In Case You're Just Joining Us: Amora the Enchantress, having released the Rock Trolls upon Earth, finds that she can't control them, and so tells Iron Man how to defeat them. He must find the Mother of the Mist and destroy her with the iron in his armor - iron being anathema to beings of pure magic. Iron Man sets out to do this, but meets an unexpected roadblock in the form of Thor's villain, Ulik. Meanwhile, Pepper Potts and a gravely wounded Jim Rhodes are trapped on Stark's Estate, with half a dozen members of the Hand.

Seattle, Washington.

"You have got to be kidding me," Carol Danvers sighed.

"Not in the least," Hank Pym, the Avenger currently known as Giant Man, said from the other end of the phone line. "The Black Widow was assaulted by members of the Hand ninja clan,* and she seems to think they're after Tony Stark. We can't reach Tony or his estate for some reason, and you're the only Avenger in that area - "

(* See the last two issues - Russ)

"Former Avenger," Carol snapped. "You kicked me out of your boy's club, remember?" *

(* See Marvel's Avengers #7 for that story - Russ)

Hank paused while Carol looked out her terrace window, over the nighttime Seattle skyline. "Actually, I wasn't with the team when you were voted off, Carol. I..."

There was a sudden scuffle from Pym's end of the line. A second, rougher voice said, "Give me that," followed by another series of bumps and scratches, and finally the voice of another Avenger - Hawkeye.

"Listen to me, Carol," Hawkeye demanded. "I was with the team when we asked you to leave - "

"Forced me to leave."

" - and you can say whatever you want, remember it whichever way lets you sleep at night, but the fact is, we gave you the boot because you had a problem that was affecting the team and you wouldn't own up to it or let us help you!"

"I'm hanging up now, Barton."

Hawkeye went on as if he hadn't heard. "Now Tony tells me you're getting your act together, getting into AA. If that's true, you should have a clear enough head to know this has nothing to do with the Avengers, and it sure as hell doesn't have anything to do with you. It's about Tony... cause if these Hand guys catch him without his metal undies on, he is going to die. Do you read me, Avenger?"

Carol clenched her jaw and closed her eyes, counting to ten once, twice, three times, until she could trust herself to speak. Finally, when she could exhale again without it sounding like a snarl, she nodded.

"I'll fly by the estate, see if he's there."

Hawkeye was quiet for a moment. "Thanks, Carol."

She hung up before either of them could say more.

Iceland. Inside the Black Mist.

Ulik the Rock Troll smashed his enormous fist into Iron Man's faceplate. The granite wall behind the Avenger cracked with the impact.

"I know you, man of iron," Ulik said, hoisting the dazed Avenger over his head and slamming him bodily to the floor of the cavern. "You ally yourself with the accursed son of Odin, do you not? You call the mighty Thor friend, and fight at his side in that foolish assemblage of Midgard heroes called the Avengers."

Tony didn't reply. He was too busy trying to simultaneously lift himself off the floor and make a break for the doorway that stood open less than 10 yards away. A cloud of utter black mist billowed from this doorway, carrying with it thousands of Rock Trolls. Even now, the mist was climbing across the ancient Viking village at the top of the cliff this cavern was bored into. The only way to stop it was to reach the "Mother of the Mist" somewhere through that doorway. Unfortunately, Iron Man had encountered a roadblock... a very big roadblock - Ulik was at least three times the size of the other trolls the mist had freed.

Ulik's foot came crashing down on his back, crushing the Avenger back down to the floor. Tony grunted, swung an arm back, and blasted the troll's other foot out from under him with a repulsor ray. Ulik's arms pinwheeled comically as he tried to regain his balance, but it did no good - the villain toppled over, landing hard on his face.

Tony quickly shrugged the troll's weight off and got to his feet. His eyes were useless inside the mist, and heat imaging wasn't a whole lot better, considering the solid wave of bodies coming through the doorway. Still, he knew where the door was, and that was all he really needed.

He pushed into the wave of lesser trolls, using repulsors and brute strength to fight his way against the current. Behind him, Ulik roared. Tony could hear him tossing his brethren aside, mowing through the crowd to get at him. Iron Man fought harder to make his way through the press of yellow-furred bodies.

