Possessed by Protector’s Sword

The Avengers are surprised when Valnior — former steed of the Black Knight — arrives at the mansion with the unconscious form of Sean Dolan, the Knight’s former squire. Crystal and the Wasp take the young man up to one of the spare rooms. Returning downstairs, they discuss the situation with the Vision, Swordsman, and Quicksilver. They recall how Dolan was transformed into the deadly Bloodwraith after taking possession of the Ebony Blade. Turned into a homicidal maniac by its blood curse, these tendencies were tempered when Victoria Bentley sacrificed her soul to partially tame the blade itself.[1]

They all remember that the sword was recently gotten into the possession of sorceress Morgan le Fay and is trapped within the Inhumans city of Attilan, which is trapped within a Negative Zone barrier.[2] This all leaves them wondering why Dolan came to Avengers Mansion. That’s when they realize that they have the Ebony Blade wielded by Proctor, an alternate reality version of the Black Knight who died in battle against the Avengers.[3]

Quicksilver races down to the storage room but is too late to stop Dolan from recovering Proctor’s sword. This time, he transforms into a blazing skeletal form and starts calling himself Black Wraith. The other Avengers try to stop him, but Black Wraith is just too powerful. Blasting his way out of Avengers Mansion, he transformed Valinor into a blazing skeleton and takes off.

The Avengers follow Black Wraith into the city where the maniac is trying to collect souls from innocent people on the street. He succeeds in killing a terminally ill construction worker about to commit suicide before the Swordsman arrives and stops him from claiming a second victim.[4] Blasting Black Wraith off his flying horse, the villain then falls to the ground. Crystal then leaps onto the flaming horse’s back and is suddenly teleported away from the battle. The Avengers have little time to process what happened as Black Wraith begins attacking them, revealing that he can control with Ebony Blade mentally when it is knocked out of his hands.

Meanwhile, Crystal finds herself teleported into the caverns of the Alpha Primitives. They are under attack by a group of Inhumans but they are driven off when Crystal arrives. Crystal is greeted by an Alpha Primitive named RN-62, he explains that Inhuman dissidents are trying to avoid further mutation from the Terrigen Mists that have been released inside the city by destroying the device that maintains the Negative Zone barrier around the city, the Orb of Agon.[5] Next to it is the Black Knight’s Ebony Blade which is embedded in the rocky floor of the cavern. RN-62 tells Crystal that his people have a legend that whoever wields the Ebony Blade will be considered the ruler of their people. Crystal decides to try removing the blade, which comes out of the ground easily when she uses her elemental powers to cause a mini-tremor to loosen the rocks around it.

Once she removes the sword, the Alpha Primitives all bow before her and proclaim her their queen. Crystal very quickly begins to become influenced by the blade’s blood curse and is about to sacrifice one of the Alpha Primitives that has bowed before her. This is the mate of RN-62 and he pleads with Crystal to spare her, saying that she is the first of their people to ever become pregnant.[6] Crystal manages to regain control of herself to spare RN-62’s mate and use Valinor to return to the battle in New York City.

There, Crystal is quickly knocked off Valnior the Black Wraith who is about to run her through with the Proctor blade. That’s when the Vision picks up the dropped Ebony Blade and threatens to use his phasing powers to destroy it, even if it will cost him the use of his arm. Black Wraith doesn’t care since the Proctor sword is much more powerful. When he tries tossing it at the Vision, Quicksilver speeds by and grabs it. That’s when Valinor swoops past the Vision and knocks the Ebony Blade out of his hand and into Black Wraith’s. However, in doing so, Black Wraith and Valinor are both reverted back to normal.

