In Case You're Just Joining Us: Tony traveled to Iceland to tour a Viking excavation site being partially funded by the Maria Stark Foundation. While there, he fell under the spell of a beautiful philanthropist named Amanda Encantare, actually the Asgardian Enchantress in disguise. Meanwhile, the Black Widow happens upon a meeting between HYDRA and the Hand, and finds herself running for her life from a bloodthirsty band of ninja.

New York City

Clint Barton was halfway through the latest episode of Dharma & Greg when his apartment's picture window exploded inward. Reflexes honed by years as a core member of the world's foremost super-team kicked in, and he dropped his beer and rolled over the arm of his chair, placing it between him and whatever had just come in. He waited for a moment, listening carefully for any sign of movement, then cautiously peeked around the back of the chair.

"Natasha??"

He stood and moved quickly across the apartment to where a beautiful red-haired woman laid face-down on the carpet. The tight-as-skin black leather bodysuit she wore - the costume of the Black Widow - was ripped and torn, and blood was flowing steadily out of a nasty gash in the back of her thigh.

"'Tasha," Clint said, rolling her over and lifting her head up. "Come on, talk to me."

Her eyes fluttered open, alighting dazedly on Clint's face. "Clint... help... me."

"I'm here 'Tasha. We'll get you some help, don't you worry. Who did this? Are they still after you?"

"They're... here..."

She pointed toward the shattered window, and Clint turned - just as an arrow whizzed through the space his face had occupied. The darkness outside his Manhattan apartment seemed to gel, to thicken, and suddenly half a dozen black-swathed ninja were dropping through the hole the Widow had made.

"Oh boy..." Clint Barton, the Avenger known as Hawkeye, muttered, and then the night came alive with steel and arrows.

Stark Estate, Evergreen Island.

"What do you mean he's not answering his pages?" Pepper Potts demanded as she stormed into her office.

"Exactly what I said, Pepper," the voice of Jocasta replied over the house's speakers. "I've attempted to contact Mr. Stark four times since you left him in Iceland.* His pager, cellphone, and the communicator in his wristwatch have all been deactivated. I've even tried patching directly through to the Iron Man armor, but he apparently hasn't donned it yet."

(* At the end of last issue - Russ)

Pepper slammed her purse down on the desk and crossed her arms. That woman - that Amanda Encantare. Something had been wrong about her. Sure she was a beautiful woman, and Tony had a great weakness - though some might call it a blindspot - when it came to beautiful women... but Tony had been too quick to alter his plans and stay at the archaeological site they'd visited late yesterday. Something was wrong. And she'd let him run her off halfway around the world.

"Jocasta," she said, leaning over the monitor, "see if you can contact Jim Rhodes. We're going to need some help."

Iceland.

"You move well, Mr. Stark," Sekhmet Conoway observed. "You've been rock climbing before."

"Once or twice," Tony Stark replied as he made his way down the side of the cliff, accompanied by Sekhmet Conoway, Amanda Encantare, and Rudy Gottlieb. The rope he rode down reached back up to the top of the cliff. "Though I'm not looking forward to the climb up."

"We've got a winch hooked up for that. Just hook the harness on and it yanks you right up the side of the mountain. We needed to set something like that up for the members of the crew that had never been rappelling, but still needed to get to the cave."

"Where is the cave, exactly?" Tony asked, peering down the cliff face to the crashing North Atlantic below. "I can't see it from here."

"Directly below us, another 50 feet or so," Sekhmet replied. "The ledge is almost non-existent - the cave is really just a gouge dug into the side of the rock... a big gouge, though. Nearly as big as the village up topside."

"And you're sure it was once inhabited."

"Sometime within the last 1,000 years, certainly. Probably during the 11^th Century, which is where the village ruins date from."

"But how could anyone have lived in a cave, dug in the side of a 500 foot cliff, with no way in or out that didn't involve climbing 250 feet of sheer rock?"

"Well now, that's the question, isn't it?" Sekhmet grinned. "Personally, I suspect some kind of metahum-"

Tony's head suddenly split open like an overripe pumpkin, his brains squirting out the top and his optic nerves dancing an epileptic jig across the interior of his empty brainpan... or that's how it felt, anyway. His body went rigid as the sudden and merciless pain triphammered through his skull. Reflexively, he released the rope he was sliding down and put both hands to his head.

