ye. be. warned.

Chapter 33

The wind was harsh and hot. It blew a dust storm into a hard fury not half a mile off. The land was utterly flat with the exception of outcroppings and jagged rocks that appeared like spikes through the earth. The capital city of GrnFen was in the very midst of the colossal dust storm and, right now, it was being virtually wiped off the face of the moon.

Clint could see for miles in every direction from where he stood on the broken Keel. He watched as the ships rushed off into the atmosphere, as others disappeared through the shimmering portals that could have only come by Loki's hand.

He wondered what had become of the Frost Giant in the years since they'd been apart. Had he ended on good terms with Gamora? Redeemed his past faults? Fell into old habits once more? His thoughts were a mere distraction from what waited for him below.

Clint stood as close to that edge as he dared. Natasha was at his side, their fingers intertwined as if she might just fall right over the edge with him. She would, he considered, if he let her.

"I can't wait much longer," Clint said, watching as the wind storm swept closer and closer. The cities left behind, shook in the excitement of Galactus' coming. If the force of it could uproot the foundations of cityscapes, there was no doubt it could take the Gauntlet from where it lay below them. Even now, as they stood together, the first bands of that storm hit them. Sand and rocks pelted through the air like miniature projectiles. Clint's clothing billowed up about him, caught in the currents of air. Deep below, the canyon whistled to life.

"Rinon will come." Natasha pressed, staring desperately out into that evacuation.

"Tasha - "

She turned on him. "No. You're not! We have time, we can wait!"

The land beneath them rumbled. Clint and Natasha backed away from the mouth of the crevice as the land began to crumble free.

Natasha cried out. The crevice in Heaven's Keel opened a second time. A perpendicular jagged edge, like a bolt of lightning, stretched out all around them. Clint rushed to her, dragging her out of its grasp, but only succeeded in falling into the crumble of rock himself. Natasha lunged out of the way. She clung to the side of a boulder, and turned just enough to see him struggling at her feet. The minute his hand gripped solid rock, it gave way. He scrambled for a foothold, something to keep himself from being dragged under before he was ready to let go.

The Herald appeared through the clouds of swirling dust and smoke. There existed something very statuesque about the creature. As if she'd once been made of marble, and now assumed the form of a living creature. Three years ago, Clint and Tony had taken off for a vacation together, and when they weren't enjoying the sun and the sand of Cabo San Lucas, they were inside binge-watching Netflix television shows. The Weeping Angels, from one such series, reminded him of that deadly creature hovering over him.

She'd come for The Gauntlet. Their time was up.

"Clint!" Natasha screamed. She grabbed at him, finding a solid hold on his quiver's strap. Her nails dug into it for dear life. "Climb up with me!" she told him, trying with one hand to lift his useless weight.

The earth continued to fall apart around him. The boulder where she found refuge, shifted back and began to roll as if it might, too, fall into the expanding crevice of earth.

"Tasha!"

She held on tighter, her eyes, wide in terror, focused in on his. She couldn't bear to look at that Herald of Galactus.

"We're out of time." Clint said. His look was severe. She'd seen that before. His eyes, the same as it was in that vision she'd shared with the elven leader. It was coming . . .

"No!" She spat stubbornly at him. "No, we're not! If you go, I go! I'm not letting you - "

"Natasha," he said, softly.

Her breathing stopped. Suddenly, the entire world fell away from them. All was silent. She held his gaze, dreading his words.

Above them, the Herald screeched. The sound, grinding against their souls like the horrifying song of a wraith. She swirled into the clouds of dust, and suddenly dove down into the crack of earth.

"I love you." He told her.

He reached up, hit the buckle of his quiver, and suddenly Natasha's hand flew upward with the weightlessness of him falling. The quiver bucked, arrows spewing out and falling down with him. He wasn't ready. His bow wasn't in his hand, the arrows not on the string, nothing was as she had seen before.

