I had naturally been present with the Richards, too. I knew what was going on, and just in case something went south, I was on hand, displaced in a different direction, under my own invisibility, completely unsuspected by the two Asgardian Casters and Sekhmet’s vengeful avatar/champion/pawn.

Karnilla was going to pay the price immediately.

“Release me!” the Norn Queen raged at me. “If you do not free me immediately, the wrath I will visit upon your descendants will have no limit! They will know the ire of the Norn Queen forever! I will force them to live under my Curses and tender ministrations in despair and squalor all their lives for you having dared to imprison me!”

I’d been listening to this rant from the gem I had Bound her in for some time. When the air popped open and Dealer joined me on the balcony of Mr. Hill’s house, we both stepped through a Portal back to the wilds of Asgard.

The Portal closed behind us, and I decided that I’d had enough.

I hauled back and gave her a direct mental wallop.

She felt it coming. This was direct Will against Will, nothing fancy, the purest form of mental contest. She scoffed as she braced for it, bringing up her mental defenses to grapple with me.

Her scream as I broke her mental blockade was loud, and then I crushed her down inside her little jeweled cage and proceeded to coolly hammer at her.

She tried to keep up her mental defenses, she really did. But Kwannon had learned marvelous amounts about telepathic combat, and I was the Sage of Focus. I slammed mental blow after blow into her, until she could do nothing but cower and hide from the next one, saying nothing more.

She could also tell I wasn’t really putting a bunch of effort into it.

I mentally stood back and glowered at her. Shaken, she looked up at me in the mindscape, and then up behind me.

Eight ruby eyes were looking at her. Everything about them was radiating ‘LUNCH!’

“The Widow in the Web!” she blurted out, staring at my skinflint Patron.

“Karnilla, self-styled Queen of the Norns,” I said without emotion. “You’ve two options before you. Contrary to what you believe, you are neither so valuable that I can’t kill you, nor so powerful that I can’t kill you.

“You struck at my friends and myself, perhaps relying on the fact that no mere mortals could strike back at you, and you could do as you please.” I tossed a mental thumb over my shoulder. “My Patron here thinks you look tasty, and She is totally and completely capable of devouring you. You will not pass Go, and you will not go to Niflheim. You will simply be GONE.”

She read the situation very thoroughly, judged my bored personality, and realized she really was about to die. Yet with all the dignity of a goddess and archsorceress, she got to her mental feet and focused on me. “You would not be telling me all this if you did not want something from me,” she stated knowingly, realizing she was dealing with at least a peer, and someone supremely dangerous. “What is the price for my freedom?”

“Your freedom?” I repeated once, still bored, and her face turned down. “Do I look like someone who wants to have an ageless backstabber around poking in my business and upsetting all my apple carts?

“No, Karnilla, this isn’t about your freedom at all.”

She was even stiffer as she replied, “Then, what is it you want?” much more politely, if coolly.

“One of two things is going to happen here.” I held up two fingers. “The first, you will determine to fight me, and die like a goddess.

“I am going to go into your head using magic very similar to what you gave Ororo Munroe, and I am going to take your Asgardian power, your magic, your learning, your lore, and make it my own. Lest you think I cannot, I have already done so to Amora.”

She flinched in shock. The Enchantress was not her equal in magic, but the simple fact I had done it to one Asgardian goddess meant I could do it to another.

“When I am done with you and taken everything you have, doing unto you as you’ve done to others, I am going to feed you to my Patron here. You are going to vanish, and nobody’s going to know you’re even missing.”

Her mental swallow was visible, despite her composure. She was in a bad way, and she knew it. “And the second choice?” she asked with careful calm.

“You give me your True Name, I get everything I want from you willingly, and perhaps sometime in the future, you will indeed be released and freed. One shard of hope, as I understand is your style. I trust the taste is to your liking?”

