In Case You're Just Joining Us: Tony, at an archaeological dig in Iceland and under the spell of the Enchantress, finds himself experiencing terrible headaches from the mind control blocks he's erected in recent years. The Enchantress goes ahead with her plans despite Stark's illness, first killing one of the student archaeologists on the dig and then using his blood to open up a doorway to the land of the Rock Trolls. Meanwhile, in the States, Hawkeye saves a poisoned Black Widow from a band of ninja, and the Widow reveals that the Hand intend to kill Tony Stark!

Avengers Mansion.

"What do you mean he's not answering his phone?" the Avenger known as Hawkeye demanded, pounding a fist on the control panel. "He's got Jacosta set up in his mainframe, for cryin' out loud! Somebody's always home!"

"I'm sorry, Clint," Henry Pym turned from his bank of communications equipment and shrugged. "All lines into Tony's estate are disconnected. There's nothing I can do."

"What about his communicard?"

"Deactivated."

"Damn it, this is unacceptable! The man's an active Avenger, he should always be reachable!" Hawkeye crossed his arms, fuming in silence for a moment, then snapped his fingers. "Are there any Avengers living in that area? Anybody we could call?"

Hank did a quick database search. "Only one. Warbird."

"No," Hawkeye stated flatly. "After we gave her the boot, I doubt she'll be too keen on helping us. There's got to be somebody else."

"The only other Avenger living on the west coast is Living Lightning, but I hear he's running with the Thunderbolts now,* and ever since you left that team,** they've changed all their contact codes."

(* See current M2K issues of Thunderbolts for the Lightning's stint with that team--Russ)
(** Hawkeye was kicked out of the T-Bolts in M2K's Marvel Fanfare #4--Russ again)

Hawkeye frowned at the mention of his former team. Then he pushed those thoughts away and nodded. "Okay then. Let's call Carol."

Stark Estate, Evergreen Island.

Jim Rhodes killed the helicopter's engines and peered out onto the grounds of the Stark Estate. They were black, no lights anywhere, not even the lamps that should have been marking the helipad. He'd had to touch down while only barely able to see the LZ.

Pepper had called him earlier in the day. She'd sounded worried about Tony, so when he got the message, Jim decided to come on by. It wasn't that he was particularly concerned about Tony - his former boss was a man who could take care of himself - but he was looking forward to seeing Pepper again. They'd enjoyed a night out on the town a few weeks back,* and Rhodey had been thinking of her ever since.

(* See Iron Man #8 - Russ)

Now, looking out on those black, black grounds, he was worried about her.

Jim pulled a first aid kit from under the pilot's seat and opened it up. The kit had a false bottom, and stashed underneath it was a Ruger pistol. As a former Marine and mercenary, Rhodey never left home without it.

He pushed open the door of the copter and stepped out onto the tarmac, wishing he had some night vision goggles to go with the gun. Slowly, he began to move in the direction of the house.

He did not see the black shapes that detached from the darkness of the estate and followed him.

Iceland.

Sekhmet Conoway plunged to her death as an evil black cloud crawled up the cliff face she'd just fallen from. Sek had lived a long, eventful life as an archaeologist, and she hadn't expected this job, of all jobs, to be the one that punched her ticket. Leading a team of ESU students on a simple Norse village excavation. What could be less dangerous?

Plenty, apparently, because her survival was beginning to look fairly unlikely. She'd fallen - or rather, been thrown - from 250 feet above the frigid North Atlantic waters at the base of the cliff. Even if she managed to survive the fall, the freezing water would kill her in minutes.

Her life should have been flashing before her eyes. She should have been reflecting on all the things she hadn't done with her short time on this earth... instead, she just couldn't stop thinking about how this kind of crap always happened on her digs.

And then salvation came, heralded by the low hum of bootjets. She felt a soft thump, and suddenly she wasn't falling anymore. She had been caught by a man in gold and crimson armor, his pointed faceplate inscrutable save for the blue eyes barely visible through the eyeholes.

"Iron Man!"

