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In the mountains of the Himalayas, where the Wreckers had placed the beacon, Ebony Maw, the most cerebral of Thanos' Black Order had created a defense in depth that was gradually growing throughout the Himalayas. This consisted of scattered, shielded defensive points, shields that were strong enough to take even a blow from Fenrir and had heavy guns behind them, along with the Chitauri's version of rocket launchers. Giant elephantine creatures that had nine legs and long snouts, these could only move slowly through the portal and had to be unpacked afterward, the same as some of the other land-based creatures.
The Spitters, a name that even Ebony thought was both apropos and a sign of limited intelligence, consume large chunks of stone, then, in their stomachs, shift those chunks into massive bolts of stone. Shooting them into the atmosphere, these stone creations would come down once more with all the kinetic potential they built up after going at Mach speeds.
The impact these simple rods had once they came down on their target cities was far larger than the limited upkeep necessary. Although the rods could be knocked out of the air, and many had been so far, cities all around the Himalayas and beyond were burning, adding to the death toll that this invasion had already accrued.
Coupled with these rocket stations were numerous technological traps that served as deterrents even against Fenrir or Hela, let alone their companions. These came in the form of mines that fooled even an Asgardian's senses. When they exploded in the attacker's faces, the explosions hit with such heat and force that even Hela, Fenrir and Garm could be flung away, saving that segment of the defensive line, which could then fall back.
Heavy antiair guns, the dung beetle-like cyborgs, defended the Chitauri from aerial attacks. Dozens of fighters and bombers from India, Bangladesh, Nepal itself and even China had been slain, and they were also strong enough to at least smash Hela out of the sky. They didn't hurt much, but she was not a strong enough flier to push through the amount of impact those bolts of energy hit her with.
Worse were strange gravitic traps that could catch even Fenrir, holding him in place despite his mighty strength as the area around them was impacted by gravity several hundred times more than Earth's normal gravity. It had only been luck and the fact he had been ranging ahead of the others that stopped Hela and others from being seriously wounded by that last when they first ran into it.
Thus, Hela had decided to change tactics. Instead of simply bulling ahead as she and the others had hoped, the group sent to do what they could on this front started to use hit-and-run tactics. They ranged all over, using Hela's ability to fly and Fenrir and Garm's prodigious leaps to traverse the mountains, slaughtering bands of aliens or smashing hard points and then retreating under her spells from any attempt to track them. However, even the Asgardians, goddess and beast alike, were having trouble moving around the mountains like this.
That main portal was massive, its aperture five times the size of any of the other portals spread across the planet. This allowed large numbers of Rippers and Death Claws to come through, along with the construction equipment designed to build the anti-air and automated weaponry that Ebony was using to create his defense in depth.
As the defenders spread out, they also created smaller portals on Ebony's orders. These were the size of individual aliens. Thus, while the main portal was being used to bring in a lot of equipment, the smaller ones brought in infantry or skimmers closer to the front line, such as it was. Lots of them, infantry and skimmers both.
The infantry dug into positions spreading out over whole mountains, creating a defense in depth with the smaller infantry-sized portals at their center becoming hard points. These also became the typical targets for Fenrir, Garm and the rest.
But while Hela could use her magic to swat even a Ripper out of the sky with ease or whole flights of skimmers at a time, and did every few minutes, she could only be in one place at a time as well. Unfortunately, like most magic users, while on an attack like this away from her place of power, Hela could not direct her magic out beyond her admittedly amazing line of sight. The rest of the group with her were even less capable of stopping such from spreading out quickly.
Thus, as Hela and the rest did what they could to slow Ebony Maw's expansion of his defense zone, whole flotillas of skimmers, many times the size of the units being used by Supergiant in China or Nebula in France, were now spreading out beyond the mountains of the Himalayas, hitting the nearby nations. Thanks to being connected to Pinoptes, Dennis and Sage's network, Hela was well aware of the carnage this was causing in India, Burma, and even as far as the Bay of Bengal. While most of those nations had some type of air force, they were small and outside of India, not very well maintained or at a technological level sufficient to fight even the skimmers, let alone their bigger brethren. On this front, those bigger brethren were only one in fifty, but that was still more than enough to cause a lot of damage.
That death toll was a true horror, despite it not having lasted so long thus far and the reversals that the attackers had faced. Despite Ororo's best efforts, tens of thousands of civilians had died in Washington, Paris and beyond, and elsewhere, it was far, far worse, particularly in China and near Ebony's portal. Doom had saved Debrecen and the rest of the planet from far worse, but it was only the nature of the portals and the lack of a space-based angle of attack that had kept the planet from being entirely overrun.
The best defense for the area was a United States carrier group that had remained assigned to the Indian Ocean after the Eurasian War. Yet even the US forces who had been quick to take up the same tactics as their counterparts in France and America - launching from out of range and then turning away when they ran out of missiles - were being slowly overwhelmed in the skies over India.
It is a numbers game, and it is one that the humans are losing here. Blast this commander and his defense-first strategy. Ugh, it reminds me of those history books that Ororo and Harry had me read about the First World War. If we had been able to get here before the Chitauri got so situated, things would be different. But that and the terrain have worked against us, Hela thought, scowling as she leaned against the side of a mountain, standing on a tiny path that even a goat would have thought impossible to traverse.
Garm and Fenrir both had some trouble moving across the mountains on the ground like this, and even Hela was finding the going tough at times. It was almost enough to make her think of adding the kind of hover boots Dani used in her combat outfit to Hela's own.
"We've broken contact," Dani reported from the back of the group. "That illusion you just cast is leading away the last group of skimmers that were trying to follow us, Hela. If we just keep moving further in this direction, the only ones we'll need to worry about are the skimmers."
