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Once, countless had lived and worshipped upon the rocky, barren soil of this minor planetary moon, but now it was utterly abandoned - after all, if the most apt comparison was not to some type of noxious weed (on account of their combined tenacity and being unwelcome practically everywhere) the Universal Church of Truth could quite easily be likened to a cosmic hermit crab. Things had gone wrong, as they had done many times before, so they had abandoned the place they had christened Sacrosanct and fled to the stars. Such was the destiny of the cultists of the Magus; the future they sought to bring to fruition, the rule of Adam Warlock’s darker side, had long been sealed away… and while that seal’s integrity had been tested a few times it has, thus far, remained in place.
After the now nameless moon was abandoned by the Church, it returned to the existence it had enjoyed since time immemorial - owing to its lack of natural atmosphere or resources worth coveting, and the inhospitable conditions of the planet it orbited not leading to the development of complex life, the moon had attracted little attention throughout its long existence.The galaxy, much less the universe, was too vast for such a small, insignificant rock to draw much notice when it did not have a dangerous cult making it their temporary headquarters, and so the city they had built there had been left to rot.
The High Citadel of the Matriarch, once graced by the feet and hands of the Church’s most beloved Messiah, had suffered the same fate as lesser structures across the moon; gradual decay. On the last day of the Moon’s occupation, the Guardians of the Galaxy had subdued the arisen Thanos and had left the moon behind with some haste - they had an incredibly dangerous prisoner that needed immediate containment, after all. It would be some time before any amongst their number had the opportunity to reflect on what had happened on Sacrosanct, as far more pressing and universe ending concerns would demand their attention for quite some time after. The members of the Church that had not been killed during the mad Titan’s rampage calmly and quickly evacuated, the survival of their cult demanding a new stronghold. So it was that within the High Citadel, nobody had cause or opportunity to investigate the bizarre and persistent drain on the city's emergency power.
The Universal Church of Truth primarily powered their technology using Faith Generators; psionically attuned devices which drew upon the shared worship of the Church’s believers to generate power. It was a versatile power source, used to create champions who could challenge any of the greatest forces of the cosmos as well as to provide light and heat for the population of their cities. It gave the Universal Church of Truth a unique and potent advantage, as the ferocity and zealotry they inspired in their faithful could provide energy far in excess of any standard power source used throughout the galaxy. But this advantage did not come without cost - it relied on both the strength of their believer’s faith, but also on the number of believers. The Faith Generators could not function safely without a sufficiently large congregation to draw from, since attempting to use them while below that threshold would soon leave that congregation brain dead (and therefore unable to generate power). As such, the Church’s engineers always made sure to install some form of redundant power generation in any structure that might need to support the remnants of their faith.
As above, like a noxious weed; the Universal Church of Truth has been almost destroyed on several occasions, and long-time Truthers have developed some much needed pragmatism when it comes to such things.
The High Citadel of the Matriarch had emergency power sufficient to provide life support and sustenance for up to one thousand living beings of approximately Terran size and diet for up to one month. A more robust and long term power supply could have been employed, but if it was ever called upon (its designer’s reasoned) either the Church had been all but eradicated and therefore it would be a great cruelty to prolong any survivor’s suffering, or the Church had been merely decimated and would need to vacate the moon promptly and any further resource expenditure would be wasteful. This meagre power supply had been extended for well over one hundred times its original duration; it had, after all, only needed to preserve the life of one being.
Two, if you were being generous (and in the opinion of the second, if it had the faculties to possess one, incorrect).
As one of Life’s Champions, the Magus knew many secrets about the inner workings of the universe, one of which was that the cosmic balance is notoriously unstable, yet craves stability. As such, he knew that an Avatar of Death would soon rise to oppose him, and being a practical sort he attempted to pre-empt any such confrontation as best he could.
Of the various Avatars of Death he was aware of, the current holder of the title was already within his possession. The Phoenix he could not capture without also capturing and neutralising every telepathic being in existence, and that was currently beyond him, but it had been a recalcitrant Avatar in its time - if it were recalled to serve, it might very well join him out of spite alone. The entity Sundersuns was not only beyond his reach but also, by his reckoning, beyond the reach of the Cosmic Abstracts - therefore, not an immediate threat. That left the corpse of his sometimes great enemy, and sometimes dear friend, Thanos the Mad Titan.
The Regenerative Cocoon had been crafted by the Magus to restore the fallen Avatar of Death to life. He had reasoned that, given how trivially he himself could perform that mundane miracle, it would be no great barrier to the Cosmic Abstracts. Better to have him contained, ready to be subverted to his way of thinking just as the Magus already planned to do with the current Avatar. If the forces of Death needed to raise an untested champion against him, their preferred pieces upon the Chessboard corrupted, he was confident that his superior experience would give him the necessary edge.
The Cocoon did not share the Magus’s ambitions for its patient - all it desired, if such a thing could be said to have desires, was to accomplish its function. That is, restoring the deceased Avatar of Death to life.
Its function had been interrupted, its patient removed pre-emptively from its regenerative slumber… which was admittedly a fairly common result for those who would slumber within the regenerative cocoons of Adam Warlock. The Cocoon, absent of purpose, should have allowed itself to decay.
But this Cocoon had been crafted to restore an Avatar of Death to life and, it just so happened, when its previous occupant had left, another Avatar of Death (deceased) lay within the Cocoon’s reach.
It had taken some time to integrate itself properly into the emergency power of the High Citadel, a hack job functionality that the Cocoon was loathe to use (but due to the damage inflicted to it when its patient was removed, it was a necessary functionality), and even more time to reach out, ever so gradually, and take the lifeless Avatar into its clutches. The damage the Cocoon had sustained was extensive - its work was slow, inefficient and in some ways flawed. But while it was slow and inefficient work, it was still effective work. Within the folds of the damaged Cocoon, the slain Avatar of Death was slowly coaxed back to the land of the living.
Lesser technologies would be satisfied with that, but the Cocoon had been created to restore its patient to a fully functional state - to heal them of their wounds, to restore them to the heights of their former power and to provide them with care until such time as they were ready to wake. Simply being “alive” was not the same as being restored, and so the Cocoon had continued its arduous work. That had been the problem, really, as the energy demands for its work were higher than the energy that was on hand, which meant that the Cocoon had to cut corners. The living body, sedated while the Cocoon worked, was doing its utmost to go back to being dead. Providing for its charge’s nutrition, preventing degenerative damage to the body and restoring it to full working order was one demand too many, and the Cocoon was forced to consistently sacrifice one or more of those categories to make progress.
The Cocoon knew that its patient was not ready - they would be weakened, and confused, and they would not be ready to suffer the torture and brainwashing that the Magus had intended for them (although given the state of the planet and the utter lack of attention it had been paid over the last decade, the Cocoon at least deemed the chances of that happening quite unlikely). But, it also knew that the power supply it had been drawing on was on the verge of running out. Power sufficient for preserving the life of one thousand beings for thirty days did not necessarily translate to preserving the life of one being for four thousand days, and the Cocoon had already coaxed every drop of energy that it could from the surrounding lunar surface.
With something similar to regret, the Cocoon began the process of awakening its charge and, once that was underway, began to eliminate its functions from the waning power grid. Its last thought, such as it was, was of grim satisfaction. It had performed its task to the best of its abilities, under the circumstances.
