MI-13: Part IV

Having survived the onslaught of near-indestructible, supernatural foes, our heroes find brief respite in a stairwell. Now that he has time to think, The Arcanist recalls that he has seen these creatures before, in one of his books, they are known as the Mindless Ones, inhabitants of the Dark Dimension, often found in the employ of Dormammu, though they have had many masters. The Mindless ones are near-invulnerable engines of destruction, with no real intelligence to speak of and no known weaknesses. The good news is that The Arcanist knows how to stop the Mindless Ones before they destroy the planet, by closing the magic gate they came through. Pushing his supernatural awareness outwards, The Arcanist senses for strong magic resonance, unfortunately, the magic rooms throughout the building blind his arcane sight. 

A greeting starts the team from their reverie, in the stairwell above them is Union Jack, relieved to see his backup. Unsure if this may be another illusion, The Arcanist asks who of the team Union Jack helped to rescue, when he responds with 'Sandman, Purple Shadow and Psylocke', they agree to go with him. Union Jack has lost his radio in a fight with a Mindless One, but managed to scout out and find the room from which he thinks the monsters are coming, but without the magical expertise provided by The Arcanist, he can't be sure. A couple of floors up, there is one flat that resonates the same aura of illusion magic, but which appears to be normal to the eye. After a few minutes of spell-slinging, The Arcanist decides that he will need more power to close the portal, Union Jack suggests that they barricade this room whilst The Arcanist works. When the team agrees and the door is bolted, the trap is sprung; Union Jack has betrayed them!  

It's another dry and dusty night in Beirut, but MI-6 Agent Charlotte Jane Ashwood doesn't shift an inch on top of a building opposite the Embassy. Intelligence has indicated that a key member of the Civil Service is preparing to sell national secrets in order to cover his gambling debts, so MI-6 has sent their top agent, her, to catch him in the act. The work is dangerous, vital and thrilling, Charlotte Jane wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. As she shifts her legs to prevent cramping, she smiles; life is good. 

In a dimly-lit warehouse in the rough part of town, The Sandman is at last face-to-face with his nemesis, Doctor Death. It has been a long 1990s night of smoke, no visible feet and way too many pouches, but Sandman, despite being gravely wounded by Doctor Death's henchmen has finally found his foe's lair, along with his kidnapped illegitimate daughter. Doctor Death is in the middle of an interminable villain rant and Sandman is doing nothing to stop it because he knows he doesn't have the strength for a last stand. An idea hits, Sandman could take a leap at Doctor Death, pushing him from the catwalk and sending them both crashing to the warehouse floor, three stories below; he would surely die, but then everyone else would be safe. Sandman tenses for his last heroic act... 

Elizabeth "Betsy" Braddock is sitting in her favorite cafe, checking her Instagram when a stranger sits down at her table, they are the most stunningly beautiful person she has ever seen, comparable to the timeless elegance of a marble statue. With a voice full of unearthly music, they greet Betsy as their queen. When Betsy tries to shoo the fellow off, they insist that she is descended of a line of exiled fae royalty, ousted by their rivals centuries ago, but now the Unseelie king has been defeated and the true royals are being invited back. Due to the death of her parents and Brian Braddock's duties as Captain Britain, Betsy is the chosen queen, she is to come with the Shide before her and be made ruler of the Fae... 

The Arcanist is left puzzled as his allies disappear before him once the trap is sprung. Angry, but stuck with no way out, he continues with his spell, pausing when a malevolent force begins to coalesce inside the room. An amorphous star-field forms, floating within it a white face with a mocking smile. He greets William Albertson by name and The Arcanist knows that he his face-to-face with Doctor Plokta, the dream master, creator of the Mindless Ones and a Duke of Hell. Plokta offers The Arcanist a deal, get his heart's desire and live in the Dream Corridors with the rest forever so that Plokta can tap the immense power of the wizard's soul. 

Having already made deals for his power with both Cyttorak and Agamotto, The Arcanist is wary about lending his soul to another extradimensional deity. However, if he does not stop Plokta soon, he will overwhelm the entire world with Mindless Ones, and even the Ancient One and the Avengers may not be enough to stop them. Meditating on the problem, The Arcanist decides that another deal may be exactly what he needs, but with a different broker; quickly extending his astral senses, he makes contact with the realm of Agomotto, mystical deity and ascended former Sorcerer Supreme. Agomotto is willing to offer his devout servant a mystical blade that he just happens to have in his possession, a blade sharp enough to slice through reality itself, but one that comes with a terrible curse. 

The deal is one simply made, The Arcanist will have to resist the curse for as long as it takes to return the blade to its owner, thereby allowing his escape from the illusory room and granting a favour to Agomotto. As The Arcanist grasps the blade in his hand, a fine example of 15th century craftsmanship, he feels an unnatural hunger start to take hold... a hunger for human flesh. Once the blade is safely sheathed, the hunger is replaced with revulsion, but the memory lingers uncomfortably. Steeling himself, The Arcanist grasps the blade once more and slashes the very air, tearing asunder the illusion around him and parting a way through to the next dream corridor, demonstrating the fantasy of an inhabitant of the tower block. 

Many slashes and fantasies later, The Arcanist finds himself behind a crouching Purple Shadow on a rooftop in Beirut. When the Secret Agent spins to face the newcomer, the sight of his face brings a flood of memories of her real life coming back to her and a cry of "Oh, shit!". Being a trained agent with an immovable sense of duty, Purple Shadow quells her emotions and sets her mind to the task ahead, of ridding Birmingham of the influence of Plokta and defeating the Mindless Ones. 