The end, though, was never in doubt. He'd barely crossed any of the distance between himself and the doorway when Ulik's massive hand closed over his head and drove it forward, again smashing him into the rock. Trolls continued to swarm over the two combatants, but Ulik ignored most of them and shrugged the others aside. Then he lifted Iron Man up.

"Let us see, Avenger, if you are made of the same stuff as Thor." The laughing monster wrapped its massive arms around Iron Man's torso, holding the Avenger fast against his body, and began to squeeze. Pressure warnings went off, informing Tony that he was in danger of cracking the armor's seals. A moment later, he was in danger of being crushed.

Ulik was still laughing. Tony fought with the beast's arms, but couldn't get him to let go. His vision started to blur as the armor squeezed tighter against his midriff. He knew that if he passed out here and now, it was all over.

Raising his arms, he fired at the ceiling. The repulsor hammered a hole the size of a limo into the stone, and the rubble came raining down on top of them. Tony could see through heat imaging several of the smaller trolls crushed beneath the minor avalanche, but Ulik laughed all the louder.

"You would use rock to defeat a Rock Troll, mortal? Are you the Avengers' resident idiot, then?"

The troll squeezed tighter, and Tony groaned inside the armor. Something had to give under all that pressure soon... and he had a feeling it was going to be his ribcage.

Iceland. At the edge of the Black Mist.

Sekhmet Conoway, on-again-off-again friend to the X-Man named Remy Lebeau, and currently a very frightened archaeologist, watched as the Black Mist reached the edges of her encampment. She stood on the far side of the camp, on a slightly elevated ridge, and even from here - almost a quarter mile away from the Mist's roiling crest, she could see the monsters scampering just below its surface.

"I must away," the woman at her side said. Up until tonight, Sekhmet had thought her to be a philanthropist with an unusually intense interest in Viking history. Now she knew her to be some sort of Norse Goddess named Amora the Enchantress. The woman had released the Black Mist, then told Tony Stark's bodyguard Iron Man how to stop it once she realized she couldn't bend it to her will. Sekhmet wanted to punch her lights out, but her last attempt had gone so poorly she wasn't about to risk another go at it.

"There's one jeep left," Sek said, hooking a thumb at an old army surplus vehicle behind them. "Come on."

"You misunderstand me, mortal," the Enchantress replied, one eyebrow arching. "You are free to leave as you wish, but my way is not yours." With that, the woman tossed her cape over her shoulders, raised her arms above her head, crossed them, and vanished in a flash of pink light.

"NO!" Sek cried, lunging at the area, the woman had just been in. "You don't get off that easy, dammit! You can't cause all this, kill Rudy, then just rabbit out when you're done! Come back here!"

But Sek was screaming at the empty sky - or perhaps the approaching mist. Amora was gone.

Snarling, the archaeologist turned and sprinted up the incline towards her vehicle. The key was in the glove box - there had never been any reason to lock up the cars this far out in the wilderness. She slammed it into the ignition and turned.

The engine clicked, made a half-hearted groaning sound, and died.

"Oh, isn't that perfect!" Sekhmet whispered breathlessly. She turned the key again. Only clicks this time.

"Come on," she urged as the engine whined and the Mist got closer.

Nothing. The jeep was dead.

Sek hopped out of the driver's seat and looked back toward the camp. The Mist had consumed most of it already. It was moving fast... probably too fast to escape on foot.

But that's what she'd have to do, hoping all the while that Iron Man could stop this before she collapsed from exhaustion.

She dallied just a moment longer, taking the time to retrieve a tire iron from the jeep's trunk, then she sprinted into the woods.

Tony Stark's Estate, Evergreen Island.

Jim Rhodes slowly bled to death on Tony Stark's $4,000 Oriental rug while Pepper Potts knelt over him, without a clue what to do.

Earlier in the evening, Pepper had been finishing up some work and waiting to hear from Tony in Iceland. Around 7 PM, Jocasta - the sentient program living in the house's mainframe - had appeared on the screen of her laptop, said "Pepper, we're under att-", and then vanished along with all the power in the house. There had been enough power to engage all the locks on the various doors and windows - a safeguard Tony had put in place when he'd built the mansion - but otherwise Pepper had been crouched in the dark, waiting for the shadowy figures who flitted about outside to either give up or come in and kill her.