And then he started to fall.

"Mr. Stark!" Sekhmet cried as he plummeted past her. The rope made a buzzing sound as it sped through the clip on his harness. He knew all he had to do was grab it, but the pain... it was...

It was gone.

Stark grabbed the rope with both hands. The cord burned his hands, even through the heavy leather climbing gloves, but he held on until he'd stopped, his body slamming hard up against the rock.

"Mr. Stark!" Sekhmet repeated. Above her, Rudy and Amanda were also calling his name.

"Your left hand behind you!" Sek was crying. "Get your left hand behind you and get in the proper seated position!"

Shakily, Tony did as he was told. Placing his left hand in the small of his back and his feet against the rock, he bent at the waist as if he was sitting.

"The cave's right below you," Sekhmet continued. "Hop down to it and wait for us!"

Tony nodded, taking a couple of hesitant jumps and swinging into the dark mouth of the cave. A few moments later, Sekhmet joined him. Rudy and Amanda arrived immediately after.

"What the hell was that?" Sekhmet demanded. "Never release the rope, do you hear me? Christ, what was I thinking, bringing civilians down here?"

"I'm sorry," Tony sighed. "My head... I don't know what happened... felt like somebody drove a railroad spike into my eye."

"Poor darling," Amanda Encantare said, stepping forward and taking his head in her hands. "Let me kiss it away."

And she did. The kiss spent sparkles of electricity up and down Tony's spine. He'd never met a woman as beautiful, as perfect as the mysterious Amanda Encantare. The last day they'd spent together had been so much fun, and last night...

Tony blinked, and pulled suddenly away. Amanda looked at him curiously. "What's wrong, Tony?"

She'd come to his tent last night. He was sure of it. But what had happened after? Had they slept together? Why did it feel like there was a gaping hole in his memory there?

"Lucky bastard," Rudy opined softly several feet away.

Sekhmet slapped him in the shoulder. "Focus, Rudy. Let's show the money what they came to see and get them out of here so we can get back to work."

Rudy grinned. "Focused. Right. Whatever you say." He glanced at Tony and Amanda. "But you get to keep them off of each other. I'll lead the way."

Sekhmet sighed. "Fair enough. Mr. Stark, Ms. Encantare. If you'll come this way please, let's go make an Indiana Jones movie..."

New York City

Hawkeye sprinted across the floor of his apartment, the Black Widow thrown over one shoulder, as arrows ripped through the air all around him. He hurdled the coffee table, bounced off the couch, and rolled in mid-air as he fell behind it.

"Hawk..."

"Don't talk, 'Tasha," Clint said as he set her down and crab-walked to a nearby closet door. "It's under control. Just let me get ol' Bessie out."

His bow and a quiver of arrows were stashed in the closet. He hurriedly pulled them out and slung the quiver over one shoulder.

"Clint..." the Widow said weakly. Her skin was a scary gray color, and her voice was weak. Had she been poisoned, Hawkeye wondered. "They're not human," she said. "Not completely. Don't take... any chances..."

"Do they have ears, babe? 'Cause that's all I'm worried about." He jammed his little finger into his ear and twisted his wrist, turning off his hearing aid.* "You might want to cover yours," he said, then dove out from behind the couch.

(* Hawkeye damaged his hearing in Marvel's first Hawkeye mini-series, lo those many years ago - Russ)

Arrows were everywhere, and the putzes were almost on top of him. He hit the floor, rolled, and came up behind the television. Then he let the arrow he still had nocked fly.

The trick arrow screamed across the apartment, a special ultrasound projector pounding out decibels too intense for the human ear to withstand. As one, the ninja dropped their weapons and fell to the floor, hands clutching their heads.

Clint grabbed another arrow... then thought better of it as the nearest ninja reached for his sword. Clint sprang up, sprinted across the livingroom floor, and aimed the bottom of his boot at the guy's face. It never connected. The ninja grabbed his foot in mid-flight, twisted, and suddenly Clint was on his stomach on the carpet. He rolled over onto his back just as the ninja lunged for him, sword lifted over his head.

