Shadows (Sequel to Rip My Heart Out)

Chapter 14

"Emelia-" The Ancient One began.

The blue light was agitated and violently swarming around my body. The Ancient One's composure was slipping ever so slightly as she glanced around us to see the fragile, ancient walls of Kamar Taj. I could see in her mind that she was remembering the other day that she brought me here and I had almost torn down the structure.

"Emelia, calm-" She began again.

"Don't tell me to calm down! All this time, you let me think that he was in the hands of Loki. You let me think that he could have been-" I couldn't bring myself to say it. Dead. But he wasn't. He wasn't dead, just hidden. The stone pulsed with relief once before resuming it's agitated beating in my chest. "Take me to him. Now."

"Fine." Said the Ancient One. She turned her back to me and started moving her hands in complicated maneuvers. In her mind, I heard her think, "Anything to get you away from here."

She knew I was listening. I was too angry and too much power was emanating from me for me to be sneaking into her head. She wanted me to hear it, like a warning.

I brushed it off. In the past, I had been subject to my anger, and lost control. And I was angry now. More angry than I had been in a long time, but this was different. Pietro was depending on me. I had never felt more in control of the stone.

"It's ready." The Ancient One said, not bothering to turn to face me.

I glanced around her uncertainty. In the space in front of her was a portal. The edges were sparking and glowing orange, but inside, it was dark. I couldn't see anything.

"Where is it?" I asked, knowing this was a portal to another dimension, just like the one she had used to get me out of the Flame dimension I'd been trapped in once before.

"It's Nowhere." She said.

"I'm warning you-" I began.

"It's a realm that I found long ago." She said, interrupting my threat. "I named it nowhere, because it is an alternate dimension where nothing exists, not time, not space, nothing. I've never been able to go to it because the moment I were to enter it, I would cease to exist. I would never return." She said.

"And you sent Pietro there?" I was furious now. The blue light grew even more violent around me.

"It was the only way that you truly wouldn't be able to find him." She said. I could hear the sly smile in her voice. She was proud of her clever trick. "If I'm correct about this dimension, the moment you step through that portal, space, time, power, everything that you possess because of the infinity stones, will come with you. You will create space and time. Only you will be able to find Pietro, because only you have the power to make this dimension into something tangible."

"If you are correct?" I said. "What exactly is that supposed to mean. How can he be there if nothing exists there? What if I get there and he is already gone."

"There is only one force in this universe that can create or truly destroy matter." She turned to me. "And it is you, not me. I sent him there, that I am sure of. Right now, he is not himself as he would be in the presence of space or time, but I do know that he is not gone. You once brought him back from the dead. You can bring him back from nothingness."

I looked at her with fire between my eyes. I was beginning to understand just how good she was at putting others in a position where they didn't have a choice but to go along with her plans. But this was Pietro, and I was going to save him, no matter the consequences. So, with one last burning look at her, I quickly stepped past the Ancient One, and into the dark portal to nothingness.