But still, Clint fell. She heard him scream. Heard the heavy thud of him hitting bottom and a sickening snap of shattering bones. She screamed his name. Considered letting go of her handholds to fall into the earth beside him, but before she ever got the chance, the fissure around her exploded.

A kaleidoscope of light and energy erupted out of the earth as Clint, somehow, managed to still make that impossible shot. He'd hit the center of the Gauntlet, contacting the Power Stone most likely, with an exploding tip. The Stone responded the only way it knew how.

Natasha yanked herself over the side of the boulder to escape the hail of energy raining all around her. The explosion sent another concussive force, larger than the earthquake, into the very bedrock beneath Heaven's Keel. The two granite slabs, separated at first, now came crashing toward one another. The minute they connected, Natasha knew it was already too late.

:(:):(:):

Thor hit the ground only a few meters away from where the guidance system directed him. He had to search hard beneath the rubble and stone to find the escape pod bearing the source of Clint's ever-present signal. Discovering it empty, brought a wave of cold ice right through his heart.

"Clint of Barton?!" He called into the howl of the eastern winds. The visibility had shot down to hardly anything at all. He felt, rather than saw, the trail of shattered slabs of granite and hewn stone. The large Asgardian pushed his cape back behind his shoulder and moved forward, using his hand as a guide to follow the line of collapsed stone. He nearly jumped out of his armor when he encountered the arm of a woman.

"My friend!" He cried, pulling her toward himself. He shouted above the wind's deafening roar. "Barton? Barton, where is he?!"

Natasha was nearly lifeless. The torrents of oxygen being stolen from the air to feed the encroaching monster, had almost felled her before Thor had a chance to arrive. Despite her weakness, her hand traced down, flowing along the line of granite where two great slabs had collided together. All at once, Thor understood.

He lifted her into his arms and whisked her to the valley floor below. Throwing caution and concern to the wind, Thor thrust his hammer into the pitch-black sky, and summoned lightning from the very belly of the feeding Galactus himself. With a mighty swing, Thor brought Mjolnir down against the broken back of Heaven's Keel.

When one strike was not enough, he did a second, a third, the great stones lit the sky on fire with the force of the thunderer's fury to break into the chasm sealed beneath. Persistent, sheer will paid off and, as Natasha watched groggily from the stretch of valley below, Thor disappeared into the fissure of rock. He was not leaving this place without Clint Barton.

:(:):(:):

"There! See it there! Get this thing moving! We need to reach that hillside before this whole place comes down on us!" Steve ordered from the copilot's chair. Beside him, a trusted T'Challa continued to push the limits of their quinjet model. They could see the tower of lightning erupting just outside the limits of the earthen colony. Thor had focused an attack there, and the only reason they could think as to why, involved none other than the archer himself.

"The Keel. Clint hid the Gauntlet there. Has it been there this whole time? These past six years and no one knew of it?" T'Challa asked.

"I don't know. When time shifted, they just seemed to stop existing. Their ship, Thanos' entire fleet, everything was just gone in the blink of an eye. a Herald took the power from him then, brought it here."

"And our home at least stand." Fehreh added from behind them she threw a poisonous look toward Loki who spread his hands slightly and lowered his head. The former Alfheimr queen paced. "Something has happened. Something is wrong." She pressed in between the two of them, staring at the great wall of thunder and lightning. "I feel a great change has overtaken us.

Steve sensed it too the moment T'Challa offered to stay behind and let the team go on to Clint alone. Thor wasn't supposed to be anywhere near the place Clint fell. What he did there now, was anyone's guess.

T'Challa leaned forward and gazed up into the sky. "We do not have long. Minutes, at the most. We must take them and leave, immediately, before this world falls out from beneath us."

"Do not concern yourself with the time. I will design whatever it is we require." Loki told him, nervously drumming his fingers on the back of Steve's seat. "We may escape this rock with our lives yet."

Fehreh turned to him. "Can you get us closer?"

