[Carter Residence, New York — September 2010, Afternoon]

Ethan tipped the beer bottle back and drained the last of it in one long pull. He lowered it and let out a slow breath of satisfaction.

"Ha," he said. "That hits the spot."

He settled back into the sofa cushions with the comfortable ease of a man who had spent three months in subjective time doing intensive work and had earned the right to sit down.

Jean, Didi, and Elizabeth were arranged across from him, Jean with her notepad still in hand, Didi with her legs folded beneath her, Elizabeth sitting straight with a glass of juice she had brought from the kitchen and had not yet finished.

After coming back from the chamber, Susan had gone straight back to the Baxter Building. She had hugged Ethan at the portal and said she needed to check on things there, which he understood.

Anna and Diana had taken one look at the open sky above the backyard and decided they needed to breathe outdoor air that had not been generated by rune structures, which he also understood.

Three months of subjective time in a closed space, however comfortable and well-stocked, produced a specific and reasonable hunger for horizon.

So he had come upstairs, found a beer in the fridge, and sat down.

Jean looked at him like she was deciding where to start. Her eyes moved to his hair, which now reached his shoulders, and then to his beard, which was full and had not existed that morning.

"Alright," she said. "How did the assimilation go. Because everyone came out and immediately left without saying a word about what happened, which is either a very good sign or a very concerning one."

She paused. "Also, what is with the beard. It is extremely distracting and I need you to explain it before I can focus on anything else."

Ethan touched his jaw with one hand and smiled. "It’s been about three months inside the chamber, Jean. Real subjective time. Anna, Diana, and Susan spent those three months getting a proper handle on the monarch cores. By the time we came out they needed air, food that wasn’t from an infinite rune fridge, and approximately ten minutes of not being in a room even if it can change into different locations."

Didi raised one eyebrow. "Hyperbolic Time Chamber?"

"That is what I am calling it," Ethan said. "The chamber I built this morning. Time, space, gravity, temperature and locations are all adjustable. One day outside equals one year inside at standard setting. The rune bracelets I made let you push it further."

He walked them through the full details, the time dilation ratios, the gravity controls, the scenery modification, the food storage system, the energy absorption structures feeding back into the mansion’s power grid.

Jean’s expression moved from curious to genuinely impressed, which she managed without making it look like she was surprised, because she had learned not to be surprised anymore. Elizabeth sat with her juice and listened with the focused attention.

Didi absorbed it all with her characteristic stillness and then looked at him. "And the beard?"

Ethan’s smile shifted to something more entertained. "Anna decided she liked it," he said. "Somewhere around the six-week mark she told me to stop shaving and I decided that was a reasonable request from a woman who had just spent six weeks mastering the Core of the Beast Monarch."

Jean and Didi looked at each other.

"She is not the only one who likes it," Jean said.

"Not even slightly," Didi agreed. They turned back to Ethan at the same moment with matching expressions that carried a very specific meaning.

Didi tilted her head and said, perfectly casually, "You know, tonight we should really have angry sex."

Elizabeth choked on her juice. The sound she produced was not dignified and she knew it, and she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and looked at the ceiling while her face went red.

Jean laughed and did not attempt to hide it.

Ethan looked at Didi with a grin that had absolutely no shame in it. "Your wish is my command, my lady."

’Three months well spent,’ he thought, ’and apparently the evening is already planned.’

They talked through the rest of it over the next half hour. The assimilation had gone cleanly for all three of them.

Anna had taken to the Beast Monarch Core with ferocity, as if she had spent years learning how to channel overwhelming power and instinctively understood how to direct a new source of it.

She could now wield the full might of the Beast Monarch, making her a force to be reckoned with, especially alongside the other abilities that had somehow merged into her very being, even without her X-Gene.

So even with her X-Gene disabled, she could still use the powers she had absorbed in the past from Logan, Lobo, Superman, and others.

Then comes Diana, she had approached the Destruction Monarch Core with patience and sheer fucking will.

If it had been anyone else, they likely would not have been able to withstand its power. But Diana was a demigod and a woman who refused to give up easily.

She trained harder than the others to bring its power under control, and by the end of their training session, she had done an excellent job containing it.

Even if she had not fully mastered the powers of the Monarch of Destruction yet, she could already display the might of a true Monarch.

And finally Susan, she had taken the Frost Monarch core and spent the first week simply sitting with it, which Ethan had not expected and which had turned out to be exactly the right approach.

With patience and a slow, careful understanding of its nature, Sue eventually achieved complete mastery over the Monarch’s power.

Now, she could truly be called the Monarch of Frost.

All three of them were fully operational now. Proper monarchs, in every sense of the word.

Jean wanted to see what that meant in practice. Ethan told her, Didi and Elizabeth that they could watch after the party, which he had now been briefed on via the guest list Jean slid across the coffee table to him.

He looked it over. X-Men, Sharon Carter and a few close friends.