Long overdue, the Regenerative Cocoon began to decay into dust, leaving behind the body of a silver-haired woman.
The second thought that went through Phyla-Vell’s mind after her resurrection was “No, don’t think about that right now.”
The third thought was “Figure out how you’re alive, get to safety, THEN have a breakdown.”
The fourth thought, more distantly than the others, was “I sure hope that alarm isn’t important.”
She remembered dying. Rather vividly, in fact. Thanos had melted the flesh from her bones in an instant, which she supposed was a fairly serious mark against her on the superhero front. Her dad had fought Thanos on a number of occasions, and gotten out of those scraps with almost all of his flesh intact.
Slowly, she opened her eyes; they were caked in some sort of dried gunk, so it took some doing. In fact, opening her eyes was a lot harder than she was used to basic anatomical functions being.
Her hair was longer than she liked it. The silver locks, which she had preferred to cut short and messy, hung over her face almost down to her navel. It looked like it had the consistency of dry straw, and even to her untrained eye she could see that it was riddled with split ends. It, too, was covered in gunk. A flaky, greenish substance that seemed to coat her entire body.
Her costume, the once brilliant red, white and black garb granted to her by the cosmic abstract Oblivion within the belly of the Dragon of the Moon in exchange for her service as its mortal Avatar (a sentence that hurt to even think, much less remember), hung loose on her skeletal frame where it had once fit with a perfection that had been unnerving. The limbs beneath it were sluggish, heavier than they’d ever felt, yet light and brittle as twigs. She felt exhausted.
She felt, in fact, like someone who had just been dead.
Phyla decided that an appropriate use of what little energy she’d managed to gather would be best served by letting out a pained groan. It didn’t really make her feel any better, but she was glad that she’d done it all the same.
Arduously, she reached for her flight - it took energy for her to lift herself against gravity, of course, but there was no chance that walking would be easier with her body in this state.
She remained, resolutely, on the ground. That spooked her; flying was something she’d always been able to do, it was part of her physiology. Eternals could fly and she was half-Eternal; ergo, she could fly. It had been as natural as walking since the first moment of awareness she could remember, and now she couldn’t figure out how to do it.
Bitterly, she rolled onto one side and started to push herself into an upright position. It was hard going, and slow, but the insistent whooping of the alarm that echoed all around her gave her a little motivation to not let herself close her eyes and return to unconsciousness - she’d been dead, and probably dead a while now if how badly she felt was anything to go by, so giving up now would just be ungrateful. Not everyone gets another shot after dying; her father sure hadn’t, her brother hadn’t! She wasn’t going to let something as small as… uh, rampant and extensive muscular degeneration, potential power loss and sheer tiredness stop her.
Grunting in pain (flark but her mouth was dry), she got herself into a sitting position against the wall of the room she’d woken up in. Unless she missed her guess it was the same room she’d died in, which was a bit depressing - no one had bothered to retrieve her body.
How dare they! Had they just forgotten about her, had they not cared? So, she was just a disposable member of their stinking team, unworthy of dignity even in death? She would make them pay!
She felt herself starting to slide slowly downwards out of her seat against the wall, and the absurdity of that derailed her train of thought. Which was weird, because now that she wasn’t in the process of thinking it, that train of thought just seemed completely insane; the anger that had bubbled up within her had felt so right, so natural, but now it was like someone else had been feeling those feelings, thinking those thoughts.
Which wasn’t entirely out of the question, she supposed.
When she had possessed the Quantum Bands, the shade left behind from when Annihilus had been their wielder had intensified her anger to lower her defences, using the moments when she’d lost control to try to take over... and since becoming an Avatar of Death, she’d found herself just as quick to anger, if not more. There had always been a good reason for it; the Galaxy had been in turmoil! Not to mention that she’d been under a lot of stress, personally! No wonder she’d been angry, no wonder she’d lashed out! Was her justified anger a reason to doubt herself? No, she was right to be-
There it was again.
There had been no good reason to swear vengeance on her friends, on her loved ones. No one was challenging her, so there was no good reason to so passionately (so petulantly) resist an imagined inquisition. That meant that she was compromised - which meant that she had to be mindful of any strong negative emotions, in case they were Martyr’s emotions rather than Phyla-Vell’s.
She sighed - it would have been nice to have this realisation before she’d tried kidnapping a member of the Inhuman Royal Family, or perhaps before deciding to keep her mission to assassinate her friend a secret. She was an idiot sometimes.
Another grunt, of frustration or pain she couldn’t quite tell, and she was able to muster enough force in her legs to push herself back up against the wall. It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t quick, but after a few minutes of embarrassingly feeble struggling, she had managed to get to her feet. She felt light-headed, and sweaty, and that just made her feel more light-headed.
She braced herself against the wall with one arm and attempted a step forward - she was immediately grateful that she’d braced herself, because it turned out that walking in a straight line wasn’t quite within her abilities just yet. She decided that she would just let herself fall into the wall in a generally forward-ish direction, for a bit.
She followed the sound of the alarm.
It took her over an hour, the lion’s share of that time spent attempting to navigate her way up a flight of stairs, to reach the control room. The alarm was accompanied by flashing directional lighting, which made plenty of sense to her - when you’re in a static structure in space, and you’re the sort of being that would be in danger if you were suddenly in a vacuum, if something is wrong, you want people to go to a secure spot where they could figure out what was wrong and then try to fix it. Furthermore, if you wanted to make a space secure, it was prudent to put all the important bits and pieces that let you figure out what was wrong there too. Therefore, having the warning alarms lead you to that space was just good planning (albeit increasingly unbearable to listen to).
Theoretically, Phyla wasn’t the sort of being that would be in danger if she was suddenly in a vacuum, once again thanks to her half-Eternal physiology - but she was in no hurry to test that, given that her ability to fly seemed to have vanished. Until she had time to figure out what had changed, she wasn’t going to be trusting in any of her natural abilities in case she didn’t have them anymore. Coming back from the dead was a costly endeavour, and she’d heard of Adam Warlock gaining and losing his powers enough times to not assume she’d not pay a similar cost.
That reminded her of Adam, and that reminded her of the Magus.
The tiny gout of hatred that rocked her wasn’t too unexpected - from her, admittedly warped, perspective it had only been earlier that day that the Magus had been doing his best to break her mind and spirit with unrelenting physical and mental torment. That was the sort of thing which rightfully inspired some hatred in a girl. But she forced it down anyway - those emotions weren’t safe to indulge in right now.
She stumbled over to one of the few unbroken panels left in the room, which was coated in dust and grime. She wiped it clean, which took more effort to negotiate than she’d like to admit, and looked at the fading light of the monitor.
EMERGENCY POWER: 0.1%
LIFE SUPPORT: CRITICAL
-ATMOSPHERIC REGULATION: CRITICAL
-WATER RECLAMATION: OFFLINE
-TEMPERATURE CONTROL: CRITICAL
COMMUNICATIONS: CRITICAL
TELEMETRY: OFFLINE
SECURITY SYSTEMS: OFFLINE
FAITH GENERATORS: BELOW THRESHOLD
She sighed, which was a little easier than her earlier groans. She was not, in fact, in a particularly good situation. The ruined city, the headquarters of the Magus, was on the verge of giving up the battle against the void of space with her trapped inside of it.
