Camelot's rise in Marvel

I shook my head, focusing instead on the present rather than the past.

Loki's schemes and those of his mother were not my concern; I played along because it did benefit me to do so. After all, all I had to do was help delay things, and I could do that much.

Not that I minded the idea of sending my knights off to war; they were warriors, unafraid of war, thriving on the battlefield. They wouldn't mind, many being restless, desiring combat, and against worthy foes at that.

Still, Asgard was full of surprises. "Mordred, did you need anything? I doubt it is all that interesting, just standing there watching me."

"Well, if you find watching the city that interesting, I can't see why I can't find watching you interesting." She said, crossing her arms.

"If that is what you want." I sighed, looking onto the city, and indeed, I too was getting restless, in particular, my Alter spirit origin was itching for some action.

"Go seek the Veiled Hand, ask for updates on the Hand, I want to know if they need to be dealt with yet." I finally came up with an excuse to send Mordred away, a task she probably wouldn't groan too loudly about.

"Ughh! Fine, if I'm annoying you that much." He groaned loudly as she turned to leave, stopping to cast one last look at me.

-----

Mordred cursed under her breath as she made her way through the castle halls, annoyed that she was stuck in the city, barely able to get out and have fun.

She once hated that she had to keep herself hidden under her armor every time she went outside. But, now that she could walk around dressed as she wanted, she was finding that it wasn't as nice as she had imagined.

Because, now everyone knew who she was, everyone watched her, stopped to ask her question, it was annoying as fuck.

Couldn't they just leave her alone?

But no, they all wanted to take pictures of her.

Worse yet, countless men tried to hit on her!

It was only fair she hit them back!

At least Father wasn't mad at her when she did that. Though that didn't stop Agravain from being annoying about it, or that good-for-nothing Bedivere, even the traitor Lancelot commented about it, saying she shouldn't beat up the commoners.

What right did he have to say something like that?

If it wasn't because of Father's stupid trial that said she had to get all of them to acknowledge her as heir to the throne, she would have thrown them out long ago.

She knew they didn't do so yet, but she didn't care. All she had to do was prove herself to Father, that way, she could go back on his decision, and give her the throne, but not yet.

There was far too much boring work happening right now, better let someone else deal with all of that.

Though she really wished that Father would start a war or something, she wanted to fight properly.

That Asgardian had been one hell of a fight, and she really wanted to fight more of them, or go to that Jotunheim place and beat some giants, that sounded like a ton of fun.

But no, instead she had to shut down a few rebellions, or slay a demon, and those were weak, all the monsters that dared set foot in Albion were weak as hell, she really wanted to slay a proper demon, or even a dragon, that would be a fight worthy of her Clarent!

She made her way into the basement of the castle and followed some twisted turns around until she left the castle entirely and entered the basement of another building.

HQ of the Veiled Hand, those sneaky women her Father had saved way back then, now a part of Camelot, doing all kinds of sneaky things.

She didn't care about all that, it wasn't like they found her any cool battles or anything, just sneaking around, or looking at screens all day.

Boring as fuck stuff.

"Yo! Anyone here?" She said as soon as she threw the door open.

Inside the mostly dark room, she couldn't help but once more wonder why they don't turn on the lights? So strange.

"Yes, we are here, as always." A tired and annoyed voice called from behind a monitor, the owner of the voice barely even looking away.

"Well, you could fool me, so damn quiet, are you all sleeping or something?" Mordred clicked her tongue as she went in and threw herself into the large sofa.

"Nope, just busy doing important stuff is all, you know, keeping an eye on the world outside, spying on foreign nations, watching some scientist who can turn into a green giant hide from spies, watching Captain America try to get used to the twenty-first century." Another widow said as she took a break.

They all knew that with Mordred around, it was best not to try to focus on their work; it wouldn't happen. Mordred wasn't someone who could leave people alone if they focused too intensely on something.

"Green giant, huh?" Mordred raised an eyebrow. "Someone strong or what?"

"Yes," The second woman replied, stretching her arms behind her head. "Pretty much invincible, a monster of pure rage, but pretty dumb, so easy enough to trick, but wrong enough to at least go toe to toe with the Round table, maybe only Gawain can beat that thing."

Mordred scoffed. "Please, I bet I could smash that giant into the ground with one hand."

That earned a couple muffled snorts from the agents nearby. One of them rolled her chair across the room, tossing Mordred an energy drink without looking.

"Well, I'm sure you will have a chance, the scientist is looking for a cure, and that will lead him here, to Camelot, and well, given his history, that is gonna go bad." The first woman said, looking forward to seeing Mordred knocked around.

All the former widows liked Mordred, she was someone they could get behind, someone who took no shit from anyone. She was quick to stand up for them, and the kids loved her.

