As always, your comments and support keep me going. Love you all
The golden light of the Avalon Protocol didn't just appear in her mind; it bloomed, warm and heavy, like the sun breaking through a thick fog. With her eyes closed, the sterile hospital room faded away entirely, replaced by the deep, ambient warmth of the System's inner architecture.
Maya mentally reached for the tab she had noticed earlier.
[Accessing: The Armory of the Round Table]
The interface didn't just open a new window. The golden knotwork expanded, forming a massive, intricately carved archway in her mind's eye. Beyond the arch lay a vast, shadowed hall constructed of dark, polished stone. Floating above heavy stone pedestals were shapes—silhouettes of weapons and armor wrapped in chains of glowing light.
It wasn't a store. It was a vault.
She focused her attention on the pedestal closest to her. The silhouette was a broadsword, but even in shadow, the blade seemed to absorb the ambient light around it, radiating a cold, oppressive gravity.
[Relic: The Ebony Blade (Fragmented)] Origin: Forged from a star-stone meteor by Merlin. A blade that cuts through magic and matter alike, but hungers for the blood of the corrupt. Status: Locked. Cost: 5,000 Essence.
Maya mentally whistled. She shifted her focus to another pedestal, this one holding a small, jagged chunk of dull, grey metal that crackled with dormant, branching electricity.
[Material: Unrefined Uru Ingot] Origin: Nidavellir. Status: Locked. Cost: 2,500 Essence.
She looked at her own currency counter, hovering in the top right corner of her vision.
[Current Essence: 0]
"Right. Obviously," she muttered in the quiet of her mind. The System lore she had absorbed stated clearly that Essence wasn't handed out for doing chores or helping frightened children in the burn ward. Essence was earned in blood. It was the currency of war, stripped from the defeated enemies of the Realm—villains, HYDRA agents, alien foot soldiers.
Right now, she couldn't even defeat a strong breeze, let alone a Chitauri warrior. The Armory was a promise of future power, a dangling carrot to ensure she didn't just settle into a quiet, civilian life once her heart was fully healed.
She backed out of the Armory hall, the heavy stone archway dissolving into golden threads, and turned her attention to the next locked function.
[Accessing: Oath Ledger]
The interface shifted into a massive, leather-bound tome floating in the empty space. The pages were blank, made of thick, cream-colored parchment.
[The Oath Ledger] A Knight's word is their bond, etched into the very fabric of Avalon. To swear an Oath is to tie your soul's progression to a singular cause. Current Status: No Active Oaths. Warning: Swearing an Oath grants immediate, massive boons and unlocks targeted evolutionary paths. Failing or abandoning an Oath inflicts the [Oathbreaker] curse, severing the Host's connection to Aether and halving all physical stats permanently until atonement is achieved.
Maya stared at the warning, a cold chill running down her spine that had nothing to do with the hospital's air conditioning. Halving her physical stats permanently. If she swore an oath right now and failed, her Vigor would drop from a 5 to a 2.5. Her heart would literally stop beating in her chest within minutes.
She mentally slammed the book shut.
Not touching that. Not until I actually know what I'm up against.
She needed information. She knew it was May 2011, but the MCU timeline was notoriously compressed around this period. Fans called it "Fury's Big Week"—the period where the events of Iron Man 2, Thor, and The Incredible Hulk all essentially overlapped in the span of roughly seven days. If she was in the middle of that week, New Mexico was currently dealing with a blonde god looking for his hammer, and Harlem was about to be torn apart by two gamma-irradiated monsters.
She needed a phone. She needed the internet.
The sound of the heavy wooden door clicking open shattered her concentration.
Maya's eyes snapped open. The golden interface instantly dissolved into the periphery of her vision, leaving her blinking against the harsh fluorescent lights of Room 314.
She quickly let her posture slump, relaxing the newly tightened muscles in her arms and back, sinking deeper into the pillows. She let her eyelids droop, erasing the sharp, analytical focus from her face and replacing it with the dull, weary haze of a chronic patient. Act the part, she reminded herself. You are dying. Just... slightly less than yesterday.
