Kal summoned his mount and shot off in the direction of New Jersey. In no time, he found Camp Lehigh, the 'birthplace' of the idea behind Captain America.
His annoyance at being unable to get both Infinity Stones without revealing that he was gathering them and therefore raising the suspicions and guards of everybody on Earth kept rising - despite the windfall of boons he had already acquired with the help of the Mind Stone.
With the Quel'Thal twin swords equipped and a permanent scowl on his face, a stealthed Kal, invisible to all forms of observation, broke every wall until he found the elevator shaft that would bring him down to Arnim Zola.
The elf pressed a button, and the old-timey supercomputer inside the hidden basement came to life.
**Who are you?** Appeared on a static green computer screen.
"Cut the shit Zola. I'm here to destroy you."
**... Destroy me? Why?**
"I told Fury about Hydra over a year ago, and he doesn't get shit done. You came for me, so now I'm taking out a few heads of the Hydra in retaliation," Kal explained with a mocking smile that Zola still couldn't see no matter what kind of camera the man-turned-computer-program used.
Finally, the face of Zola appeared on one of the screens like it did for Captain America in a possible future.
"Cut off one head, and two shall take its place," Zola's eerie, robotic voice claimed.
"Yeah, but some heads are more important than others. Like Pierce, Sterns,... I guess Strucker?"
"Impossible!" Zola exclaimed, and that was all the elf needed. A small bit of confirmation before he killed droves of people who didn't deserve it.
[Skill used: Consecration]
The entire secret basement was suddenly filled with a film of holy light hovering at the height of his knees that abruptly smashed into the ground and lit up the entire room in ethereal golden flames that slowly melted and destroyed all pieces of technology in a rain of sparks.
Kal'thal kept up the spell until he checked every wall for more hidden surprises and eventually left as he flew straight to Sokovia.
Finding a secret Hydra outpost was supposed to be hard and take a long time, but another divergence from the MCU helped the High Exarch tremendously the moment he flew above one of the forests of Sokovia.
The smell of demon blood.
The elf dismounted and stalked the forest in stealth as he drew closer and closer toward the stench.
Eventually, he found a hidden old medieval fortress built into a hill. Kal knew he finally found the place.
"Like the Burning Legion… but at the same time a little different?" Kal whispered to himself in Thalassian while sniffing the air. "Was I not the only being that came from my reality?"
Walking into the fortified HYDRA base like he owned the place, Kal was left unbothered by any and all guards present. They simply couldn't see him, and Kal preferred a stealth approach over a confrontation that would lead to whoever stank like a demon to sneak away before he reached them.
"Lord Xaviusss will be mossst pleasssed with your progresss~," a withering, scathing, and repulsive voice whispered in temptation.
"Anything for our lord and benefactor," a man who was clearly in pain whispered back in a submissive tone.
Kal redoubled his efforts to stay hidden as he finally reached the place with the freshest and densest source of the foul demonic smell. Hearing the name 'Lord Xavius', however, brought a solemn look on his face.
Xavius, once a Highborne Elf, was twisted into one of the most devoted slaves of the Burning Legion by the titan Sargeras himself. In his transformation, Xavius became the first of the 'satyr', a race eternally pledged to the Legion.
Once Kal entered the room, he saw an actual satyr in the room together with a kneeling man and several severely wounded people next to a tank of dark green blood. It seemed almost black in the dark room. All of the captives in the room were hooked up to the tank and writhed in pain, their voices long gone from the constant screaming.
"The Light?" The satyr suddenly asked in fear as its head snapped in Kal's direction, and instead of trying to fight, it tried to flee immediately as its form started to shimmer out of existence.
[Skill used: Turn Evil]
Kal immediately used a paladin spell that was used to bind undead and demon enemies and stop them from moving or using spells of their own. Thankfully, Kal didn't overpower the spell with his lightforged prowess, lest the lesser demon was eradicated by the spell by accident. The demon in front of him, now that he saw it, was but a lowly lesser satyr that could not have been turned for longer than a year at most.
As the demon screeched in pain, shackled into submission by golden chains, Kal turned to the man kneeling in front of the satyr.
With an uninterested drawl, Kal mocked, "You sell out humanity to the demons for personal gain Baron Strucker? How noble of your HYDRA..."
Tainted by demonic essence, being in close proximity to the High Exarch who wielded the Holy Light freely hurt the man too much to form a response. The HYDRA cell leader merely writhed in agony as much as the people he had tortured with the demonic blood.
Concentrating on the fact that he excluded both Strucker and the satyr from the spell effect, Kal raised his hand to use an area of effect spell primarily used against undead and demons.
[Skill used: Holy Wrath]
Casting several Purify, Flash of Light, and Word of Glory spells, Kal managed to kill a good half of the human experimental subjects down in this basement. Their essence had been changed too deeply. The Holy Light had instead hurt them instead of healing them of their injuries.
"H-help my sister," a young man with silver hair suddenly asked the Exarch as he managed to stand up despite the agony he was feeling. His voice had been restored with the healing spell, but his 'demonification' had almost been achieved. The healing process was slow and painful.
