Max studied the three figures carefully, trying to make sense of who or what they were. The shield they had conjured bore the telltale circular mandalas of Earth's sorcerers, glowing with the same orange light that Strange's spells had. Max's first thought was obvious: sorcerers. Like the Ancient One. Like Strange.
Wait…
His gaze settled on the man with Tibetan features, the staff in his hand glowing faintly. Is that…? Max's eyes widened. Could that be… Agamotto?
As if on cue, the man stepped forward and bowed slightly. "I am Agamotto," he said, his voice calm and deep.
Holy shit, Max thought, trying not to show his shock.
The blonde woman beside him stepped forward. Her white armor gleamed with faint golden light, her golden sword still humming with energy. "I am Thena," she said. "And this is Gilgamesh."
"I can introduce myself," Gilgamesh grunted with a annoyed face, cradling one bloodied hand. "We appreciate the assist."
Eternals, Max realized. Of course. His mind reeled Agamotto and the Eternals. Oh, wait does that mean Earth is some kind of celestial egg?
I hope not, Max thought.
Odin stepped forward, showing off his brash side. "Quite a battle you were caught in," he said. "You would have died if not for our timely arrival."
Agamotto nodded solemnly. "Your help was well-timed and deeply appreciated.
"You are correct. We were near death," he added after a pause.
Max noticed Thena studying him now, eyes sharp and assessing. She turned briefly to Odin, her voice cool. "An Asgardian, yes?"
Odin nodded proudly. "Indeed."
"I've met a few before," Thena said thoughtfully, her eyes narrowing slightly. "About a millennium ago. Rather less loud than you…"
She turned her attention back to Max. "But you… what are you, Lantern? You look human."
Odin chuckled before Max could speak. "Grænlaðr? Midgardian? Ha! He doesn't even know what he is himself."
Gilgamesh tilted his head. "What power do you wield ?"
Max waved the question off with a small smile. "That's not important right now. What is important… is for us to know what we just vaporized."
Agamotto stepped forward, expression grim. "They were Deviants but twisted, changed, tainted by Dormammu's influence. They've given themselves willingly to the Dark Dimension."
Max's tone hardened. "The Destroyer of Worlds himself?"
"You know of him?" Agamotto asked, surprised.
Max nodded.
Odin frowned, surveying the scorched earth. "I don't suppose that was all of them, was it?... And to think, I once called Midgard boring."
Agamotto shook his head. "No. This is only the beginning. If you'll help me, Green Lantern Prince Odin then perhaps we can end this quickly, before the veil between worlds is torn apart."
"How can we help?" Max asked.
Agamotto looked grave as he continued. "The leader of this group before he died revealed that he had already sent emissaries to other Deviant settlements, carrying Dormammu's corruption."
Thena crossed her arms, her expression grim. "Deviant settlements are deeply hidden. Even we struggle to locate them."
Gilgamesh nodded solemnly.
"We must find these emissaries quickly," Agamotto said. "If they reach their kin if they convince more Deviants to follow this path Dormammu's shadow will spread faster than we can contain."
Max clenched his jaw. "Understood. So, we find the emissaries…and kill them."
"And the Deviants as well; it is rare for us to locate their underground cities," Gilgamesh added, his fists glowing faintly with golden energy.
Thena turned to Agamotto. "Is there a way to track them?"
Agamotto nodded, raising his hands and murmuring in an ancient tongue. Golden-orange mandalas flared in the air before him, swirling with sigils and spinning glyphs. Slowly, three bright points of light emerged in the projection.
"There," he said, eyes half-closed. "Three signatures. Their life-force is tainted by the Dark Dimension. I can sense them."
Gilgamesh squinted at the floating lights. "I see three glowing dots…but not where they are exactly."
"Ah, I suppose you do not see what I see," Agamotto replied. "Perhaps I can find a clearer way."
Max stepped forward and conjured a glowing green construct of Earth, the rotating globe hovering beside Agamotto's projection. "Here show us on this."
Thena raised an eyebrow, clearly impressed. "You have strange abilities, Lantern…"
Agamotto nodded in approval, then waved his hand, transferring the glowing markers to Max's green map. Three bright points flickered across the holographic globe.
"One is here," Agamotto said, indicating the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent, near the island of Lanka.
Another pulsed in the far north to the arctic. "And one lies in the frozen wastes of the north."
He gestured again. "The last is at the edge of a great desert. These two" he tapped the markers over Lanka and the Arctic "show multiple life-signatures."
