A Third Path to the Future

by Vimesenthusiast

Rescued from the Negative Zone by the Fantastic Four, Harry Potter discovers he is a mutant and decides to take up the cause of equality between mutants and humans (among other causes). How will a dimensionally displaced Harry Potter, one who is extremely intelligent, proactive and not afraid to get his hands dirty effect the marvel universe? Pairings: Harry/Jean/Ororo/others pos.

48. War of the Gods

I am not Rowling nor Stan Lee… or whoever he sold Marvel to.

Hey all, here is the next chapter of ATP! I am continuing my efforts to push this story to completion, although it has to be said, my muses have not liked being so shackled LOL. Thank goodness for my other fics. Stallion will be updated tomorrow, and Fate should be up soon.

Before we get to the chapter though, I want to give a shout out to the readers who pointed out several mistakes I'd made in the last chapter. Most of them were minor, but one big one was that I had forgotten that Odin was forced into the Odin-Sleep by the Shadows! This has been corrected, along with a lot of minor mistakes and immersion issues, and I also went back and changed how everyone interacted with Wander-Odin. In the original, I let Gaea and the Enchantress's attitude towards him color everyone else's interactions with him, and that was not right. I also went into further detail on the expanded team roster. Harry and the Custodes are going full hog on this mission folks!

I strongly suggest rereading the changes made to the chapter! The important ones start in the segment of the chapter where you will find the name 'Freya' being used! Search the page for it, and you should be able to jump to it. If you don't then a large segment of this chapter might not make sense.

Thanks go out to Observanc3 for his work on that, and on this chapter.

Summary of the last chapter: While Harry continues to enjoy some down time training his apprentice and having some soul-repairing family time, War begins in Asgard as the Shadows decide they need to use the big reset button marked Ragnarök. Balder the Bright One is in the fore of the fighting, slowing them down as elsewhere, his brother leads his reduced party back up Yggdrasil, still dealing with mirage-based attacks slowing them down.

Elsewhere on Earth, Wander-Odin is active, having saved a young girl with an intriguing power named Blink. Having received orders from his original self, Wander-Odin seeks out another banished Asgardian, the Enchantress. Reluctant to leave her immensely pleasurable life, Amora is forced to help Wander-Odin connect with Harry in a way that will grab his attention. The trio do this by using Blink to teleport into the Savage Land as Harry is there looking over the physical changes of the place with his lady-loves.

With their downtime interrupted, Harry and his officers begin to plan out what to do and how big a hammer they need to bring to the campaign. Meanwhile, Thor and company arrive back in time to find all is not well in Asgard. After a lengthy journey, the group meet with Queen Freya, who is commanding the muster in lieu of her husband, who has fallen into the Odin-sleep. Thor is instantly sent to the front to do what he does best.

Back on Earth, preparations take time but eventually, the Avalon Empire Expeditionary Force is ready to go. This included a few new faces in the Hulk, Xian co Manh, Emma Steed, and Charles Xavier. The four of them join almost the entirety of the X-men, Strange's household, the Custodes, and the first four companies of quasi-trained Orbital Drop Marines. The small army uses Blink's power, Harry and the Asgardians' connections to Yggdrasil to teleport, leaving Earth behind more than a week after Wander-Odin made contact with Harry.

This chapter has been edited by Morde24 in it's entirety, and a third by Observanc3. Hopefully there won't be any immersion-breaking mistakes. If you want to wait for the rest of the chapter to be seen to by Observanc3, be aware while he is thorough, he is also slow due to RL things, so it might be a while.

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Chapter 48: War of the Gods

While Harry and his assault force had been preparing for their sojourn to Asgard, the war against Surtur and his people had continued. Nearly a month since the first clashes on the border had passed, and now the enemy army had pushed from the hinterlands and into the heart of Asgard. For any human army that would have been impossible given the size of Odin's realm, but Surtur's army could move far faster in a day than most human armies could, simply because jotun didn't need to eat or rest. Like the Asgardians, they could ignore being tired to an amazing degree and recovered far faster.

As for eating, while they had taste buds and enjoyed eating meat (human meat being a delicacy), Fire Jotun, like their lesser stony cousins, could gorge on rocks and recover energy that way if need be. And being shapeshifters, the jotun of Muspellheim could do more than simply recover energy by taking in that mass. They could also use it to add bulk to their forms, which most had been doing as the army moved ever deeper into Asgard, despoiling the land as they went.

None of that meant that their advance went unopposed. Indeed, every day saw hundreds of skirmished and a few that were not so small. All of this was in keeping with a larger plan, Balder and Freya working to buy time so that their men could create a battleground that would shatter the Jotun army.