"Very good. In that case, it is time to think smarter instead of harder. Initially we had wished to draw out the enemy commander and the remaining Wrecking Crew. That is not working any longer and the aliens are still just spreading out, digging in further. Instead, we will need to infiltrate, push past their outer envelope to get to something vital," Hela answered, scowling underneath her half mask, her tone grim.
"I dislike that sister. These creatures are prey. No matter how many millions of them there are, they cannot be a true threat to me or even this old wolf beside me," Fenrir half teased, pushing his shoulder against the shorter and far older Garm where the pair stood, taking up the entirety of a small ridge above Hela's current position. "We have slain thousands today. We can slay thousands more if we keep attacking."
"I will have you know, pup, that I probably have killed even more of the enemy than you have. There is something to be said for guile and experience against youthful enthusiasm," Garm retorted. "Listen to the mistress."
"Why not break the group in two?" Dani asked, shrugging. "Let Fenrir and Garm go wild. The rest of us sneak through their lines until we find the main portal."
"It might work, but it would also separate two of our heavy hitters from the rest of us. While I can slaughter even as many as my brother here, my raw physical power is not up to doing both that and fighting the two remaining members of the Wrecking Crew," Hela answered, not dismissing the suggestion but calmly explaining why it wouldn't work. "I can face one, mayhap both in direct conflict. Yet I would have no ability to do that and aid you or Gerda against the other aliens. No, we stick together for now. If we do meet with either of those two, then mayhap splitting up will become viable."
Dani nodded thoughtfully, reaching up and stroking Fenrir's side as the tiny trail she, Gerda and Hela were using wound up and past his current position. Watching them, Hela was again astonished at the connection Dani had formed with her prickly younger brother. Truly, the young huntress has a most magnificent way with all beasts, but her friendship with my brother is perhaps the best thing to have happened to him in quite a while.
Then she shook her head and concentrated on the here and now. "Gerda, come here. I will cover us with illusion once more. And remember, from now on, only attack when I say," Hela ordered. "I am looking at you most particularly, brother!"
Gerda had been scouting out ahead of them and now came down towards them, pushing through under a series of boulders, having hidden herself amongst them almost as well as someone who could use magic to do the deed. Thankfully, the aliens didn't seem particularly good at spotting single people on the move in a natural environment like the mountains from above, or else even she would have been easily spotted simply because of the number of skimmers that flew in the air on random shifts.
The two wolves, however, were, while a massive benefit to the group's combat abilities, simply too large to be anything but threats even in their currently human-sized forms. At Hela's direction, magic encased all of them. First was a dome of magic that blocked others from hearing anything within, a Muffilatio writ large that would allow the group to communicate with one another verbally rather than through hand or eye motions. Which, obviously, the two wolves could not participate in. It also blocked anything that tried to find them in any manner, which allowed Hela to use an electronic map that Spymaster sent to her bracelet-shaped computer, a bit of engineering she was still getting used to.
At least, that was the hope. But Hela understood that there were powers in the universe that were beyond her understanding and thus beyond her magical ability to counter, so she used the electronic device sparingly. Worse, she knew that the Chitauri might be able to discern even her use of magic. Richards and Doom had both come up with scientific means to track magic to a significant extent degree, especially hasty spellwork like this. And they have not found us yet. I will just need to keep trusting to hope.
With Hela's spells covering them, the group quickly began moving once more. Following the direction marked out on Hela's map by Pinoptes, they moved in the direction of the energy source of the main portal. Doing so, they traversed several hundred leagues of some of the most horrible terrain Earth had to offer, with jagged cliffs, huge granite walls of raw mountain, and snow deep enough that if you walked over a hidden crevice and fell in, you would suffocate before you could get out. Despite their monstrous strength, even the wolves had problems, a lack of hands and their size hampering their ability to climb dramatically.
At one point, it got so bad that Hela had to use further magic to help them ascend up into the air from one escarpment to another. "I would wager you have never wished to have our father's ability to transform and shape-shift more than now, brother," Hela teased good-naturedly. "At the moment, turning even into a werewolf would make your ability to move around in these mountains far easier."
"Personally, I think it's a matter of opposable thumbs," Gerda announced with a laugh as she and Dani helped Garm along without the use of magic, which was far more difficult. "Surely, the fact that we have opposable thumbs has helped humans and those like us to evolve past our primitive origins. No longer do we need to fear the animals of the forest."
"Says someone who has never seen monkeys or gorillas," Dani snorted.
Fenrir was touchy, though, and while he was willing to let Hela's comment pass by due to their sibling connection, he took umbrage at Gerda's statement. Looking over at her, he scowled, fangs showing along one side of his jaw. "Keep talking like that, and I will show you that even being a chooser of the slain is not enough to save you from my bite! There is a good reason why your ancestors feared wolves like me."
It fell to Dani to play peacekeeper for a time, but the magical illusions that Hela occasionally sent out and their own invisibility to their enemies worked. The various illusions made the skimmers race away from them whenever they had to simply take to the air again, as flying was a bit too much for Hela's spellwork to hide completely. Because of this, the group passed over the mountains as quickly as they possibly could without taking to the air, which at this point would've been dangerous simply because there were so many skimmers flying through the air over the mountains. They were sure to hit some of them and thus break Hela's magic.
Eventually the infantry posts also became so thick on the ground, such as it was in the mountains anyway, that the presence became known to the enemy once more.
Two aliens turned from where they had been working on setting up another small portal at a noise behind them. At first, they saw nothing but the scree of the mountainside, which was loose here. Spreading out away from their current positions, looked like it had been the site of some ancient avalanche or river. But as they watched, dozens of rocks came clamoring down from a loose band of rock.
Most would have simply dismissed this as something up above them causing a small cascade of rocks, not seeing any danger in it. But the Chitauri had run into invisible enemies prior to coming to Earth. Both infantrymen raised their blasters and began to pepper the area where the rocks and seemingly come from, hitting Gerda and Hela, the hits dispelling her illusion.