"Ms Conoway," he replied, as if they were meeting at a cocktail party instead of near the bottom of a cliff. After catching her, he'd continued to descend, slowly decelerating so as not to injure her with too sudden a change in direction. Now he came to a full halt and reversed, arrowing upward.

"What is that cloud?" Iron Man asked.

Sekhmet turned and studied the black mass of smoke and electricity that had blasted her out of the cave seconds earlier. "I have no idea. I climbed down there trying to find your employer and his friend, Amanda Encantare. Before I'd taken five steps, that... mist hit me like a..." She trailed off.

"What's wrong?" Iron Man asked.

"'Black mist'. Encantare said the carved door we found at the back of the cave said 'black mist'."

"It doesn't appear we've got enough time to figure this out. Look."

The mist was boiling in all directions across the cliff face - up, down, left, right. Iron Man and his charge had climbed up nearly even with the top edge of the mass, and at this range, they could both see the shapes swarming over the cliff, just under cover of the mist. There were brief glimpses of claws and yellow fur.

"Monsters," Sekhmet breathed.

"Looks that way," Iron Man agreed. "Hold on."

He gunned his boot jets, shooting straight up and over the cliff. The excavation team Sekhmet was leading was set up around an ancient Norse farming village, about a quarter mile from the drop. Iron Man gently deposited Sekhmet on the fringes of the campsite and turned back toward the cliff.

"Evacuate everyone. Everyone," he said. "There's a township-"

"-ten miles to the North," Sekhmet finished his sentence. "I know it."

"Get your people out of here and call the authorities there. Warn them to be ready to evacuate as well. I'll hold these guys off as long as I can."

"How can-" Sekhmet began, but Iron Man was already gone, disappearing in a flash of bootjets back toward the cliff.

"Little goddess," Ulik the Rock Troll sneered, bending over the prone form of Amanda Encantare, "Tell me why I shouldn't devour you where you lay. Tell me why I shouldn't grind your bones to make my bread."

"You couldn't," Encantare insisted. Her body seemed to... shift, and then she was on her feet again, her expensive mortal clothing exchanged for emerald robes and cape. A golden tiara sat atop her head. "Thou standest in the presence of Amora the Enchantress, troll. And I wish to forge an alliance."

"Alliance?" Ulik laughed, his great jaws snapping. "Foul wench, wherefore would Ulik ever forge an alliance with an Asgardian?"

"Mayhap because the humans have forsaken thee, just as they have forsaken Asgard. They believe us to be naught but myths, troll! Does that not burn? Does that not make thee want to crush them beneath thine heel until they have no choice but to believe that gods walk among them?"

"I will crush them," Ulik growled, leaning in close. "But I will crush Asgard as well. Odin will perish, his thrice-accursed son, Thor, will perish. I will sit on the throne of the Realm Eternal and my people will populate it. You, though... you have loosed the mist, opened the gate between the land of the trolls and Midgard. You have earned the honor and mercy of a quick death."

Ulik raised one giant yellow fist. The Enchantress raised a hand in defense, and Ulik's fist came down on a shimmering pink barrier.

"Think, Ulik!" she cried. "How much more might we accomplish together? Once the Midgardians are brought to heel, we may settle the differences between the trolls and Asgard, but until then--"

Ulik laced his fists together and brought them down again on the pink barrier. The impact staggered Amora beneath her shield. She fell back and hit the wall with her shoulder. For one precious moment she lost her concentration, and her field dissipated.

Ulik was laughing. "Foolish cow of a godling! Though Surtur and Ymir themselves threaten to consume us all, the Rock Trolls shall never unite with Asgard! Know this truth, and go now to Hela's cold embrace!"

He raised his fist again, but Amora was no longer there, having vanished in a flash of pink magic. Ulik grunted, looked around in confusion as if he expected her to be standing nearby, then - forgetting about her - turned to look at the Mist.

It had filled the cavern completely. Even now, his people were swarming over Midgard, hopefully destroying and crippling many. Ulik smiled. The Asgardian whore's idea of alliance was foolish, but that didn't mean he wouldn't crush the humans anyway. And then, when all of the worms were dead, Ulik would stand atop a mountain of their gnawed bones and wait for their protector, Thor, to come avenge them.