Reflexively, Hawkeye lifted his right hand in a futile effort to ward the ninja off... and the paste arrow he still held in that hand punched through his opponent's torso as he fell. The body tensed briefly, then sagged over him.

"Damnitdamnitdamnitdamnit!" Clint cried, and hurled the corpse off. He hadn't meant to kill the guy. He...

He was alone in the apartment.

Almost alone. He heard Natasha moan softly from behind the couch, and ran to her. Her skin was a nasty shade of charcoal now, and the whites of her eyes were grey.

"'Tasha," he said, brushing the hair off of her sweaty forehead. "What can I do? Tell me how to help you."

"Get me... to Fury..."

"Nick Fury? As in the director of SHIELD?"

"He'll know... what to do."

Hawkeye began to rise, but paused as the Widow put a weak hand on his arm. "Clint... you've got to warn Tony, too..."

"Warn Tony? Warn him about what?"

"The ninja... they're after him too... the Hand are going to kill him..."

Iceland.

"And this, my friends, is what we all came to see."

Sekhmet Conoway shined her light on a massive wooden door that marked the extreme inside edge of the enormous cavern. The door was a work of art, finely carved with images of destruction, furry man-like monsters with the faces of bears decimating a band of Viking warriors. It was beautiful in the way that horrible things sometimes are.

"Perhaps this is the way to the surface you haven't been able to find?" Amanda suggested.

"We don't think so," Sekhmet replied. "There's definitely something on the other side of the door, but sonic imaging tells us it's a room, not a passageway."

"The really intriguing thing," Rudy interrupted, directing his flashlight beam to a set of markings on the door, "is these inscriptions. Our linguist seems to think they're letters - not runes or glyphs - but they're not in any language she's ever seen..."

"It says wendol," Amanda said. Rudy and Sekhmet both turned to stare at her, their mouths hanging open. "Literally, 'Black Mist'."

"How the hell do you know that?" Sek demanded.

Amanda shrugged. "I'm fluent in most ancient Celtic and Scandinavian languages. You could say it's my obsession."

"You're a philanthropist who just happens to know more about Norse languages than our linguist," Sekhmet said in disbelief.

"Apparently so."

"What the hell?" Sek cried, throwing her hands up.

"I really don't understand what you're getting so upset about..."

Off to the side, Tony Stark cradled his head in one hand. His headache was back with a vengeance. He didn't think a kiss from Amanda was going to help it this time. In fact, the thought of it seemed to make his head pound even harder.

"Mr. Stark," Rudy said, his voice appearing on the edges of the argument Sek and Amanda were still having. "Are you alright?"

"Fine," Tony muttered, and then the world blinked away for just a moment. There was a heartbeat of blackness, and then he was on the ground, breathing the dirt of the last 1000 years off the cave floor. Sek and Amanda had postponed their argument, and all three of his companions were hovering over him.

"Come on," Sekhmet was saying, "let's get him harnessed up and lifted out of here. Now. Rudy, give Doc Sven a call and tell him to prep the med tent."

"No... I'm fine..." Tony insisted.

But his companions weren't listening. They lifted him and began to haul him toward the exit. His head continued to pound and finally, blissfully, the world went away again.

Stark Estate, Evergreen Island.

"Jim Rhodes doesn't seem to be home," Jocasta announced. "I'm sorry Pepper."

Pepper sat with her arms crossed, quietly fuming. She could see the grounds of Tony's Estate outside her window, but the clear sky and gently blowing trees brought no peace to her mind.

"I'm worried, Jocasta... really worried. This isn't like Tony. And that woman... Encantare... I can't stop thinking she's involved somehow." She paused. "Who else can we call?"

"Short of alerting the Avengers?"

Pepper chewed on her lip, then nodded. "Yes, we don't need to involve the Avengers yet. I doubt they'd mobilize on my say-so, anyway."

"Then there's only one other person. If you'll give me a moment, I'll see what I can do."

"I'm not going anywhere," Pepper replied, and Jocasta's digitized face disappeared from the screen of her laptop.

Jocasta spun through Tony Stark's contact database. Since hers was a computer intelligence, she could do this and mull over the current situation with Tony. She was just as worried as Pepper was for her friend and former teammate.Tony was a wonderful person, and - despite his Iron Man armament and friends in high places - a remarkably vulnerable person. If someone had harmed him...