"This works," he said. "I didn’t want a crowd."

"Neither did I," Jean said. "As for the the venue, we are thinking about the hotel you own in New York."

"I’ll have a floor reserved in my head," he said.

They discussed the logistics for another few minutes, the catering, the timing, and the question of whether Logan could remain civil for an entire evening. They also talked about inviting the Summers family, including Scott, Madelyne, and their five-year-old son, Nathan Summers.

Then Ethan set down the empty bottle and stood up. "I’m going to make a stop at Kamar-Taj," he said. "Carry on without me. I won’t be long."

Jean looked up. "Did something happen?"

Before Ethan could answer, Didi spoke. "After the little stunt our man pulled last night," she said, her tone easy and unhurried, "it is best if he checks in with someone who has experience navigating the aftermath of that kind of declaration."

Ethan turned to look at her for a moment. "You know me too well," he said.

He looked at Jean, caught her eyes, and blew her a slow, deliberate kiss with a grin. Then he looked at Didi and winked.

He raised one hand and the red portal opened in a smooth arc in front of him. He stepped through it and it closed behind him without a sound.

The living room was quiet for a moment.

Elizabeth set her juice glass down carefully. "What is Kamar-Taj?" she asked.

Jean smiled. "It is where we learned magic. Our teacher is there."

Elizabeth’s eyes went wide. "Ethan-sama has a teacher?" She processed this for a beat. "Does that mean his teacher is more powerful than him?"

Didi looked at her curiously. "How did you arrive at that conclusion?"

"Because masters are usually stronger than their students," Elizabeth said, with the certainty of stating an obvious principle.

Jean’s smile stayed in place. "We have never formally discussed the comparison," she said. "But if it ever came to a fight between them, I am quite certain of the outcome."

Elizabeth nodded slowly, her expression settling into something that was equal parts reverent and completely unsurprised. "As expected of Ethan Sama," she said. "Stronger than his own master."

...

[Kamar-Taj, Kathmandu, Nepal — Evening]

The library was quiet in the way that old libraries with thick stone walls tend to be quiet, which is to say thoroughly and without apology.

Wong sat at his usual table near the window with a cup of tea in one hand and a book open in the other.

The book was a detailed survey of multiversal entities, their classifications, their known behaviors, their documented interactions with the Earth dimension over the past three thousand years.

It was, as reading material went, not particularly comforting, but it was useful, and Wong had long since made peace with the distinction between the two.

He took a sip of tea and thought, with that the evening was pleasantly quiet and he intended to enjoy it.

"Boo."

The sound came from directly behind him.

Wong startled badly enough that the tea left the cup. He was out of the chair and onto his feet in the same motion, rolling back from the table with the ingrained reflex of someone whose training had made self-preservation automatic, and came up with both hands raised, twin golden mandalas spinning into existence at his wrists, ready.

Ethan stood behind the chair with a grin on his face that was entirely too pleased with itself.

Wong looked at the tea spreading across the surface of his book.

He looked at Ethan and thought, with great clarity, about how satisfying it would be to punch that specific expression off that specific face.

"Yo, Wong," Ethan said. "My brother from another mother. What’s up?"

He paused after seeing Wongs deadpan expression. "Sorry for disturbing you."

The mandalas dissolved. Wong picked up his book, assessed the damage, set it back down, and looked at Ethan with the expression of a man choosing patience through sheer force of will.

"One day," Wong said, "you are going to do that and I am going to have a heart attack, and you will have to explain to the Ancient One that you killed the librarian of Kamar-Taj by sneaking up on him in his own library."

"I would explain it very well," Ethan said.

"I am sure you would," Wong said, sitting back down. "It would not help."

He picked up what remained of his tea and looked at Ethan with the measuring expression he used when he had things to say and was deciding on the order. "Sit down," he said. "Since you are here."

Ethan sat.

"About last night," Wong said.

"Wong—"

"I am not finished," Wong said. "Last night you did something that I am going to describe charitably as attention-grabbing. Not just here on Earth, where every weather instrument on the planet either went haywire or melted, and not just in the news cycle, where four scientists spent this morning arguing about God and aliens on live television."

He set his cup down. "You made yourself known to every magical and dimensional entity in range of what you released. Which is not a local range, Ethan. That signal did not stop at the atmosphere."

Ethan opened his mouth.

"I am aware," Wong continued, "that you had reasons. You usually have reasons. I am also aware that your reasons are usually better than they initially appear. But the fact remains that you have now announced yourself to beings whose attention is not comfortable to have, and Kamar-Taj exists in the same dimension as you do, which makes your announcement somewhat relevant to our situation as well."

He looked at Ethan steadily. "I did not appreciate learning about it from the television before Ancient one explained to us what truly happened."

Ethan looked at him. ’Fair point,’ he thought.