And on that day, Asgard would weep as bitterly as Earth would.

Stark Estate, Evergreen Island.

Tony Stark's house was just as dark as the rest of his estate. Rhodey snapped his pistol's safety to OFF, and glanced nervously behind him as he rapped on the door.

No answer.

Jim turned around to peer out onto the grounds, putting the door at his back. This was bad; it was more than a power outage - Tony had back-up power out the wazoo, there should have been some lights on. What the hell -

The arrow slammed into his right arm, knocking him backwards and pinning him to the front door. Rhodey cried out and squeezed the trigger on the Ruger. The bullet flew off into the grounds unobstructed, but for one heartbeat, the muzzle flash showed him four men crouched down low to the ground, dressed all in loose-fitting black garments that covered them from head to toe. All of them within ten feet of him.

The gun dropped from Jim's suddenly numb fingers and clattered onto the stoop. Reflexively, he tried to bend over and pick it up, but was quickly reminded of the arrow connecting his arm to the door. Grunting, he grabbed the feathered end and snapped it off. If he could free himself, he might have a chance.

But then he heard the whisper of his opponents' garments as they moved in for the kill. He wasn't going to have time...

The door at his back came suddenly open, wrenching the broken arrow free of his arm. He grunted in pain then stooped over to grab the gun.

His memory would skip here when telling the story later, but Pepper Potts - the one who had finally opened the door at his back - remembered it in terrible detail. One of the ninja stepped forward and drove his sword upward as Rhodey bent over, driving the blade all the way through the man's torso.

"Jim!" Pepper cried, her voice rising into a scream. The ninja slid his blade free and Rhodey began to topple backward. Pepper lunged forward to grab him, then thought better of it and let him drop, going for the gun instead. The ninja had paused to watch his prey fall to the ground. By the time he realized Pepper was going for the gun, she already had it raised. The ninja lifted his sword to cut her in half.

Still screaming, Pepper pumped two rounds into the killer's face.

The ninja was flung backward, landing in a heap on the stoop. Pepper swung the gun around, finding the other three ninja, making it clear that she knew how to use the weapon in her hand. Slowly, the ninja backed away, fading again into the estate's shadows.

Pepper grabbed Jim under the arms and managed to drag him into the house. Once his feet were clear of the door, she leapt up and slammed it closed, engaging all of the non-electronic locks it had.

"Jim," Pepper breathed, kneeling down next to him. Miraculously, he was still alive. The sword had gone in mid-torso, and there was a nasty wheezing sound coming from the wound - not to mention what looked like gallons of blood. The arrow wound in his arm was also bleeding badly, but the first order of business was getting his torso wrapped up.

"Just hold on," Pepper urged, then she rose to her feet, wondering if she could find the linen closet with all the lights out.

Jocasta floated in the un-space of electronic impulses that made up her world.

That world had become severely truncated in the last hour. Something was keeping her from reaching out from the house's CPU. All of her limbs - all the connections to the house's appliances, security controls, and overrides - were still there, but she couldn't manipulate them at all. There was nothing in her experience to explain the strange little dance of avoidance electricity did whenever she tried to reach out from the central processing unit. Though she had never had a living body, she suspected this was what humans felt like when their extremities had gone to sleep.

Whatever had struck her, it had struck fast. She'd barely had time to warn Pepper that something was wrong before she was cut off from the rest of the house.

She was little more than a ghost in the machine now.

Iceland.

Iron Man swooped low over the Black Mist, trying to get a better look at the strange creatures swarming over each other inside it. Whatever they were, there were hundreds of them, perhaps thousands. And yet, they never left the mist's confines.

The mist had almost crested the cliff-face, though. Once that happened, it would engulf the camp in a matter of minutes.

He had to determine the nature of the monsters, try to figure out how to stop them. Sighing, he sealed and pressurized his armor, and plunged into the black cloud below.