Slowly, carefully, she lowered herself onto the padded stool in front of the monitor and laid her fingertips against the keyboard. The Truthers worshipped a being who had been created on Earth, so a lot of their technology was based on Earther designs - that was good, because Phylla was reasonably familiar with Earther tech, and she really didn’t have time to learn a completely foreign operating system.
She opened a communication interface, ignoring the flurry of warnings and error messages that flooded the screen when she did so, and tuned it to a long range frequency. Phyla opened her mouth, but her throat was too dry to make anything comprehensible come from her vocal cords.
She wet her lips, cringing slightly at the foul taste of the green slime that still coated her body, and then tried again.
“I-if a-anyone is r-receiving me…” she stuttered, surprised at how painfully scratchy her throat was, “this is M-Mar… Phyla-Vell b-broadcasting on all f-friendly channels. I a-am alive on the Uni… the moon S-sacrosanct. I’m l-losing-”
The lights went out, with a sudden and final rapidity.
“-power.” Phyla concluded, lamely. She supposed that was the end of that 0.1%.
Okay, so that probably meant that she had a few minutes before the heat was leeched away by the vacuum outside, and maybe a bit more time after that before she ran out of oxygen. Most space faring races built their structures so that, even if all the power went out, the breathable atmosphere didn’t just up and vanish, and she hoped that was true of the Universal Church of Truth as well.
She slumped in her stool, feeling sorry for herself. There was no telling if her message had even been sent, and even if it had been there was no guarantee that friendly ears had heard it or were close enough to do anything about it. She’d transmitted as wide and as broad as the busted up monitor had allowed her to, but for all she knew the only ears listening out there were the Inhumans or Shi’ar, still sore about her team’s interference in their interstellar war and keen for some payback. Or maybe it was just the Magus and his Cult, successful in whatever megalomaniacal conquest he’d set in motion because she’d failed to stop him.
How in the galaxy was this fair? How many people get a second chance of life, and then they die again because they have no way of calling for help to escape their tomb. She didn’t expect any help from Oblivion, or the greater Death aspect that he was a splinter of, of course; she’d never been on great terms with her new Patron(s), and they’d abandoned her the moment a better option had presented itself. But even so, part of her hoped that they’d throw her a bone here.
Hell, she’d even take a mocking visit from Maelstrom at this point.
That sent her thinking back to the first time she’d met Maelstrom; the little gremlin had stolen her Quantum Bands, which had abandoned her after her false “death” at the hands of Mentor. Turns out you weren’t allowed to wield the Quantum Bands when you’re properly dead (which was probably why Wendell Vaughn always tried to explode into Quantum Energy rather than karking it like a normal being). The bands took a piece of you with them, then left to find a new wielder. That had been Wendell, since he’d finally managed to reconstitute himself after his demise at the hands of Annihilus, and she’d given them up to him gladly. After the deal she’d made, she hadn’t deserved the Bands back.
But Wendell Vaughn had never been the sort to care about who “deserved” things, at least if you weren’t one of the bad guys. He’d bequeathed a portion of the Quantum Light to her, earmarked it for her use no matter where or when, to summon her Sword. Odds were good that that portion of Quantum Light hadn’t been used in a while.
“By Hala, Wendell, I hope you’re paying attention” she murmured, and summoned the blade of starlight that had once been her favoured construct as Quasar, until she had corrupted it by becoming the servant of Oblivion. It had become the Symbol of her office, or something suitably ominous like that, and taken on a form of bone and a cross-guard of skulls, but even so, it was still Quantum Energy that formed that blade... still potentially a beacon for a friendly Protector of the Universe.
Surprisingly, she didn’t pass out from the strain of summoning it.
She held the Quantum Sword, and it was different to the last time she’d held it… but familiar. The warm golden light of Quantum Energy had returned to the blade itself, even if the guard remained a bleached-white skull rather than the original starburst. That was something. Perhaps, after however long she’d been dead, the bands had granted her some forgiveness for how she’d perverted their energies.
The strain did not abate - it was like she was pushing and pulling at the energy at the same time, the effort required to maintain it much higher than normal. Channelling energy like this had once been as natural as breathing, but Phyla supposed that was another thing she’d lost in her resurrection. She could feel herself slipping, and knew that either she would have to lose the construct or lose consciousness. She wasn’t sure which she’d prefer.
Darkness began to creep in at the edges of her vision, and she let her arm fall with the Sword still blazing in its grip. It had been worth a try.
The moment before she let her eyes fall closed, the dark sky she saw through the control room’s viewport exploded into a supernova of golden light.
The last thought that went through Phyla-Vell’s head after her resurrection was remarkably similar to the first one.
She’d woken up in a Shi’ar Hospital, which had been a surprise. Last she’d known, the Shi’ar hated them and Knowhere had medical facilities, so clearly she was missing some context.
They had her strapped up to a veritable forest of IVs and monitors; apparently, there was no way she should’ve been alive, which Phyla had agreed with. She’d tried to ask the medical staff questions, but she’d been heavily sedated through the bulk of her care thus far, and coming down from those sedatives the rest of it - if they’d bothered answering her questions, she’d not comprehended or remembered their answers.
This was the first day that she’d been properly lucid, and it seemed like she’d been forgotten about by the staff now that she was likely to survive; she had a bleary recollection of being told that she was on track to fully recover by a doctor whose face she couldn’t remember, but beyond that any interactions she’d managed had been lost to the fog of her recent memory. The only insight into the state of the universe that she’d gleaned was from the handwritten note (written on paper!) left to her by Quasar:
Phyla,
So happy that you made it back! I was always rooting for you. Wish I could stay until you’re awake, but the universe just needs so much darn protecting sometimes!
Much love,
Wendell
Which at least meant that the universe probably hadn’t ended in her absence.
She felt lazily content, lying in her hospital bed with probably more drugs running through her veins than actual blood, and was pleasantly warm. She had questions, including a desperately pressing one that she was repressing for now, and she had concerns, but she could wait on them for a time. Wendell had brought her here and she trusted him implicitly; if he thought this was a safe place for her to be, she’d accept that it was.
She didn’t have much of a choice, really. She might be on the mend, but she definitely wasn’t mended. She didn’t fancy trying to muscle her way out of her hospital bed in her current state.
“If you disturb my patient, I’m throwing you out of that room, war hero or no!”
Phyla perked up at the raised voice outside her room. She hadn’t had any visitors yet.
The man who poked his bearded head through the door was immediately familiar to Phyla, but it took her a moment to place him. It was something about his manner, the way that he waved off the ward nurse following him (arrogant, but an arrogance was somehow earned, too), that made it click for her.
“You got old, Quill,” she mumbled, still content to ride out the pleasant pain-killer haze.
“Well, I guess it has been about one hundred and twenty years since I saw you last, Phyla-Vell,” Peter Quill, Star-Lord, answered with the same light drawl he’d always had.
It took a moment for her mind to catch up with his words, and then suddenly she wasn’t content to have her senses dulled by the drugs. With a start, she forced herself up into a sitting position.
“What.”