Kal looked over to see an auburn haired woman crying in deep exhaustion and pain.
'Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch almost died or became demons in this world??' Kal thought in deep and worried contemplation as he helped out Wanda by using a less painful Lifebloom nature healing spell. It sped up the healing and lessened the time she had to bear the process.
Once he was done, he used another spell from his fight at the Stark Expo, Lunar Efflorescence. A silvery flower bloomed in the basement and helped heal those that had survived at this point as Kal walked over to Strucker.
Grasping the man by his throat, Kal lifted him into the air and asked, "How many foul offspring of the Burning Legion did you have contact with?"
Strucker's response was a painful howl that should have doubled as derisive laughter.
Gathering holy elemental mana on his hands, Kal placed it on Strucker's arm that was trying to claw away the elf's arm to regain his freedom. The man once more screeched in pain. More resentful, more fearful, more agonizing this time around.
"I'm doing everything I can to lessen the impact of my being on you so that you do not suffer needlessly. I can instead cause you pain for as long as you want until your mind finally snaps, if that is your wish," Kal proposed with a neutral expression. "Sure, my healing spell killed a few test subjects just now. But I can learn to heal you without holy energy and keep you alive forever. Tell me how many and how they found you or how you found them."
Strucker did not answer, so Kal kept his promise and used a druid's restoration spell to heal the man, mindful to suppress his perk that boosted the effect of his nature magic by providing a holy light effect. Then, Kal placed his hand on Strucker's abdomen and earned himself another screech.
With another Turn Evil, the satyr that thought it could get away was once more stunned into submission, and Kal loosened the grip on his active concealment as he activated Retribution Aura.
"Is this how you want to go? Pissing and shitting yourself as I break you for what will surely feel like an eternity to you?"
"I'll talk!" Strucker screamed out, and Kal once more reigned in his presence.
"Go on," Kal ordered.
"It came to us! 'You are like-minded', 'We can grant you unimaginable power', those were its promises! Lord Xavius appeared in my sleep after I drank his blood! I don't know how many more, I swear!"
The holy energies gathered in the hand that Kal had around the man's neck as he threatened, "Think long and hard before you answer this next question. Does HYDRA know about the deal you made, and did you provide them with this filthy demonic ichor?"
Strucker was quick to answer, "I-I- aaahhhh!"
"I told you to think hard on it," Kal impassively drawled.
"Sitwell knows of a discovery, but not what it was! No blood has left this fortress on my orders!" Strucker answered while deeply crying after waiting for a whole minute.
"Not on your orders," Kal sighed and intensified the holy energy burning Strucker. "Did I ask you to play word games with me?"
This time around, the screams continued for almost a minute as the elf healed Strucker while simultaneously burning away its demonic existence.
"A barrel went missing! Someone working for another head of the HYDRA likely did it!" Strucker cried out and earned himself some more holy-inflicted torture.
"Really? 'Someone'? You're willing to be tortured for weeks just because you're still not willing to give me the name of whoever it was that stole from you?"
"Doctor List! My right hand!"
Using Repentance, Kal stunned the man and threw him to the side for now. He still wanted to know of Strucker's hidden vaults. One of them should contain the artifact that created the Inhumans if this was still canon and if they still lived on the moon if Kal remembered right. Technically, it should also be the tool to find the banished being called 'Hive', the one that originally created HYDRA hundreds of generations ago.
"I'll never talk!" The satyr defiantly spat as Kal neared it, but the High Exarch merely shrugged.
"I've fought your kind for several human lifetimes. I know you won't... because you don't know anything. Isn't that right, little satyr?"
Kal asked as he loomed over the still stunned creature. Its eyes widened in fear and pain.
"Did you really pretend to be Xavius himself when you planted those dreams in Strucker, little dream eater? If I tell him when I fight him next... I wonder if he searches the Twisting Nether for your soul just to rip it apart himself," Kal pondered out loud with a sneer on his face. But despite his taunts and laid-back nature, Kal studied every little expression on the satyr's face to learn as much as possible.
The demon knew of the Twisting Nether, so it was born in the same world as he was when he was an elf born in Azeroth. The words meant nothing to a creature of this Marvel universe. Knowing Lord Xavius might have already been enough, but that could have been a 'racial memory' from when it was born in a freak accident at the same time the space anomaly that brought him here happened.
"So there's a tear in reality somewhere that brought you to this world..." Kal pensively muttered, leaving out the part that said he was brought by the same tear. 'Is that what the Ancient One meant when she said my world was closer than I might believe?'
Kal broke off both of the satyr's horns and stored them in a bag before he eradicated the demon. No matter what, Kal would not believe any answer if he asked how many more there were or how they got here and where the tear was that allowed it entry.
His only hope now was that Stark or the Ancient One could pinpoint the tear with one of the demon's horns as a guide with the help of either technology or Earth sorcery.
"Now, what to do with those two and the rest of these unfortunate souls..."