Symbiote 0246: Extreme Measures (1/3)

[I think I'm going to hurl, Alex!] Wanda told him telepathically with a suppressed tone of disgust.

[Calm down. It's over now.] Alex told her, directly manipulating her biological processes to pull down the bile that was rising in her throat. Now all that was left was the mental disgust that she had. Her body wasn't having any reaction to it at least.

[Fucking disgusting. I feel like something is crawling all over my skin. I should've tortured that fucker Yog Whatever before killing it.]

"You have proven your strength without a doubt, Lord," Bael spoke, kneeling down on one knee despite the horrible pain that he experienced because of the action. Wanda's punch had been infused with a very violent Chaos Energy attack and left the demon extremely injured.

Wanda restrained her impulse to snap the demon out of existence and looked at him impassively, not speaking a word.

The demon seemed to gulp, "Allow me to escort you to the core of the dimension, Lord," Bael spoke. "That is where you resided until your disappearance."

[Ask him about the exact circumstances surrounding Cthon's disappearance.]

Wanda nodded and floated toward Bael's platform. "Tell me, Bael," Wanda asked. "What exactly were the circumstances surrounding my main body's disappearance?"

"You don't know, Lord?" Bael asked, surprised.

"Answer the question, Bael," Wanda said as her eyes glowed red.

The demon had been sufficiently terrified by her previous display of power where she took no more than a few seconds to dispatch almost all of the Elders who were on par with him. It answered apprehensively, "A significant amount of time has passed, Lord. Roughly three chaos cycles, equivalent to four and a half Earth months, since your disappearance from your abode. It was abrupt and completely unexpected. One moment we were all going about our business in our respective domains and the next moment, your presence disappeared. The dimensional currents all went haywire and the lesser demons all rioted. We were forced to take action to suppress them and bring them under control."

Wanda hummed, "Let's go to my abode now. Lead me," Wanda said before turning to Bael. The demon didn't even have the opportunity to voice out its doubts and was forced to escort the new dimensional lord to the central location. Despite its injured state, it fulfilled its task.

Wanda came up to a huge floating landmass shaped like an island that had a palace built atop it.

"You can return to your domain to heal up, Bael. And let me know when the Elders that I killed are revived. We will soon convene an actual meeting," Wanda told the demon who stiffly bowed and essentially ran away.

"The demons that you killed will be revived?" Alex asked with a raised brow, appearing beside Wanda. "How'd you figure that?"

"I just know," She said. "It's like an instinctual piece of information. Chaos demons, whenever killed, are eventually revived within the dimension itself."

"And here I was thinking that you were rid of those tentacled abominations," Alex teased.

"If they creep me out one bit, I'll kill them again," Wanda grunted before taking up a haughty tone. "Now come. Your wife wishes to celebrate a battle hard fought."

Alex raised a brow at Wanda's choice of words, "Wife, you say …"

"Of course," She turned to look at him with her hands behind her back. Leaning forward, she brought her face close to his and smiled a bright smile that seemed to momentarily light up the dark and dreary dimension, "We're life partners, after all, right?"

"Guess so," Alex said with a smile as he moved closer to Wanda who continued floating backward.

The duo soon entered the palace and started exploring.

"That Cthon guy must've been unbelievably big to have needed so much room …" Wanda commented on the large proportions of all of the items in the palace. "I feel like I'm Jack."

"From the fairy tale?"

"Yeah. I believe he must have felt this way as well when he entered the giant's abode."

"If you say so," Alex said. "Let's look if the guy left anyway for us to glean information from this place. If he has some kind of secret library for us to browse, we are going to hit the jackpot."

"I doubt it," Wanda said. "The dimensional rulers are said to be nigh-omnipotent beings within their dimensions. Someone like that has no need for written text other than baiting fools who are hungry for power."

"Cthon was indeed the one who wrote the Darkhold. Or at least his incarnation, Chthon. Innovative name, really." He said dryly.

Wanda snorted amusedly, "Can you split into multiple bodies to scour this place? If it's just us searching, then it's going to take us days to go through the entire palace."

"I thought you liked it here?" Alex said.