"Wong," he said. "You are completely right. And I was about to explain the full context when—"

A junior sorcerer appeared in the library doorway, bowed quickly, and said that the Ancient One was requesting Dr. Carter’s presence.

Wong and Ethan both looked at the doorway. Then they looked at each other.

"We will finish this conversation," Wong said.

"We will," Ethan agreed, and stood up.

...

[Kamar-Taj, The Ancient One’s Chamber — Moments Later]

The corridor outside the Ancient One’s room was the kind of quiet that felt intentional rather than accidental. Ethan walked the last stretch of it and raised his hand to knock.

The door opened before his knuckles reached the wood and Mordo came out.

He stopped when he saw Ethan and the two of them occupied the doorway for a moment in a silence that had several layers to it.

Ethan smiled. "Mordo. Good to see you."

Mordo looked at him with an expression that landed somewhere between assessment and resignation. "You should not have done that," he said.

"If you are referring to last night," Ethan said, "there is context that makes the decision considerably more—"

"I know there is context," Mordo said. "There is always context with you."

He crossed his arms. "We already have our hands full because of your self-proclaimed rival, who decided that worshipping Dormammu was a reasonable life choice and has been causing problems at a scale we are still managing."

His eyes held Ethan’s steadily. "And now, on top of that, you have sent a signal to every entity in the universe that Earth currently has an individual powerful enough to potentially challenge them. Do you understand what that invitation looks like from the outside?"

Ethan stood with this for a moment. ’Wait,’ he thought. ’My rival. Since when do I have a rival. How did I not know I had a rival.’

He knew, of course. It was Kaecilius. It had always been Kaecilius, who had developed, somewhere in the process of his magical training and his subsequent descent into dimensional extremism, the private conviction that he and Ethan Carter were engaged in some kind of ongoing competition for supremacy in the mystic arts.

Ethan had never agreed to this competition. He had never been informed that the competition existed. He had simply been going about his life while Kaecilius apparently dedicated significant mental energy to their rivalry.

He was about to clarify this when the Ancient One’s voice came from inside the room, calm and unhurried. "Ethan."

Mordo stepped aside. He looked at Ethan for one more moment. "Even with everything you have," he said, "you still manage to act like you do not know what to do with it."

His expression was genuinely disappointed in the specific way of someone who expected more and was not pleased to have their expectation unmet. "I am disappointed in you, Carter."

He walked away down the corridor without waiting for a response.

Ethan watched him go. ’I definitely do not need your approval,’ he thought.

He said nothing, because saying it would have required more energy than the situation was worth. He pushed the door open and went in.

...

[The Ancient One’s Chamber]

The room was the same as it always was. Simple and clean. The light came through a single high window and fell across the floor in a long rectangle of late afternoon gold. Two cushions were arranged facing each other on the floor, and between them sat a low table with two cups of tea, already poured, already steaming.

The Ancient One sat on one cushion with the posture of someone for whom stillness was not an effort but a default state. She looked at him with eyes that seemed to have silently witnessed most things in life and made peace with nearly all of them.

Ethan crossed the room and sat across from her. He picked up the tea and took a sip.

The flavour settled across his tongue with the particular clarity it always had in this room and nowhere else.

"No matter how many times I drink it," he said, "this tea is something else."

The Ancient One smiled. "I have offered you the recipe many times," she said. "If you accepted it, you could make it yourself every morning."

"That is exactly why I will not," he said. "If I drink this every day it stops tasting like anything. You only appreciate what you cannot have all the time."

He held the cup in both hands. "Besides, the place matters as much as what you are drinking. Half of what makes this good is sitting in this room."

Her smile stayed in place. "Well said." She looked at him calmly. "Now. You came here for a reason."

"We both know what it is," Ethan said.

"Last night," she said. "You destroyed a dimensional lord completely and sent a declaration across the cosmic web simultaneously."

Her expression was entirely unbothered. "Unless a being at the level of Celestials, or above decides to weigh in, what you did is permanent and final. And the message you sent was received."

She tilted her head slightly. "It was not the most subtle approach available to you."

"No," he said.

"But you do not regret it."

"Not even slightly."

She looked at him for a moment with that steady, layered gaze. "I thought not," she said. "But I do not think that is the real reason you came."

Ethan set his cup down. His expression shifted and something more serious settled into it, something that had been sitting underneath everything else since the chamber, since before the chamber, since a moment weeks ago in subjective time that he had spent turning over and over.

"No," he said. "It is not."

He leaned forward slightly. "Someone did something to one of my girls," he said. "My girlfriend, Sue."

He held the Ancient One’s gaze. "I think someone interfered with her womb."

The room was very quiet.

The Ancient One’s expression did not change immediately. But something moved behind her eyes, a shift in the quality of her attention, the kind that meant she was taking what she had just heard and placing it against everything she knew, looking for correspondence.

She set her own cup down slowly. "Tell me," she said, "everything."