Flat, bored, uncaring. I literally had no opinion on what she chose. I would treat her exactly as she treated others, her whims and indifferent cruelty totally appropriate to a sorceress goddess who need be held liable to no one and nothing, a queen in her domain who could not be challenged.

A lot of her own spells feeding back on her plus a lovetap to the skull said otherwise.

“I will give you five minutes to consider your position, and then we will begin, one way or another.”

A timer started at three hundred and began counting down.

---

I opened my eyes back up and saw Storm and Dealer standing there.

Dealer would have looked funnier being pregnant if she didn’t float everywhere. Seeing Storm there in the same outfit Ororo had been wearing in the maelstrom was a bit jarring, as she flexed her arm and inspected her nails critically.

“Any problems?” I asked, crossing my arms.

Storm shook her head once. “No. You were right, the Asgardian energy was enough to power a Duplicate mind on Asgard here, and the same quantum shift that Reed and Sue benefited from has touched Storm here. No Asgardian Racial Level, it was burned off the original.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” I admitted, while Dealer prepared to administer the Psychic Reformatting. “What one of our templates did you end up with?” I inquired of Storm.

Storm smiled very widely. “I am thinking that I would not mind being a queen OR a goddess.” Her smile was wide and dazzling. “Of course, one must do these things properly!”

I nodded once. “You will inform T’Challa?”

“Of course. If he wishes to cut relations with me, I will understand. Africa is not a small place. I will find much to do.” Her eyes shimmered with power, and the skies swirled overhead.

We’d not been able to Assay Ororo and learn her Human/2 Obsession. It was a standard for Human/2 Assays, but it had simply been... absent.

Very absent. Conspicuously absent. It hadn’t popped up on any Assays right from the beginning.

False information we would have been sensitive to, knowing Truth like we did. No information... meant she was hiding something.

Discerning the power doing that had taken a couple care trips and observations by Dealer, who had to make sure the interfering Entity wasn’t alerted by the counter-Detecting going on.

Sekhmet. Egyptian warrior goddess of battle, punishment, and the sun. Bringer of the wrath of Ra, creator of the deserts and the many plagues that sprang forth from it.

Like most of the gods of Heliopolis, she was experiencing something of a resurgence, but not at the same level of Isis or even Bast, and certainly not equal to Horus or Osiris.

Or Seth, obviously, who had thrown his influence behind the Askari.

Ororo had been approached in the desert as she fled Cairo when young, and the truth of the Askar being behind her parent’s death been revealed to her. At the same time, the suffering that outlanders had inflicted upon Africa had been poured out upon her, and there were many, many children who had been caught between them, and who wanted them all punished.

The Askari thought they were manipulating her, but she was just using them. My stopping her assault on Europe had just moved up the plans of her and her goddess, sending them to the Rain Queens to ‘learn the true ways’, and amusingly enough, gain direct contact with Wakandan royalty, with whom Sekhmet also had a long-stranding grudge, and whose inaction she blamed for much of the ills of the continent and its people.

Also, Osebo the Panther-God had a much better relationship with Bast than with her, and the Wakandans followed Beast Totems, instead of the gods!

Dealer’s intervention to bring Ororo along here was to reward her if she had a pure heart, and tempt her to reveal herself fully, if not. The Askari attack Dealer had aided them with, along with Sunny, had been meant to kill the Black Panther. Then Ororo, wielding the power of Sekhmet, had been ready to take on the Sphinx, defeat him, and take on the role of queen and goddess-ruler of Wakanda, and in time, all of Africa.

She had played her part well, and none of those around her had suspected anything. A little missing detail in a topical Assay...

Karnilla, it seems, was an associate of Sekhmet. How the two knew each other I’d find out shortly. Aiding Ororo in stealing the powers, talents, and knowledge of Reed and Susan, and then ambushing me when I arrived to cover up all the tracks, was a minor favor she hadn’t expected to go so wrong with sufficient pre-planning.

