With Laura sent away, Alex started his rivalry with Wanda's variant. Over the period of a few weeks, he infiltrated all five of the planets under her control, and no matter how hard she tried to eradicate him entirely, his real self was in another dimension. This made sure that such a result was impossible. Over that period, the little Mystic League formed by Doctor Strange and Magneto had grown into a much more substantial resistance force. Under the leadership of Illyana and Katherine, both of whom had a direct line of communication with Apex, they were able to cause some real trouble for Wanda.
Of course, Apex and the Mystic League didn't cause too much trouble and kept their actions limited to disrupting Wanda's management. They didn't interfere with any of her faith collection or the main currency system on any of those planets. That was by design since Alex didn't yet want to get rid of her. He only wanted to make it difficult for her to add more worlds into her system for the time being.
As time passed, however, Wanda was faced with her first major loss against him on Earth-65. The loss of two Infinity Stone fragments. That had left her positively irked and infuriated as she launched a major assault against the Mystic League and Apex. Unfortunately for her, this was also the time when Alex and Wanda had completed the Chaos Tower. An artifact of unimaginable complexity that served as the new medium for the Source of Chaos. He maintained the facade of being pressured, but it was all under his control as he schemed to take more of the Scarlet Angel's accumulation.
In the meantime, on Earth-21798B.
After establishing the Chaos Tower and Apex City, it was time to establish a functioning system to run things. As reluctant as Wanda was to involve herself with management, she was absolutely necessary for the initial setup of the management system because a lot of things had to be automated.
So, things got delayed for almost a week as Wanda refused to listen and wanted to celebrate the creation of the tower and city instead.
Ultimately, it took tying her up and threatening her with prolonged denial of pleasure before she agreed to get some work done.
"All right, now let me down," she said while restrained against the wall. The stone wall had extended outward and had encased the entirety of her limbs, leaving only her torso and head free. "I can't even move my fingers."
"You promise?" Alex asked. "I have ways around your Chaos Source, Wanda. If you try to circumvent things again, your next orgasm may very well be your last in a while."
"Fine, fine, I get it, Alex," Wanda rolled her eyes. "I won't try to manipulate reality to make it that we were already in the middle of sex… again."
"I'll hold you to that," he said as he pointed at her threateningly. The wall receded from Wanda's limbs and freed her. Immediately, she jumped at Alex and wrapped her arms and legs around him.
"Wanda…"
"I didn't use any magic," she spoke close to his ear while swaying her hips and pushing her crotch toward him.
A tired sigh escaped Alex's mouth as he placed his hands on Wanda's hips and walked out to the balcony that overlooked Apex City below them and the crimson-tinted sky all around them.
"First order of business. The city and its residential system," Alex said. "How do you want to play this? A simple city or somewhere mystical?"
"Do we have to do this?" Wanda asked.
"Come on," Alex smiled lightly as he raised his hand and traced his fingers along her spine.
"Mm…" Wanda shivered a little and closed her eyes.
"Tell me. I want this to be more than just my city."
Wanda exhaled audibly, and Alex stopped moving her fingers, placing his palm on her lower back.
"Are you familiar with The-Powers-That-Be?"
Alex froze at Wanda's words.
"I'll take that as a yes," she said. "Now, if you have an idea about them, you probably also have an idea about the dimension that was manifested due to the large influence of witchcraft in the universe?"
"All I know is that another abstract entity called Witchcraft serves as the source of power for both witches and wizards who practice witchcraft. I assume that the dimension you're talking about is the Witches' Road."
"Hmm?" Wanda frowned. "I don't have any information about the concept of witchcraft gaining sentience. That is probably a universal abstract that has not yet reached the full scale of the multiverse, like the primaries such as Death, Eternity, and the like. You are talking about an isolated entity."
"Maybe," Alex said. "But you are talking about the Witches' Road when you say witchcraft dimension, correct?"
"Yes," Wanda nodded. "My thought was to make Apex City such a place for all magically inclined entities related to me."
"It's a good thing that I didn't start working on the city's infrastructure then," Alex said. "How about we make it a sort of game?"