Jim's appearance had been unexpected, and her terror at the prospect of opening the door to let him in had made her hesitate. She had finally unlatched the door just as he was being attacked by one of the black-garbed men laying siege to the estate. Now he was unconscious, with a gut-wound that wouldn't stop bleeding, one that made an ominous sucking sound whenever he pulled in shallow breath.

Jim's Ruger, the same one she'd used to kill the man who'd stabbed him, was heavy in her hand. She was no expert with guns, had never shot anyone before tonight. But if Rhodey was going to survive, she was going to have to take the gun and make a break for it... and bring Jim along.

What did these people want, she wondered. They dressed like ninja, but why in the world would ninja be after her or Tony?

She shook the question off. It didn't matter. She had to get herself and Jim out of here now, even if it meant moving him and making his wounds worse.

She was reaching down to try to pull the big man into a sitting position, when she heard the near-silent scuff of cloth slippers on linoleum. Her heart froze and fought its way up her throat. Dear God, they'd found a way in! She turned slowly, facing the entryway to the main diningroom, the gun frozen at her side.

Standing in the doorway was a man identical to the one she'd killed on the stoop, swathed in black from head to toe and squatting against the doorframe. In his hands was a huge bow, an arrow nocked in its string. As Pepper finished processing this, and as the message to raise the gun finally completed the trip from her screaming brain to her frozen arm and hand, the bowman released.

Iceland. Inside the Black Mist.

Tony Stark was quickly running out of options as Ulik crushed the life from him. He had no idea how far the Mist had advanced topside, but he needed to stop it yesterday. Ulik opened jaws big enough to bite Tony in two and bellowed an ugly laugh. Iron Man thought of how he'd fired both repulsors into the ugly bastard's face earlier to little effect.

With sudden inspiration, and a familiar, cold anger that allowed him to fight dirty, Tony slapped the palms of his gauntlets over Ulik's eyes and fired.

The effect was immediate. The massive troll howled in pain and doubled over, hurling Iron Man away.

"My eyes!" Ulik cried. "What have you done to my eyes?"

Tony didn't answer, just got to his feet and turned to face the inevitable mad charge. A moment later it came, as Ulik pounded blindly across the floor at him, smoke curling up from his wounded eyes and trailing behind him like steam from a train.

"Curse you Avenger! I'll feast on your living heart!"

"Whatever," Tony said. He waited until Ulik was almost on top of him, then grasped the wall at his back, kicked up with both feet, and fired his bootjets into the troll's midsection.

Iron Man's bootjets generated little heat, but they provided enough thrust to hurl the half-ton armor through the air at speeds exceeding those of an ICBM. He had used them recently to hold a collapsing suspension bridge up for nearly half a minute. Perhaps they couldn't actually harm Ulik... but then again, maybe they could.

The jet's pressure wave slammed into the troll, first halting his forward progress, then hammering him backwards. Ulik cried out something in his own language that Tony guessed must have been an all-purpose profanity, then was flung off of his feet, through the racing hordes of his brethren, and into a wall more than a dozen meters away. The wall cracked and exploded outward, raining granite down the side of the cliff and into the ocean far below. Ulik was blown far clear of the wall, and so never had a chance to save himself. Down he plummeted, screaming defiance all the way, until he disappeared beneath the waves with a tremendous splash.

"All right then," Tony said, putting his feet back on the ground and charging up his gauntlets. "Let's get this over with."

Tony Stark's Estate, Evergreen Island, Washington State.

The arrow flew from the ninja's bow. Pepper squeezed her eyes shut in anticipation of the pain. A moment passed. She realized with some puzzlement that the arrow hadn't found its mark. Cautiously, she opened one eye.

Standing in-between where Pepper knelt and the doorway the ninja had fired from was a tall blonde woman in skintight blue and gold. In one hand, she held the arrow that should have been buried in one of Pepper's vital organs at that moment. The other hand was glowing with barely-restrained power.