“Oh, d’ast, that came out wrong - Phyla, that’s just me, I’ve been out of it too, I was running a different time stream for a while,” Peter quickly clarified, throwing up both hands and approaching with a fighter’s balanced crouch. He looked concerned, maybe even verging on scared.
“How long have I been ‘out’, Quill.” It wasn’t really a question, more a statement of intent; answer, or suffer the consequences.
He kept one of his hands held out, but the other started slowly falling towards his belt, where Phyla noted an unfamiliar weapon was holstered. He seemed legitimately frightened now.
“A little over a decade, I think,” Quill replied, hesitantly, “not a whole century. Now, Phyla, do you mind… powering down?”
Phyla paused, and considered what he had just said. She’d been furious at him… well, not at him specifically. Furious at the situation that he had accidentally misrepresented, but that was no reason for him to-
Oh.
Her hair, voluminous as it currently was, had risen around her head like a ghostly shroud and was arcing bolts of blue energy between the strands. She noticed that she wasn’t warm anymore; in fact, she felt extremely, bracingly cold.
That was new.
The lengths of hair, now that she was aware of them and the rush of hatred was starting to fade, started to lose their energetic display and fall back down around her. Closing her eyes, she breathed deeply and acknowledged the fury that had gripped her, imagined it dissipating through her. Slowly, that image became the truth, just like the Priests of Pama had always taught, and she calmed herself.
She released the breath, and opened her eyes again. The temperature was already starting to rise, but the half-asleep haze of painkillers did not return.
“I’m, uh, I’m sorry,” Phlya attempted, her face screwing itself into a frown unbidden. She hadn’t meant to lose her cool… her temper like that. The shadow of Oblivion’s influence over her hadn’t lessened, now that she was aware of it.
But Quill still should have chosen his words more carefully, flark him.
She slumped back into the pillows and sighed. The fury had been replaced with exhaustion, resignation. D’ast she was tired.
“Ten years…” she said, deadpan.
Quill’s hand stopped hovering over his sidearm, and he carefully rose from the defensive stance he’d adopted during her outburst. He smiled, ruefully, trying to recapture some of that geniality she’d scared away.
“It's not so bad; I actually was gone for a century. I spent more time gone than I’d ever spent here; maybe I can empathise with what you’re feeling a little.”
She returned the wry smile, “I bet I’ve missed a lot, huh?”
He laughed, “If I remember right, the one you missed was one of the more eventful decades. D’ast, when was it you died? Before or after your evil dad tried to eat our universe with his own?”
Phyla blinked, then frowned, “...before.”
Quill snorted, “Okay, well, that happened. That was a big one, actually; we sent Thanos in and he brought Death to an undying Universe. Rich and I tried to sacrifice ourselves to keep him trapped there, but it didn’t stick for any of us… those were the days…”
He pulled a chair from the wall and brought it over to her bedside, seemingly choreographing the story with the fingers of his free hand. He slumped into the chair, slinging one leg up to her bedside with a casual familiarity.
“So, basically, after Adam’s evil side stopped the universe from ripping in half, there was this giant ‘Fault’ that-”
“Peter,” Phyla interrupted, suddenly dead serious, “I need to ask you something important.”
The first thought that had passed through her mind when she’d come back to life, the one that she’d caged up to stop it from consuming her, the one that had been clawing at the bars ever since, the one she hadn’t let herself ask the nurses or the doctors.
“Sure, Phyla, what?”
She took a deep breath; mindfulness.
“When I… died, I was… we were…” Phyla began, but she was stumbling over her thoughts. The words didn’t want to come out, she didn’t want to know the answer, just in case the answer was what she feared. She took another deep breath, and steeled herself. She needed to know.
“We were connected. I could feel her, not perfectly, not all the way - but Mantis had made a link, so that we could call for help. I could feel her, Peter, all the way across the Galaxy.”
Peter Quill didn’t have the look of an old man reliving the glory days anymore - his expression was dead serious, and that made her afraid.
She continued, “but when I woke up, when I was alive again, I couldn’t feel anything. Is…”
She took another deep breath; she couldn’t let the part of her that was Martyr turn the breeching, impossibly deep fear the question evoked in her into anger.
“Peter, is Heather okay? Is she alive?”
The answer he gave managed to be as unhelpful as possible.
“Well, uh, that one’s a bit complicated.”
Phyla wanted to rip free of the hospital’s equipment, tear away her bonds so that she could embrace the woman in front of her. So that she could hold her and never let her go, so that she could kiss her and press their foreheads together… so that she could feel like she was finally home.
But she didn’t.
The woman in front of her was Moondragon, that much was clear. But even without Peter Quill’s halting, uncertain explanation, she would’ve known that this wasn’t quite the Heather Douglas she’d fallen in love with.
The set of her face was a little sharper, but that could have just been time. She had a different style of dress, of makeup, but again - she’d been gone more than a decade, and tastes changed. She wasn’t that petty, or she tried not to be at least; none of that would have mattered.
It was her eyes.
Heather Douglas had always been a very guarded person; that’s par for the course when you’ve been trained as an ascetic psychic monk who must contain a parasitic cosmic monster within yourself. But her eyes, when she’d looked at Phyla, had always had a spark of playfulness in them. Something that had always betrayed a sense that… it had been worth it. That the road to get there had been long and hard and painful, but now that the two of them were together that road must not have been so bad (...d’ast, that was a saccharine thought).
This Moondragon’s eyes were cold.
She’d not come alone; the door to her hospital room was open, and she could see the woman leaning against the wall outside in the hall. She was wearing a pair of dark aviator sunglasses, so Phyla could not see her eyes, but that was entirely unnecessary to understanding this woman’s mood. She was angry - and not just a transient, flippant anger. This woman’s rage ran deep.
Like Moondragon, there were physical differences. Her hair was longer than Phyla liked her own, hanging artfully below the shoulders, and she was more… stylish, Phyla supposed. Certainly more bold. She wore a low cut blazer with no under-shirt, and her crossed arms accentuated that fact. She was in amazing shape, better than Phyla had been herself at the height of her mother’s training. She had higher cheekbones and the scar of Quantum Energy that Phyla had received fighting Annihilus was absent from her face, and she wore striking black lipstick which Phyla didn’t think she, herself, would be able to pull off.
She supposed that, had they been seen together, a bystander might think them sisters; and certainly her the younger. This other woman had an air of swaggering poise and self-confidence that Phyla had never managed for herself. Insecurity, thy name is Vell, after all.
The… other Phyla had not entered the room. Very pointedly, in fact. She had even attempted, in the raised voice of someone trying to be quiet but failing, to convince Moondragon not to enter the room when they’d arrived either. She’d stationed herself, radiating anger, so that she could watch the proceedings, but that was that. Quill, who’d vacated the room’s singular chair for Moondragon, had attempted to greet the other Phyla with no success. She had ignored him, all her baleful focus on the woman in Phyla’s hospital room… not, which slightly confused her, Phyla herself.
“Hello, Vell,” Moondragon said, in a sad tone that conveyed her intent clearly; she was trying to be kind. She had spoken her surname in the fashion one would say a pet name - an attempt to bridge the gap, to open a dialogue in a situation that was impossible to define or prepare for.