Sekhmet Conoway ran through the dig site, rousing sleepers, interrupting lovers, breaking off the efforts of after-hour workers. In minutes, the entire crew - some thirty people in all - were rushing for the few vehicles parked on the edge of the encampment.

But Sekhmet couldn't find Rudy Gottlieb, her second-in-command. As she sprinted from tent to tent, and kept not finding Rudy, her heart began to sink. Had Rudy been on one of those ropes she'd found in the cave before the Mist had hit?

If so, where the hell was Tony Stark? Iron Man might have gotten him clear before coming back to help, but would there have been time? She didn't -

"You!"

Sekhmet halted in the entrance to one of the guest tents, her eyes narrowing in rage as she spotted Amanda Encantare rising from the cold ground. The woman had changed clothes at some point - now she looked like something out of a porn version of Cinderella - but there was no forgetting that face.

"Be still mortal," Encantare said, "I must--"

"You bitch! You did this!" Sekhmet dove forward and decked Encantare across her slim jawline. The blow should have dropped the woman; instead, her head merely snapped back. When she turned her eyes forward again, there was nothing but bloody wrath in them.

"Sow!" She backhanded Sekhmet, and the archaeologist was lifted straight off the ground and flung into the angled ceiling. The tent bulged out as she hit it, and then the entire structure came tumbling down around the women.

It took several minutes for Sekhmet to shake off the daze from the blow and to find her way out of the collapsed structure. When she finally pulled free of the canvas walls, she found Encantare nearby, facing the wall of mist that had finally spilled over the edge of the cliff and was even now advancing toward them.

"Listen to me," Encantare said without turning, as Sekhmet approached her from the rear, her fist cocked. "There's only one way to stop the Mist, and there is little time left to us. Where is Stark?"

"I have no idea," Sekhmet growled, lowering her fist.

"I have need of his bodyguard."

"Iron Man? He's here somewhere. He saved me from falling off the cliff."

The blond woman finally turned toward her. "Here? Could he have gone back into the Mist?"

"Yes, probably."

"Damnation," Encantare breathed, turning away. "Then mayhap we are lost, lest Odin himself intervene."

Iron Man had barely penetrated the edges of the black cloud when the monsters grabbed him and dragged him down into their depths. The creatures were short - none of them taller than five feet - with huge, blank eyes and yellow fur covering their thin-as-rail bodies. They seemed almost mindless, swarming over him with no regard for the brethren they crushed between their combined weight and his armor, breaking teeth and hands and feet against his metal shell in a constant press of flesh.

They were incredibly strong. Given time, they might be able to do serious damage to his armor, but Tony didn't intend to hang around for that long. He engaged the uni-beam on his chest and the repulsors in his gauntlets, blasting the creatures away and into the unknowable depths of the Mist. In the split second before the monsters recovered and pounced on him again, he fired himself out of the black cloud.

The Mist had started to crawl up over the cliff's edge. Iron Man circled over and crossed in front of the leading rim. When he reached the end, he spun around and flew back, this time strafing the cliff with repulsors cranked up to full power. The blasts shattered the rock, spilling it back into the cloud, through the cloud, and down to the briny waters below. Dozens of the monsters followed the rubble down, screaming all the way.

But the Mist did not stop advancing.

"Damn it!" Tony hissed inside the armor. How could he fight this? The mist seemed more electricity than condensed moisture, and its composition had been foreign enough to baffle his sensors when he'd been inside it. How could -

"Iron Man!"

He looked back toward the encampment at the blaring sound of the voice. Sekhmet Conoway was standing just outside the camp, a megaphone in one hand and the woman Tony had come to realize was the Enchantress standing proudly on her right. He turned and shot off in their direction, landing in front of the two women moments later.

"What have you done, Amora?" he demanded, stabbing a finger in the Enchantress's direction. "And how do we undo it?"

"Lest you wish to lose that digit, sirrah, I suggest you point it elsewhere," the Enchantress replied.

"We don't have time for your attitude, woman!" Sekhmet cried through the megaphone, directly in Amora's ear. The Enchantress flinched, took a step away, and aimed an angry glare in the archaeologist's direction.