Hela could simply ignore the strikes entirely, as even a Ripper's beam couldn't hurt her, although it could toss her off-course. But caught mid-step, Gerda grunted, collapsing onto her side and then rolling down the mountainside towards the two enemy infantrymen.
Both of the aliens fell to shots from Dani before any of the others could even move, and then she was racing down the hill after her friend and trainer.
As a Valkyrie, Gerda was made of quite stern stuff, and her armor was among the best she could wear without hampering her movement. It wasn't quite up to the unpowered armor of the Custodes, but it was way better than that of the Chitauri. Thus, she was not overly injured by the strikes, although the initial impact of the green energy bolts from the enemy infantry had stung her thigh and knee under her armor. The resulting fall only really wounded her pride, and she waved off Dani's hand, pointing above them to the dozen skimmers that had responded. "Look out!"
The skimmers, linked to whatever communication system the Chitauri seemed to share, had responded almost instantly and now came in from every angle. Instantly, fire rained down, such that Hela had no chance of raising another spell to hide their presence or send out magical decoys before they struck.
"Blast it all! Fine, if these fools which to die, slaughter them all!" Hela snarled.
Dodging around the energy bolts coming their way as best they could, Dani and Gerda began to fire arrows up at the skimmers while Hela started to use her magic once more. Bolts of raw magic shot upward, downing fourteen skimmers with her first magical blast, Hela being far too annoyed at present to concentrate on any specific spell. Still more came down at them, though, firing without any care of the losses they were taking in turn.
To one side of where they had been traversing the mountains was a small path. And now, along this path, hundreds of Chitauri infantry skittered across the sides of the mountain like so many spiders scaling a wall. Above them came two skimmers containing Wrecker and Thunderball. "Hah! Ebony was right. They were trying to sneak past us. Fuck them up!"
Seeing that, Hela smiled, much of her earlier annoyance disappearing. Perhaps Dani's plan to split us up will become viable momentarily. "Fenrir, rother mine? If you could concentrate on the two Wreckers. Garm, get in close with those infantry. Gerda and Dani, give them cover fire if need be, but keep your distance."
A second later, a web of red and purple lightning rose from her hands, going off in the air like so bursts of flak. More skimmers began to fall, and the rest pulled back, seeing none of their fellows getting through. They instead fired from further above, which did not do much for their aim. A moment later, another series of spells lashed out into another column of infantry before then, causing a minor avalanche that carried many of them away.
If we can break contact and leave Fenrir and Garm here, then…
Unfortunately, Wrecker and Thunderball had learned from Bulldozer's ignominious end. They had been further outfitted with alien technology to let them move through the mountains far easier, and Wrecker used this now. An Antigravity belt, smaller but based on the gravity traps Fenrir had run into, canceled his weight, and Wrecker leaped forward faster and higher than either Garm or Fenrich had thought he could move. Normally, he would have a leaping power to match a normal Asgardian, but with the anti-gravity belt, he covered a distance that even Hela would've had trouble doing, landing several hundred yards above where Dani and Gerda were standing before racing down toward them.
Before either woman could react, Wrecker slammed Gerda off her feet with a shoulder charge before lashing out at Dani with a punch. Dani was already dodging even before he landed, but even so, a glancing blow nearly broke her arm. Grunting in pain, Dani moved with the blow, letting it twist her around before using her hover boots to kick off the slope behind her. This let her get within Wrecker's reach. The sword she had been training on with Gerda since returning to Earth from Asgard came up, stabbing toward Wrecker's eye.
"Gah, you bitch!" he howled as he twisted away quickly, dodging losing an eye by the skin of his teeth. Instead, her blade opened up a cut just below his eyes across his nose. In Retaliation, his foot caught Dani in the side, and she could feel her powered armor crumple a bit under the blow. The kick hurled her off the steep portion of the mountainside she was currently standing on to crash into a tree below, although even that was better than not having her fall stopped so precipitously.
Thunderball wasn't nearly so lucky because from where he had been charging behind Fenrir, Garm had seen Wrecker fly overhead. Unlike Fenrir, who hadn't stopped his headlong charge into the oncoming infantry and was now tossing the aliens away like so many small toys, Garm had stopped his initial charge. When Thunderball tried to leap over the tumult as Wrecker had, Garm leaped upwards, intercepting him. "Got you! Your meat will line my stomach, fool!"
Garm's teeth bit into Thunderball's leg as he was still jumping forward, and even as he cried out in pain, Thunderball's momentum continued for a moment before his belt fizzled out due to the added weight. Unlike the gravitic traps, the belt was extremely finicky technology, even for the Chitauri.
The pair crashed into the side of the mountainside, tumbling as they hit. As they fell, Garm released Thunderball's leg and bean scrambling at Thunderball's chest and side as the pair followed after Dani in her own pell-mell dissent, quickly passing her position..
Shaking his head to get rid of the blood coding hit his nose and mouth, Wrecker charged again but ignored Dani and Gerda. Instead of helping his comrade or targeting the two weakest members of the defensive force, Wrecker leaped up towards where Hela was standing further up the nearly sheer cliff face. "You're next, you stupid bitch!"
Turning from where she was sending out blasts of electrical flak up into the air, Hela sneered at him, deflecting his crowbar with her sword, grimacing only slightly at the reverberations of the impact. Wrecker was strong, perhaps a touch stronger physically than Hela, but she knew he was a brawler. He swung his crowbar like he was a club, all strength, no finesse. I need to keep him at sword length. I can't let him get a hand on me, but... In a few seconds, Wrecker was bleeding from several cuts, none debilitating, but all of them nasty. I can probably bleed him out soon.