"I was thinking the same thing," Wanda said. "When a witch taps into the Witches' Road and starts channeling it through them, their powers are increased exponentially. Their spells become more potent; simpler incantations are enough to cast complex spells and more. Apex City could be a similar place."
"It's possible," Alex said. "But we can't manually increase their power every time, we need a better process."
"That's where the tower comes in, Alex." Wanda grabbed his face between both her hands. "The Chaos Tower will be the heart of Apex City. It has already streamlined the drawing of Chaos energy from my source, turning it into isolated channels that are independent from me, yet still fall under my control, allowing me to interface with them whenever I desire to. We have barely scratched the surface of the powers of this tower."
"I can make some sense of the vision that you have in mind," Alex said. "From what I have seen, there are two kinds of practitioners who utilize Chaos energy for the time being. The first kind is the myriad variants of Scarlet Witch, all of which draw upon your source directly. The second are, in essence, subordinates who draw upon the Chaos energy possessed by their respective patron Scarlet Witches, and cast Chaos magic through the energy that they possess."
"These patron Scarlet Witches are probably the ones who have the real copies of the Darkhold," Wanda said.
"Why do you think so?"
"Because I have a spell," she said. "This spell allows me to draw a special energy—I'll call it faith for simplicity's sake. It is not faith, mind you. It doesn't work on belief. What that spell does is that it draws upon the power of a person's emotions. When I use this spell to give someone access to my power, that person's thoughts and emotions are sent to me as feedback whenever he or she pulls on my energy. That feedback can then be converted into raw Chaos energy, or I can use it to empower my Source of Chaos. That is how I can make my source stronger by allowing more people to pull energy from me."
"Well, fuck," Alex said. "Is that also the spell that allowed me to use Chaos magic? That ‹Host of the Scarlet Witch› thing that I used to have."
"No, that was different," she shook her head. "It was me instinctively connecting myself to your soul. You were a sort of literal host for my tether. You told me your soul gained a red glow because of my actions. That was because of my tether connecting our souls together. That is also what allowed you to use Chaos magic through me."
"Convoluted…" Alex commented. "Let us move back to the main topic. I get that you receive this feedback from everyone who pulls energy from you. What about their subordinates?"
"What do you mean?"
"Let's take the example of Scarlet Angel," Alex said. "That woman has multiple planets with many subordinates who pull on her power to use Chaos energy-based Mystic Arts. What about them? Do they give you any feedback?"
"No," Wanda refused. "You remember when we learned the theories about principalities during my education in Kamar Taj?"
"Exocentric magic, yes," Alex nodded.
"That's how this system functions in essence," she said. "I am the principality for those who draw Chaos energy from me, and those Scarlet Witches are the principalities for those who draw Chaos energy from them. I only get feedback from those who directly call upon my power. I don't get any indirect feedback."
"Well, the first order of business should be to start getting that feedback."
"Yes, and that's where my image for Apex City comes in," she said. "It's large enough that we can house millions of witches here easily. Give each of them a small territory that they can expand by either battling each other or by contributing resources to the expansion of the city. The larger your territory, the greater your connection to the tower."
"What about the witches that lose their territory?"
"Relegated to the periphery and forced to start again," she said.
"How about this…" Alex thought of something. "Instead of making the territory larger, we can simply move their domain closer to the tower, where the concentration of Chaos energy is greater. Since this place is going to be entirely mystical, we don't have to be bound by conventional rules of space. Every so-called territory can be its own pocket of space. We can divide this entire city into an organized grid that makes it easier for us to manage things, but for those who live inside the city, things should be flexible. They should be able to manipulate the space within their domain by spending certain amounts of Chaos energy."
"Oh, how about a physical representation of how much Chaos energy they have available? They can only use Chaos magic so long as their domain has Chaos energy. Once it is exhausted, you have to wait for it to replenish."
"That's doable..."
Alex and Wanda spent the next few hours brainstorming the system for the upcoming city and quickly started implementing all of their plans so that they could bring in the witches who were directly connected to Wanda's Chaos Source into the city.
***
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