Agents of Supernatural (Marvel x Supernatural)

The Well Pt. 4

"Professor Randolph," Coulson greeted

"Agent Coulson, come in, come in," Elliot Randolph said as they shook hands as Coulson entered his office, Fitz, Simmons, and Katerina walked in behind Coulson.

"Waterfield 44." Coulson was pointing at the pen in Elliot's hand which made Elliot look down at it as well. "14-Karat gold nib with mother of pearl inlay,"

Elliot laughed "That's quite an eye you've got. I didn't know you were a collector,"

"On a government salary, not quite,"

"Well, I'm assuming you found something on the ground in London,"

"And then some," Katerina muttered under her breath.

"In a tree in Norway," Coulson said "And unfortunately we weren't the ones who found it,"

Katerina opened the case Fitz brought along and pulled out the printed rod that Fitz made.

"It's a 3-D model," Fitz explained

Katerina handed the rod to Elliot who took it and examined it closely.

"Oh, that is amazing." Elliot turned away from them and put the rod's symbols under a light to look at them better. "Now, based on these runes, I'd say I'm looking at a piece of the Berserker Staff," he set the rod down and picked up a book "Let's have a look," Elliot opened the book and began looking through pages. "Yeah, the myth dates back to the late 12th century. It's all about a powerful warrior from Asgard. Here." he set the book down and showed the team a pen drawing of a man holding the rod high up high over his head, the rod was considerably bigger than the one that was taken out of the tree. "A soldier in the Berserker Army,"

"Berserker Army?" Katerina asked

"Oh, yeah. A powerful army. Fierce army, it was. Berserkers battled like raging beasts, destroying everything in their path. A single Berserker had the strength of 20 warriors,"

"So whoever wielded the staff got superhuman strength?" Coulson asked

"Fighting with it put the warrior into a state of uncontrollable rage." Elliot picked up the rod and was showing it to Katerina. "The staff contained a very powerful magic,"

"Or a scientific attribute we've yet to discover," Simmons said

"Analytically minded and pretty as a peach,"

"The warrior in the story," Fitz said

"Well, in the story, he came to Earth to fight, but he ended up falling in love,"

"With whom?" Katerina asked

"With life, on Earth. Humanity."

Katerina and Simmons smiled at that.

"He fell so much in love that when his army returned to Asgard, he stayed behind,"

"What happened to the staff?" Fitz asked

"Well, he didn't want its dark magic falling into the wrong hands. So, he broke it into three pieces and hid each one in a different location,"

"The manuscript wouldn't happen to say where he hid them, would it?" Katerina asked

"Actually, it does," Elliot turned back to the book and picked it up walking to his desk. "In three verses. Now, let's all bear in mind these are poetic abstracts from long-lost ancient texts. So, there is one about a tree, which they've found it seems. Another is 'east of the river, sun overhead, buried in Earth with the bones of the dead.' That's a bit macabre, isn't it? There's another one here. Well, this one doesn't even have a rhyme. But the gist of it is 'close to God.' That could be anything, couldn't it?"

"It could also mean nothing," Simmons said

"I was hoping for less metaphor, more longitude and, latitude," Coulson said

"Well, I mean, it does stand to reason to search near Viking raid routes, doesn't it?" Elliot asked

Coulson shot him a look at the suggestion.

"Now, there have been some recent interesting findings of Norse relics on Baffin Island off the coast of Canada. Yeah, virtual treasure trove of new artifacts,"

"We'll start there, then." Coulson said "Thank you, Professor,"

***

I sat on the edge of the table where Skye was working "So..."

"KC, not now...I haven't been able to even go into the SHIELD database since Coulson put me on social media patrol...so my answer is no I haven't been able to dig much deeper into your mother's history, especially her death,"

"I wasn't talking about my mother, I was talking about social media patrol, what do you got?"

Skye sighed but I knew she knew it was killing me on the inside that the agency I was working for, including my own father, was hiding the truth behind my mother's death from me. "Nystrom's deep-web message boards are just abuzz with psychos." she pointed at the holocom and I could see messages scrolling across part of it. "They believe they're gonna ascend to be the Gods of destruction and death. People suck,"

"That's your progress," Ward said as he and my father came into the planning room "'people suck'?"

"These people do. And there's also chatter about going underground,"

"Could be going incognito or-"

"Or searching for the next piece," my father finished.

"Randolph said to check Viking routes. Find any others?"

"There's some sites along the Volga River in Russia," I said "some in Kiev, and weirdly, here," I touched an area on the map displayed on the holocom, it zoomed in to show Seville, Spain.

"In Seville, Spain?"

"It's a long shot, but Vikings sacked Seville twice,"

May entered the Planning Room. "We found promising locations with Viking relics, El Divino Nono. A church built on the ruins of an 8th-century crypt built on Roman ruins from 206 B.C.,"

"East of a river," I said

"And lots of bones." My father added "Let's see what we can dig up. See what I did there?"

I rolled my eyes at his joke and left the planning room.

***

"How you doing, Katerina?" My father asked over the earpiece as I walked through an area that was very dark.

"Just glad I'm not Ward's height," I joked as I continued through the tunnel in the ground holding a tablet and a flashlight. "Nothing yet." the table showed no alien substances "All my readings are normal.

My tablet made a dinging noise.

"Kat, your spectrograph is reading something near you," Fitz said

"I don't see anything,"

"Well, it's right in front of you. Oh, wait. No. Uh, okay, hold on. It's moving-northwest,"

I turned and saw someone starting away from me, I chased after. "Visual contact,"

"Kat, turn left,"

I entered a hallway and caught up to the person I saw. When I turned him around I saw that it was Elliot Randolph.

"I have a wonderful explanation," Elliot said

"Ran into some unexpected-" I reached out to take a hold of Elliot but I heard some sort of strange low rumbling sound and I dipped my head in pain. Elliot had been holding another part of the staff. With my hand on it, it was once again glowing bright orange. I grunted and fell.

A baby cried, everything was surrounded by flames, a woman screamed and through the flames was a pair of eerie yellow eyes.