However, despite her advantage in experience and skill, Wrecker's blows began coming in fast and furious enough to nearly make Hela lose her footing and sword in that order. She was able to keep a hold of her blade and turn a fall into a leap away, but couldn't dodge a strike that got through to her leg as she did.
As she landed, the limb collapsed under her, causing her to fall to her side. Another blow to her shoulder got through before she could recover, but it wasn't her sword arm, and in return, Hela's sword came up, cutting at Wrecker's forearm.
He flinched back and then tried to bring his crowbar down on her chest. "Not this time, bitch!"
A blast of magic lashed out from Hela at point-blank range, dumping him to the ground of the somewhat wide (it was a whole six-person dining table in size) cliff they were currently on. This let Hela get to her feet, but she was somewhat annoyed to see how quickly Wrecker had gotten to his own across from her. Blast it! Were he an Asgardian, he would have had trouble shrugging that off. Does he have some more magic resistance thanks to how he gained his power?
Hela dodged backward as Wrecked charged forward, then dodged backward again as rippers appeared among the skimmers in the air above the battlefield. Her electrical flak spell having faded out, many of them started to fire at Fenrir and Garm, uncaring of the fact Thunderball was locked in combat with Hela's companion. That was all she had time to notice before four more began to open fire on her. The heavy energy strikes staggered her and Wrecker both.
But the blasts hitting Garm smashed him off of Thunderball, who instantly took advantage. Leaping forward, he landed on Garm's back. "Got you!" Before Garm could twist away or buck the former doctor off, Thunderball wrapped his wrecking ball's chain. Gripping the chain tightly, he began to pull, choking Garm.
Fenrir noticed this and turned from where he had just bit an alien in half. "ARROOOOOOO!" he howled, the sound causing the aliens and the two Wreckers to flinch. The infantry actually began to retreat while all the rippers within hearing range began to fire at him exclusively. They were soon joined by the majority of the skimmers as Fenrir just laughed wolfishly, hurling himself forward.
This took the pressure off a hiding Dani and Gerda. "Target Thunderball!"
Nodding, Gerda did so, her arrow joining Dani's gauss rifle round. Thunderball had barely a second to blink before he took the arrow in the shoulder. It didn't penetrate but stuck there, and right after it, a boulder the size of a tank round going far faster than any human-made tank could fire slammed into his head. "GAHHH!"
The blow didn't do much, but it did force him to loosen his grip. That was all Garm needed to twist around, fangs biting. Thunderball tried to flinch away, and a Ripper landed nearby, Fenrir having leaped upward and tearing at its throat. The combination of the flinch and the ground jumping underneath him sent Thunderball tumbling to the side down the mountain toward the very, very distant ground below.
The two shooters were then forced back into cover as the Skimmers all turned away from Fenrir, who had been ignoring their fire. The rippers kept on striking him, though, twisting away and rising higher into the air. None of the infantry around them bothered to try and go to the plummeting Thunderball's help, instead firing at Dani and Gerda.
Higher up the mountain face, Hela and Wrecker were nearly ignorant of all this, locked in their own battle. Wrecker's speed and strength were such that Hela could barely concentrate enough to call forth her own magic for a series of small spells, but that was enough to even the playing field along with her own skill with the blade.
And then, as Hela stumbled back from a strike at her shoulder, Wrecker overextended just slightly to aim at her head. When Hela dodged instead of blocking the blow, Wrecker became well out of position. A point black blast of magic blinded him for a second, and he didn't pull back his arm fast enough.
Like Gerda and Dani's blades, Hela's sword had been forged in Asgard. It had been forged not to kill humans but to fight Jotun, beasts of similar strength and other Asgardians, to deal with their armor and their physical durability. And unlike Dani's earlier desperate strike Hela's blow struck true, the side of her blade slicing at Wrecker's wrist. While she couldn't separate the limb entirely, she could cut halfway through.
Blood spurted as Wrecker cried out in pain, his crowbar falling from his now worthless hand. "ARGGH!:
Years ago, when the Wreckers were just starting out, simply physically separating Wrecker's crowbar from his person would've been enough to depower the Wrecker, let alone the rest of his crew. Now, it wasn't. Yet even so, that crowbar represented a lot of the Wrecker's offensive power, and he tried to lunge forward as his eyes cleared, his useless hand flopping at his side. "No!"
Hela allowed herself a sneer as she pirouetted around him and stabbed upwards into his armpit. Again, the sword couldn't penetrate very far, but now Wrecker's other arm fell useless. The tendons there also cut as he screamed in agony. The armpit was one of those places that, human or Asgardian, no matter how tough you were getting hit there hurt! Let alone getting stabbed.
"GAH, no, no!" Doubly crippled, Wrecker cried out, shifting away from Hela, losing his footing. He pinwheeled in place, completely open, and a second later, paid for it with his life.
Hela's sword came up and around again, aiming for his throat, cutting across it from one side to the other. "No! I was promised so much…" He gurgled, blood flowing from his open mouth.
"Perhaps then you should have looked up the historical manner in which traitors are paid," Hela sneered, shaking her head.
Hela kicked Wrecker's body away from her and was about to turn and leap down towards where she could see ongoing fighting going on in the distance when she felt as if a giant fist had suddenly picked her up. A second later, Hela was hurled against the mountainside. She grunted at the impact, not hurt exactly, but certainly getting the wind knocked out of her.
Then Hela found herself being lifted up into the air and literally hurled through the sky so fast she could barely use her magic to slow herself. "A telekinetic, blast it all!"
Hela had occasionally sparred with Jean after the redhead had gotten back into combat shape and knew the signs of fighting a telepath. That didn't mean she was any happier about it, of course. Because this telepath had done so out of her line of sight. And I can't send my magic out past my line of sight here on Midgard. In her own realm, that would be a different story, but the point was mute, really, something to while away the time before the feeling of being tossed away faded, and she could fly back under her own power.