"It is not nice," Warbird stated, "to shoot at people in their own homes."

She unleashed the power in her free hand at the ninja, who was already vaulting over the blast. Faster almost than the eye could follow, his hand slipped back over his shoulder and reappeared with four feet of naked blade in tow. He brought this sword down toward Warbird's head.

Warbird caught him with another blast before he could reach her. The blast smashed into his upper chest, flipping him backwards, and the blade fell from the ninja's fingers, clattering to the floor a moment before its senseless master did.

Warbird watched him for a moment longer to make sure he wasn't getting up, then turned towards Pepper. "Are you o... oh my god, is that Jim Rhodes?"

Pepper nodded. "He's hurt bad. It sounds like his lung's been punctured. I can't stop the bleeding and his breathing is getting shallower."

"Oh boy..." Warbird looked around. "Do you know how many of these goons there are?"

"At least six," Pepper replied, thinking of the even half-dozen she'd seen swarming around the front of the house when she'd dragged Jim in. "I shot one. You just put away another..."

"How did he get in?"

"I don't know. Could have been anywhere... look, you have to get Jim out of here, get him to a hospital. I can barricade myself in until you get back, but if he doesn't get help soon, he's either going to bleed to death or suffocate."

"No, I'm taking both of you," Warbird insisted. "I saw a helicopter on the pad when I flew in, so all we have to do is get that far, and I can fly it out of here." She crouched down on Rhodey's opposite side and lifted him effortlessly. Jim gave a soft groan and Pepper put a hand on his forehead to calm him.

Pepper sniffed and looked around. "What's that smell?"

"That would be eau de dissolving ninja," Warbird replied, nodding to the pile of smoking rags on the floor where the ninja had been. "My buddy Wolverine told me about that: they turn to smoke when killed or knocked unconscious. Is that gun loaded?"

Pepper looked at the Ruger in her hand. "I... I think so."

"Make sure. I can still fight the bad guys while carrying Mr. Rhodes here, but not as well as I'd like. I'll need you to help cover me."

"I don't know how-"

"Here." Warbird took the gun with the hand supporting Jim Rhodes' shoulders, popped open the clip with the hand threaded under his knees, grunted in approval, checked the chamber, then slammed the whole thing back together before handing it back. She'd barely disturbed Jim while doing so. "You've got eight shots left in there. Make them count."

There was nothing more to say. Pepper moved to open the door, and - cautiously - the two women and their injured friend stepped out into the night.

Iceland. Inside the Black Mist.

Iron Man pushed through the swarm of rock trolls, making his way back toward the doorway leading to the Mother of the Mist. None of the trolls were as big or strong as Ulik had been, but their sheer numbers more than made up for a lack of individual strength. They had paid no mind to him when he'd first fought his way in here, obstructing him simply because he was in the way of their stampede. Now, though - perhaps because the Mother of the Mist sensed he'd done away with Ulik - the monsters tore at him as they passed, bowling into him, keeping him constantly off-balance, and taxing his armor's targeting system to the limit.

Which didn't mean they could possibly stop him, of course, just that he'd have to sweat for it.

Reaching the doorway, he grasped either side of the opening and hauled himself through, grunting as a leaping troll bounced off his helmet. Sensors told him the chamber he found himself in was only about 6 feet by 9. The room was full to brimming with mist, making optics useless. Thermal imaging, though, had finally made itself useful, by picking out a spherical dead zone at the center of the chamber.

This orb was what the mist was pouring out of. This was the Mother of the Mist.

You are welcome here, warrior, a sweet, feminine voice intoned suddenly in his mind. We mean you no harm.

"Funny way of showing it," Tony grunted as he pushed forward. Snagging a passing troll by the ankle, he swung the monster in front of him, using him as a club to bat his brethren away.

We must all be true to our natures, yes? the voice explained. It was playful now, with an affectation of embarrassment. Tony felt himself being charmed by it despite himself. He shook the feeling off, reminding himself what this mist must be doing to the world topside by now.

We wish only to be free, sir. Surely you can understand that.