She didn't want to think about that. Because Jocasta was beginning to have very strong feelings for Tony Stark, feelings that her computer intelligence could not account for nor categorize. But the part of her personality that had been grafted from a human woman's psyche recognized these feelings - and they were beginning to grow far beyond simple loyalty and friendship.

Jocasta found the number she was looking for - it had taken her less than a picosecond. She wasted no time dialing.

Iceland.

Tony swam in and out of consciousness. He came to briefly as they were winching him up the side of the cliff, hanging limply in his harness while Sek and Rudy supported him from either side. Next thing he knew, he was in the med-tent, the beam from a penlight stabbing into his eyes while Sven - the site medic - examined him. That bout of consciousness didn't last long, and when next he woke, he could see through the tent that it was after dusk. Standing next to the cot he occupied was Amanda Encantare. His head swam again when his eyes fell upon her.

"I understand the problem, Tony," she said. "You have some sort of psychic safeguards in place to protect you against mind control." She reached out and gently traced the line of his eyebrow with one finger. "What I've done - making you love me, as all mortals soon will - it's not really mind control, but it's close enough that it's causing you harm. I have no time to learn how to circumvent that now, so I shall have to rely on other resources. Rest now, my handsome warrior. When I return, when my work here is done, I'll learn how to make you truly mine."

Then she kissed him, and again the world went black.

Seattle.

Carol Danvers was halfway through the final chapter of her latest science fiction novella when the word processor she had running vanished from the screen of her computer and was replaced with the face of a woman she didn't recognize.

"What the hell-? Where did my story go?"

"Your work is safe, Carol. Forgive me for the interruption, but I need your help."

Carol's brow furrowed. "Jocasta? Is that you? I didn't recognize you with the new face. What's going on?"

"Mr. Stark may be in trouble - neither Pepper nor I can reach him - and I was hoping-"

"No," Carol interrupted. "No, Jocasta, I'm sorry but Warbird cannot come running whenever Tony Stark doesn't answer his pager. Carol Danvers has responsibilities too, and one of those responsibilities is getting the first draft of this story to my editor by tomorrow morning. No. Uh-uh. Can't do it."

"But Mr. Stark may be in trouble..."

"And he might be involved in a shady fling with a Scandinavian heiress. In fact, given how capable the man is, I'd say that's far more likely a scenario. In any case, I can't help just now."

Jocasta looked out at her for a moment longer, her digitized eyes and face inscrutable, then she said, "Very well," and vanished from the screen.

Carol sighed and leaned back in her chair, her eyes wandering from her restored writing to the glass globe of rare undersea flowers sitting on her couch's endtable. What she'd told Jacosta about having to get her work done was true, but she'd left out that she also had a date with Namor McKenzie tonight, the infamous Sub-Mariner, king of Atlantis. She wasn't sure which of the commitments was more vital to her decision to not help out.

In any case, the clock was ticking. She turned back to her computer screen, hoping she could re-find her groove.

Iceland.

"I really appreciate this," Amanda Encantare said as she unfastened her rappelling harness. "I know Ms. Conoway isn't happy about Tony and me being here, and she'd probably be very angry if she knew you'd brought me down here again..."

"No question about that," Rudy Gottlieb agreed. "Sek is a bit of a hard-ass though, and she's very territorial when it comes to her digs. In any case, I really think you could help us understand this place better."

Amanda smiled. This mortal was not as comely as Stark, but he served her purpose just as well as Stark eventually would. "Come on, then. Let me get another look at that door."

"What do you mean he got up and left?" Sekhmet Conoway demanded.

"I went to the chow tent to get some dinner, and when I came back, Mr. Stark was gone," Sven Ulrich explained, running a hand over his smooth scalp. "I didn't realize he was a prisoner, Sek, otherwise I would have tied him down."

"Damn it! I knew I shouldn't have let those two stay." She crossed her arms and deliberated silently for a moment. She'd gone to tell Encantare her time was up and it was time to get the hell off her site, but the woman hadn't been in her tent. Neither had she been in Stark's. Both sets of belongings had still been there, though. The camp was neither large nor particularly crowded... she didn't think they were anywhere in the village.