But it was the wrong pet name. Heather had called her “Phy”.
“You’re really not her, are you?” Phyla replied, and she felt her heart collapse with those words. The fear that had gripped her since the moment she’d woken up seemed to give way to a deeper, impossible hollowness. If Heather had been dead… she’d died before, and Phyla had found a way to get her back. This felt more final.
“See, she gets it.” The other Phyla snapped, from outside the room.
Moondragon’s face fell. Phyla wasn’t sure which comment she was reacting to.
“The Heather Douglas of this world, and the Heather Douglas of mine… of another world, are the foundations of the Heather Douglas you are speaking to,” Moondragon continued, diplomatically, “but no. I am not her.”
Phyla noticed the slip up.
She didn’t respond right away. How could she? What was there to say?
Moondragon reached out and placed a hand over hers, expression serene but concerned. Phyla wanted to pull away, to slap the proffered hand back, but she couldn’t. Holy Pama, she still wanted to reach out and pull this woman into a kiss. She wanted to kiss her and she wanted to drive the blade of her sword through her chest, she wanted to shatter her like glass and sift through the pieces for the bits that were the real Heather Douglas. She wanted to love her and hate her and destroy her and build her up, and… she knew that she couldn’t let herself do any of it. She could feel the part of her that was Martyr trying to get in, and she refused it.
She realised that she was crying.
“This… this sucks,” she managed, finally. It was so utterly, impossibly inadequate.
“I know, dear, I know.” Moondragon replied, soothingly. She clasped her hand over Phyla’s, squeezing it tight.
“How did this…” Phyla began, but she choked on the words. She was sobbing now, ugly tears and snot streaming down her face. She must’ve looked like a child, and part of her couldn’t help but unfavourably compare her state to the composed, harsh expression of the other Phyla.
Moondragon didn’t need to hear the rest of the question to know what she was asking, and answered, “Your Heather Douglas was not involved in the battle against Requiem; she learned of my… of the Heather Douglas of the other world’s existence later, by chance. She was resentful of what she viewed as a perfect life, and engineered a situation where she… where she could find peace, of a sort. She allowed herself to be consumed by her demons, in part, so that she could use the Dragon of the Moon’s power in an attempt to slay me, but I had a better solution than bloodshed.”
Moondragon paused and looked at her. The tears hadn’t abated, but the sobbing had. Phyla didn’t understand who or what Requiem was, but she found that she could understand Heather; she was finding it rather hard to not lash out against this Moondragon, or the other Phyla, out of resentment herself.
Moondragon sighed, and continued, “I drew her into my mindscape; she wished that she could have had the life I had been fortunate enough to live, and I saw no reason that wish could not be granted. I melded our minds into one and cast out the Dragon. She did not resist me; it was a harmonious combining of souls.”
Phyla withdrew her hand from Moondragon’s grip, and wiped away the worst of the snot and tears. She could feel her hatred, her rage, bubbling just below the surface of her grief. It would be so easy to let it loose… She wanted to raise her voice, to point out the hypocrisy of this woman. Harmonious? Maybe, but not equal. The woman she loved had been devoured by this Moondragon, treated as lesser by this invader, this impostor from another world. She wanted to summon her sword and take vengeance for Heather Douglas.
She didn’t.
“Just… tell me,” Phyla began, her voice wooden, “when I was gone… was Heather… was she okay?”
Moondragon smiled sadly, and shook her head, “No, she was miserable, I’m afraid. Her grief consumed her, and she became reclusive; she never stopped loving you, if that is any comfort.”
Phyla starred in blank shock.
“How the flark would that be a comfort?” She snapped, making no effort now to stop the anger bubbling up.
The monitors around her bed erupted into a cacophony of alarms as she ripped herself from the webbing of IVs and monitoring devices, but she paid them no mind. She was still tangled in bedsheets, so getting to her feet still wasn’t an easy task, but she wanted so d’ast badly to get up and to hurt someone.
She’d neglected who the trio visiting her bedside actually were.
The other Phyla’s skin erupted into a blue starfield, and she was flying towards her in an instant. She would’ve gotten her before Phyla could summon her sword, or freeze the room, or throw a punch, but it wasn’t necessary. Two emerald projections burst from Moondragon, and they snapped their jaws around each of her wrists, pinning her to the wall. Phyla knew, objectively, that they weren’t real draconic beasts, but her body was not convinced. The psionic projections were tricking her mind into thinking she had been grappled by two very real monsters.
Star-Lord had drawn his sidearm, but seemed very thoughtful about who he should actually be aiming it at.
The anger, robbed of its momentum, fled. Martyr, as always, left her to pick up the pieces.
“Damn you,” Phyla sobbed, sagging between the ephemeral grip of the two psionic dragons, “damn you…”
The other Phyla paused in mid-flight, but her skin remained a glittering galaxy of starlight that reflected her continued use of the Nega-Bands.
“I’m sorry, Phyla-Vell,” Moondragon said, finally. She released the psionic projections, and Phyla slumped back down into her hospital bed.
Without another word, the woman who had replaced the love of her life turned, and left the room. After a moment, the other Phyla followed her, still flying in combat readiness. Peter Quill holstered his weapon and sighed.
“She didn’t handle that particularly well. I think you’ve got her spooked; the decision to fuse with our Moondragon wasn’t universally popular before you came back, Phyla,” He said, matter of factly. He picked up the chair that Moondragon had knocked over in the flurry of activity, and turned it so that he could sit with his chin on the chair’s back.
After a while, he chuckled, “She definitely should have lied to you, though. Told you that Heather had a fling with Gamora and got over you, became a high priest of Pama or somethin’ impressive.”
“Mantis,” Phyla replied, her voice absent of emotion, “Gamora would never go for it. She’s the most obnoxiously straight woman I’ve ever met.”
Quill burst out laughing. Despite herself, Phyla felt herself smiling a little too.
“You’ll be okay, Phyla,” Quill said, after he’d calmed down, “it sucks right now, but you’ll be okay.”
She didn’t say anything, and he shook his head jovially. He got to his feet, vigorously stretched out his arms with a cracking sound, and sighed.
“I’m going to leave before the staff gets here and sees all this mess, okay?”
“Okay.”
He nodded, and walked to the door. Halfway through turning to leave he stopped, and looked back to her with an impish grin.
“It might not be what you want to hear right now, but I spent the better part of the last century in a very happy polyamorous relationship; might be worth looking into!”
“What.”
With a grin, Peter Quill darted off down the hallway.
Moondragon didn’t visit her again, but she saw some other familiar faces during her recovery. Mantis visited her once, stayed for less than ten minutes and made a cryptic proclamation to not tell anyone that she had. Phyla had questioned Quill surreptitiously to try to figure that one out, and apparently Mantis might as well have died fighting Thanos along with her for all that anyone had seen her over the past decade, and nobody knew why she’d made herself so scarce.
Seers were infuriating; Mantis might very well have had “visit Phyla-Vell in hospital after ten years of radio silence” in her calendar since before they’d even met.