Sean Dolan once more and back in control of himself, he deduces that Valnior orchestrated this whole ordeal in order to break the blood curse that had tainted Sean. Dolan then takes off with the Ebony Blade, promising the Avengers that he will master it much like his former master the Black Knight had done.[7] In the aftermath of the battle, Crystal tells her husband Quicksilver to keep the Proctor sword away from her, but she can’t help but feel that she and the fate of Attilan are linked to it somehow.[8]

Recurring Characters

Avengers (Wasp, Quicksilver, Vision, Crystal, Swordsman), Bloodwraith, Alpha Primitives, Valinor

Continuity Notes

1. There is a lot going on here all at once, so lets break it down:

   • The original Ebony Blade had a blood curse on it. When the weapon tastes blood it compels its wielder to continue spilling blood more frequently than the last. Dane has been cursed with it twice. The first time he was cured Doctor Strange (vol. 2) #68-69. He was saddled with it a second time starting in Avengers #291-293. That time it turned him into a living metal statue as seen in Avengers #294-297 and Thor #397-400. Dane was eventually freed from the curse in Black Knight (vol. 2) #1-4.

   • Sean Dolan later became the Black Knight’s Squire following the events of Black Knight (vol. 2) #1-4. However, the kid was sidelined after one adventure in Avengers Spotlight #39.

   • Fearing he might get curse again, Dane stopped using the sword circa in favor of a photonic sword in Avengers #343. The Blade was being held at Dane’s ancestral castle until it was under siege from some of Dane’s old foes. In order to protect himself and ally Victoria Bentley, Dolan used the Ebony Blade and cursed himself in the process. For some reason, he specifically was transformed into the deadly killer Bloodwraith. See Avengers Annual #22.

   • Victoria Bentley sacrificed her life to lessen the curse on the Ebony Blade in Avengers #366.

2. Bloodwraith lost the Ebony Blade to Morgan le Fay during the Atlantis Rising even, which also saw Attilan taken from the moon and returned to Earth, then sealed in a Negative Zone barrier once more. See Namor the Sub-Mariner #60-62, Fantastic Four: Atlantis Rising #1-2, Warlock and the Infinity Watch #41-42, Fantastic Force #8-9, and Fantastic Four #401-402.

3. Proctor came from Reality-374, a reality where he was dumped by the Eternal Sersi. So heartbroken by this he went mad and traveled from reality to reality with his Gatherers to eliminate every version of Sersi in the Multiverse. His campaign to eliminate Earth-616’s Sersi happened over the course of Avengers #343 to 375. In that final issue, Sersi-616 used Proctor’s own Ebony Blade to decapitate him. It’s worth noting that shortly after Proctor’s death, the Black Knight and Sersi hopped through a portal to another reality, which is where they are at the time of this story. Proctor’s reality was indexed in Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Alternate Realities 2005 #1.

4. During his battle with the Swordsman, Black Wraith mistakes him for Jacques Duquesne, the original Swordsman who died in Giant-Size Avengers #2. This is Philip Javert, Jacques counterpart from Reality-921, who came to Earth-616 in Avengers #343. His reality was also identified in the Alternate Realities 2005 handbook.

5. This is the last time the Negative Zone barrier and the danger of prolonged Terrigen exposure is mentioned or seen. When the Inhumans reappear again in Quicksilver #6, the status quo had been restored to what it was prior to Atlantis Rising with no explanation. Explanations finally be made in both Silent War #4 and Inhumans (vol. 2) #1. Which explains that the Inhuman Royal Family was able to return to Attilan and established a working relationship with the Genetic Council in exchange of having the barrier taken down and the Terrigen Mists contained once more.

6. Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe #1 explains that the Alpha Primitives were a biologically engineered race created by the Inhumans. Genderless and without reproductive organs, their race was sustained through cloning. They were used as slave labor until an uprising in Fantastic Four #131-132, which led to Black Bolt emancipating the Alpha Primitives. This also meant that the creation of new Alpha Primitives ceased, spelling an eventual end of its people. While unclear here, the Alpha Primitive profile in Avengers Assemble #1 handbook confirms that exposure to Terrigen Mists caused the Alpha Primitives to develop genders and the ability to reproduce.

7. Dolan’s attempts at mastering the Ebony Blade will fail him as he will become Bloodwraith again when the blade absorbs all the souls of the recently decimated Slorenia. See Avengers (vol. 3) #36-37.

8. Except it won’t really do much of anything. The Proctor blade will be taken to Attilan and returned to the Alpha Primitives cavern. Crystal will briefly recover it in Quicksilver #6, but other than that, nothing has come of it as of this writing in January, 2023.