Carla led the way into the room, holding a thick metal clipboard. Behind her was a man in his late fifties. He wore a crisp white coat over a pale blue button-down shirt, a stethoscope draped around his neck like a familiar yoke. He had thinning silver hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and the heavy, drooping eyes of a man who hadn't slept a full eight hours since medical school.
"Good morning, Maya," Doctor Aris said, his voice a low, gravelly baritone that managed to be both commanding and strangely comforting. He stepped up to the side of the bed, his eyes flicking immediately past her face to the monitors.
"Morning, Dr. Aris," Maya replied, purposefully keeping her voice soft, adding a slight, breathy rasp to the syllables. It wasn't entirely an act—her throat was still raw from the ventilator tube a few days ago—but she exaggerated it just enough to sell the performance.
"Carla tells me we had an eventful morning," Aris said, pulling a penlight from his breast pocket. He gently lifted her chin with two fingers. "Follow the light, please."
Maya tracked the small beam as he moved it back and forth.
"Pupils are responsive. Color is vastly improved from Tuesday," he murmured, more to himself than to her. He clicked the light off and reached for his stethoscope. "Sit forward for me, just a bit."
Maya pushed herself off the pillows. She made sure to move slowly, letting a slight tremor enter her arms as she bore her own weight. It took focus to suppress the steady strength the System had just granted her, to artificially introduce the weakness the doctor expected to see.
Aris pressed the cold metal diaphragm of the stethoscope against her back, right between her shoulder blades. "Deep breath in."
Maya inhaled. She could easily fill her lungs now, the Draught of the Hearth having cleared the heavy fluid buildup, but she purposefully stopped halfway, letting out a small, manufactured cough.
"And out," Aris instructed, his brow furrowing slightly. He moved the stethoscope lower. "Again."
She repeated the process, controlling the airflow, making it sound shallow.
Aris pulled the earpieces out and let the stethoscope drop back around his neck. He walked around to the foot of the bed, picking up the chart from Carla. He stared at the papers for a long, silent minute, chewing on the inside of his cheek.
Maya held her breath, a spike of genuine anxiety piercing through her calm facade. Had she overdone it? Or underdone it? Did he hear the anomaly in her valve?
"Your resting heart rate is seventy-eight beats per minute," Aris finally said, looking up over the rim of his glasses. "Your oxygen saturation is hovering at ninety-four percent on room air. Yesterday, you were at eighty-eight percent while on a nasal cannula."
"Is that... good?" Maya asked, playing the hopeful, confused teenager.
"It's remarkable," Aris corrected, his tone laced with heavy medical skepticism. He walked back to her side and gently picked up her wrist, pressing his index and middle fingers against her pulse point. "The human body is a strange machine, Maya. Sometimes, it fights the medication. Sometimes, it decides to cooperate. It seems your mitral valve has spontaneously managed to seal slightly better than our last echocardiogram indicated. The beta-blockers finally have traction."
He let her wrist go and turned to Carla. "Let's step down the Lasix dosage. Her fluid retention is dramatically reduced. We don't want to dehydrate her and trigger another arrhythmia."
"Yes, Doctor," Carla nodded, making a note on her clipboard.
"Don't start packing your bags just yet, Miss Gallagher," Aris warned, turning his attention back to Maya. The stern lines around his mouth softened just a fraction. "You are still in the critical ward for a reason. Your heart is essentially a cracked foundation. We may have stopped the leak for now, but the crack is still there. I want you resting. No sudden movements, no stress."
He offered a brief, tired smile. "But... whatever you're doing, keep doing it. I'll see you this evening."
"Thank you, Doctor," Maya whispered.
As the two medical professionals left the room, Maya let out a long, silent exhale. Her muscles unspooled, the tension draining out of her shoulders.
She had passed the inspection. They attributed the healing to the medication taking late effect. She had bought herself the perfect cover story. As long as she kept her stat gains steady and didn't suddenly jump to a Vigor of 20 overnight, she could play off her recovery as a miraculous, slow response to the treatment.
But Aris's words echoed in her mind. The crack is still there.
He was right. The System hadn't given her a new heart; it had reinforced the broken one. The underlying congenital defect, the physical warping of the tissue, was still a reality she had to navigate. If she took a massive hit, or if she failed her daily tasks and triggered the [Tarnished Honor] penalty, that foundation would crumble instantly.