"Answer the question, Amora: how?"

The Enchantress turned her glare on Iron Man this time. For a moment, he saw the resolve to simply leave these mortals to their fates growing in her eyes. Tony surreptitiously charged up his repulsors, ready to blast her rather than let her teleport away. Finally, she tipped her chin in the direction of the still-advancing fog.

"In days of yore, the wendol - the Black Mist - was a carrier organism for the Rock Trolls on their sojourns into Midgard. The trolls wouldst attack the mortals at random, shrouding their villages in mist, then leveling the structures and feasting 'pon the remains of their prey. Ere long, Odin himself grew weary of his worshippers being massacred so, and contrived a means to contain the mist and, for a time at least, the trolls. Since that time, the trolls have found other ways to visit Midgard, but the Mist - if released - yet allows them direct access between their land and this hive of mortals."

"And you let the Mist out from behind that door in the cavern," Iron Man finished.

"Aye."

Sekhmet's eyes lit up in recognition. She clicked the megaphone off and turned toward the Enchantress, an ugly, furious look in her eyes.

"And what about Rudy Gottlieb?" Sek asked. "I didn't see him while I was clearing the camp. There were two ropes going into that cave, and I'm pretty sure Stark wasn't on one of them. It was Rudy, wasn't it?"

The Enchantress looked at the woman, her eyes heavy-lidded, almost bored. "Aye. My spells required the blood of an unsuspecting mortal."

"You killed him?" Sekhmet lunged at her, but Iron Man grabbed her by the arm and spun her around.

"Stop it!" he ordered. "We don't have time for this! We have to stop that damn cloud before anybody else dies!"

"But she. Killed. Rudy!" Sek hissed. There were tears as well as anger in her eyes now. Iron Man dropped his voice before he replied.

"He'll be avenged," he said. "I'll make sure of it, Ms Conoway. That's my job. But if you throw yourself at Amora right now, she'll kill you, and I don't know if I can stop her. Do you understand me?"

Sekhmet glared at him. The disdain she was feeling was almost as powerful as that she had for the Enchantress... but she nodded. "Yes, I understand."

Iron Man looked to the Enchantress. "How do I stop it?"

"Inside the chamber I opened is the mother of the mist - a black orb from which the mist originates and from which, it is said, the Rock Trolls themselves are born. You must kill the mother of the mist."

"How do I do it?"

"The answer is, literally, in your hands. The mother of the mist is sentient, but it is also pure magic. There is one material in all creation that is anathema to magic. Do you know what that material is?"

Tony raised his gauntleted hand, looked at it for a moment, then closed it. "Iron."

"Correct."

"Both of you stay here," he ordered, then he fired himself into the air and back toward the cliff.

The mist had completely covered the cliff face, and was beginning to spread out over the water at its bottom as well. Iron Man stayed clear of it as he rocketed down the cliff until he hovered right in front of the cave entrance. Mist still bellowed out of it, and Tony paused only a moment to re-seal his armor before plunging in.

His optic sensors were useless in the blackness, but his internal compass and heat imaging kept him on track. He mowed through the plunging, rail-thin bodies of the rock trolls, making slow but steady progress back toward the source of the mist. Eventually, he found the doorway, and he was just about to pass through, when an enormous hand seized him from behind.

"Where goest thou, good knight?" The hand whipped him back and away from the door and slammed him bodily into a nearby rock wall. They were still engulfed in mist, so Iron Man couldn't see his assailant. Whoever he was, he was about three times bigger than any of the other trolls Tony had seen thus far, and - according to his impact readings - many, many times stronger.

Tony found what was probably the creature's face on heat imaging, then gave it a double blast of repulsor rays. The monster jerked back with the impact, then chuckled and wiped an arm across its mouth.

"You will have to do better than that, mortal. Much better, if you wish to best Ulik in hand-to-hand combat."

Oh hell, Tony thought, as a fist the size of Cleveland descended toward him.

Next Issue: The conclusion of "Black Mist".