Many powerful beings spoke of a Sage who lived beyond the multiverse, in a realm beyond the reach of ordinary people's dreams.
He knew everything, understood everything, and only those with genuine needs came to this region.
No matter what questions a visitor had, no matter what invincible enemy they faced, the Sage would help them resolve it.
Of course, the price was steep. The Sage required no form of currency. As payment, he accepted only one thing: wisdom.
Beautiful poetry, wild flights of fancy, complex yet uniquely distinctive magic—all of it fell within the scope of wisdom.
Those seeking help would permanently lose the talent they had once taken pride in. Mages would find it difficult to sense magic, scientists would discover their thinking had become extraordinarily sluggish, and geniuses would become mediocre. That was the price of the Sage's intervention.
Today, the Sage had unusually declined to receive visitors. Reclining sideways in a cushioned chair, he gazed, seemingly intentionally yet absentmindedly, at a pool of clear water below.
Magic beyond mortal imagination churned within the water, faithfully displaying the events unfolding on distant Earth before the Sage.
The Avengers probably could never have imagined that while they fought one another into a tangled mess, an old man with white hair and beard was watching them with great interest in the depths of the distant cosmos.
He wore a wizard's hat embroidered with stars and moons. His robes were extremely worn, and beside him rested a staff whose age could not be discerned.
He was the self-proclaimed watcher of Cosmic Omnipotence, Grand Magus Merlin, who had long transcended the limits defined by mortals!
He had been a swordsman, a knight, and more often a mage—a druid, an occultist, a priest, a psion. He had held every profession that had