She needed to get stronger, faster. She needed to hit the Mindscape Pavilion again tonight and squeeze every ounce of knowledge out of Sir Percy.
Maya looked over at the small bedside table. Resting next to the plastic water pitcher was a cheap, digital alarm clock and a black plastic landline telephone. No smartphone. No laptop. The original Maya hadn't brought them to the hospital because she had collapsed unexpectedly.
She needed a window to the outside world.
She reached for the TV remote clipped to her bedrail. It was a bulky, cream-colored plastic thing with faded rubber buttons. She pressed the red power button.
Mounted high in the corner of the room, a chunky, flat-screen television flickered to life. The volume was muted, the screen currently displaying a local daytime soap opera.
Maya clicked through the channels, her thumb mashing the 'Channel Up' button. Cooking show. Rerun of Friends. A local car dealership commercial.
Finally, she hit NY1, the local twenty-four-hour news network.
She pressed the volume button, bringing the sound up to a low murmur. On the screen, an anchor with perfectly coiffed hair was sitting behind a glass desk, looking entirely too serious.
"...continuing our coverage of the bizarre meteorological event that occurred late last night in Puente Antiguo, New Mexico. Local authorities are still completely baffled by the sudden, intense atmospheric disturbance that touched down in the desert. Amateur video from the scene shows what appears to be a massive, localized funnel cloud, though meteorologists insist the conditions were not right for a tornado."
The screen cut to a shaky, grainy cellphone video. The footage was dark, illuminated only by distant streetlights, but the sky was churning violently. A beam of blinding, iridescent light punched down from the clouds, slamming into the desert floor with enough force to shake the camera.
Maya sat straight up, the manufactured weakness entirely forgotten. She stared at the screen, her heart giving a solid, heavy thud against her ribs.
The Bifrost.
Thor had just landed on Earth.
The anchor's voice returned as the footage looped. "Adding to the mystery, a large crater was discovered a few miles from the town this morning. The area has already been cordoned off by federal agents belonging to a shadowy government agency, who have declined to comment on the nature of the object found at the center of the impact site."
A government agency. S.H.I.E.L.D.
Maya's mouth went dry. She looked at the digital date scrolling along the bottom ticker of the news broadcast.
Friday, May 13, 2011.
The timeline wasn't just starting; it was already in motion. The pieces were on the board. In a few days, the Destroyer would tear through that small New Mexico town. Somewhere in New York, Tony Stark was likely throwing a disastrous birthday party while dying of palladium poisoning. And in just over a year, the sky above the very hospital she was sitting in would tear open, raining Chitauri chariots down on the streets.
A year. She had exactly one year to go from a bedridden girl with a failing heart to a knight capable of standing on the front lines of an alien invasion.
Maya gripped the plastic remote so hard the casing creaked. The sheer scale of the task was suffocating, a mountain of impossibility casting a shadow over her.
But then, she felt the phantom weight of the wooden training sword in her hands. She felt the lingering, ambient warmth of the alchemical draught in her chest. She had the Avalon Protocol. She had the echoes of ancient kings backing her play.
"One year," she whispered to the television screen, her jaw setting in a hard, uncompromising line. "Better get to work."
Maya's thumb hovered over the mute button on the chunky plastic remote, but she didn't press it. She let the anchor's polished, urgent voice wash over her, a bizarre soundtrack to the realization that her life was now a countdown clock.
Thor was in New Mexico. Which meant Loki was currently orchestrating his brother's exile, and within the week, he would fall into the abyss, right into the waiting, purple hands of Thanos.
Maya rubbed the bridge of her nose, her newly clear mind processing the data with a cold, terrifying efficiency. The Marvel Cinematic Universe. Arthur had watched the films. He had enjoyed them—expensive popcorn spectacles to kill a Sunday afternoon. He knew the big beats: New York gets invaded, Ultron tries to drop a city from the sky, purple alien snaps his fingers.
But as the broadcast transitioned from the New Mexico crater to local metropolitan news, the ticker tape at the bottom of the screen caught her eye.