But Hela was not the only target of the currently unseen telekinetic. Fenrir and Garm soon joined her, hurled away from where they had been fighting. This was not in time to save Thunderball. Indeed, it merely hastened his demise. Garm had been in the process of biting his head off when he was pulled away. Garm's bite hadn't given away. Thunderball's neck, on the other hand, had.
As blood gushed from the now headless corpse of the last member of the Wrecking Crew, Gerda and Dani went to ground, hiding themselves as best they could. And soon enough from the same direction Thunderball and Wrecker had initially appeared, came a flying humanoid. He was very much not human, and from her place down below in the forest lining the bottom of the large valley they had been fighting in, Dani had to shake her head. This alien looked almost exactly like one of the gray-skinned aliens from the X-Folders, and for just a moment, Dani had to fight back an inappropriate snort of laughter at the idea of Agent Mully popping up out of nowhere to demand the truth from the alien.
He was short, almost at Dani's own height without her suit, and thin, almost emaciated in terms of his body type. Yet his head was quite large for his frame, his eyes were wide and almost circular, and his skin grey. He had white hair, which did kind of mess with the overall X-Folders alien image, but even so, the resemblance was uncanny.
But as spindly and unassuming as the alien was, there was no denying his telekinetic powers.
Raising his hands, the alien gestured, and telekinetic power blasted down into a quickly returning Hela, Fenrir and Garm, and even the two hiding members of their impromptu team, attempting to crush them to the ground, creating an effect not unlike a massive tornado. While Hela lost control of her hover spells and let both wolves drop, Danny and Gerda found themselves picked up and hurled like so many pebbles out of the valley and further down the mountainside. If not for the armor they wore, they would have been dead many times over.
But as it was, even through their armor, both Valkyrie and mutant huntress took a pounding, and it was only the fact that the alien wasn't concentrating on them at all that saved them from dying so quickly that even the emergency medical array wouldn't have saved Danny's life. Instead, they had been caught at the periphery of the field that the alien had created to capture the two giant wolves and the Asgardian.
Snarling and falling away from Hela, Garm and Fenrir each reacted in the same exact way. Both of them released their hold on their human-sized forms and began to grow and grow until both of them had regained their natural sizes. And when they did, they began to fight back against the force pressing down on them even as Hela did much the same, trying to create a magical barrier around her to defend herself from telekinetic power.
Hovering several miles over the battlefield, the Black Order member Ebony Maw scowled ferociously. He had come forward to engage these enemies when he had seen a report from the Chitauri in charge of this group which seemed to indicate the humans had been trying to sneak through his defense in depth. The fact they were here, barely one mountain away from the beacon, meant they had been succeeding at that tactic most disturbingly. Now it looked as if the only reason they hadn't been trying to simply blast their way through was it might take them too long.
Angrily, Ebony used his powers once more, picking up boulders and hurling them at each of his enemies one after another, sonic booms echoing across the mountains. But while the Asgardian female cried out in pain and crashed to the mountainside below, only the older looking of the two four-legged creatures seemed to even feel the hits. But that snarl was one of animal fury rather than pain if Ebony was any judge. And as Thanos' chief torturer, he was indeed a good judge of the difference between an angry snarl and a pain-filled one.
It would take me quite a bit of time to smash through even that one's normal endurance and durability. Whereas the human female is quite clearly a magic user as well as being Asgardian, which makes her doubly dangerous. The Chitauri had some information on that group, and she certainly fit the mold. To say nothing of the other four-legged beast, which was even now breaking out of his hold on it again!
Perhaps I should have retreated and reinforced the defenses around the main portal? But no, that would've given the tactical initiative to the enemy, and I would've never been able to regain it. Doubling down on this point of contact was the best idea! Ebony thought to himself, even as skimmers and Rippers began to fire down into the trio.
It was time, Ebony decided, to put his other gift into action, the one that gave him the name 'Maw' in the first place. With that in mind, he zoomed down towards the younger of the Four-legged beasts, understanding and seeing him as the main threat. And thus, the one whose turning would most benefit him.
He flashed down and quickly bound the beast in another set of telekinetic shackles, blasting away his older companion and sending him flying down the mountainside into a large copse of trees. The young creature instantly began to break out of them once more, causing Ebony to grimace and strain mentally to keep the bonds in place. But he could still speak as he did so. And that was enough. "You are so strong, such a magnificent beast, so powerful. So worthy. Worthy of acting as you will… But your will is my will, my pleasure, your pleasure…"
The wolf at first seemed to ignore his words, but feral intelligence was no match for Ebony Maw's second power: a mental manipulation based on his voice. Only the most powerful mind could avoid falling under his spell, and it had little to do with telepathy, bypassing the normal defenses as it was carried not through the Astral Plane but physically through his voice.
Fenrir began to succumb. For all his massive power and deadly strength, his mind was not nearly as well formed or protected as even a normal Asgardian, and as Those Who Watch From Above In Shadow had proven, their minds were almost always susceptible to exterior influence. Fenrir's eyes glazed over, his willpower crushed by this oblique assault.
Nearby, Hela also felt the impact of that voice, but she was far enough away that she realized what was happening quickly. She raised a hand to her head and intoned a spell she had learned from her Seidr Man during one of their impromptu magical prank duels. "Mufilatio!"
The impact of the alien's voice instantly ebbed away, and she launched the same spell toward her brother and the alien. I hit one, he stops being able to hear. I hit the other, he stops being able to talk!
Ebony Maw saw the wavelike spell coming his way and hastily leaped away. He didn't stop his insidious assault on the four-legged one, instead speaking to it even as he sent dozens of telekinetic spikes towards the magic user, showing an ability to multitask few telepaths could. "My will is your will! You want to attack the female! You want to attack your fellows."