Yet to Thor, God of Thunder and the common man, none of that mattered. All that did was that he had an enemy in front of him, and it was one he could hit. Hit very hard.

"HAAHAHAHHAA!" With a bellowing laugh, Thor brought his hammer around, slamming it into the side of jotun's waist. Not only did the hip muscle explode on impact, to such a degree that the jotun's leg fell off, but the power of his strike was such that his target was smashed off of his remaining foot and hurled into several of his fellows. Before any of the six jotun could have a chance to recover, a dozen karls raced forward, spears thrusting down.

These spears were not magical like Mjollnir, and even as they penetrated unarmored portions of the jotun they melted, the magma of the jotun's internals searing them away in a manner they had not at the start of this war. Even in this little way, the jotun had begun to adapt like the shapeshifters they were. The spearmen had to quickly let go of their weapons and retreat as blood spurted, molten hot, but even so, one of them was burned quite badly in the escape.

"Eaor!" Cursing, Thor raced over to the man, battering aside two other jotun in the melee to reach his fallen comrade. Around him, Tyr and his men continued to fight, striking from their hiding places on either side of the narrow defile through the woods that a portion of the jotun army had entered. True, it might've only been a small force of the whole, but that was all to the good, in Tyr's opinion.

The wounded warrior waved Thor off, his voice thick with agony. Bits of bone and intestines were visible through the holes the droplets of searing blood had seared, and it was clear the man didn't have much time left. "Leave me, Lord Thor, I be done for."

"Now, what kind of defender of the common man would I be if I did that, Eaor?" Thor bellowed with a laugh, lifting the man into his arms with one hand like he was a baby and twirling his hammer in his other hand. He whirled it over his head, and then the two were in the air, pulled along by the hammer, in a leap that covered the whole of the battlefield, landing by Thor's chariot.

Nearby, several dead jotun could be seen having been gored by Teeth-grinder and Teeth-barer, although they too were looking a bit worse for wear at this point. Placing the wounded man in the chariot, Thor took up the driver's position, using one hand to wield the reins and get his worthy steads moving.

Enchanted by Freya and Odin centuries ago, they instantly began to move, each step taking them higher and higher into the air. Using that same hand, Thor directed the goats into a slow circle over the battlefield, his hammer spinning to one side of the chariot. Looking down, he lashed out with bolts of lightning that crashed down into formations of jotun moving around the defile where the ambush had occurred. Each bolt of lightning tossed a dozen or more jotun in every direction, as well as caused trees to burst into miniature explosions from simply being near the jagged bolts of lightning.

Many of the jotun survived such attacks, smoking and twitching from the impact of the magical lightning, but alive, a sight that caused Thor to scowl. Still, his intervention had allowed Tyr to slay several more and begin to turn the battle in the defile against their enemy once more.

Several spears flashed up towards Thor, but he batted them aside with ease as he continued to survey the battle. A moment later, he came down in one segment of the battlefield after another to grab up wounded warriors, three humans and one Asgardian, the warrior Baard.

When next he was in the air, Thor saw the battle had changed. Tyr had begun to pull back from his position in the defile, moving up the slope at the back of it. As Tyr did so, a group of karls had moved forward from where they had been hidden nearby to support his left flank against any attempt by the jotun to simply circumvent the defile. The woods there were not as thick as on the other side, and to Thor's surprise, the karls had managed to form a shield wall. As he watched, a group of seven jotun moved to confront the twenty defending karls, each of them out-massing the men by five to one at the least.

Given the strength and reach of the average jotun, a common shield wall would be useless, but as Thor prepared to intervene the Jarl in charge seemed to come to his senses. The men hastily retreated in front of the group of jotun, who followed them across the ground the warriors had been standing on.

As they did so, the weight of the jotun proved their downfall. Thin wooden planks, which had been set over a covered ditch, shattered, dumping the jotun into said ditch. This trap put their heads and shoulders at eye level with the humans and didn't give them enough room to bring their weapons up easily.

"RAAAH!" With a wordless cry, the retreating men whipped around and charged forward, hacking and cutting into the heads and shoulders of the stuck jotun. While many of those heads were helmeted, they were the kind of open-faced helmets that only really protected the back and sides of the wearer's head. Soon, several of the jotun were dead, only two having been quick enough to use their powers of shapeshifting to grow taller and thinner so they could bring their arms above the edge of the ditch and strike back.

Five of the humans lost their lives to the two quick-thinking jotun before the rest pulled back. Another group of karls nearby who'd been backing Tyr's initial ambush fired into the two still trapped jotun, slaying them with arrows.

