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Dante's wristwatch, a gift from Anna, showed 3 PM when he knocked on Felicia's apartment door.
The door swung open almost immediately just like the last time. Felicia leaned against the frame with a graceful smile that could've sold anything from perfume to luxury cars. That was her charm.
"Hi, sweetheart. Here to deliver death to my doorstep?" Felicia asked before frowning, a concerned one. "Why do you look depressed?"
He regarded her for a moment. Winged eyeliner, deep red lipstick, and that classic perfume—her makeup was immaculate.
"All that effort to sit pretty at home."
She stepped aside, welcoming him into the apartment. "I just came from my dorm room."
He immediately noticed the photographs on her walls, showing a younger Felicia with an older gentleman with slick white hair and a middle-aged brunette.
"My makeup doesn't make me the prettiest in the university. Some dumb redhead has that title on lockdown—" she paused, noticing his attention on the photo frames. "Dug these out from my stash. I can finally look Dad in the eye."
He wasn't really listening to her. His brows creased in a frown before the spark of realization bloomed. He pulled out the nearly faded photo in his wallet. "Felicia, look at this."
She snatched the pic and stared in surprise. "My parents—what is this doing in your wallet?"
"I don't know."
The previous Dante had some sort of connection with Felicia's family. That much had become clear.
Felicia gave him a skeptical look. "You don't know why you're carrying my parents' old photograph. Am I supposed to believe that?"
"I basically don't remember anything that happened before last week." He put the photo back in his wallet and plopped down on her comfortable mattress. "Let's leave the question to your old man when we get him out, alright?"
"Sure, sure. I don't think I can force the truth out of you anyway."
This time she wasn't ungrateful. She actually served him coffee, a premium brew that came in sleek black packaging with Italian script. The coffee was exceptional with a bold, complex, and vaguely smoky flavor.
Felicia sat down on the chair beside the desk, her grin suggesting that this generosity came with conditions. "It's Kopi Luwak, eight hundred dollars per pound, imported. Hope you don't mind indulging your secret lover's expenses, darling~."
He almost spat it out. "Sister, why is your tiny mouth this talkative?"
Felicia set down her own cup with care and leaned her elbow on her desk, resting her chin in her palm. The playfulness vanished from her expression, replaced by something quieter. More honest. More real.
"Mom rarely meets me. Hasn't in months, actually." Her fingers drummed once against her cheek. "I don't have friends either. Not real, close ones, anyway. You're the only person I've talked to these days who doesn't want something from me. Well, aside from our cooperation thing… So I'd be very grateful if you stopped ignoring my lovely text messages."
He pulled out his phone. The screen lit up with notification after notification, each one from her. Cute emotes—cats with hearts, cat memes, cat gifs, and awkward greeting messages from yesterday evening to this afternoon. His phone had been on silent the whole time. Then again, he hadn't caught a real break since having time with Silvija at the research site yesterday.
"Sorry." The word came easily when he meant it. Loneliness was a terrible, depressing thing. He switched silent mode off. "I'll try to respond from now on."
He also knew she was appealing to his emotions, trying to secure him as an ally for future schemes. Fate had thrown Death and her companion in her lap, and she meant to make full use of them—that's just how Felicia was. But that didn't make her loneliness any less real.
She blinked, taken aback, then chuckled. "Have I ever told you that you're really sweet for someone associated with death?"
He smiled. "Death might be the sweetest woman in this universe. I'm only alive because of her."
"Ohhh." Felicia's eyes sparkled with genuine curiosity as her playfulness returned with real interest. "I sense a heart-throbbing story. Care to share with this lonely cat?"
He shook his head. "Another time. Right now, you need to see what you're actually walking into. That facility isn't what Emma described."
"How? Are you teleporting me inside?"
"Not really." He set his cup down carefully after finishing the coffee. Anything hot for ordinary people felt lukewarm to him. "I need a few hours to prepare."