Thena's eyes narrowed. "Multiple emissaries in the south and the north, but only one heading toward the desert. That suggests more than one Deviant settlement at those first two locations."
Agamotto nodded. "Which means we must split up teams of two for the south and the north. The lone emissary… one of us should suffice."
Max seized the opportunity. "I'll take the one headed toward the desert."
Agamotto turned to him, surprised. "Are you sure?"
Max smiled smugly. "Don't worry I am the strongest one here I can handle it."
"I doubt it," Odin challenged, folding his arms.
Thena glanced at Gilgamesh, then back to Max. "Very well. Gilgamesh and I go south."
Agamotto gave a short nod. "Then Odin and I will take the northern route. We must move swiftly the more time we lose, the more Dormammu's corruption spreads."
Odin clapped Max on the shoulder. "You picked the easy mark, Grænlaðr."
Max grinned. "Or maybe it's the toughest one."
"Here this will help you find them," Agamotto said, tracing an orange mandala that flared into being around Max's and Thena's wrists.
Max studied the glowing sigils, wondering if he could style his constructs in such patterns or better yet, learn from Agamotto and combine sorcery with the power of will. The possibilities were endless.
Thena, tightening the damaged straps of her armor, cast Max a sidelong glance. "Lantern… don't venture too far west. There is something—"
"The God-King," Max said, cutting her off. "Yes, I've heard of him." He's exactly why I chose to got there, he thought.
Her gaze sharpened. "Then you know not to enter his realm."
Who is this guy, really? Max wondered, but he only offered a cryptic smile.
Before departing, an idea struck him. He turned to Odin and conjured a luminescent green spear, its design reminiscent of Gungnir.
"What's this?" Odin asked, hefting the weapon.
"Just tell me how long it takes to disappear," Max replied.
With a mock salute and a burst of emerald light, he shot into the sky mind racing not only with the task ahead but also with what awaited beyond the desert sands.
Egypt. Thebes. And the mysterious God-King.
======
Max soared high above the turquoise waters of the Arabian Sea, the wind rushing past him as the coastline curved into view on the horizon. The sun shimmered across the waves, its golden light already beginning to soften as the day wore on.
The tracker Agamotto had placed on Max's arm began to vibrate gently as he crossed into the target region.
"Alright," Max muttered, slowing his flight. He scanned the shoreline below, then swept farther inland, eyes narrowed for any trace of the emissary. Minutes stretched into an hour, and the sun began its descent behind him.
Max sighed. "This is taking too long."
Just then Jade chimed in. "I am now detecting the same energy signature as before north-west quadrant."
Max grinned. "Ha! Take that, Agamotto's tracker."
Suddenly the tracker vanished.
"Wait where did it go?"
"I removed it," Jade replied flatly.
Max blinked. "You can do that?"
"It took time to analyze the construct," she said. "It was made of inter-dimensional energy. Based on what I've learned, I have developed partial countermeasures against similar magical signatures."
"So…" Max said, eyes lighting up, "we've got some defense against sorcery now?"
"Insufficient data to confirm that hypothesis. Further analysis is required."
"Still pretty cool."
Following Jade's guidance, Max adjusted his course and dropped altitude. "Where is he now?"
"Directly below," Jade said. "But the signal is fading fast."
Max looked down and then he saw it.
A flash of flickering purple sigils: sorcery. He descended swiftly, landing on a cliff's edge to get a clearer view. Below, a battle was unfolding. A group of Deviants distinct from the monstrous, corrupted ones he had encountered before were locked in combat with a lone figure wreathed in swirling dark magic.
Max narrowed his eyes. "That's the emissary…"
He hovered silently, watching as the Deviants overwhelmed their target. They moved with coordinated precision, wielding energy weapons and glowing swords. Within moments, the emissary fell.
Jade spoke again. "Thena's directive included eliminating the Deviants as well."
Max hovered in silence a moment longer. "They just killed the emissary. It doesn't look like they accepted his offer."
"You intend to let them go?"
"I never agreed to blanket killing," Max said quietly. "If they had joined him if they'd turned I would have acted. But they made their choice."
Below, the Deviants lifted their gazes toward him. They saw him acknowledged him but made no move. Max met their eyes, gave a small nod, and turned away.
"All right, Jade," he said, accelerating as he turned westward, the wind catching behind him. "Next stop: Egypt."
