Defenders: Beyond (2022 series) #3

Last issue our Defenders met the Beyonders and were joined by the Beyonder from Secret Wars I&II in passing on to the White Hot Room where the Phoenix Force took over Taaia.

She now addresses the others separately because they experience being in very different places.

Tigra wakes up in a dark cave with a small fire lit. Greer Nelson is worried about her son William who she left in daycare. The Phoenix speaks from the fire and claims to be the glory at the heart of all things, and outside is the darkness.

Blue Marvel is in a monochrome scene of a single builder erecting a never-ending scaffolding. Phoenix tells him he's at the heart of all things and she calls him Adam Kadmon. He assumes this is Phoenix's home base. The builder says he's always adding the new to the old. Adam Brashear wonders if he's God or Death.

Phoenix also looks in on America Chavez in a desert burning in the heat of Phoenix as the Sun. She reminds her that she's the self-styled Paramedic For The Multiverse but she's lost most of the power to enable her to do that. Now she must tread a path that leads either to knowledge or the abyss.

On the other hand Loki and the Beyonder are in a freezing wilderness. But Beyonder has created for himself a food blender from scratch - making the basic quarks was the hardest bit. And he's also made food to blend. He says it's comforting when he's outclassed by the PF in the WHR. If Loki hadn't trapped him in a narrative arc he'd *never* have come here. Then Phoenix calls out for Loki who she says is a temporal anomaly draining reality from the current Loki-616, and she's going to send her back where she came from. She tells her that the WHR is the highest plane she can reach without risking the Abyss. Loki replies that the Abyss sounds good, but PF says she's not giving her any choice. Her flame will burn away trespassers ...

... including Blue Marvel in the monochrome construction site. But with a foe of this level he feels free to really let loose with his anti-matter blast. The pair fight among the girders with Phoenix still calling him Adam Kadmon and saying he faces the All-Flame. But Adam Brashear guesses that her attention is split between 4 fights now, or maybe 5.

Tigra sees the fight in her fire in her cave. Beyonder throws his full blender at Phoenix, but he's only keeping her from watching Loki who's drawing a 5-pointed star in the air which fills in with white to form a portal through which America bursts still wearing the Eternity Mask which gives her power equal to the Phoenix. To become a Phoenix herself and engage the other in combat, for Loki and their cosmic purpose.

Blue Marvel is being ignored in the construction site. The builder confirms that this place and the WHR are the same. It's a place of balance, and at the moment the case for letting Eternity's Defenders go forward and the case for killing them is being 'argued'. Brashear decides to bring Tigra into the equation. He doesn't know how to get a message to her but she's hearing him in her fire. She hears him say he guesses there's a balancing force against the Phoenix and he believes he's met it and that *she* is its perfect avatar.

Phoenix warns her not to listen even as she's defeating Chavez (the Mask only makes both sides have an *equal* chance of winning). She claims Loki has to die because the danger to reality is too great. Beyonder makes another blender. But Tigra points out to Phoenix that she's *not* human. She's *the* Tigra, sacred warrior of the Cat People. She snuffs the fire out and heads into the dark where she meets the primal foe that the fire was designed to keep away - the Tiger God.

They emerge together and the giant tiger engages the Phoenix Force in a fight that has been going on forever. Greer is swept up in the Tiger God's rage and she wonders if this is how Taaia is feeling, or the current Phoenix, Echo (Maya Lopez) as of Avengers (2018) #44. So Taaia and Tigra disengage from the Phoenix Force and the Tiger God and leave them to it. The Defenders plus the Beyonder drop down through layers of building blocks ...

... and end up in a grey realm with strange symbolic 'trees' growing out of the ground. And they're greeted by Glorian (in colour) who tells them they're in the Abyss, but he can make their dreams come true.