The next of their allies' dreams which The Arcanist and Purple Shadow find themselves in belongs to Sandman, where he is still poised to sell his life to end Doctor Death's. With the return of reality, so does the pain and inevitability of the cancer that riddles Gardner Fox's lungs return. Using his mystic sight and the blessings of Otkid, The Arcanist can see the disease that riddles his colleague's body and knows that the veteran hero is not long for this world. Such empathetic musings will have to wait, however, as there is still a world to save. 

Meanwhile at the Seelie Court in the Siege Perilous, Queen Betsy reigns with a firm-yet-fair hand, settling matters of intrigue to the satisfaction of all involved and becoming a beloved monarch in the process. This idyll is shattered however, when a tear opens in the very air and The Arcanist, Purple Shadow and Sandman step through from another dream and her memories come flooding back. When Psylocke questions just how The Arcanist was able to escape the dream corridor, he states that he is literally a mage capable of drawing on the power of an ancient deity, so that's what he did. Now together once again, the team slice their way through the many dreams of the tower's inhabitants, until they find themselves in a real hallway once again, confronted by several of the Mindless Ones and Union Jack 

"Why do you morons ruin everything?" demands an irate Union Jack, "How could you give up your hearts' desires?" The Arcanist asks what Union Jack wanted so badly that he would betray the team, when the answer comes that it was his deceased wife, The Arcanist calls Union Jack a "bitch" and brusquely reminds him that his wife is dead and implies that Union Jack is an idiot. The rest of the team wonders if The Arcanist isn't a little too harsh in his approach, but the lumbering attack of the Mindless Ones becomes a bigger priority in the moment. Sandman switches to his sand-like form, having learned that the Mindless Ones are unable to damage it, and moves to intercept one of the brutes. The Arcanist is too slow to dodge the incoming monster, but manages to bind it in the grasp of the Crimson Bands of Cytttorak. 

Both Psylocke and Purple Shadow soon find themselves battling the hulking Mindless Ones, with their psychic knives and deadly auras proving to have little effect against the brutes. Nearly begging for his former colleagues to return to their dream corridors, Union Jack fires his Webley at The Arcanist, the silver bullets bouncing uselessly off the magical dome protecting much of the team. Wanting to end the fight as fast as possible, The Arcanist flings the Mindless One in his magical grasp into Union Jack, the weighty foe battering Union Jack into pulp, murdering him brutally in front of the entire team. 

The shock only lasts a moment, for the Mindless Ones close on the protective dome and start battering the mystical barrier, Sandman is outside and lends what assistance he can, but the monsters are tough. Inside the protective dome, options are limited, so Psylocke starts using her telekinesis to fling nearby objects at the Mindless Ones. Taking a similar tack, The Arcanist whips the Mindless One still in his grasp at the next of the bunch, shattering the first and placing a large crack in the other. A blast from the facial cavity of a Mindless One shatters the mystical dome of protection, rendering the situation a desperate in seconds, with Sandman and Purple Shadow throwing punches and Psylocke throwing objects. 

Knowing that they're fighting a losing battle, The Arcanist throws caution to the wind, grasping the lift of the building and ripping it through several floors to batter the last Mindless Ones into dust. The rest of the team is making sideways glances at The Arcanist as he insists that his murder of Union Jack, veteran, war hero, superhero and father, was justified because of his betrayal of the team. The discussion of weather or not wanting one's deceased wife back was grounds for summary execution is tabled however, as the group decide to search the pulped remains of Union Jack for his dog tags, but end up vomiting copiously before they find them. 

An eerie light wafts from the staircase leading from the top floor, a kaleidoscope of impossible colours dappling across the concrete steps draws our heroes up to the final confrontation with Plokta. The end of the top floor is an encroaching portal of colliding dream and space-time, with the floating face of Plokta twisted into a mocking grin as he is flanked by waves of Mindless Ones marching into physical reality. Plokta mocks the heroes and offers them one more chance to live in their fantasies and allow him to conquer the world. The Arcanist, pushed to the very edge of his sanity by the endless battle with the Mindless Ones, taking on a cursed blade and murder of a friend, decides to end the threat, even if it costs him his life. Summoning up all of his mystical might and empowering it further with his own soul, The Arcanist blasts the hallway with a concussive wave of mystic energy that lights the night sky of Birmingham. 

When the dust finally clears, Plokta is gone, forced back to the Dark Dimension, the mindless ones collapse into their rocky components and those still in the dream corridors stagger unwillingly back to reality. Once radio communication is reestablished, an MI-13 clean-up crew comes in to provide counselling and assistance, as well as to hush-up just how close the world just came to annihilation. Pete Wisdom comes in to speak to the team and is shocked to discover that Union Jack has been killed, though The Arcanist is cagey about the details. Other shocking revelations, such as Sandman's terminal diagnosis and The Arcanist's new cursed sword mean that it's well past time for everyone to repair back to base and be properly debriefed. 

Once the truth comes out, in large thanks due to Sandman, the decision is made to cover up the truth of Union Jack's betrayal and death for a more heroic narrative in the press. The funeral is beautiful, televised nationally on BBC1 and spun as a heroic end to his life battling the last remaining Dark Elves. Many are moved by the proceedings, though The Arcanist is conspicuous by his absence. Even with the many years of magical experience between both Wisdom and The Arcanist, neither can figure out the origin of the cursed blade before them. A plan is secretly hatched to have The Arcanist return to the London Sanctum, where he can continue to research the cause of the sudden upswing of magical activity in England, but also remain safe from murdering any of his team mates. 

What lies in store for the team? Will someone replace The Arcanist? What is behind the mysterious magical mayhem? Only time will tell!