Leaving that area of the spread out battlefield to Tyr's leadership, Thor ascended higher into the sky, moving over the area in a wider sweep. This portion of the realm was marked by scattered segments of heavy forest and scrub brush intermixed, all leading out into a small plain leading south. It was often covered by snow and wintergreen, the smell of pine everywhere, as winter lasted overlong in Asgard compared to Midgard.

Yet that had changed, and not just because of Surtur's invasion. Poison now also permeated both land and air, pouring in from the shores of Asgard as the waves did, battering against the earth and misting the sky. Hundreds had died from the raised sea level caused by Thor's most-hated nephew, Jörmungandr when he'd decided to join the war against the Asgardians. Still more had fallen ill from the miasma he had released into the air and the very earth, the trees and grass of Asgard had begun to wither and die.

This was never more obvious than when Thor was in the air. Instead of green and white, he saw what snow there was almost black from the poison, pine trees withered, and any remaining grass brown and dying. Would that I had been given leave to hunt the beast down! Jörmungandr should have been slain ages past!

Of course, Thor had been forbidden to do so. While Jörmungandr did not have the same ferocious reputation as Níðhöggr, he was actually harder to deal with in reality thanks to both his size and ability to hide deep under the waves. That, and Freya and Odin were well aware that Thor might have been destined to die in such a contest as part of Ragnarök.

Scowling, Thor shook his head, concentrating on the here and now, staring past the start of the deeper woodlands to the small plain which the invaders had already crossed. Out there, only Thor and a few of the strongest Asgardians had been allowed to attack the enemy army. Thor himself had delivered devastating damage only a few days before, but Surtur had eventually driven him off, as much as it galled Thor to admit it. That blasted spear of his strikes like, like…

Once more, Thor shook his head, the thought not staying in his head. Instead, he stared down into the forest, where the humans among their forces had come into their own. Though weakened from the poison that infected the land, the terrain broke up the barely organized columns of jotun and allowed the karls and Jarls to get back into the war.

From high in the sky, Thor saw other humans using cunning and traps to fight against the invaders as best they could. Here, warriors retreated, only for other warriors to come out of hidden foxholes, stabbing upward with spears towards their giant enemies. The retreating warriors quickly reversed course and closed while the stabbed Jotun tried to turn on their attackers. Over there, a group of warriors worked with several Asgardians. The Asgardians rushed forward to hold the attention of the Jotun while the humans turned them into pincushions with arrows.

Everywhere Thor looked, traps, ambushes ,and small-scale battles slowed the advancing army. But it still came on, as inexorable as an avalanche of fire and brimstone.

Thor could see that as well from his current position. Surtur's horde was a dark red and black stone band across the land, pushing ever onward. And behind them, the land was changed. No longer a land of pine trees and stone, or vast plains of snow. Where the jotun marched, the land itself boiled, gouts of magma and jets of heated water erupting as the very earth beneath shifted and quaked. This wasn't caused just from the mass of the army from Muspellheim, but also from the magics of the jotun themselves. For in Ragnarök, not only the gods but the land too would die to fire, ice, and wave.

Yet the closer sight, the band of black and red marching across the land, grabbed Thor's attention more. "Tis like an open wound, one scabbing over in places yet still sore. On already poisoned flesh, curse Jörmungandr!"

That line and the whimpers of pain from his fellows audible even from as high up as he was reminded Thor of his current duty, and he shook his head. "Gah, woolgathering is for after the war is won and you have an ale in your hand, Thor. Back to work!"

Sending a final blast of lightning down, Thor turned away from the battlefield, retreating towards where Balder now led the main army of Asgard to prepare the fortifications for the coming battle. Well beyond that, dozens of leagues distant, just in case, laid the main camp. There, Thor stopped, unloaded the wounded he had saved, and within seconds was in the air once more.

Alas, Thor did not realize two of his human charges had already died. The poison in the air was not strong enough yet to fell a healthy warrior, but the wounded succumbed to such at horrible speed. Indeed, it was all Freya and Eir, goddess of healing and childbirth, could do to save one human in four. With the Asgardians, they had been having more luck, thankfully.

Back near the ongoing skirmishes, situated at the top of a hilly ridge, more than sixty thousand warriors were frantically putting up defenses as the jotun host marched ever toward their position. These men represented most of the Asgardians and the Einherjar, those ancient men of common and noble birth brought to Asgard in ancient times, their deaths having proven them worthy of living among their gods.

Below that ridge, still more teams of humans worked feverishly on setting up ditches and other traps throughout the forest. It was hoped the forest and these limited fieldworks would break up the jotun's columns, limiting the number of that could reach the ridge at any one time.