The spell hit Fenrir and as it wasn't an attack spell of any kind, bypassed his magical resistance, deadening his sense of sound. For a moment, Ebony didn't realize something had changed, but then Fenrir's glazed eyes snapped back to normal, and he snarled soundlessly. Instead of attacking the female, he turned his claws and fangs on Ebony Maw once more, forcing him to retreat in alarm. "Some kind of sound-based spell!? Mind controlling magic, AGAIN!? Damn, all its users to the depths of the eternal ocean!"
Garm had stealthily closed to where he had been trying to influence Fenrir. Now, Ebony's hasty flight brought him within snapping range, and only a hasty change of direction meant he had a gash down his leg rather than no leg at all.
"You, you beast, my power will end you!" Again he created telekinetic bonds around the two wolf-like beasts' forelegs, but before he could try and ply his powers on Garm, a cutting spell from Hela forced him up and away. A second later, he watched as Fenrir and Garm both tore through their bonds and began to stalk up the side of the mountain, staring up at him, splitting apart, trying to circle him despite the difficult terrain.
Something about the way these animals were treating him as simply prey infuriated Ebony, and he gestured. All of the debris from the battle up to this point, bodies, rocks, or trees, rose into the air, and he sent them down like a monstrous rain, carpeting the area even as he skyrocketed higher into the air.
Hela hastily created a Protego over her head, holding it while she returned fire, forcing Ebony to block. His brand of telekinesis wasn't strong enough to block or simply stop her attack spells in place, unlike Jean's. Instead, his shields could only absorb her magic for a few seconds before coming apart, forcing him to dodge.
Meanwhile, back on the ground, Dani and Gerda were forced into hiding by Ebony's wide-angle attack, utterly forgotten in the clash of monsters. Garm grimaced as various things hurled at just below the speed of sound struck him, while Fenrir howled in laughter, unheard by any thanks to the Muffilatio still covering him. Unlike most spells, the Mufilatio could not be dispersed by too much movement, only time or a cancelation spell.
With a snarl on his face, Ebony reached through the ongoing rain to grab at Hela, and the battle continued. He kept his distance and kept hurling things at the attackers but simply couldn't damage any of his three opponents enough. Only once was he able to get an attack past Hela's magical defenses to score across her side, doing nothing. And the skimmers and Rippers still in the air around him were next to useless.
Despite his earlier thoughts on this point, after several long minutes of this stalemate, Ebony began to contemplate retreating for a time. I can hold at the beacon or hide myself high in the sky, wait for the magic user's guard to drop…
A sonic boom from above and behind him broke Ebony out of his thoughts. He hastily twisted around, believing that he would see another enemy and hoping to use his voice on it before the magic-user could interfere. Instead, Ebony's already wide eyes widened further, and he bowed deeply towards the hovering throne of his master, his power disappearing from his voice, a quaver of fear replacing it. "Lord Thanos, please forgive this foolish one's actions. I am horrified and humbled that my lack of ability has…"
"Enough, Ebony. In point of fact, you are performing as well as you possibly could against Asgardians like these. Retreat back toward the beacon for now. I will deal with them." Thanos ordered.
He saw no need to mention that two of Ebony's fellow Black Order had been beaten off by this point. Nebula, ever the disappointment to her father, had been slain even before her portal beacon had been destroyed. Luckily, before that occurred, thousands of Chitauri had passed through into Paris, whereas the loss of Gamora hurt even worse for how total it had been, closing off that avenue of invasion completely, to say nothing of the emotional impact.
"Relay orders to the Chitauri as they come through to continue to maintain a defense in depth. The humans cannot be allowed to close this portal or destroy the main beacon."
With that, Thanos gestured, and several components of his throne went to work just as the larger of the two four-legged creatures below broke Ebony's telekinetic control yet again and leaped upwards. It soared through the air, impossibly fast and high, clearing the equivalent of a skyscraper in an instant.
Only to slam into the defenses of Thanos' hovering throne. "Damn you! At least let me kill that little one before you appear and interrupt my meal!" The animal snarled, trying to bite and gouge his way through the energy shielding around Thanos.
Thanos slowly stood from his throne room, staring at the creature with his head to one side, a sneer on his thick lips. "A beast you appear, and a beast you are. Is this truly the best you Asgardians can produce?"
With a wave of his hand, the shield disappeared. Fenrir tumbled forward, although he righted his course enough to thrust his maw forward, seeking Thanos' body.
But instead, Thanos fist hammered into the side of his head, hurling Fenrir to the side with a gasp of agony. Fenrir slammed into the mountainside below with enough force to actually shatter the mountain. There as a massive booming noise as hundreds of tons of stone cracked underneath them impact, sending up a plume of dust and debris as trees and rock alike were shredded by the backwash.
"Throne, takeover defense," Thanos ordered, as energy the Power Cosmic began to form around his hand.
This was the basic energy of the universe, which Thanos called the Power Cosmic. His race had all been born with a connection to it that allowed them to be nearly ageless, able to use it on a near instinctual level as offensive and defensive powers. Once Thanos had opened his connection to that power more, he had become a Titan. It was the same power source that magic users and gods could only interact with peripherally, although even that was enough to allow them to do a lot, like the Asgardians, who had a natural connection to the Power Cosmic much like Thanos' own people did. But only Thanos and higher-level deities could connect to the Power Cosmic in so raw a manner as to manipulate it like this.
Thanos could not manipulate it like a magic user, could not order the Power Cosmic to, say, shift into a physical form under his command, but that did not matter to Thanos. Nor did it matter to his victims.
The energy blast took Fenrir in the side and shoulder, causing him to howl in pain for the first time since his fight with Surtur.