And it was honestly amusing watching Mordred struggle to deal with all the attention from the girls, she had no idea how to react at all, but still wanted to look cool. If only they could make sure the girls didn't grow up wanting to dress like that.

Because Mordred liked clothes that didn't cover too much of her body and didn't restrict her movements.

Honestly, they were just glad she didn't like surfing the internet on her own, because well… they wouldn't want to think about what would happen if she realized what people were saying about her, or seeing some people cosplay as her.

"So, what do we owe the pleasure of the great heir to Camelot?" the woman asked, clearly amused.

Mordred waved her hand dismissively. "Yeah, yeah. I'm not here for your flattery. Father wants a report on the other Hand. The bad one. Hopefully you got something that will make Father agree to take me out again to finish them off."

Mordred hadn't forgotten about those evil ninjas, she was still angry that she hadn't been allowed to finish them off, or figure out their secret.

She couldn't possibly forget that they might have a crazy secret like resurrection. She still didn't believe it, but hey, she didn't really need any more of a reason to kill them than the fact that they were clearly evil.

That quieted the room. The moment the real topic came up, the playful air thinned like steam off steel.

One of them turned to look at her monitor, quickly tapping away at the keys as they searched up about the Hand in their own internal database. "Hand, an evil cult of ninjas, mostly working out of Japan and New York, apparently currently digging around for something under New York." She read aloud as she found what she was looking for.

The Veiled Hand dealt with countless threats and what not, and some were minor, like the Hand, only on their radar because Arthuria herself went to cause trouble for them. Compared to the other things around, they seemed almost pitiful.

Yet, with Arthuria paying them attention, there had to be more about them than visible on the surface.

She continued to look at the file, reading the notes about the leaders. The only interesting thing about them.

"They have five leaders," the widow continued, eyes scanning the screen. "And they are old, real old, according to this, there are records going back centuries about that one Madam Gao you faced in New York, and they seem immortal, plenty of reports of them dying, and coming back."

Mordred leaned forward, expression sharpening. "Anything else? Anything new about them? Some evil scheme, something big and juicy."

"We don't have much," the widow admitted. "They seem to have kept a low profile since your last run-in with them, mostly just some conflicts with other gangs and such, but they are still digging. Stark got us data on that, they are digging like crazy."

Mordred growled. "Well, what are they digging for? We need to know something, Father will never let me go unless we find out something more!" She whined.

One of the widows sighed and spun her chair around to face Mordred fully, fingers steepled under her chin.

"We are trying," she said, her tone even but tinged with sympathy, "but I'm afraid we don't have the ability to really spy on them, not enough manpower, they are too skilled, so we only really got Stark and his tech."

She didn't like being the bearer of bad news, but honestly, the Hand just didn't make it easy, and it wasn't important enough to deserve their full attention; their intel was indicating that they weren't dangerous, so it wasn't important.

Another widow added, "They've gone deep underground—figuratively and literally. Whatever they're after, it's something buried. Possibly ancient. Stark's scans show a structure under New York that doesn't match anything on record. Not subway, not sewer, whatever it is, it's hard, so hard it blocks any attempt at scanning it, but it's big and old."

She turned her monitor toward Mordred, displaying a grainy satellite render—a faint geometric shape embedded beneath Manhattan. A giant black shadow on the map, a vague square shape.

"The Hand is focusing on everything there. Even pulled assets from Japan. Whatever it is, it's important to them. We suspect it's an ancient vault of some kind, but that is just a guess at best. No energy signature, so it is unlikely to be a big weapon or anything."

Mordred's eyes narrowed. Then with a groan, she knocked back the can of energy drink and crushed the empty can in her hand a moment later. "Bah, nothing fun at all. Anything else interesting happening?"

One of the widows leaned back in her chair, glancing over at another monitor. "Well, define interesting. We've got a few crises simmering. But many of them are heavy on the politics, like Mutants, Hydra, SHIELD, take your pick, and we got it, the only really interesting thing for you might be that Morgana wanna be, but that's still restricted for now, King's orders."

Another silence settled over the room like a storm cloud waiting to break. Mordred sat up straighter, the name clearly catching her attention. Her tone sharpened, eyes narrowing.

Oh, how she wanted to go after that witch, but she couldn't, she wasn't allowed to do anything, and she hated it! But well… she couldn't go against her Father, so she just had to grit her teeth. "Anything new happening there?"

The widows looked at one another for a moment before one finally spoke. "Not really, we think she is hiding in France, but that's just a guess, we aren't good at tracking mages, not having any ourselves, so yeah, she is still just testing the waters, but we have gathered some information about her, still working through it, lots of it is just rumors."

"Alright, focus on that, if we get enough, maybe I can get Father to agree to let me deal with that witch, so do your best." Mordred said as she stood up, throwing the can across the room and into a trash can. 

"Score!" she grinned as she slammed the door open again, leaving without looking back.