Drax had visited once, also, but apparently he was not the Drax she’d known. Like her, he was an Avatar of Cosmic forces… but one of the second stringers (also like her). He was the chess piece that the forces of Life put on the board when Adam Warlock was busy, and he’d been killed and reborn several times in the preceding decade. It seemed that, currently, Drax was a formerly mindless clone body of the original Destroyer into which this new Moondragon had psionically implanted all the second hand memories of Drax she’d managed to draw from those who’d known him to create a Drax facsimile. This had sounded fairly monstrous to Phyla; it seemed like the sort of thing that was doomed to fall apart in a dramatic fashion.
Her Heather, their Heather, had found out about it. She’d soothed over the rough edges, granted Drax first hand experiences, memories and thoughts from the original Drax, the original Arthur Douglas. She’d helped the psionic scarring heal, a little. This new Drax knew, and was at peace with the fact, that they weren’t the original, but Heather had given them a true bridge between those existences.
They’d talked, long into the night, but both of them were aware it wasn’t the same. Phyla had bonded, once, with the original Drax the Destroyer, becoming close over their shared grief after the Phalanx Conquest. The two of them had both lost the most important person in their universe, and they’d leant on each other for support. But to this Drax, those were distant second hand memories, and to her they were the events of a few months ago. The dissonance was too great to overcome.
Rocket Racoon and Groot had visited, briefly, on a number of occasions, making small talk but saying very little of meaning. Richard Rider stopped by weekly, before and after his appointments at the same Shi’ar hospital she was recovering in - he was getting therapy here. Apparently the Shi’ar Empire had extended support, no questions asked, to any surviving veterans of the Annihilation Wars. That was the least of what they should have done, Phyla had groused, given that they’d completely ignored the conflict and let the rest of the Galaxy die holding a front that protected them from the Wave.
Rich wasn’t the same tortured and brash hero she remembered fighting besides against the Phalanx or Annihilus; he seemed like he was healing. The universe didn’t weigh so heavily on him anymore.
Some familiar faces hadn’t made an appearance. Gamora had, apparently, visited her at Quill’s insistence… while she was under sedation. The two of them had never really got on, so Phyla hadn’t been too upset about that. Adam Warlock was apparently in the wind, and hadn’t shown up (also a good thing, given the complications of their respective demises). No one had had contact with Jack or Vance in years. Cosmo hadn’t been able to secure a ride, because apparently Knowhere had been destroyed while she was dead, but he had sent a telepathic message wishing her a speedy recovery.
She hadn’t told any of them that she was being discharged.
After she was officially a free woman, as recovered as her Doctors deemed necessary for her to be allowed to walk out their doors, the first thing she did was cut her hair. She walked to the small attached sink and toilet next to her room, summoned her Quantum Sword, and sheared the tangled locks of silver hair down to a fuzzy buzz cut. She hadn’t worn her hair so short in… well, over a decade, but more accurately since she’d trained on Titan to defeat her Brother and take her father’s mantle by force.
She’d been a child then, arrogant and haughty, and she screwed up her face when she looked at herself in the mirror. Maybe she’d been a little too hasty in evoking that time of her life.
But that’s the thing about hair, she supposed; it grows back, when you cut it. It's one of the few things you can get another chance at.
The only possession she had to her name was her Martyr costume, since any other belongings that she could have staked a claim to had been in her accommodations on Knowhere (which was gone) and had probably been sold or claimed while she’d been dead anyhow. So, despite the bad associations with the garment, she’d replaced her hospital gown with it on the day of her release. She’d regained a lot of the body weight that had been lost in her resurrection, but the bodysuit and cloak were still a little loose on her.
Including the time she’d been insensate, she’d been in the care of the Shi’ar medical facility for three weeks. Physically, she was approximately as healthy as she’d been the day before she’d stabbed the Magus through the chest (since, after that, she’d been subjected to torture daily, she could confidently say she was doing better than she had been the day she died). It was a miracle of medical science, she supposed; she was a whole new woman.
She’d tested her new abilities some; her Kree-Eternal physiology had allowed her to absorb energy in the past, but it had been more limited than the new leeching aura she’d acquired. Before, she’d been able to neutralise most energy attacks that she could see coming - and only if she saw it coming. This seemed broader than that, and far more passive once she turned it “on”. She’d stolen thermal energy out of the air when Star-Lord had set her off, and when she’d convinced Groot to let her try it out on one of his cuttings it had eventually withered, as if she’d drawn the… life out of it, she supposed. It fit the whole Avatar of Death thing, but it felt unnecessarily grim. It wasn’t a fair trade for not being able to Fly anymore, but hopefully this would mean that she wouldn’t be flayed alive by a cheap shot from Thanos next time she ran into him.
She pulled up the hood of her cloak over her newly cut hair, and looked over the drab room she’d been confined to. She wouldn’t miss it, but it was still… leaving it behind was a moment, a statement. Phyla had thought about picking up where she’d left off, rejoining Peter Quill and his team on their quest to save the galaxy, but she knew it wasn’t meant to be. The slot on the team for a half-Kree, half-Eternal clone daughter of the legendary Mar-Vell was taken, and Phyla wasn’t sure she wanted to see Moondragon again yet. That deep, complex hollowness she felt whenever she thought of the woman who had replaced the love of her life was still too fresh.
So what to do? How do you pick up the pieces of a life after a decade of not living it? She could go back to Titan, she supposed, but even by the time of the Annihilation Wars she’d felt a stranger there. Her mother had vanished, and her “uncle” Eros was apparently dead. Thanos had attempted to possess him somehow and had been last seen in the process of being devoured by a Black Hole. That wasn’t the sort of thing that would put him down for good, so she supposed she could seek some vengeance on that score (not to mention her own murder at his hands). But even the idea of doing that particular quest felt a little pointless.
She kept her head down as she walked down the hallway of the Shi’ar medical facility, but there was only so much she could do to stop heads turning. The Martyr costume wasn’t really subtle, after all. Once she got outside, she’d look into finding a way off planet and figure things out from there.
“So, you must be what passes for the Captain Marvel of this reality.”
Phyla snapped her head up, and met eyes with Phyla-Vell.
The other Phyla was leaning against a modest terrarium near the hospital exit, but this time she was in uniform. The white and blue raiment of another universe’s Superhero, with a sheathed sword at her belt. Obviously, the other Phyla hadn’t followed the same path that she had - that was evident enough from her double’s continued usage of the Nega Bands that had she’d lost upon becoming Quasar - but it was reassuring that Phyla-Vells the multiverse over would find themselves using a sword.
“I was never Captain Marvel, not really,” Phyla replied, hoping to get this over with.
The other Phyla smirked, “Yeah, that figures. You don’t seem like you would’ve cut it.”
Phyla crossed her arms over her chest, feeling frustration bubbling up inside her. Had this been the reason her counterpart had found her? To brag about how much better she was?
“What do you want?”
“I asked the staff to let me know when you were getting out; said we were sisters,” the other Phyla began, “I got the feeling you weren’t going to stick around, and I wanted to talk one on one.”
Phyla sighed, gesturing dismissively for her counterpart to get on with it.
The other Phyla continued without missing a beat, “in my reality, the Annihilation War didn’t go quite as brutally as it did here. My Quasar and Nova both survived that first encounter with Annihilus; we defeated the Wave before it had gone a third of the way it managed in this universe. No hole in the Kree War Net for the Phalanx to infect. No Skrull diaspora, no ‘Secret Invasion of Earth’ - so, unlike here, the Inhumans never took command of the Kree, which meant no war with the Shi’ar. No Cancerverse.”