Garm had also broken out of his telekinetic bonds. He was not as fast or as powerful as Fenrir, but he leaped upward now, aiming for the bottom of the hovering slab of stone that contained the throne of the enemy commander.
He didn't reach it. Instead, he too crashed into a shield, as a mechanical voice intoned, "Kinetic force dispersal shield online. Impact analyzed. Within parameters."
And as it spoke, the shield that Garm had just impacted blasted outwards, not allowing him the ability to try and fall back gracefully, instead hurling him down to join his younger companion. This forced Garm to use one of his mistress's favorite curses. "Blast it!"
Hela had been using her magic to try and dispel Ebony's hold on her, only succeeding when Ebony began to retreat. Now, she turned her own attention towards Thanos, recognizing him as the Mad Titan, the one behind this entire war. "What!? A shield of science that can block magic?"
Black fire arose from her hand and streaked through the air toward Thanos, but once again, a shield protected him. He stood there in front of his throne, his arms crossed behind him now as his throne informed him of the magical powers inherent in that spell. "Did you think I would come back to this star system, the scene of my defeat, without having prepared?"
Thanos was not just a monstrously powerful warrior or tyrant. He was also the last survivor of a highly advanced race, one that had been advanced long before even the Shi'ar had taken to space. And while the AI aboard his hovering throne had no personality whatsoever, it had access to Sanctuary. This gave it far greater computational power than any system, even Doctor Doom or Reed Richards, could have contrived. An entire planet's worth of stored data in order to analyze and overcome anything Thanos encountered. It also had access to Thanos' technology, a technology that had been brought to a level where humans would have termed it the equal of magic.
"Gravity web," Thanos ordered calmly. A small gun aperture opened at the side of his throne, revealing a gun with something that looked like a radar disc at the end, pointing towards Hela. A wide web of black and brown energy flashed forward too fast for Hela to dodge, and she found herself instantly trussed up like a shark in a net. Try as she might, her magical abilities could not cut through whatever energy made up the net, the magic folding around it. As it wrapped around her, Hela groaned in pain as she felt herself dragged down to the ground, where she crashed into the mountainside. The gravity web held her there with the gravity of a black hole, and Thanos lashed out again with an energy beam.
Helpless to move, Hela could still call on her magic. With a snarling growl, she conjured up her own spell, the spell appearing an inch away from her chest and shooting out and up toward the incoming attack.
Roiling lightning intercepted Thanos' energy beam, the backwash of energies covering nearly half as many leagues as Ebony Maw's earlier attacks had covered in his attempt to overcome the Asgardians. Once more, Gerda and Dani were forgotten, and had to basically button down and try to avoid the stray bits of energy that cascaded around them, disappearing quickly, but deadly for all of that.
For more than ten minutes, this went on, the two of them striving against one another, pouring out their energies into this one clash of brute force against brute force. Hela grimaced, seemingly pushing all her will into the spell as she tried to physically fight through the gravity web, having little luck, her bones grinding against one another with every attempt. While behind and around her, another spell began to coalesce.
In contrast, Thanos looked almost amused as he continued to hold out his fist, sending the energy of the universe towards Hela in its raw destructive form while Hela used magic, in Thanos' mind, the bastard child of the Power Cosmic, to block it.
But this clash allowed Garm and Fenrir to collect themselves and close once more to the point they could leap up and attack Thanos once more. Fenrir was hurting a bit from the twin strikes, but his durability was such that even Thanos' energy bolt hadn't been able to hurt him all that much. Garm had avoided anything but the explosion of kinetic energy back into his face from his earlier attack and being choked by Thunderball earlier in the battle.
The impact of the two hits from below overcame the kinetic absorption shield around Thanos' throne. The AI gathered what kinetic energy it could to release on command, but the shield fell, letting the two wolves claw and bite at Thanos and the throne alike.
Thanos quickly turned, his other hand coming up a beam of power coalescing there to match the one he still was sending down at Hela.
Garm was quick and leaped out into the open air, dodging away from the energy beam. In contrast, Fenrir attacked, lunging towards Thanos so fast he couldn't strike him away this time, nor could his throne raise its shield again. Slathering triumphantly, Fenrir bit down hard on Thanos' forearm, fully expecting to bite through in one chomp.
Instead, he found his bite stopped. The metal of Thanos' gauntlet groaned under the force of his bite and warped in places, but metal and Titan alike endured his bite.
"For all that you are an Asgardian, all your abilities are purely physical," Thanos mused as a small trickle of blood appeared between where his armored forearm was clamped within Fenrir's fangs. "Superlative in that frame in comparison to other Asgardians perhaps, but it can be overcome! And if my first strike did so little damage, then I merely need to raise the power level."
However, Thanos wasn't the only one who could concentrate on several things at once. Even as she had been striving power against power with the mad Titan, Hela had been concentrating on another spell, this one a long enchantment. From the air above the battlefield, roiling black energy began to appear, washing across the sky and then coming down in a cyclone cloud toward Thanos. " of Hel come to thy Mistress, bearing the lamentation and grief as thy strength! Wind of the Damned%!"
The energy of this attack appeared in the air, almost like lightning and fire, whose form had somehow shifted into a spiral of smoke. Covering the sky from one horizon to another, it then spiraled into crash into Thanos and his throne, overcoming the shielding of the throne once more and battering against both Mad Titan and his seat of power.
Fenrir also took some hits from the spell, but as Thanos flung him away, he was able to avoid much of the damage done. He fell through the air back down towards the mountainside, now massively changed from what had been due to the numerous impacts of Thanos and before him, Ebony hurling the defenders around the place like so many soccer balls.
Yet once the spell cleared, Thanos and his throne stood, almost undamaged. And once more, the robotic voice of the throne spoke. "Anomalous energy analyzed. Energy exceeds storage parameters. Redirecting stored probability differentiation-inducing cosmic energy."
