23 Mercy
[3rd POV]
How long has it been since he had been trapped in this dimension?
How many times has he lived this moment?
Like a broken video put on perpetual replay, he lived this length of time again and again and again.
Forever.
But in truth, not even a second has passed. It was only an instant.
An instant that stretched for eternity.
Time has isolated him.
He did not know how much time had passed. No, time had not passed, that's the problem.
Time has stayed with him, trapping him in its infinite length. It has been so long, so very very long.
He had done everything there was to do, thought about every thought there was to think and picked every choice there was to choose.
But.
It was not as bad as it sounds. Sure it would've left anyone insane to experience time for so long but Thanos was made of tougher stuff.
And with the help of the mind stone that would occasionally refresh his mind, he could bear the weight of infinity.
There was also one thing that Thanos had come to value through the time spent here, His fellow prisoner.
"Focus. The mind is not like the body, you cannot push it, you cannot force it. You have to convince it, accept it." The Ancient One said wisely while Thanos held the mind stone in his hand.
Thanos was floating in the air while crossing his legs. He was closing his eyes and the mind stone in his hand glowed bright golden.
With his bald head and the golden light of the mind stone, he looked like an alien Buddha.
There were multiple rocks and pebbles around him and they circled around his floating body. His eyes creased in focus while he trained the power of his mind.
"Relax. Be at peace. The body grows under pressure but the mind while at ease." The Ancient One advised again from a few meters away from him.
She watched as Thanos used telekinesis to float in the air and control the thousands of rocks and pebbles around him.
Thanos let out a breath and then willed the pebbles around him to revolve around his suspended body. The rocks started moving, slowly and in one direction at first.
But soon, the pebbles revolve around Thanos at insane speed and from different angles. They numbered in thousands, maybe even millions but Thanos controlled each and every one of them in such a way that no pebble crashed with one another.
It was like a solar system, with him in the middle as the sun. The Ancient One let out a smile and clapped her hands.
She was very impressed indeed. Whether it was Thanos's talent or his affinity with the Infinity Stone was to be seen, but Thanos was a genius.
It took only a few decades for him to have such control while many spent centuries in the art of the mind. It was the trickiest and most truthful art because you can't fool or cheat on your own mind after all.
After a while, Thanos stopped what he was doing and the pebbles fell to the ground. He also stopped floating and stood with his two sturdy feet.
"That was impressive." The Ancient One praised.
"So when am I going to learn how to break through your mental shields so that I can induce insanity in your mind?' Thanos asked truthfully.
"I don't know if that is even possible since I am embodying time itself right now but I would hope you see the result in a few centuries."
Thanos nodded in understanding. He did not know if that was quick or not. Heck, he did not even know how long it had been, he stopped asking the Ancient One after they reached a thousand years.
The time he had spent was used to kill and fight The Ancient One most of the time but he would also take a couple of years break now and then.
But at one point, he thought it was pointless and decided to train himself instead. The Ancient One had been supportive of the idea since she preferred actually living instead of being cut down again and again before she even managed to gather coherent thoughts.
So while Thanos trained, she would give him advice to Thanos here and there. At one point she even taught him how to train his mind as she was tired of dying over and over due to the flying debris caused by his physical training.
It was mostly because Thanos stayed still and was quiet while training his mind and The Ancient One wanted that quiet time to relax and do her own research.
Due to the amount of time they have spent together in this time loop, the Ancient One and Thanos had developed an unlikely relationship.
It was nothing like a human bond that involves love and feeling but instead, it was akin to a relationship a sailor would have to the sky or sea.
"Tch." Thanos suddenly became annoyed when he thought about it and used his mind-amplified by the mind stone to grab The Ancient One.
He used telekinesis and she was suspended in the air while she had a bored expression. "Again? Seriously? You can't just kill me whenever you are annoyed. don't you have any sympathy?"
Thanos flicked one finger and her jaw was ripped off immediately. He used his other hand to make the action of pulling something in the air and her tongue was slowly ripped out of her throat.
It was a gruesome sight but the two of them acted like nothing happened. He put his hands together and made a squeezing gesture while he smiled.
"Ruler's Authority."
Then the Ancient One's body was crushed by the invisible force. Her blood, bones, and organs were crushed and compressed, it was a horrifying sight that was enough to force a man in the bathroom to vomit for a whole day.
*Rewind*
Then it happened again, for who knows how many times. Time rewinded.
"There you go again, giving stupid names to your powers." The Ancient One said, "You are no better than a child."
Thanos turned around and he looked almost offended, "What? 'The sacred sword of Vishanti', 'The divine shield of Seraphim.' hello?"
"I summon powers from different dimensions and entities, it's different." The Ancient One folded her arm confidently.
" Ruler's Authority is a cool name. It's cooler than telekinesis, it gave the impression that it's a powerful ultimate move. It makes me believe that it is more pwoerithan it actually is."
"And believing that it is more powerful than it is helps strengthen the telekinesis too."
The Ancient One frowned, not knowing if it was true or not. She had never heard of strengthening mental powers through believing it but it actually sounds possible.
She made a mental note of that and put it aside to be researched further.
But not now.
Because now her head rolled off her neck after that. It seemed like Thanos was going to use her as a training dummy again.
'I have been training and wasting my time enough. Now it's time to get serious again.' He thought and prepared mentally.
It's all or none.
*Rewind*
.
.
*Rewind*
*Rewind*
*Rewind*
*Rewind*
*Rewind*
*Rewind*
*Rewind*
*Rewind*
*Rewind*
*Rewind*
*Rewind*
*Rewind*
*Rewind*
*Rewind*
*Rewind*
*Rewind*
*Rewind*
*Rewind*
..
.
.
.
.
.
.
---__---__---__---__---__---__---__---__---__
[3rd POV]
The Ancient One was breathing heavily even though time had just rewinded.
The air of invincibility around her was no more. She was perfectly fine on the outside but her soul was tired and fatigued.
Although she made it seem like she could rewind and die again and again until eternity, she could not.
It was a bluff.
Because dying, no matter how short it was, took a toll on the soul. It did not matter if she could turn back time, her soul continued to suffer.
It was negligible and given time to recover, she could do it perpetually.
No, even if she got no break and died, again and again, she could do that for around 10000 years straight,
But who would've thought that Thanos was able to do it? He was able to end her repeatedly for 100000 years, without a single pause.
It was a show of willpower that terrified her to no end. Even celestials would not be able to show that much patience and determination.
She could only imagine what motivated him to such an extent.
She flopped on the ground. She could not even act to appear strong as Thanos slowly came to her and towered over her.
"Yao..." He called her. His voice had an endless depth that almost drowned her entire existence.
It was something he did not have when she first met him. The time he spent trapping her only worked to make him stronger it seems.
"Let's bargain." he finally said with an evil smirk that she now had grown accustomed to.
She sighed.
She had lost this battle of will.
She recalled the distant past, the time when he first appeared in New York. She remembered using the time stone to look at infinite possibilities.
Be in those infinite possibilitiese, she never won. Losing was inevitable for her no matte how much she tried.
She can never win.
Thats why she resorted to using the time stone and trapping him like this. At least she thought, even if she couldn't win, she would not lose either.
But she still lost. It was inevitable from the beginning.
She just hoped that her other plan worked on him. She hoped that all this time spent in the dimension together was enough for him to form some sort of bond with her.
That was why she was okay with teaching him and interacting with him all this time.
To try to get him to have even a tiny bit of attachment to her so that even if he won, he would give her and the earth the only hope they had left.
Mercy.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author : Let's bargain. Give me enough stones and I give you chapters.
Simple.
Equivalent exchange.