“Good for you.”
“I’m not here to brag, my dear sister,” the other Phyla snapped, “I’m here because the history of your universe is nothing like the history of mine. I didn’t have those experiences, I didn’t suffer in the trenches like you did.”
She paused, and sighed.
“But Heather did. Or at least, part of her did.”
Phyla felt the heat die in her breast. The hollowness inside her heart rose up and swallowed her frustration, leaving her empty. Yeah, she supposed that explained it.
The other Phyla must’ve seen her expression change, because she broke eye contact and stared at the floor.
“If you’re anything like me, you love her so much it hurts sometimes,” the other Phyla said, tone neutral.
“Yeah,” Phyla replied.
“I haven’t been handling it well, you know. I’ve been… pushing her away. I’ve been angry.”
Phyla said nothing. If there was a universal constant, why’d it have to be Vells and anger issues?
With a sigh, the other Phyla looked up from the floor, “Do you drink?”
“Not really.”
“What a good girl you are. I do.” She remarked, and she reached into the Terrarium and retrieved a half-empty bottle of Earther wine. She removed the loose cork with a flick of her thumb, and took a long swig. Holding the bottle at an angle, she looked at the remaining liquid appraisingly, before putting it back into the glass garden she had stored it in.
With a sweep of her cape, the other Phyla sprung up from her position at the wall and walked over to her. It surprised Phyla slightly to see that they weren’t the same height - her counterpart was a little taller. Without comment, she inclined her head upwards to continue meeting the other Phyla’s gaze.
It caught her completely off-guard when the other Phyla leaned in and kissed her, forcefully, on the lips. With a gasp of protest, she pushed the other Phyla back and the taller woman laughed.
“Weirder than I thought it would be. Can’t imagine why Heather chose that as the trigger…” she declared, grinning without humour, as she adjusted some loose hair with one hand.
“What the flark is your problem!” Phyla demanded, wiping her mouth with one arm. The other, her sword arm, hung loosely at her side - the brief reprieve from the anger that seemed to bubble up within her at the slightest provocation seemed to be over. She wanted to stab her counterpart through the sternum like the Magus had once stabbed her; maybe that would help with the other Phyla’s lack of experiences of this universe!
“Your girlfriend tried to kill my wife, and she succeeded. That is my problem, little girl” the other Phyla retorted.
Suddenly, Phyla realised something about the other Phyla, this Captain Marvel. She understood that the universe hadn’t put this woman through the wringer the same way it had her; she was still the same spoiled girl whose mother had told her that she deserved Daddy’s name more than her older brother. Phyla had been forced to leave that girl behind, but maybe this other Phyla never had?
The funny thing was, regardless of that sudden rush of understanding, Phyla still wanted to murder her.
Captain Marvel impacted the turf of the rolling green hills of Halfworld approximately a kilometre away from the Shi’ar-ran medical centre, travelling a touch faster than the speed of sound. The shockwave hit her almost instantly, flattening the grass and swaying the nearby trees.
Phyla, incandescent in the plume of icy blue light that surrounded her, flexed her right arm; she’d never been that strong, physically strong, before.
Captain Marvel floated into the air, channelling the power of her Nega-Bands - different to the set she’d worn in this dimension, but Phyla would bet they were just as powerful. If the haymaker, or the subsequent impact, had done any damage it was quickly masked by the rolling starfield that signalled the quantities of cosmic energy being drawn on by her opponent.
The clods of dirt that covered the blue and white armour were dislodged as her counterpart began picking up speed, making the return journey in seconds.
Gamely, Phyla attempted to begin an opposing charge, but she hadn’t even gotten out the hospital door before Captain Marvel was on her like a missile - she blocked a flurry of quick blows with an haphazard guard and kicked out inelegantly, creating some distance as her opponent dodged. She barely had time to breathe before she was under attack again, the strikes coming from above now - d’ast she wished she could still fly!
Swinging wildly with a pair of punches to force an opening, she flung out her other hand and summoned her Quantum Sword. The sense of drain was immediate, but so what? Maybe her new powers were working against her now by trying to absorb the Quantum Energy even as she tried to summon it, but she could handle the dissonance.
She slashed rapidly, forcing her opponent to back off out of range of her blade, which gave Phyla an instant to assess the situation; she’d been sent hurtling back into the hospital, and the foyer was rapidly being evacuated. That was good; even letting Martyr’s influence go unchecked, she didn’t want any of the staff or other patients to get hurt. Fighting in an enclosed space took away some of the advantage the other Phyla’s aerial mobility provided, and unless Captain Marvel wanted to wipe out everyone else in the building her more powerful energy blasts would be off the table, so the hospital was a favourable battlefield if the immediate vicinity was clear of civilians.
The other Phyla was drawing her own sword, a bounded energy blade of some kind. Maybe technological, maybe she was channelling her Nega-Bands through the haft, Phyla didn’t know. But what she did know was that it was no match for the blade that she wielded.
Phyla charged forward, glittering icy-blue energy streaming off her with every movement, and slashed upward. Her Quantum Sword had a longer reach compared to the other Phyla’s sabre, and it seemed that she was far stronger than her opponent. So when Captain Marvel attempted a parry, she was able to easily overwhelm her.
Captain Marvel let herself be pushed back, keeping herself in the air with her flight, and followed one of Phyla’s slashes with a heavy kick. The strike took her in the head - there was a little pain, which was manageable, but it broke her stance and knocked her off balance. Phyla had been an adept aerial combatant, and it seemed that Captain Marvel was too; she clearly knew how to generate force when she wasn’t on the ground.
Following the kick was a flurry of stabs with the energy blade; Phyla brought up her sword to block, deflecting the hits with relative ease. She countered with a sweeping strike, adapting quickly when the other Phyla dodged low, and brought her Quantum Sword down at her head with a savage chop.
Unable to change direction in midair as fast Phyla was able to move her blade, Captain Marvel was forced to block with her sabre. Phyla piled on the strength behind her blow, and hammered her opponent into the hospital floor with a crash.
She was getting the measure of her opponent. Captain Marvel was tough, and her flight gave her a major tactical advantage, but Phyla was the better swordswoman; she was moving a heavier, bulkier blade with more speed and grace than the other Phyla was managing with the thin energy weapon - she got the impression the other Phyla carried the weapon more as a prop than a dedicated part of her repertoire.
Before she could take advantage of the downed Captain Marvel, a short but intense blast of Photonic Energy caught Phyla in the chest. The icy shroud around her drank most of the power out of the blast before it reached her, but there was still enough momentum remaining to give her pause, and that seemed to be what the other Phyla had been hoping for.
Captain Marvel rose like a sunrise; unstoppable and brilliant. With one hand, she gripped Phyla by the collar and flew upwards, slashing blinding with her sabre. Phyla trapped the energy weapon between her arm and torso, keeping the weapon in check as it began to stutter against her energy draining aura, but there was nothing she could do about the hold in time to stop herself from being pushed through the ceiling. Phyla couldn’t claim that she fully understood how her new powers functioned just yet, but it clearly didn’t make her invulnerable; it felt unfair that being driven through a building hurt quite this bad.