...Union Allied Construction secures massive rebuilding contracts in Hell's Kitchen following recent gang violence... Senate subcommittee pushes for mandatory registry of 'spontaneous genetic anomalies' in public schools...
Maya froze.
Hell's Kitchen. Union Allied. Those weren't Avengers plotlines. That was the gritty, street-level stuff. That was the blind lawyer with the billy clubs and the man who wore white suits and crushed people's heads in car doors. Arthur had watched a season or two of those shows on Netflix before canceling his subscription.
And that second headline. Genetic anomalies.
She stared at the scrolling text, her heart doing a completely natural, un-medical flutter of panic. Mutants? Was this world merged with the X-Men? Arthur had seen those films years ago—Hugh Jackman with the claws, the bald guy in the wheelchair, the guy with the metal helmet. But their timeline was a convoluted nightmare of time travel and retcons. He didn't know when things happened for them. Did they already have the school in Westchester? Was Magneto currently dropping stadiums on people, or was he playing chess in a plastic prison?
This wasn't a neatly packaged film franchise. This was a living, breathing, terrifyingly vast reality.
Before the panic could fully take root, the air in the hospital room shimmered. The Avalon Protocol flared to life, not as a subtle notification, but as a sprawling, multi-paneled interface that dominated her field of vision. The System had sensed her expanding awareness of the world's threats and was responding in kind.
[World State Assessment: Expanded] [Host awareness has breached localized parameters. Unlocking 'The Knight's Codex'.]
A large, beautifully illuminated manuscript materialized in the air, its pages turning rapidly with a sound like heavy canvas snapping in the wind. It stopped on a double-page spread mapped with glowing, shifting territories.
[Faction Standing & Threat Ledger]
The Crown (Asgard): Neutral. (Warning: Cosmically distant. Current political instability detected.)
The Shield (S.H.I.E.L.D.): Neutral. (Warning: Infiltration level severe. Trust cautiously.)
The Shadows (The Hand/Criminal Syndicates): Hostile. (Active in Host's immediate vicinity.)
The Children of the Atom (Homo Superior): Fractured. (Societal tension escalating. Potential allies or catastrophic threats.)
A new sub-menu blinked into existence beneath the ledger.
[Dynamic Quests Unlocked: The World Stage] The realm is vast, and evil takes many forms. As the Host's Renown grows, so too will the attention of these factions. Engage with caution.
Maya let out a hollow laugh that sounded more like a cough. She waved a hand through the glowing projection of the Codex, watching the golden light warp around her pale fingers.
"I have four Vigor," she told the System, her voice a dry whisper. "I literally needed a magical potion to eat red jello without throwing up. You think I'm going to go pick a fight with a ninja death cult or a guy who can control metal?"
The System, predictably, did not answer. The Codex simply folded itself shut and dissolved into ambient golden motes that faded into the hospital ceiling.
She was vastly out of her depth. Her film knowledge was a crutch, not a roadmap. She knew the broad strokes, but she didn't know the day-to-day reality of living in a city that was a magnet for supervillains.
The heavy wooden door to her room suddenly swung open, making Maya jump.
Eleanor backed into the room, holding a cardboard drink carrier and a brown paper bag stained with grease spots. She turned around and let out a genuine, unburdened sigh of relief when she saw Maya sitting completely upright, the bed angled up, watching the news.
"Look at you," Eleanor breathed, kicking the door shut behind her. She walked over, setting the bag and the drinks on the rolling table. She looked significantly better than she had a few hours ago. Her dark red hair—the exact same shade as Maya's, though currently lacking the hospital grease—was pulled back into a neat ponytail. She had changed into clean jeans and a soft grey sweater, and while the dark circles under her eyes were still there, the sheer, crushing weight seemed to have lifted from her shoulders.
"Dr. Aris called me," Eleanor said, pulling up a plastic chair and sitting close to the bed. Her eyes were searching Maya's face, taking in the color that had returned to her cheeks. "He said your echo looked better. He said the valve is... holding."
"Yeah," Maya said, offering a small, careful smile. "I feel weirdly okay. I even walked to the window."
