The Dark Dimension
Clea sat alone in the rebel headquarters, staring at the magical map spread out before her on the roughhewn table. She had long since dismissed her council of generals and lieutenants and now she shared the quiet war room with only dust and doubt.
Her eyes passed over the constantly shifting landscape of the map section that depicted the Never Hills, its random undulations still able to make her nauseous if she spent too much time contemplating them. Luckily, they weren’t her focus tonight. Umar’s forces didn’t like fighting there any more than her own did, so it had yet to become a battleground of any significance, but she knew that might not last. Nothing about the Hills ever did.
She spent a few brief moments studying the shining barrier that separated the most populated areas of the Dark Dimension from the territory of the Mindless Ones. The sinuous golden line was as bright and strong as ever, with no visible areas of thinning. She breathed out a quick sigh of relief before moving on.
Her attention this evening was centered on Umar’s palace, the seat of the Azure Throne. It had proved nigh impregnable during the many times it had changed hands over the millennia, from Dormammu to Umar and back again, a constant tug-of-war on a scale that made mortal sibling rivalry look like ants fighting over crumbs.
The palace remained the one obstacle to the rebellion’s success. It had never been taken by force, only by magic and treachery – the magic Dormammu’s and the treachery Umar’s. But now that Dormammu had been defeated, perhaps for good, and Umar had absorbed his power, it did not look like there was much chance of the royal residency falling to those means, either.
Clea almost wished she could reach out to Stephen for guidance, as she used to… but no. It was at least partially Doctor Strange’s fault that Umar had been able to defeat her brother Dormammu in the first place, as Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme had thrown in with the power-hungry Faltine goddess to protect his world from the Dread One. He hadn’t appeared to give much thought to the fact that doing so would subject Clea’s own world to Umar’s reign once again, and Umar was easily the more malicious of the two despots. That Stephen could so casually and callously put his own world’s needs above hers was perhaps understandable.
It was not necessarily forgivable.
As she contemplated the palace-in-miniature, chin on her fist, Clea gradually became aware of a buzzing sensation in her ears. Irritated and thinking it a swarm of the small insects that plagued the underground hideout, she brushed at the sides of her head, yet came away with nothing but strands of silvery-white hair for her trouble.
Realizing it was not bugs bedeviling her, Clea sat up straighter and tilted her head to the side, concentrating on the sound. It wasn’t a drone so much as white noise, a pattern of static like what came over the radio during her and Stephen’s car rides when they passed through a tunnel. After a moment, she thought she could make out words.
Clea… need you… hurry…
A moment further, and she recognized the voice.
Patsy Walker. Hellcat.
Clea hesitated for the space of a breath, recalling that the last time she had left her rebels and their battle to free the Dark Dimension from the Dread Siblings and come to the Defender’s aid, she had been promised assistance in return. Assistance that had yet to materialize.
But ultimately that didn’t matter.
Patsy wouldn’t be calling out to her unless she was in dire straits and truly needed her. Clea had no choice but to answer her old friend’s call.
•••
Patsy needed caffeine, acetaminophen, an ice pack, and the darkest, quietest room in the Parringtons’ beach house. Some anti-nausea medication couldn’t hurt, either.
Using her psionic powers had often left her with killer migraines in the past. Then the Titanian priestess Moondragon, who had fostered those abilities within Patsy and trained her in their use, had seemingly taken the powers away again in a fit of pique.
Telepathy had never really been in her bag of psionic tricks even before Moondragon’s temper tantrum had emptied it out, but Patsy had always been able to sense when her loved ones were in danger. She supposed it wasn’t telepathy so much as empathy, but the connection was the important thing, not the words used to try and define it.
Clea was someone Patsy loved; she’d been a dear friend since Hellcat’s earliest days with the Defenders, and a source of great comfort when Patsy’s mother had died. Though their paths had diverged greatly since their attempt to start that team anew with Valkyrie, she still knew Clea would do anything for her, just as she would do anything for the purple-loving Sorceress Supreme.
And that they would both do the same for Ardina, who wouldn’t even be here if not for them.
Unlike telepathy, empathy wasn’t just a one-way street controlled by the mind reader, not when both parties shared in the emotional bond. It went both ways, and it was that two-way connection that she hoped would allow her to reach Clea across whatever vast distances that separated them.
So, she concentrated on those ties of love and friendship, remembering past battles against the likes of Mandrill and his Fem-Force, the Order, even Satan himself, calling to mind images of Clea and the feelings of warmth and affection those memories evoked.
There.
Patsy didn’t know where “there” was, exactly – probably the Dark Dimension – but distance was meaningless where love was involved, and her questing mind had brushed up against the bright silver and violet beacon that was Clea’s essence, like a moth seeking flame, minus the whole burning to death part.
She homed in on that lodestar and, focusing every ounce of psychic ability still left to her, began sending the same message toward it over and over.
Clea… need you… hurry…
She only stopped when the pain in her head threatened to split her skull in two, not knowing whether her call had been heard or not, but too exhausted from the effort to attempt anything else for now.
Patsy supposed if this didn’t work and Clea didn’t show, she would have to enlist the help of Doctor Strange. Not an appealing thought; she knew how strained his and Clea’s relationship had been of late. Long distance romances were hard. They were even harder when they spanned dimensions instead of globes.
Add in one party’s rampant womanizing, and, well… maybe she should try contacting the Surfer instead? He could travel between dimensions, and he did sort of have a vested interest in Ardina, her having been the Eve created from his cosmic Adam’s rib, so to speak. Though he hadn’t exactly forgiven any of them for that little stunt yet…
Yeah. This better work.
As she lay back on the world’s most comfortable sectional couch, which had probably cost as much as the annual royalties she made on all her books combined, Patsy’s back twinged painfully again. That Mindless One had really done a number on her, but she knew she’d been lucky. It could easily have killed her, especially catching her unawares like that. As it was, she was definitely going to need some downtime to get back into fighting trim.
Which in turn meant it was unlikely that she’d be able to accompany whoever she ultimately did wind up getting to go after Ardina.
All the more reason for it to be Clea.
Patsy went back to trying to send her message across dimensions through her tenuous empathic link with her friend, doing her best to ignore both the pain in her head and in her lower back.
Clea… need you… hurry…
“By the Vishanti, Patsy, there’s no need to shout.”