Great sonic blasts pummeled the land and tried to take out the Black Panther and his Dora Milaje bodyguards. Creatures woven of the booming thunder, congealed solid sound, were formed into herds and packs and sent forth at them as if alive.

T’Challa took out a round orb from his belt pouch, glancing at Dealer above, whose silvery Cards were sweeping through the sonic constructs and disrupting them before they could do any harm... but that just allowed the Klaw-wielder to make more.

He had seen her before, of course, back when she was visiting the Rain Queen compound, but this little sphere had been given to him by her on the day of his father’s funeral. A raid on the vibranium mines, led by the mercenary Klaw, had caught his father in an explosion and mine collapse, and even if the raiders had mostly been killed, Klaw had survived the wrath of the Wakandans by somehow being transformed into a being of solid sound, fleeing the country with a small amount of vibranium.

The precious metal had returned, wrought into a strange instrument of Weird Science that could focus sonic energies as no other weapon they had ever seen, and even render sound energies as solid as real matter.

The Orb Dealer had made for him was a magical thing, and it had been made to kill Klaw and nullify his weapon!

T’Challa flipped the sliding switch on it, and the world went Silent.

He charged the wielder of the Klaw at full speed, this time not bothering to dodge the Askar’s sonic constructs or his blasts of sound.

The first blast of sound splattered against the sphere of Silence, much as had that of Ulysses Klaw himself. A pride of sonic lions leapt at him in mechanical motion and synchronicity, their roars inaudible. Their shimmery energy forms vanished as they struck the Silence, gone without a ripple.

Cards fluttered, and the two cyborgs and lightning wielder that remained had no chance to do anything as magic wound about them and cut them off from T’Challa, giving them no chance to support their ally.

His two Dora leapt upon the cyborgs, who grimaced as the women came in close. Wakandan weapons were very good, and the women of the Dora Milaje were very, very well-trained. The Askar who had given up their flesh for the strength of metal would not last long.

The man with the Klaw was screaming something T’Challa could not hear as the bell-like nozzle of the Klaw spewed out blasts of sound, walls of sound, and creatures of sound. They all vanished into the Silence around the Black Panther. The only thing T’Challa could hear was the pounding of his infuriated heart as he leapt at the panicking Askar, his claws spread wide.

Ulysses Klaw had screamed back then, too, as Silence came down about him and ate away at his body of solid sound. The Silent Orb had another button on it, which burst forth in vivic fire. T’Challa had torn open a wound in Klaw’s disintegrating body, set the Orb within, and then pinned him and watched him die, burning away in vivus that cleaned away the last of him, and even purged his weapon of any traces of him.

Made of sound or no, the soul of Ulysses Klaw was now gone, and would not be returning to this world.

---

A Six and Seven of Clubs slammed down on either side of Thunder Caller as he was flailing madly with his maces, trying to launch lightning in all directions, but especially at the floating Dealer, who was basically ignoring his attacks entirely as they bent around her and were sucked into a floating metal sphere behind her back.

Thunder Caller’s arms snapped out to either side, his arms tightened on his golden maces, and he stared in alarm as black voltage crawled out from the Cards and began to play over him.

As so many had danced to his lightning, now he screamed and began to dance the same way.

T’Challa looked up from the bloody but still-living Askar, tearing the Klaw off the fallen man before he turned off the Silent Orb and straightened up.

The cracks of thunder and the howling of the wind were instantly returned to him. Cries of pained men and machines added to them as vibranium spears buried themselves in artificial joints and shoulders, electricity flared, and the cyborgs went down, one after another, their other mechanical limbs swiftly crippled and removed from them before the Dora retreated. It was not a moment too soon, the self-destructs inside both men exploding violently and ripping them apart for their failure.

Doubtless impure-bloods coerced into taking this step, good only to die in the eyes of the Askar.

The real fight was taking place a kilometer to the west.

A lurid red light was concentrated there, swelling to the sky, and the land and air seemed to ripple interchangeably as it whelmed, reality shifting at the will of the ancient who wielded the Ka-Stone. The clouds themselves peeled away, or burned like fire, rained boulders upon the land, or crackled with lightning in unnatural hues. The ground was heaving like a thing alive, hills forming, then smoothing out, or plunging into chasms in irregular cycles, as if thrusting against the power that opposed it.

In direct challenge to the red, a golden light flared like a new sun, and if it could not rise to rival the power of the ruby light that was all around it, neither could the ruby collapse upon it and suppress it. It burned with unwinking grandeur and ceaseless brilliance, fighting back without effort, and all that the ruby hurled against it seemed to burn away and recede.

There were attempts by the ruby to turn in their direction, or to hurl bolts into the sky at the two women up there whose other jobs were now done. A great sculpted face in the clouds was turning upon that source of ruby, and an array of Cards was being built in the air, burning with silver.

But when the ruby light thrust out with bolts of force, or tried to generate a wave, or expanded in their direction, the golden light exploded forth, diamond-hard and keen, spearing for the source of the crimson light with crystalline accuracy and unremitting force. The attacks faltered and dissipated as hasty shields were raised against the attack, and the gold was forced rapidly back once more.

“Your Majesty, the Askari troops have all been neutralized!” Captain M’Dengu reported to him on coms. T’Challa glanced at Thunder Caller, still suspended in the air between the phantasmal Cards, black lightning making him twitch even in unconsciousness, his maces fallen from his hands. The Askari’s scout, sniper, and not-quite-so-clever Caster had been the first ones to fall, the sniper taken out by Draufganger literally appearing atop him and cutting him down with Core-charged Sun Strikes in a blur of silvered blades.