Loki nodded once. His eyes closed, silent words passed through his lips as he concentrated on the air before them. One minute their ship was flying over the wind swept dunes, the next they were screeching to a halt at the base of Heaven's Keel.

Scores of lightning erupted around the ship, sending a jolt through its engine. The repulsers failed, and the team lurched to one side as they settled into the dunescape. Steve launched out of his seat. There, ahead of them on the dirt, lay Natasha. The captain pushed his way out of the copilot's chair for the door, but Loki cut him off. The outer alarms had been blaring since the moment they left the evacuation zone. If Steve left the ship now, the lack of oxygen might just kill him. It was a risk they couldn't afford.

"I'm not leaving her out there!" Steve yelled in desperation, fighting to get past. Loki, though - who seemed no more able to strangle a rabbit than he could stop Captain America - did just that.

"Let me! I might survive it, but we know you certainly will not!"

A second blast of energy lit the sky. All eyes turned toward the forward glass. Tony had arrived. Screaming across the horizon at mach four, he slammed into the broken back of the colossal rock formation in the very center of Thor's lightning storm. It was now or never.

Forgoing any further argument, Loki dropped the hatch open and fell the six feet into the arid rock of Nova Luna. His long legs spanned the stretch of wasteland between himself and Natasha's limp form. He reached down, grabbed her around the waist, and hauled the human up against his chest. Returning to the hatch, Steve and T'Challa both waited to take her. The hatch sealed a second time, and the Frost Giant turned his eyes toward the broken slab of Heaven's Keel.

:(:):(:):

Quill struggled against the controls of his new Milano, forcing her to bend against his every command. Beside him, Rocket worked at his own control panel. The movements were jerky now that the guidance system had been destroyed, but with a bit of luck, the overwhelming force of the planetary alliance finally seemed to turn the tide of Galactus' army. They'd projected, initially, only sixty Heralds, already an unheard of number for a being who only ever required the service of one.

Flying through the battlefield now, they understood how very little they'd anticipated his strength had amassed to. No less than a thousand, devoted, power-filled followers spread out in the wake of their galaxy-sized monster. The Heralds were an insurmountable force. Some conjured fears, others turned the fleet against itself, still more pieced away at the planet, little by little consuming the souls of those left running. The only way to stop them, to stop all of it, was to guide the Bethlehem Star home.

Quill turned his ship end over end, spiraling over Odin's nose. The Asgardian king had a plan in all this, and though Peter couldn't imagine what that may be, he had to go along with it regardless. He couldn't think about Clint, the mission, the Gauntlet, or anyone else. Even as they spanned the Nova Luna airspace and made their final stand, as far as he could see, Galactus' massive bulk continued to consume stars and planets even light years away. Maybe the Nine Realms were already gone, the way Galaxy Red, Hyth, and the Dark System were. There was no way to know for sure.

"Rocket!" Quill exclaimed.

"Got it! Got it! Swallow this, you sick, Herald witch!" Rocket cut loose with a massive cannon, shredding the creature threatening to hack off the nose of the new Milano. Odin's ship dipped beneath them, and came up swiftly over their port side. Peter glanced across at them, but could see nothing through the blocked cockpit windows.

"Hey, old guy, you sure about this?" Peter radioed over. He had little experience with Thor's father. Mostly the Asgardian liked to poke fun at him, claim how his entire life was 'unworthy' of Valhalla, and kept to himself. Pete never expected to be flying point with him in a recreation of Independence Day.

"They are draining her power. She requires strength to force the collision meant to end this all."

Peter didn't like the sound of that. "Yeah, ok, what exactly do you suggest?"

The line went silent. Pete tapped the dashboard comm, dodged a chunk of space debris, and piloted over to Odin's opposite side. He didn't understand the words Odin spoke next until it was already too late to catch up with him.

"I aim to make Thor a king."

;_;

yeah. he said it. yeah. Clint did it. Yeah. thor's trying to stop it... OMG