"I'm not having this discussion with you," Tony replied. He was close enough to the orb to touch it now. He still had no idea what it looked like, but it swirled like smoke on his thermal imaging. Amora had said the Mother of the Mist was pure magic, and Tony guessed she hadn't been lying.

Tell us what you want. We will give anything.

"I want you off my world." He lifted his right gauntlet, and closed it into a fist.

You would kill us then? Kill us like dogs?

Tony paused. 'Kill'? He hadn't thought of it as such until that moment. The Mother wasn't really a person, just a... a monster. Killing her would be no different than killing an animal. It...

Damnit, he wasn't a killer. Not anymore. He squeezed his eyes shut, and the faces were there to mock him, to call him liar. Sergei, the Carnelian Ambassador, who'd been killed by Iron Man's hand when Justin Hammer took control of the armor; the Kree Supreme Intelligence, who had committed genocide upon his own people, and was executed by Tony and a group of heartsick Avengers because of it; the second Yellowjacket, whom Tony had killed while under the mind control of Kang the Conqueror. Kang had corrupted Tony, turned him against his teammates and made him into a murderer. He wouldn't go down that path of his own volition again. He wouldn't.

Anything, good knight.

Was there an alternative? Cap said there always was, and if Cap was here, Tony had no doubt he would have found it by now. But Tony could think of nothing, no other way. Every second he stood here in indecision was another second the trolls had to decimate the world above.

"Turn back," he said. "Pull your hordes back and I'll leave you alone."

That we cannot do.

"Then god damn you for making me do this."

Iron Man shoved his gauntlet forward, piercing the cloud-like sphere that was the Mother's body. There was a brief but terrible scream in his mind... and suddenly the trolls that had been hurtling out of the Mother a moment earlier, changed direction and began flying back into her. Iron Man was almost knocked into the Mother himself as they flew past him.

With some effort, he managed to turn around and make his way to the doorway once more. Digging his way out was going to be even harder than coming in had been. But he had no choice. He didn't want to be here when the Mother finished calling her children home.

Iron Man charged up his repulsors and began cutting himself a path.

Sekhmet Conoway had sprinted five miles, always staying mere yards in front of the advancing mist, when her ankle caught on a root and she went down hard on the dry, scrubby ground. As soon as she hit, she was rolling, getting her feet back under her so she could spring up again.

But as soon as she rose, her ankle gave out and dropped her right back on the ground again.

"Shit!" she hissed, grabbing at the useless ankle. Sprained at least, she guessed, maybe broken or dislocated. And the mist...

She looked up.

The Mist was right on top of her.

She could see the trolls within, gnashing their teeth, tumbling over each other in their headlong rush to keep up with the advancing mist.

"Remy," she whispered, and closed her eyes.

She heard the snapping of one monster's teeth... then there was a scream, a woman's scream that seemed to sound more in Sek's mind than her ears, followed by the trumpeting, frustrated howls of thousands of trolls.

Sekhmet opened her eyes.

The mist was retreating, leaving a decimated landscape in its wake, and pulling all the thousands of monsters it had unleashed with it. The trolls tried to scrabble free of the mist, but that apparently wasn't how it worked. The hordes were pulled back toward the cliffside they had emerged from.

"He did it," she sighed. "I'll be damned, he did it."

She tossed the tire iron she'd been carrying aside and watched as the mist retreated over a hillside, disappearing from her sight for good.

I owe that Avenger a beer, she thought, and then the pain from her broken ankle caught up to her and she passed out on her back in the grass.

Iron Man burst from the cave just as the last of the mist was pulled into it. There was a beat of anticipatory silence as the armored Avenger rocketed up the side of the cliff... and then a thunderclap burst from the cave, followed immediately by a gout of flame. The rock wall seemed to swell with the explosion, and the entire face of the cliff suddenly crumbled away, destroying the small village above as well as the cave below. Iron Man watched as the rubble rained down into the sea.

"Damn you," he whispered again.

And somewhere in the distance, he thought he could hear Kang laughing...

Next Issue: Aftermath. The repercussions of the attack on Tony's estate set in, and a very angry Iron Man has a few choice words with the Hand. Guest-starring Wolverine.