"It's good, yes, but I prefer staying in Wakanda. I feel more … welcome there. I think? I can't quite describe it yet. Here, it's those creepy demons, most of whom I would rather never see again. I just want to get rid of the mark of this dimension and get out of here so that I can become the Sorcerer Supreme and finish our sanctum."

"Your wish is my command, my queen," Alex bowed to Wanda before splitting into hundreds of bodies that all spread apart through the castle.

"So many?" Wanda asked. "I thought that you could only create a limited number of copies of yourself."

"My limit is pretty high by now," Alex said. "And it's also a quantity-over-quality situation right now. The bodies I've released to search the castle can easily get obliterated by even a single lesser demon. If I wanted to create stronger bodies, then the number would be much lower."

"Got it," Wanda nodded. "Can you also look for a bed?"

"I don't need a bed to have sex," Alex wrapped his arm around Wanda's waist and pulled her close.

The redhead showed a slightly awkward expression, "Alex …" She placed her palm on his chest, "I love you, truly. But honest to fucking god, I cannot even think of sex in this dimension that's filled with weird creepy bug-like monsters with tentacles and whatnot. I don't think I can ever get used to them if I end up forced to stay in this place."

"I understand," Alex gave an understanding smile. "Why do you want me to look for a bed though?"

"I want to lie down for a bit. I'm tired."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

…

"I'm going to kill those bastards once again," Wanda growled. "And I will keep killing them until they are demoted to damned mindless lesser demons."

"Instead, you could threaten to kill them and force them to return the fragments of the heart that they took away so that we can take control of it to get rid of the mark that it has on you," Alex said, examining the Heart of the Chaos dimension. Or at least what was left of it. Instead of a perfect sphere that was glowing with ominous crimson, it looked like an apple that had been chewed into, leaving just the cylindrical core.

"They took most of the damned core. No wonder Bael didn't tell me that the killed elder demons would be revived in my castle. They all have their own little fragments of the heart that they can use to revive themselves in their own domains."

"Calm down, Wanda. We'll just threaten them to return the eighty or so percent of the core that they took. If not, then we'll just have to go and snatch it from them."

"They are going to be prepared for me this time, Alex. The fight might not be as easy as last time," She told him. "It was already dangerous for me to take them on with them severely underestimating me. They aren't going to underestimate me again. If they truly work together, I'm going to be hard-pressed to take them on."

"Then we just have to make the fight unfair," Alex had a slightly wild idea.

"How so? I can't use mystic arts here since most of those spells are suppressed. Are we going to use the Infinity Stones?"

"We could," Alex nodded. "Or you could take suck the energy of the remaining fragment and use it to empower yourself. It should give you some of the absolute authority over the dimension that only the ruler has. They won't be able to beat you no matter what they do in that case."

"The dimension will destabilize and start imploding, Alex. That's why they left this much of the core intact. Otherwise, why would they leave it up for grabs," Wanda said. "Plus, I'm not strong enough to contain twenty percent of the literal heart of the Chaos dimension. The power it contains is not something that I can handle by myself."

"You said it," Alex said, tilting his head to look at Wanda. "You can't handle it yourself. Now trust me and start absorbing the core's energy, take all of it in. Leave everything else to me."

Wanda looked into Alex's eyes, seeing nothing but confidence in his ability to support her. "Fine," She said, extending her palms in the direction of the core.

A red mist escaped Wanda's hands and enveloped the remnant of the dimension's heart, in the next instant, a loud cracking sound was heard as the ceiling of the palace broke. Alex formed a huge canopy to protect Wanda as she pulled a crimson beam out from the core, sucking it into herself. The beam continued getting thicker as the palace crumbled further.

As Wanda continued pulling the energy into herself, she staggered a little while the entire dimension's fabric seemed to be getting destabilized. Seeing Wanda's strain, he merged into her and took over the energy that she pulled into herself. He started compressing the absorbed energy into a liquified form and spread it around Wanda's body, merging it into her. He had already formed the skin, blood, and bones bonds with her. Using those bonds, he merged the absorbed heart of the Chaos Dimension with Wanda's body.

A thought came to Alex's mind as he started the process, [Wanda … Doing this might end up making it infinitely harder for you to return to Earth. Should I keep going?]

Wanda wasn't able to answer as a loud scream reverberated through the palace, "What are you doing, you bitch!?" Bael screamed. "I'll kill you!"

***

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