She caught a brief glimpse of the second floor, and then she was through that ceiling too.
Captain Marvel poured on the speed, letting go of her sabre to keep hold of Phyla with both hands. Phyla tried to knock herself free, but her counterpart twisted and spun in the air to keep her off balance; without any leverage, her blows lacked the strength to break her counterpart’s grip.
“Shame you can’t fly anymore,” Captain Marvel snarled, and spun a final time to pick up more speed before releasing Phyla.
As the ground began to approach, rather rapidly, Phyla had a few instants to assess her options. She was pretty tough on her own merits, and maybe she could figure out how to make her new powers absorb some of the kinetic energy from her landing in the next half-second... but she doubted it.
"This is gonna hurt," she thought to herself. And she was right.
By the time she’d extricated herself from the crater she’d made, the other Phyla was already on her. Captain Marvel hit her like a freight train, driving both hands into her with the full momentum of flight behind the blow. Phyla went limp, rolling with the hit as best she could, and Captain Marvel drove her into the hillside as she swooped back up into the sky for another attack.
Gulping for air, and hacking up blood, Phyla re-summoned her Quantum Sword - it had lost integrity after her impact, but unlike her opposite number she could never really be disarmed.
Captain Marvel was on track for another ramming attack, but went wide rather than risk Phyla’s counter-slash. Instead, she unleashed a massive blast of Photonic Energy that scoured the hillside. It was the sort of attack that would have given a Herald of Galactus pause.
It left Phyla untouched, and buzzing with stolen energy.
Tracking the path of her opponent, Phyla tossed her Quantum Sword like a javelin - it flew rapidly through the air, and clipped Captain Marvel’s pauldron. It sent her careening downwards, striking the turf with a massive crash.
Phyla re-summoned the blade, and started jogging towards the cloud of dust. D’ast but she wished she could still fly.
She wasn’t even halfway there before the other Phyla had recovered, blasting out of the smoke with both hands extended into fists. This time Phyla was ready, and met the charge with a crushing strike from her Sword, battering the other Phyla into the ground with a rending clash of Quantum Blade against protective Nega Energy.
Captain Marvel reacted quickly, her starfield skin roiling with activity as she flew upwards and battered Phyla with a flurry of short strikes. Phyla attempted to bring her sword around, but her opponent had made it inside her guard; she let the weapon dissipate, instead driving an elbow into the other Phyla’s back. It sent her sprawling into the dirt, but she adapted quickly, flying head first into Phyla’s legs. Between the woman’s natural strength and the speed of her flight, Phyla couldn’t adapt to the impact and was sent flying.
Captain Marvel’s flight proved the difference maker again, and she was back on the attack before Phyla had even gotten her bearings. The other Phyla struck her side with a driving kick, and Phyla felt the pain in her ribs. Before she could retract her leg, however, Phyla had grabbed hold of the limb and pulled.
She could feel the intangible resistance of the other Phyla’s flight, but it didn’t hold out against her newfound strength for long; she slammed her opponent into the turf and let go, and Captain Marvel skipped along the surface of the grassy Halfworld field like a rock across the surface of a pool, before her momentum was arrested when she smashed through the trunk of a tree.
Phyla pulled herself to her feet, grunting at the strain. The energy she’d stolen wasn’t doing anything to dull the pain from the physical punishment she’d received, but she still felt like she could run a marathon if need be. She was buzzing like a dynamo, with the downside that her head was swimming and every time she moved lances of pain erupted from her ribs. The only consolation was that the other Phyla couldn’t be doing much better. She remembered what her Nega-Bands could do, and while they had made her tough they’d never made her indestructible - there was no reason to suspect the other Phyla’s bands were any different.
There was no beating flight in a contest of getting to your feet, but this time the other Phyla was hanging back, clutching a limp arm to her side. Phyla grinned, the part of her that was Martyr smelling blood in the water, and burst into a run.
Captain Marvel let her get closer before retaliating, unleashing a wave of Photonic Energy that engulfed the landscape; Phyla’s shroud started drinking in the blast immediately with a bottomless hunger that completely blunted the assault.
But even if it wasn’t hurting her, it was definitely slowing her - it was like walking through wet cement. She pushed forward, summoning her blade in one hand - it burned with the brightness of a star, supping on the excess of stolen energy from this attack.
Another step, and she wasn’t stepping on the pastoral hills of Halfworld anymore; the ground had been burnt away, the dirt ripped apart and turned to crystal by the maelstrom of Photonic Energy.
Another step, covering her eyes with one arm and readying her blade to swing with the other. She could see a vaguely humanoid silhouette through the energy blast, and she could feel the potency of that blast fading. Maybe the other Phyla was trying to overload her, and was near the end of her stored power? Phyla hoped that was the case, because it wasn’t going to work!
A final step, she was close enough now to swing - all she had to do was muster her strength against the current and strike! She dropped her arm, letting herself be blinded by the Photonic blast, and clasped the hilt of her sword with both hands. This would end it!
The energy blast ceased, and Phyla stumbled forward with the sudden absence of resistance.
Captain Marvel, starfield absent and face bloodied, hit her with an uprooted tree trunk.
Phyla returned to consciousness slowly.
She wasn’t angry anymore - that was nice. She was in pain, which wasn’t nice, but it was a manageable pain.
She opened her eyes, and looked up at Halfworld’s evening sky; it was a brilliant orange, and it seemed to stretch on forever.
The other Phyla was sitting on a tree stump nearby, powered down - she had a split lip, but that was the only evidence of their battle. Her expression was pensive, and sad.
Phyla looked at her opposite number, then said nothing.
They let the silence linger for long minutes, and looked at the sky.
“Did you have anywhere to go lined up?” the other Phyla asked, eventually.
Phyla shook her head.
The other Phyla, this Captain Marvel who had taken her place, sighed. With a groan, she got to her feet, and walked over to where Phyla lay sprawled amidst the woodchips of the tree she’d been knocked unconscious with. She cut a striking figure - she was every bit the Superhero, the inheritor of the Mar-Vell legacy, that Phyla had never been.
“Moondragon and I have an apartment on Dolo-Mayan. It's… roomy, enough for us to avoid each other these last few months…” the other Phyla trailed off, her expression and tone carefully neutral.
Phyla looked up at her counterpart, silent.
“It might be… weird. It’ll definitely be weird,” the other Phyla continued, awkwardly, “but you have a place to stay if you want it. Heather would want you to know that.”
The seed of hate, the part of her that was Martyr, snarled within her at the mention of Heather’s name, but Phyla pushed it down. Every time she listened to that hatred she regretted it.
“I don’t want to be reminded that you took my place and that you’re doing it better,” Phyla sighed, doing her best to match her counterpart’s expressionless tone, “I certainly don’t want to be reminded that the woman I love is gone, and that a stranger is walking around with her face. Why in all the worlds would I want to live with you?”
The other Phyla sighed again, and extended a hand to her. An offer to help her stand.
“Heather loves us both, you know. It kills me, but she does; however they decided what parts to keep, they kept the bits that loved us.”
Phyla looked at her counterpart, and said nothing. Maybe there wasn’t anything to say.
She took the hand, and got to her feet.