Earth Tithe (First Update)

A good spy's instincts had always told her that Salomon was hiding many crucial secrets. Even after knowing him for years, Natasha Romanoff had never managed to pry from Salomon any information he did not wish to reveal.

A strange man, a brilliant fellow covered in secrets, a miraculous wizard—this was every Avenger's impression of Salomon Damonet. Perhaps there was one newly added impression as well: he had developed a preliminary solution to the problem of quantum field theory without gravity. Doctor Banner looked very eager to discuss the nearly incomprehensible subject of quantum chromodynamics with him.

Agent Romanoff was one of the few Avengers who knew some of the Arcanist's secrets, but the more she learned, the more mysterious Salomon seemed in her eyes. The Salem incident had only deepened that sense of mystery. No one knew what exactly he had gained from that event. Everything had wrapped him in an opaque shell, shaping him into the person she saw now.

Salomon Damonet was an extraordinarily pure person. Since the day he was born, he had foreseen disasters, and he had suffered under those prophecies throughout his life. When S.H.I.E.L.D. still existed, its intelligence analysis division, which answered only to Nick Fury, concluded that "Salomon's prophetic ability was also the source of his mental illness." Yet that was not the truth. In Agent Romanoff's eyes, Salomon had risen up against fate through sheer force of will, preparing for a disaster that might never come, like a hero from a mythic epic.

Those were the one-sided impressions she had pieced together from countless facts and lies.

Perhaps he is right! The disaster he showed me must be resisted by any means necessary. Someone has to make sacrifices!

The thought was like an icy corpse hand clutching her heart, sending a