Eleanor's eyes widened, a flash of maternal panic immediately overriding the relief. "Maya! You shouldn't be out of bed without a nurse—"
"I know, I know," Maya held up a hand, realizing her mistake. She needed to play the convalescent, not the miracle. "I just went two steps. I wanted to see the sun. I'm okay, Mom. I promise."
Eleanor stared at her for a long moment, her chest rising and falling as she processed the impossible shift in her daughter's condition. Then, without warning, she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around Maya.
It was a tight, desperate hug. Maya stiffened for a fraction of a second. Arthur hadn't been hugged like this in a decade. But the scent of Eleanor—a mix of cheap vanilla perfume and the crisp smell of the outside air—was overwhelmingly human. It grounded her. Maya slowly raised her arms, ignoring the slight pull of the IV line taped to the back of her hand, and hugged the woman back.
"I thought I lost you on Tuesday, May," Eleanor whispered into her shoulder, her voice cracking. "I really did."
"I'm right here," Maya murmured, staring blankly at the hospital wall over her mother's shoulder. Guilt, sharp and heavy, twisted in her gut again, but she forced it down. I am Maya now. She needs Maya. So I am Maya.
Eleanor pulled back, wiping a rogue tear from her cheek with the heel of her hand, and let out a wet laugh. "Okay. No more crying. Dr. Aris says stress is bad for you, and God knows I'm a stressful person."
She reached into the brown paper bag. "I brought contraband."
Maya's eyebrows went up as Eleanor pulled out a foil-wrapped cylinder that radiated heat and the incredible, savory smell of seasoned beef and melted cheese.
"A bodega chopped cheese?" Maya asked, her mouth literally watering. The Draught of the Hearth had kickstarted her metabolism, and the hospital broth hadn't even touched the sides.
"Technically, you're on a liquid diet," Eleanor said, unwrapping the top half of the foil to reveal the steaming, greasy sandwich. "But Carla the nurse told me, entirely off the record, that if a certain patient managed to keep her broth down and looked significantly better, a few bites of real food wouldn't kill her. Just... chew slowly."
Maya took the sandwich with both hands. It felt heavy. It felt like absolute luxury. She took a bite, the mix of ground beef, American cheese, and toasted bread hitting her tastebuds like a physical shockwave of flavor. Arthur used to eat bland pub food; this was a chaotic masterpiece.
She closed her eyes and chewed, letting out a soft, embarrassing groan of appreciation.
Eleanor laughed, pulling a large iced coffee out of the carrier for herself. "Slowly, animal. You'll make yourself sick."
As Maya ate—devouring half the sandwich before her shrunken stomach finally sent up a flare of protest—Eleanor talked. She talked about the terrible traffic on the FDR, about a leak in their apartment's bathroom sink that the super was ignoring, about how Maya's father had finally called from Chicago but couldn't get a flight until tomorrow morning.
Maya listened, nodding and humming at the appropriate times. She was mapping the mundane reality of her new life. An absent father. A struggling, fiercely loving mother. A crappy apartment somewhere in the city.
It was a small, fragile life. And sitting right outside the hospital window was a universe full of gods with hammers, blind ninjas, and mutant terrorists.
"Mom," Maya asked, wiping her mouth with a thin paper napkin. "Where exactly do we live?"
Eleanor paused, her straw halfway to her mouth. She frowned, a look of genuine concern crossing her face. "Maya... do you not remember? Did you hit your head when you fell?"
Crap. Maya scrambled for a cover. "No, no. I remember. I just... my brain is fuzzy from the meds. Like a dream. I know it's the city, but the street name is just gone."
Eleanor's shoulders relaxed slightly, though the worry didn't entirely leave her eyes. "We're in Queens, honey. Astoria. Right off Ditmars."
Queens.
Maya's mind immediately supplied the association. Queens was Peter Parker territory. Though, in 2011, Peter was probably still a kid building LEGO sets, not swinging from skyscrapers. Still, it was far enough away from the impending ground zero of Manhattan, but close enough to easily access the city when she needed to.
"Right. Astoria," Maya nodded, sinking back into the pillows. "Sorry. Brain fog."
