the one who would represent the planet, they were not really set up for that.

OR, he skid to a halt, from all the pacing he had been doing in his quarters, were they?

He immediately made to get out of his quarters, only to come face to face with Wong himself.

"Oh, Hello Master Wong. What can I do for you?" He asked Wong since it was very rare for Wong to approach anyone of his own accord. He was a very reserved individual who loved listening to Beyonce in his spare time.

Well, he could understand that. She really made everyone feel her music and that was what counted the most when it came to music.

"The Ancient One has given me the duty to inform you that you will be representing Kamar Taj for an event in the Realm Eternal"

He paused at that. Realm Eter— "Oh, you mean Asgard? Yeah, sure, I'll go. Who else is coming with me?" He asked since he was very junior when it came to the Masters and he expected someone else, probably another old fogey, who was going to come with him to "rein" him in.

"Great. I will inform her about it. In the meantime, she has told me about some pest problem in the "Afterlife," 

He gave Wong a confused look for a moment before his superpowered brain caught up and he immediately gave Wong a thumbs up before flying up in the air. Ever since Wanda's attack on Kamar Taj, the wards had been raised to their highest settings without triggering war time wards which meant that no opening portals right in the middle of the compound.

He broke the rule sometimes but he received a backlash for it, which was manageable for him but not so much for all the other decidedly baseline human Masters.

Hovering right above the place where the compound used to be, he pondered on what to do. Ever since that fiasco in Australia which was still being used to try and push the Accords into the UN, he hadn't heard of Wanda or any significant event that would give them any clues to Wanda's location.

The Ancient One had informed the Avengers that Wanda was Kamar TAj's problem exclusively but as far as he knew, there had been no concrete attempts on her end to catch Wanda. Not that it would be easy but between him and her, along with some other mystically resistant members providing support, he was sure that Wanda would be captured or even killed in the ensuing battle.

Then again, the very fact that nothing of note had happened in the world that would draw their attention meant that Wanda had either gone into hiding or was living in a reality warped area where anything outside of the ordinary was summarily ignored.

Even that should have been traced by Kamar Taj so it probably meant that Wanda was currently in hiding. It had been over a year since her last sighting so he should probably go look for her once he was done resolving the issue that was the Afterlife.

He didn't know exactly why the Ancient ONe had taken interest in Inhumans but if she warned him about them, then there must be something happening there.

He didn't exactly know the exact location but he knew that Jiaying lived somewhere near Hunan village in China. Browsing the location on his phone, he saw a high resolution photo of a nearby village and opened a portal straight to the place, and found himself floating in front of a forest.

"Well, nobody said it would be easy," He said as he resolved to fly over a vast area at high speeds to see which area the Afterlife was situated in. He had to be quick about it as well since the Coronation ceremony was in two days and he had no idea if he needed to prepare beforehand or something.

Also, he needed to make at least a token effort towards recognising SWORD as the premier authority of Earth when it comes to extraterrestrial matters. Giving them the Helicarriers was the first step and now that most of the red tape was gone and they were actively hiring, mostly vetted previous SHIELD staff for their roster, he hoped that they could make some difference in the upcoming event.

After flying at very high speeds for over 2 hours, he finally found a place that could be the Afterlife. It was hard to tell because it was naturally camouflaged and the only reason he found it was because he sent in hundreds of his micro barriers in all directions and one of them found itself embedded in a red arch that was right in the middle of nowhere. The arch was well maintained and clean as well, further providing him proof that someone did live in the middle of nowhere.

He slowly floated down to the area of the arch, covered in a cloaking spell. He couldn't risk anyone else coming in too soon. As far as he knew from his memories, Jiaying was the de facto leader of the entire palace, being the eldest out of all of them. She was the one who pulled the entire community together and she was the one that held the most hatred for humanity, which was not justified since she aimed it at the entirety of humanity instead of the animal who experimented on her.

All the others in the community were either brainwashed into believing that Jiaying was the one who would lead them all into salvation or had no other choice because they were all rejected and Jiaying, along with her brainwashed people, were the only ones who took all of them in.

Gordon, he thought, was the biggest asset of Jiaying and he was probably the one he would target first, either incapacitate or worst case scenario, separate a few limbs and then cast the strongest sleep spell he knew, which was not that good because, once again, he really focused more on getting his barrier powers up to speed instead of learning new and complex spells.

There were some innocent people in Afterlife as well, people who were just now brought into the community and were not yet integrated or brainwashed into believing their Supreme Leader's words yet. They had plenty of combatants but none of them posed any threat to him.

The electricity guy could have done something had it been anyone else aside from him. Slowly floating forward, he crossed the threshold of the arc and then immediately deflated, pausing mid air.

"Of Course. Ofcourse, it had to be demons. My life just couldn't be simple, could it?" He asked himself as he landed on the ground and removed the cloaking spell. There was no point in that since the moment he crossed over that arch, he stumbled onto a demon enclave, something of an enclosed space that could only be created by generals of Demon Lords. Only someone of that power could create and sustain this giant formation without withering into dust or being detected by the various mechanisms of Kamar Taj.