Unfortunately for her, I had severely under-emphasized my Casting power to Ororo on the trip out here. The trio of them had been sure they’d Girded and used Rituals strong enough to overcome me, but they were still a good twenty levels low of what they needed to be at.

I very specifically hadn’t told her about the Leveling paradigm power of an Ur-Priest drawing from any and all gods, faiths, and powers...

She was very much not the Ororo of the comics, and now, she was taken out of the equation.

I was going to have to tell Sama about this, too. More Egyptian gods getting involved was, eh...

The new Storm had come about by using the same technique Felicia had: going to another dimension and abusing the Duplicate and Sim rules there, instead of our own home. Asgard was connected to our home realm, so burning some Divine energy was necessary, but it did the job.

Dealer applied the Psychic Reformation, and the new 19/18/18 Storm shifted her Levels around to both match that of the former, and to complete the advancement schema I had given to her over a year ago, suitably optimized for now.

==========

Storm Oct, Terra’s Storm, the Wind-Rider, Young Rain Goddess

Female Powered Human/5 (Mutant), Goddess/1* (Weather), Base Spider Totem Template

Scout/6, Monk/4, Minstrel/4, Lyric Theurge/4 (Minstrel/Sorc); Psion/3 (Air and Lightning), Cerebral Theurge/10 (Sorc/Psion), Nature’s Mind/6 (Psion/Druid); Ur/2, Druid Shaman/1 (7)* (Weather), Sorceress/1 (Learned), Theurge of Balance/8 (Ur/Druid), Elemental Theurge/4 (Sorc/Druid), Heirophant/2

Strength: (11) 14-> 24 [30] Height: 5’11

Dexterity: 18 -> 25 [30] Weight: 145 lbs

Constitution: 15-> 22 [30] Hair: White

Intelligence: 20-> 41 Eyes: Blue

Wisdom: (12) 18 ->29

Charisma: (12) 18 ->29

Health: 103

Soak: 411

Movement: 90’

Arcane Pool: 45 (3+ Ki (17) + Heartsong (25))

Mutant/Psion Core: Mutant 367->385 / Psion: 473 (311 Class + 142 Intellect Bonus +20 Mastery/5)

Theurgic Caster Levels: Ur-Priest/10 (48); Sorcerer/19; Druid/19; Psion/19; Minstrel/8 (Nog reduced Slots)

Notable Talents/Traits: Lineage of Thunder, Lineage of Rain; Naturally Focused, Dauntless; Leader, Diplomatic; Slayer: Ninja, Tong, Werewolf, Skrull/Dire Wraith, Brood, Fiends, Mutates, Constructs (robots) (acquired); Master of Three Dragons (Moon, Shadow, Sun); Master of Night Rose; Sealed Identity

--Mutant Terra’s Storm Core Template: Weather Goddess; Sky Goddess

Templated Powers: Enhanced Might (--); Enhanced Reflexes (--); Increased Fortitude and Stamina (--); Poison Resistance and Acquired Immunity; Radiation Immunity; Perfect Balance; Enhanced Speed and Jumping; Impact Resistance

Widow Training: Enhanced Healing, Enhanced Memory, Combat Instincts, Fast Learner, Steady Mindset

============

Notably, she basically still had a direct copy of the original body, which among other things meant she could still have children. She’d basically burned off the Asgardian Racial Level for the base Spider Totem physical buffs using the Duplicate Spell, but hadn’t, for example, inherited the Fire/Cold Rituals, a Nova Core, or anything similar, even copies of Soul Tats or being Sustained via Ring.

Burning her body off to make a depowered Duplicate basically left Ororo Munroe with no body at all, a disembodied victim whose fate was to die or be absorbed... exactly as she’d intended of the Richards.

Amusingly enough, Storm had the straight Druid Levels to apply the Ritual of the Fiery Heart and the Ceremony of the Frozen Soul Templates to herself on her own, she just needed a Node for them. Sama probably knew where the ones on Terra were...