He could've learned Astral Projection in Silvija's apartment. But then Silvija would've stayed with him, hovering around him to make sure he wasn't upset with her. Ava needed her sister after that breakdown, or else some fractures might appear between the sisters.
Dante spending time with Felicia was, in its own way, helping Silvija's relationship with Ava.
He crossed his legs on her bed, hands resting on his knees in a meditative posture. Felicia didn't make it easy for him. She hopped around him like a fly. When he gave her no attention, she gave up with an angry "Hmph".
"Men are such boring creatures. You have a gorgeous woman waiting to be flirted with, but you're thinking about whatever." She flopped onto her desk chair, spinning it and resting her legs on the desk. "How did this guy score Death and Silver Sable?"
His lips curled up in a smile.
'You'll only know when it's too late.'
Sensing his own mystical energy came naturally now as a byproduct of deeply resonating with Doctor Strange's consciousness.
As the Ancient One once told Stephen Strange, "Mystical energy is the raw, extradimensional power that fuels all supernatural and magical phenomena in the multiverse."
He inhaled once. The silence deepened until he could hear the faint echo of his own pulse, the faint rasp of breath in his lungs. Then he searched for the single point of stillness that lay in the deepest part of himself.
What he saw was a flicker of flame—small, steady, and bright. It was his will given shape. His personal energy.
He felt it as warmth first, then as rhythm when he focused on it. The sensation spread through his body in gentle waves. His intent pushed the flame into muscle, bone, nerve, until his skin tingled.
He raised a hand, and a thread of golden light emerged between his fingers.
Mystical energy came from three sources, and this was the first method, drawing from one's life force, as in the energy that sustains a sorcerer's body, mind, and soul. Casting a spell with one's mystical energy was the same as using one's blood, breath, and spirit as fuel. It was draining and overusing it could kill a sorcerer.
He slowed his breath again, moving on to master the second source of mystic energy. After all, a human's life force could burn only so long; the true art of sorcery was learning to let the universe breathe through you.
He spread his awareness—mystical awareness—outward. At first there was nothing, only the sound of Felicia's breathing, the sound of muffled music somewhere, and the sound of her feet making contact with the floor.
'Wait, is she—"
His concentration completely fell apart, forcing him to open his eyes. Felicia had her headphones as she danced in her own world. Her hips swayed and rolled in slow, hypnotic figure-eights that would've made a belly dancer jealous.
She might've started dancing to distract him, but ended up falling in the rhythm of moving her body and enjoying it too much.
'Her head isn't in the right place.'
He returned to his meditation, and this time, consciously ignored her. Rather than her song, he narrowed his perception on the quietly humming energy underneath all the noise.
'The universe breathes. I breathe.'
The two rhythms merged, and a cool sensation brushed the edges of his mind. Ambient mystical energy was the energy that flowed through space, matter, and thought—the energy created through the universe's natural field. This energy existed everywhere like invisible currents. The energy most preferred by sorcerers to cast spells, and a necessity for large-scale magic.
If his personal energy was a spark of flame, this was an endless ocean.
Drawing from this energy required a sorcerer to attune their mind through willpower and intent. He already knew the way to utilize both.
He lifted his hand slowly. Pale blue light coalesced around it, moving to his willpower. "Easy."
The third source of mystical energy was also the most potent and dangerous—extra-dimensional entities and objects. Sorcerers drew power from sentient entities, gods, or entire dimensions. When Doctor Strange invoked the spell, "By the Flames of the Faltine!" he channeled energy from the dimension of the Faltine—a being in the same class as Dormammu—to unleash searing mystical fire. This immense power's cost could range from minor inconveniences to being obliterated at a moment's notice.
Thankfully, the first two methods were sufficient for Astral Projection. Doing so might also alert the Ancient One.
'She probably knows about me. She has the Time Stone to see disruptions in every timeline.'