More lightning began to thunder forth, crashing forth into the ruby dome and making it ripple. A vortex of clouds seized the heavens directly above the lurid light, ripped it free of the Ruby Domain, and began to spin in an ominous and rapidly-increasing manner.

As the Storm Goddess’ wrath converged on the Sphinx, the golden light instantly grew once again. It was no stronger, but the Domain could not expend the force to keep it down, and so it expanded once again... once again moving directly towards the source of the effect.

Draufganger popped in eight feet above T’Challa and to his right. He’d already registered the Bamf effect as friendly to his suit’s scanners, and did not react as the blue-skinned, demonic-looking swashbuckler landed next to him.

“Your Majesty,” the German swordsman greeted him, looking in the same direction. “Is, ah, there anything we can do?” he asked carefully, all three of his gleaming swords burying themselves point-first in the ground.

“That looks like reality manipulation.” Kurt Wagner nodded slowly in agreement, able to feel the dimension-bending going on there. “I think that, without overwhelming power of our own, it would not be good to test the extent of the Ka Stone’s power,” T’Challa advised. “I confess to being surprised by the resilience of Sunstone’s power. The Ka Stone simply cannot keep it down.”

“It is an open secret that Sunny’s power lays in the Sunstone embedded in her breastbone,” Kurt said cautiously. “I have seen it burning like a star when she uses it for long periods of time, but I have never seen her run out of power. She said the skill in wielding it is not to draw greater power from it, but to be a smoother and more harmonious conductor of the power it will give you. If you are not suitable, then it will simply consume you rapidly. If you are not truly harmonious and in synch, it will burn you out over time.”

“I see. A dangerous tool, then,” the King of Wakanda nodded. “By my estimations, she seems to be very much in synch with the... Sunstone?”

“Yes.” Seeing no further use for them, Kurt’s rapiers shrank down into their hilts, and even the ornate guards withdrew. Kurt stashed the hilts in the three sheaths at the back of his waist deftly, even his tail moving precisely to do so. “But I confess that I have never seen her use the power like this...”

------

Sunstone watched the array being built by Dealer, and started advancing into the teeth of the Ka-stone’s Domain.

The power of the Ka-Stone was indeed great, able to mess with reality on an impressive scale. However, the Sunstone’s ability was unending power, and what was that power but more reality being made?

Thus, the Ka-Stone was trying to manipulate and annul the reality around her, and it was succeeding in doing so... but she just made more!

She hadn’t even delved into the reserves secured in the Underweb Pocket they’d set up. Months of constant streams of power were there, diverted off for use some time in the future, not even causing any strain to her body as they were sent off.

She hadn’t gotten to keep the extra physical Buffs of the Spider Totem Pact, but the default changes had been excellent by themselves, and those she had retained she certainly built atop of with the Sunstone’s augmentations. On top of that, she knew how to manipulate energy, and had the alchemy to make changes to her own body to facilitate using the power of the Sunstone.

People would have been very surprised to see the gleaming crystalline bones of her skeleton, she was sure. Letting the power of the Sunstone flow through your organs unchecked was a really bad idea. The passive energies were fine, stacking on her own muscle power and making her a low-end Paramount. But the active stuff would just ravage her cells over time, and even the healing power of having so much energy to draw on wouldn’t save her.

Nope, let it go through the bones. People commented on her golden fingernails, not realizing they were actually gold-veined crystal, the better to release the Sunstone’s power smoothly.

“You! Woman! How are you doing this?!” swore the tall and muscular Egyptian male, clad in a style of robe and headdress that had gone out of style thousands of years ago. The Ruby on his forehead was burning like a crimson sun, pouring out the energy that should have made this whole area his own playpen, and instead he was preoccupied with trying to crush a glowbug that simply would not go out.

His Domain was being forced back by powerful forces manipulating reality on their own. Ororo’s Weather Control was another huge reality control tool, throwing thousands of tons of atmosphere and massive amounts of energy at the Sphinx, forcing the Ka-Stone to confront power with power, spending more of its reserves. The cyclone building overhead was starting to grind down, putting ever more pressure on the Ka-Stone and forcing its Domain to shrink.

“You know nothing of the Stone you wield,” she replied with disdain, pausing as he bore down on her once more, and forced the blazing light of the Sunstone back. Coherent golden light warred with ruby reality control, sparking and flaring, and she just kept pouring the power forth, the Sunstone visible inside her chest like a hot white light putting out the radiant juice.

“Nothing?! NOTHING?!” howled the Sphinx, the ancient getting even madder as he was unable to crush the pale-skinned, golden-haired woman in front of him. “For four thousand years have I carried the Ka-Stone, and you dare to say I have learned nothing of it?!” he raged at her, and the golden light fell back another couple of inches before steadying again, while the edges of his Domain collapsed further.

Dealer’s Array was almost done, Sunstone noted with a smirk.

“Idiot!” she replied aloofly. “Your Stone is far older than that, and its original name is not some puerile ‘Ka-Stone.’ It is the ‘Godstone’.” She took another step forward, and another as his face faltered. “So named because it had the power to bend reality to its bearer’s will, and so it was called by its makers and those who bore it at their behest!”

He was staring at her in shock and disbelief, but the ring of truth in her voice was preying on his concentration. He was ignoring or did not care about the silver star that was starting to form out there. “Where... how did you learn this?” he demanded of her.

“Did you think the Godstone was created ALONE?” she snarled at him, and now she pulled out some of the power hoarded over these months and years. Golden light flared, pressed back against the ruby as she doubled the amount coming out, and coherent light began to reach for him again, forcing his Domain to collapse further to stave off her push. “Do you think your Stone does not have LIMITS?” she went on, and flicked out a minute of her time.