Which left, of course, the cave.

Sekhmet dropped her hand and, with another muttered curse, ran out of the med-tent.

Tony Stark stumbled through the scrubby forest bounding the Norse village on the side opposite the cliff. His head was still pounding so badly he could barely see, much less walk, but he had to get to his armor, had to stop Amanda before she accomplished what she'd come here to do. He'd stashed the suit in its pod form out here in these woods after deciding to stay yesterday. He prayed that he hadn't forgotten exactly where.

Because he'd finally remembered just what 'Amanda Encantare' was - much more than a studious philanthropist, the woman was nothing less than an angry, jealous god. And if he had to battle her, finding the stupid armor was going to be the easy part.

"When the wendol - or Black Mist - descended on a village or township, it brought with it a tribe of hairy, ferocious cannibals," Amanda was telling the wide-eyed Rudy. "Beings that were each as powerful as half a dozen men. The Norse lived in terror of the Black Mist, and turned often to their gods for relief and succor."

"Fascinating," Rudy said, watching Amanda caress the great door. "I'm a student of this stuff, and I've never heard this story before."

"That is because, after the mist was contained, Lord Odin wiped its memory from the people of Midgard, in the hopes of bringing them what he thought of as much-earned peace." Amanda paused. "It was perhaps the first step in turning the world of man away from us."

"'From us'?" Rudy asked. "Ms. Encantare, are you alright? You're talking like you're..."

"I am," she said, turning suddenly toward him. "Trust me, mortal, I very much am."

Rudy's eyes went wide as a dagger appeared in the woman's hand. He managed to take one step backward before Encantare reached his side (god, she moves so fast, was his last thought) and plunged the knife into his throat. Rudy gurgled, tried to breathe around the surprisingly painless wound, gave the blood flowing in pulses down his shirt a confused look, then toppled over into Amanda Encantare's arms.

The woman laid Rudy's body down, then smeared her hands in the youth's blood. Rising and striding back toward the door, she painted out an intricate sigil with the ichor on her fingertips, and stepped backward.

"Now free yourself," she commanded, crossing her arms over her head and generating a ball of pinkish light. She hurled the bolt at the door and the heavy wood cracked right down the center. "Free yourself and teach these worms to fear us again!"

The door exploded outward suddenly, unexpectedly. Encantare put her hands up to protect her face as a black cloud made of smoke and electricity lunged out, filling the cavern. The shockwave tossed her backward, where she rebounded off a stone wall and struggled to get to her feet.

"More powerful... than... even I thought..." she groaned. She vaguely saw shapes pouring through the blackness, ignoring her, loping, jumping, and sprinting straight for the cave's exit.

And then a bigger shape came into view, a massive being with long arms that dragged the floor, and a horrible head nearly as wide as its torso.

"Who dares?" the guttural voice demanded. "Who has released the Rock Trolls on Midgard once again? Who has summoned the mightiest of them?" The owner of that voice came into view suddenly, towering over the shaken Encantare - a hideous, yellow-furred beast with great snapping jaws and claws that could rend steel. She gasped in recognition as she realized whom she was facing.

"Who has summoned Ulik?"

Sekhmet Conoway slipped down onto the ledge of the cave and unfastened her harness from the rope she'd rode down on. Two people had definitely come down here before her. Stark and the woman, surely. And they hadn't even tried to find an escort.

Sekhmet hated civilians.

She secured the rope, then pulled a flashlight from the pouch hanging from her side and turned to head into the cave, to find the nosy billionaires and throw them off her site herself.

She'd taken barely three steps when she heard an enormous explosion from deep in the cave's bowels. "What the hell was-?"

She never finished the rhetorical question. A wall of black suddenly appeared before her, racing outward from the direction of that mysterious door. The shockwave of its passage smashed her backward, back through the cave entrance, and out into the cold North Atlantic air.

And as she fell toward the hungry depths 250 feet below, she saw the black wall pouring into the Icelandic sky, turning, and edging up the cliff face.

The Black Mist was free.

Next Issue: Pepper finds herself trapped in a house under siege, while Iron Man struggles to contain an invasion of Rock Trolls in "Black Mist" part 3.