To minimize trouble as much as possible, Daisy decided the most efficient solution was to keep the Serpent Crown sealed.
But none of them knew Sealing Magic. They could hardly pour concrete over it, could they? The Ancient One was impossible to pin down, and with Doctor Strange not yet on the scene, Daisy figured it would be better to bring her personal sorcerer, Wanda, along.
She teleported home and picked up Wanda, who was watching Tom and Jerry.
She did not let Wanda bring that obviously sinister Darkhold. This was supposed to be an easy, almost vacation-like mission. What would happen if they brought the Darkhold with them? Would it attract Set on the other side and make him charge over at any cost? Daisy estimated there was a sixty or seventy percent chance of that happening.
Why invite trouble? The Darkhold could stay at home.
Without the Darkhold, Wanda suddenly seemed at a loss, as if she did not know what to do with her hands.
"Let me bring something, at least?" Wanda looked at her pitifully.
Daisy thought it over. They might be heading thousands, even tens of thousands of meters underground. Going in completely unprepared really would be stupid. They would certainly get hungry, but Daisy could fight for ten days or half a month without eating or drinking, while Wanda could not.
She dug out the backpack she had used on last year's trip to K'un-Lun and stuffed it full of food...
Wanda suggested bringing a tent along with tools for starting fires and cooking. At Daisy's shocked expression, Wanda puffed up proudly and explained that she had learned all of it from wilderness survival shows on television.
One backpack obviously was not enough, so they got another and packed that one to the brim too. They looked less like they were going on a mission and more like they were setting off on vacation...
Each of them shouldered a huge backpack. Daisy told Wanda to change into light clothes and comfortable shoes, then wrapped an arm around the young woman's slim waist and teleported straight to New Orleans.
Her first reaction upon arriving in New Orleans was that the place was certainly lively. The streets were packed with crazed citizens.
With the Phoenix Force, the chaotic energy in the air could not affect Daisy. Wanda was even less of a concern. Whether Set or Chaos Magic was more chaotic was a question that would need specialized research; a little leaked energy was nowhere near enough to influence her.
"Find Dagger and Cloak." The city was large enough that searching normally would have been a headache, but having Wanda at her side made things much easier. Chaos Magic might be insane, but locating sources of magical power was still one of its basic functions.
Dagger and Cloak's superpowers were an unusual form of magic in their own right, so they were not difficult to locate.
Wanda had seen both of them before, though she had never spoken to them. "They're in a building two blocks to the northwest."
To the citizens bewitched by dark magic, Daisy and Wanda shone like torches. Countless people came rushing toward them with clawing hands and twisted faces.
Wanda wanted to clear the area with magic, but Daisy stopped her. These were just ordinary people, not real zombies, and they could recover later. There was no reason to use lethal force.
With an arm around Wanda's waist, Daisy flew over the heads of the crazed crowd.
"I can actually fly too..." Wanda quietly mentioned her ability, wanting Daisy to know that she had been working hard as well.
"It's fine. Save your magic for whatever we run into down below." Daisy spoke as if it were nothing, even as her arm tightened slightly. Wanda's waist was very slim, and the feel of it was rather nice.
In truth, Daisy had seen what Wanda called flying. It was much like the Quake version of Daisy from the original timeline: she used rebound force to launch herself into the air, only to fall back toward the ground afterward. Did that really count as flying?
After weaving through several turns, the two stopped in front of a dilapidated single-story house. A witch doctor lived here.
Her skill was only average. She was nowhere near Agatha Harkness, the old witch who had lived for three hundred years, much less the six-hundred-year-old master sorcerer Ancient One. At most, she was an ordinary person with a little magic.
They pushed the door open and went inside.
Quite a few people were hiding there.
Most of them were family and friends of Dagger and Cloak.
There was Dagger's mother, Cloak's parents, his girlfriend, and his girlfriend's aunt. That aunt was the elderly Black witch doctor, and it was only thanks to her murmured incantations that the crazed citizens outside had been ignoring this whole group of living people.
Daisy turned and gave Wanda a questioning look: How does this old witch doctor compare to you?
Wanda did not show any contempt. She studied the woman briefly, then shook her head to indicate that the other woman was weaker than she was. As for exactly how much weaker, Wanda had no concrete scale to measure it by.
"I need your help." Daisy once again showed her FBI credentials. She already knew Dagger and Cloak, and both had seen her fight Sandman, so they knew what she could do. The credentials were mainly for securing their parents' consent.
"Young woman, this land is soaked in blood. My prophecy tells me that you cannot solve the turmoil that strikes New Orleans once every hundred years." The elderly witch doctor kept turning over her divination cards. She had looked excited when she first saw Daisy and Wanda, but disappointment soon replaced that expression.
Could a few battered cards really reveal fate? If so, fate itself seemed awfully cheap. Even so, Daisy still maintained a healthy respect for mystical forces. She had no choice—she did not understand them.
The old witch doctor was not wrong, either. Daisy only intended to plug the leak, not solve the problem once and for all. If generations of Sorcerer Supremes had failed to settle it permanently, who was she to swagger in and pretend otherwise?
Apparently understanding Daisy's intent, the elderly witch doctor sighed and turned her cloudy gaze toward Cloak.
"Why are you all looking at me...?" Cloak had no idea why everyone had suddenly turned his way.
"Tyrone, we need your power." Daisy was growing thoroughly tired of old people constantly acting mysterious for no reason.
"Roxxon Energy Corporation broke through a barrier. They released the evil buried deep underground. That place is now contaminated by another dimension, caught somewhere between the Material Plane and the Darkforce Dimension. We can only get down there through your ability."
She explained the full sequence of events and Cloak's role in the situation.
"But... didn't you just say one of us had to be sacrificed to save the city?" Cloak turned back to ask the old witch doctor.
Right, he and Dagger were not a couple. If the two of them held hands, they could trigger an explosion; if they kissed, they might blow New Orleans into the sky. They did have some feelings for each other, but both of them had partners of their own.
Cloak's girlfriend was Black as well, and she was the witch doctor's niece.
Earlier, this cryptic old woman had been telling Dagger and Cloak that one of them had to sacrifice themselves. Her reasoning was that New Orleans had survived every crisis over the last three hundred years in exactly that way, and this time would be no exception.
The fat, grimy old woman was still turning over her cards. "The Eternal One and the Chaos Witch have tipped the scales in our favor, so naturally neither of you needs to sacrifice yourselves now. But if these disasters keep piling up, our descendants will suffer even greater hardships. I can almost see fire falling from the heavens and a tsunami swallowing New Orleans..."
As the old woman went on, she acted as though disaster were already upon them. Ignoring Daisy's openly disdainful expression, she burst into loud sobs.