From the side of the throne again came a blast of power which caught Garm, who had just leaped up into the air once more. All the power that had been contained in Hela's spell was concentrated on a single fist-sized bolt of energy, which shattered Garm's back leg as Thanos turned, launching his own attack toward the ancient wolf. The kinetic blast caught him, and this time, Garm had been unable to get out of the way. Ribs cracked as he was hurled down words to slam into the ground once more with enough force to cause the mountain to quake, the ground underneath him cratering as he struck it.
Although alive, Garm was out of the fight for now.
The sight of her heavily injured companion, her dearest friend, caused Hela to lose herself to fury. "I will have your soul under my bootheel for that, Thanos!"
Flying up into the air, Hela closed, lashing out with magic as she came, flying towards where Thanos stood still on his throne, blasting aside Fenrir as he tried to close. Her spells, however, were all intercepted by the throne's strange defenses. Two of those defenses blew out under her continued onslaught, the energy-redirecting system unable to fully encompass the spells she was hurling at it. Smoke billowed up in separate segments for a time, and then the throne's shield came down.
Thanos jumped forward, crossing the intervening distance rather than waiting for Hela to attack him. This caught Hela by surprise, as up to this point, he had seemingly been happy to remain at range. His fist came down like a piledriver, and Hela hastily raised her blade to defend herself.
The edge of the blade did not dissuade Thanos' blow, however. Although she kept her grip on her sword, the impact drove her back down toward the ground once more, even as her blade shattered under the strike, leaving Thanos' fist uninjured.
A second later, Hela was forced to use another spell to teleport herself to the side to avoid an uppercut that would've undoubtedly done some real damage. Thanos followed, his throne relaying Hela's current position to Thanos the instant she appeared again. An energy bolt caught her in the side, finishing the job of Thanos' initial strike to send her crashing down into the ground below.
Before she could right herself, Thanos was on her, a double-fisted blow coming down. He's so fast! It was all Hela could do to raise her arms and use her magical energies to reinforce her body, thankful for the time she and Harry had taken to recreate the enchantments her paramour had on his crisis suit and raise her hands up to block. "Magia Erebea eighty percent!"
The sound as Titan flesh met reinforced Asgardian was like no sound heard on earth since the dinosaurs had been wiped out. A rolling booming noise shattered the eardrums of the Chitauri still within sight of the battle.
The reverberations from the impact shattered the surrounding mountains along with the one Hela was standing on, causing an earthquake heard for hundreds of miles and blasting them into ruin. Where before a series of mountains had stood, now was a series of jagged hills and scattered fields of rock, the remnants of mighty mountains laid low by the power of the Asgardian and her opponent.
At the center of this destruction, Hela found herself driven to her knees, her body almost up to her waist hammered into the ground, which cratered underneath her as it had Garm earlier. Thanos stood above Hela, his fist once more rising into the air. Blood was running down his forearm where Fenrir had earlier bit it, some of the stress of the hit having blown back into the limb just slightly enough to cause the earlier wounds to reopen.
But Hela was far worse off from the clash. Both her forearms had broken under the strike, her defense not up to the task of stopping Thanos's hit. Her mask was shattered, along with her jaw and a few of her teeth. Hela's eyes also weren't quite tracking, showing signs of a concussion, the only reason she wasn't scrambling to conjure up another mask to hide her features.
Thanos could well have finished Hela right there, and then if not for Fenrir howling and charging forwards again. He alone had withstood the shockwave of their strikes and now charged forward none the worse for wear. "Do not think to cast me aside so easily, creature! I am Fenrir, I am the wolf that will eat the sun! I am the creature that the Shadows used to put fear in the hearts of all of Asgard!"
"And what does that matter to me, beast? To me, you are a minor threat at best," Thanos taunted, turning to prepare himself against Fenrir's charge. Beast of Ragnarök and Mad Titan met, the two of them exchanging punches, paw strikes, and fangs as Fenrir pushed Thanos away from his sister.
Each time flesh met fur, there was a shockwave of sound and kinetic force, scouring the already denuded area. Mountains outside the immediate conflict zone began to tremble, cracks appearing in the raw stone of the mountains. Thanos landed more blows, but they did not matter as much as the blows that got through from Fenrir, his strength such that even Thanos felt them, grimacing occasionally despite his kinetic barrier and Titan durability.
Neither could gain the upper hand for several minutes, but this did allow Hela to slowly regain her senses. She grimaced then. Her Asgardian lineage was coming into play, allowing her to push through the pain and mutter a self-healing cantrip through ruined teeth, slowly pushing her pain aside in order to concentrate on the ongoing battle.
As she watched through now tracking yet still pain-filled eyes, Thanos got the better of Fenrir for a moment. A blow knocked Fenrir off-balance, and Thanos quickly reached forward. Grabbing at both sides of Fenrir's jaw, he gripped it top and bottom as he strained against the muscles of the mighty wolf. Limited by his current size and his footing, The wolf scrambled to bring his full power to bear, and Thanos smirked as he began to force Fenrir's jaws wider and wider until it became painful for the Sun-Eater. "Know your place!"
Dani and Gerda had survived up to this point by being fast enough to get away from the epicenter of the ongoing battle thanks to Dani's equipment, specifically her hover boots, along with her suit's mechanically enhanced strength, which had allowed her to essentially carry her sword master around on her armored back. Now she turned back, and seeing Fenrir in such dire straits and Hela at the foot of the Titan, she dumped Gerda on her rear.
"Sorry, Gerda, duty calls." With that, Dani charged forwards, her hover boots allowing her to cross the difficult terrain created by the earlier impact of Titan and Asgardian. That terrain had been noticeably flattened for miles. Sheer cliff faces had been turned into deep divots or carved-out areas lined with scree hundreds of feet thick.