======
It took Max only five minutes of flight using his lowest speed to reach the coordinates where Thebes should be.
He had expected something modest perhaps a large Bronze Age settlement with thatched roofs, a few temples, maybe some stone structures if the people were ahead of their time.
What he saw knocked the breath from his lungs.
Spread across the banks of the Nile was a vast city, dominated by a colossal pyramid that gleamed with golden light. The structure dwarfed everything around it: precision-cut white stone, golden lines running like rivers from its apex, converging beneath a radiant crown perched at the summit.
"What the—?" Max muttered, stunned.
"Jade," he said quickly, "how big is that pyramid?"
"Height: approximately six hundred ninety feet. Base: twelve hundred by twelve hundred feet," she replied.
That's almost one and a half times the Great Pyramid, Max thought.
He floated forward, passing over the sprawling city. Streets laid out in perfect grids radiated from the pyramid's base, branching into organized neighborhoods of multistory brick structures. Closer to the center, buildings grew more refined: arched walls, intricate murals, and gleaming copper spires.
Is that the Sphinx? Max's jaw dropped.
The city was magnificent.
"Okay… okay," he breathed, half laughing in disbelief. "Yeah. This definitely looks like a place a god-king would rule from."
With the sun still behind him, shadows stretched long across polished stone roads as he descended toward the city's edge. With a thought, his green armor shimmered away, leaving him in plain clothes about as inconspicuous as he could manage, though he would still stand out.
He touched down in a narrow alley behind a house, then stepped into the street.
It was quiet too quiet.
People moved quickly and alertly, eyes darting, mouths tight. Heads stayed down. For a polis this size the streets felt half-abandoned far fewer inhabitants than the city could hold.
Something was wrong.
Max narrowed his eyes, shoulders tense, and slipped into the sparse crowd, heading deeper into the heart of Thebes.
Max wandered through the city, his eyes drinking in every detail with an archaeologist's wonder.
People moved quickly, slipping into their homes and shuttering windows. He passed children hurried inside by anxious parents, and vendors in the open markets hastily packing their wares. The scent of baked bread and unfamiliar spices still hung in the air, but the usual energy of a thriving metropolis had been smothered by something… tense.
He headed toward the central marketplace. Most stalls were already closing, and urgent whispers flitted through the air. As he passed a fruit stand, he caught a fragment of conversation.
"Are they looking for the priestess Bayek? Have the Pharaoh's men ordered her capture?" a man asked the shopkeeper in a low voice.
The shopkeeper shot him a sharp glare. "Quiet. They're not after her. They're searching for some… other foreigners."
Max slowed his pace. Foreigners? Some kind of manhunt?
The shopkeeper noticed Max who clearly was not a local and his eyes widened. He began shuttering his stall even faster.
Curious and increasingly wary Max followed the sound of a voice rising above the hush. In the center of the market a herald, draped in white robes lined with gold, stood atop a stone podium. His words echoed across the square as the townsfolk paused to listen.
"Good people of the Eternal Dominion," the herald proclaimed, "heed the words of your Pharaoh! Four interlopers walk among us foreigners not of our lands. You shall know them by their strange garments, their fair skin… and one whose body is made not of flesh, but of stone. These are beings of great evil and deception.. Should you see them, report to the city guard at once. Our Pharaoh wishes only to protect you, his loyal children, from corruption."
Max's ears pricked up.
Fair skin… strange dress… stone flesh?
Wait… fair skin, that's me, he realized.
At that moment several guards entered the square, clad in golden armor inlaid with sunbursts and wearing falcon-shaped helms. Their eyes swept the thinning crowd then locked onto him.
"Oh, fuck," Max muttered, edging backward straight into something solid.
The guards closed in, forming a ring around him. Spears lowered. One stepped forward.
"Surrender, foreigner. In the name of the great Pharaoh Rama-Tut, you will come with us."
Max's breath caught.
Rama-Tut.
Rama-Tut.
Ohhhh…Oh right…
Him.
Turning, he saw he'd backed into a towering statue of obsidian-black stone: arms outstretched, pharaonic headdress gleaming, a smug smile carved into its face.
Fucking Rama-Tut, Max thought.
Kang…
"Surrender," the guard repeated.
Max stood motionless, mind racing. He glanced once more at the statue, then at the encroaching guards.
His eyes narrowed as they began to glow green.
.
.
You can read up to chapter 22
p.a.t.r.eon.com/Illusiveone (check the chapter summary i have it there as well)