"It's okay," Eleanor said softly, reaching out to brush a stray lock of red hair from Maya's forehead. "You rest. The doctor said you need to sleep as much as possible."
Sleep.
Maya looked at the digital clock on the bedside table. 2:00 PM.
If she went to sleep now, her consciousness would be pulled back into the Mindscape Pavilion. Sir Percy would be waiting. The wooden sword would be heavier, he had promised. And she had hours to burn before the sun set.
A thrill of genuine, masochistic anticipation shot through her. The chopped cheese sat heavily in her stomach, providing a solid block of fuel. The Draught of the Hearth still hummed warmly in her veins. She was stronger than she had been yesterday.
"Actually," Maya said, letting her eyes drift shut, "I am pretty tired."
"Then sleep," Eleanor whispered, standing up and pulling the blanket up to Maya's chin. "I'll be right here reading my book. I'm not going anywhere."
Maya let her breathing slow, matching the rhythmic beep of the monitor. She didn't fight the pull of the dark behind her eyelids. She actively reached for it, searching for the golden thread of the Avalon Protocol.
She visualized the cold, damp cobblestones. She smelled the woodsmoke and the ozone.
The hospital room faded. The temperature dropped like a stone.
Maya opened her eyes.
The bruised-plum twilight of the Otherworld stretched out above her. She was standing in the exact center of the courtyard, but she wasn't wearing the rough linen tunic anymore. The System had updated her attire based on her slight increase in stats. She was now wearing a thick, boiled-leather gambeson over a padded shirt, and sturdy leather boots that reached her calves. It wasn't plate mail, but it was armor.
"You look slightly less like a beggar," a voice rumbled from the shadows.
Sir Percy stepped out from the archway. He wasn't casually leaning against his broadsword today. He was holding a heavy wooden waster, tossing it lightly from hand to hand. His icy blue eyes locked onto her, analyzing the subtle changes in her posture.
"Vigor five," Percy noted, a grim smile pulling at the jagged scar on his cheek. "You found a way to heal the vessel."
"I drank a potion that tasted like dirty pennies," Maya said, rolling her shoulders. The leather gambeson was stiff and heavy, but her body didn't immediately buckle under the weight.
"Alchemy is a crutch," Percy spat, though he didn't seem entirely displeased. "But a necessary one for a cripple. Do not grow to rely on it. Magic runs dry. Steel does not."
He stopped ten paces from her and threw a second wooden sword at her feet. It hit the cobblestones with a heavy, solid clatter. It was thicker and longer than the one she had used yesterday.
"The world is bigger than you thought, isn't it?" Percy asked suddenly, resting the tip of his wooden blade on the ground.
Maya frowned, looking up at him. "The System showed me the Codex. Mutants. Ninjas. It's a mess out there."
"Avalon sees all threats to the Realm," Percy said, his voice dropping into a solemn, echoing timbre. "You thought you only had to prepare for the sky falling. But the rot comes from the roots, Maya. The shadows of your city are filled with monsters who do not wear capes or carry hammers. If you reach fifty in your stats and unlock your Aura, it will mean nothing if a street-thug with a rusted knife guts you in an alleyway."
He raised his wooden sword, pointing the tip directly at her chest.
"Today, we do not practice form. Today, we practice pain. Pick up the sword."
Maya didn't hesitate. She bent down and grabbed the hilt of the heavy waster. It was terribly balanced, front-heavy and clumsy, designed specifically to exhaust the forearms. She widened her stance, bending her knees, and raised the blade, locking her eyes on the massive knight.
She was a level one squire in a universe of gods and monsters. But she had a stick, and she was ready to get hit.
"Whenever you're ready, old man," Maya challenged.
Percy's smile vanished, replaced by the cold, blank stare of an executioner.
He didn't step forward. He blurred.
Before Maya could even flinch, the heavy wooden blade slammed into her ribs with the force of a battering ram. The breath exploded from her lungs in a violent spray of saliva, and she was launched backward, her boots skidding off the cobblestones before she hit the ground hard enough to rattle her teeth.
"Lesson one of the wider world," Percy's voice echoed above her as she writhed on the stones, desperately trying to pull air back into her paralyzed diaphragm. "The enemy will never fight fair. Get up."