He hated demons, that went without saying but he hated intelligent demons even more, and this reeked of some elaborate scheme that he simply had no interest in. The only reason he was not flattening this entire place was because he had yet to ascertain if the (In)humans were still alive or if they could be rescued from the clutches of the demons or not.

Ideally, he should have been assaulted by a number of lesser demons or humans, empowered by demonic energy into becoming a monster that would die within a few weeks but would serve the Demons' purposes just fine, but right now, there was just eerie silence, and that was bugging him.

He flew through the giant compound, and then through the lake, the maze and then straight into the other section of the place, according to the helpful map he found right after the arc, and voila.

A sacrificial altar with a single person standing in front of it, surrounded by a pile of corpses of both old and young? Check.

Massive amounts of demon miasma being leaked into the surroundings as a direct result of the ritual? Check.

The ritual about to be completed, only to summon some uber powerful demon who might pose a threat to him? Check.

"Oh, hell no!" he muttered as he sent his barriers, slicing straight through the corpse of Jiaying and straight into the ritual altar, which was surrounded by demonic runes that pulsed red. Ofcourse, ritual powered by blood, and not just normal human blood, Inhuman blood.

He learned in Kamar Taj that blood, willingly given was the most powerful ingredient in any ritual, be it good or bad, but blood that was taken forcibly was the best ingredient for a demonic ritual because while the blood twisted the ritual and the subject of the ritual, it was exactly what the demons wanted so they had no problem forcibly taking blood.

Also, another thing he learned was that each and every single ability that anybody in the universe had, aside from some nominal super strength that was gained in proportion to the muscle the being might have, came from other dimensions. Yes, mutants, Inhumans, Eternals, every single being in this world capable of manipulating energy to get some sort of desired effect on the fabric of reality, drew upon some form of energy from alternate dimensions.

Essentially, every single Inhuman was a Sorcerer, just a vastly limited and untrained one, without the knowledge of the dangers of being a Sorcerer.

And the blood of The Masters of the Mystic Art? People whose blood has been touched by extra dimensional energy over and over again? It was priceless for demons because even a relatively small amount of that blood could power a large ritual or sustain a portal for long enough that the demons could actually get an army through.

Now, as he watched the pile of dead Inhuman husks, drained of all their blood, he realised that the demon must be having a field day, consuming the lifeblood of so many pseudo sorcerers, without anyone noticing about it.

Well, someone did and sent someone to do something about it.

So, here goes. First off, he flicked his finger, creating about a dozen more barriers as they sliced through the slowly creeping up body of Jiaying, which was creepy. Then the barriers did it, again and again, until the body was nothing more than flesh, and no blood somehow. Damn, the infestation must be deep for her body to be so thoroughly demonic.

Then another series of barriers which disrupted the ritual, collected the blood in a single barrier which he immediately flung right into the waste disposal section of Kamar Taj which was just an underwater cave built into one of the oceans. It was one of the places where the Masters could dump stuff that they needed cleansed but could not do so immediately because of extenuating circumstances.

The ritual let out a series of wrong sounds as the fuel surrounding the ritual was gone, the altar began dimming down, as a series of curses echoed from the altar. He waited for the altar to fully dim down, collapse down on the ground and then leaned back a bit as a tendril of shadows almost reached his face, before it was caught up by his barriers.

He was well versed in demons and their sneaky tactics.

"Well buddy, time to meet the Light Realm, don't you think?" He smiled at the shadowy mass that was being restrained by his barriers and being dragged away from the altar, and then pinged one of the Masters using their global network that could be used as an SOS, training request, or even normal messages.

With his reputation, he only had to wait 2 minutes before a portal opened up in front of him, and Master Rick, a relatively young Master, walked through.

"Hey, Jack! What can I– Hooly shit! Damn, that is a lot of darkness in one place."

He nodded, "Yup! Think you can do it?"

Rick did not look confident, "Well, I can certainly try."

"That's all I ask,"

…..

….

"Well, what do you know, you can do it," He praised Rick who was absolutely sprawled down on the ground, breathing deeply because of the amount of Light energy it took to actually destroy the demon. Oh sure, it acted dead a couple of times but it was not his first demon hunting rodeo so he made sure that every single drop of that shadowy creature was gone.

It was intelligent but it didn't speak much, which was new.

"Well, you're welcome," Rick said and stood up from his barriers where he was lying because actually lying down on the ground that had been contaminated by not just forcibly taken ritualistic blood but also the shadowy tendrils had been disposed of, leaving behind who knows how many germs.

Thankfully, Demon germs could not survive Earth's atmosphere and usually dissipated within hours of no contact with any lifeform. Seeing that he could not sense anything alive in this place, it saved him the trouble of hunting down any infected animal but still, he could not risk anything and leave this place for a couple of hours.

And that meant Master Rick had to stay with him as well.

Ah, so much for an "infestation".

Word Count - 2614

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