You wake in a cold sweat, the echo of a scream—your own—still clinging to the silence of your Asgardian chambers. The vision was not of some distant battlefield, but of your own Earth-616. An Amazon, clad in red armor that seemed to drink the light, stood amidst the smoldering ruins of New York. Her lasso was a whip of fire, her shield a battering ram against the Avengers’ Tower. It was not war; it was annihilation. And in the dream, you knew her name: Diana Prince of Prime Earth. Wonder Woman.

You do not wait for dawn. You go to the one being who has both the power and the petty spite to meddle in such affairs: the Enchantress. She is in a rare, accommodating mood, her smile a slash of crimson in the gloom of her sanctum. “A dream-sending across the multiverse?” she muses, tracing a rune in the air. “A potent working. To find its source, you must walk the paths between. I can open the door.” She does not ask why you seek this Amazon. She simply opens a shimmering portal, her eyes gleaming with a secret you are too desperate to see.

You step through, and the universe unfolds around you—a kaleidoscope of realities. And there, in the non-space between worlds, you find her.

She is exactly as you dreamed, though the armor is not red but its familiar blue and gold. Her eyes, however, hold the same storm of conviction and horror you feel in your own heart. She has been searching for you, too.

“Asgardian,” she says, her voice like tempered steel. “I have seen what you will do. I cannot allow it.”

You snarl, Mjolnir humming in your grip. “You speak of what I will do? I have witnessed your wrath upon my world, Amazon. You will not touch it.”

There is no more discussion. There is only the violent, terrible logic of the dream.

She moves first, a blur of divine grace. You swing Mjolnir, and the shockwave of the impact against her bracelets is a silent supernova in the void. You trade blows that would shatter mountains—her lasso snakes out, not to compel truth, but to ensnare and crush; you catch it on the edge of your hammer, and sparks of ancient magic scream into the ether.

You see a founding member of the Justice League, a hero born of love and clay, a champion of truth. But in this moment, you see only the destroyer from your vision. She sees the son of Odin, a protector of the Nine Realms, and sees only the barbarian king who would lay waste to her home.

Her fist connects with your jaw, a star exploding behind your eyes. You retaliate, a backhand swing sending her spinning away. She recovers instantly, using her shield to deflect a bolt of lightning you summon, the energy cascading around her harmlessly.

“You fight just like the monster you are!” you roar, charging.

“I fight to prevent a massacre!” she counters, meeting your charge head-on.

It is a perfect, brutal stalemate. Each of you is the embodiment of a righteous cause, defending your world from the other. The truth—that you were both manipulated, your fears weaponized by a sorceress and a witch who found common cause in their shared hatred—is buried beneath the fury of the fight. You do not know that Circe, from the shadows of Prime Earth, and the Enchantress, from her sanctum on 616, watch with identical, satisfied smiles. Their alliance was brief, their goal simple: to let two noble weapons of light sharpen each other to destruction.

The battle rages on, a clash of myths in the cradle of creation. And it ends here, in this suspended moment of perfect, tragic violence, with neither of you knowing you were tricked.