He was unconcerned. If she had the Time Stone, he had the blessing from Death herself. Death wouldn't sit by and let him be bullied by someone way out of his league. Death's reason for bringing him in a hero-less era was to let him slowly accumulate power, or so he interpreted Death's motive.
Even if Death wasn't willing, he could bluff his way using her name.
He moved on to learning the Astral Projection itself. A being consists of three distinct components. The Physical Body, a material vessel anchored to the Physical Plane. The Astral Self, the consciousness body that reflects mind and essence. And the Ethereal Essence—the deeper soul, the spark that connected one to the spiritual gates like Hell, Heaven, and other similar places. Astral projection separated the Astral Self from the Physical Body. Different from dying, which severed all three permanently.
***
Around 6 PM, about two and half hours of failures, Dante finally achieved separation. The sensation was like pulling off a tight sweater. There was a moment of resistance then freedom. His spectral form flowed out, no longer bound by the constraints of flesh and gravity.
His physical body remained seated on Felicia's bed. Dozens of shimmering chains wrapped around his torso and limbs, and golden runes covered every inch of his visible skin. These were the wards and protection spells drawn from Doctor Strange's vast repository of mystical knowledge. They'd stop stray demons or sorcerers from claiming his vulnerable vessel while his consciousness roamed elsewhere. He doubted they could succeed even without the protection. Null and its associated Universe-X were bound to him at a fundamental level.
But better safe than sorry.
He saw a faint silver cord connecting his astral form to his physical body. The Silver Cord. Ancient texts called it the lifeline between incarnated consciousness and flesh. As long as it remained intact, he could return. He could wander the astral plane indefinitely and still find his way home. But if something severed that connection, his body would become an empty shell and his astral form would drift endlessly like a ghost.
Flying in this form was as easy as breathing. He moved through Felicia's room and then phased through the wall before coming back. He just drifted through the room, relishing the sensation of absolute freedom. His astral form could move in any direction simultaneously. He could stop on a dime or accelerate to impossible speeds. The laws that governed physical existence held no power here.
He flew outside and followed a flock of birds.
'Flying is so fun. I should learn to fly through solar radiation like Hyperion.'
Hyperion achieved flight through manipulating gravitational and inertia forces through a force-field, which was fueled by solar radiation. The force-field worked on calculations, possibly hundreds and thousands of micro-adjustments per second. Marvel's Superman did it by instinct. If Dante wanted to replicate it without the resonance link, he'd need to calculate manually and practice until it became second nature. Even then, he'd probably never reach Hyperion's precision and grace.
Or he could manipulate ambient mystical energy with gestures and fly at a slower speed. Easier, less elegant, but functional. Or get so physically strong that he could leap over cities like the Hulk. Crude but effective.
He had plenty of options to choose from.
His gaze landed on the distant research facility, and he barely held back from flying over immediately. Yesterday, he'd seen Symbiote samples being transported in multiple cargo trucks around 4 AM. Over seventy Symbiote placed within containers. Piotr said Norman had been doing the same routine ever since Wild Pack arrived there, distributing them to other facilities across the city. That meant, the full scale of his Symbiote army was possibly in hundreds or thousands, or exponentially worse.
This country would perish if such a Symbiote army was released in this hero-less era, unless the X-Men came out of hiding.
'SHIELD might also have their secret cards.'
Otherwise, Emma wouldn't have cared about SHIELD. There was definitely something fishy about SHIELD of this universe.
'The site is too far.'
If he flew over, he risked weakening his connection. The silver cord had limits. He wasn't like Strange, who could visit other universes in astral form. Strange had trained diligently on top of having the talent of becoming a Sorcerer Supreme. Dante was a baby sorcerer with a Sorcerer Supreme's theoretical knowledge and experience. Still fundamentally a baby.
'I'll just go with Silvija and Felicia.'
Yes, he intended to bring both Silvija and Felicia's astral forms to Norman's research facility.
A/N: SHIELD is fucked fr
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