But Balder, whose plan this had been, could already see that was perhaps wishful thinking. In the distance, he could see the jotun were simply smashing through any trees before them, coming on like a wall of fire and death, the front of which simply absorbed the various ambushes while still continuing even now. Is this truly the Ragnarök come for us, then? Is my death on this battlefield?

As he peered at one portion of the diseased woodland, Balder noted that the trees were just another kind of weapon. When the jotun smashed through them, few human warriors could remain on their feet if they were struck by the bits of flying debris that resulted.

This supposition was proven a moment later as Tyr and Hogun joined Balder, their weary men still trudging up the ridge behind them even as fresher men moved down to help their comrades. "We're not going to be able to slow them for long out there. I hope you and yours are ready, Bright One."

"And I am still a little concerned about this battle plan," Tyr grumbled, shifting his shoulder in annoyance. He had taken a hard blow there and upper arm during the last clash, and another to his knee. Although that one, thankfully, had been a glancing blow and hardly ached at the moment.

Balder simply nodded, not turning to look at them, simply staring out into the distance, trying to force his thoughts away from the morbid tone they had started to settle in. "I know, but if we do not try to hold here, we will be fighting on the plains in a few days. In among the farmsteads of the warriors, open terrain with not a single feature we could use as natural defense."

Powerful hands clad in thick leather gauntlets slammed down on Hogun and Balder's shoulders, a booming voice nearly deafening all three. "I know not why you are talking about this as if there be any chance we are going to lose! After all, I am here!"

Balder rolled his eyes at his brother's attitude, and yet, as he turned to clasp forearms with Thor, he still found himself taking heart in the Thunder God's boisterous nature.

For his part, while he too was pleased to see his friend, Hogun took more heart in the sight of the lightning clouds that Thor had summoned into being continuing to pummel their enemies. Not rain, thankfully. With how cold it was rain would be miserable for the defenders. But lightning streaked out from the sky, pummeling the jotun horde in various places seemingly at random. Better, the winds that he summoned up will keep the miasma away, halting its sapping influence for the nonce.

Tyr, however, was a little more thoughtful, and when he looked out into the distance, he remained concerned. Numerous times the warriors of Asgard had attempted to hold the enemy, stopping them here and there, only to be overwhelmed by the sheer strength and numbers of the jotun. They had lost several thousand dead by this point, but this would be the largest battle to date. It would make the skirmishers that Thor and Tyr had been taking part in a moment ago seem tiny in comparison.

There had been barely three thousand warriors involved in those short, sharp engagements this day. There were several times that gathered here. And regardless of Balder's concerns about the terrain no longer favoring the humans soon, I have to worry that all we are going to be doing is just providing a giant target. Pun intended.

For his part, while Balder shared some of Tyr's concerns, he knew they were ready for this battle. And they had surprises that he hoped would turn the tide regardless of Jörmungandr's miasma or Surtur's magics. If they could not, Balder would probably not even have been there, such was Freya's worry for him.

"What about the catapults?" He asked, looking over at the engineer even as the ground beneath them trembled once more. Earthquakes too had been moving north with the jotun, and Balder had seen reports of massive waves crashing into the shoreline, tearing away whole fishing hamlets.

"They too are ready, my Lord. We even have the special munitions that Queen Freya sent us. We could fire those three catapults all day without going through it."

"Good," Balder nodded, willfully ignoring how many of the Asgardians and jarls that were around looked on a little bemused. Magic had its place in Asgard, something that few men were truly happy about, yet it would be a very foolish warrior who put any real trust in such personally. Let alone assume it could turn the course of a battle.

But looking around the defensive position, Tyr could see hints of magic everywhere. Freya and several of the other goddesses had come forward over the past few days to help as best they could to make this line even more defensible. The low wall of trees over which the human warriors would strike down at the jotun coming up the ridge were calcified, turned almost into stone and magicked to remain whole against any strike. Shields and spears and swords alike all had been blessed with greater durability or striking power, and numerous traps had been laid in front of the line as well, hidden via glamours.

To say nothing about the spells that Eir and Freya had woven into the actual men. The warriors would still not have the endurance they normally would thanks to the miasma in the air, but it would not impact their bodies beyond that. They would keep their skill and strength until their bodies gave out.

Tyr knew he should've felt confident about their chances of victory here. Their ability to finally smash this invading host, stop its forward momentum, cost the jotun enough they would fall back and allow the defenders to push them back across the border would never be higher. But he didn't. Instead, the god of justice and war felt uneasy. As if he was simply waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He looked over at Balder who, despite Thor's presence, also looked worried for a moment as the two of them exchanged glances before Balder shook his head. "Watch the line, dour one, Tyr. I'm going to go get my armor on."

"Aye," Hogun answered before his lips twitched into a wry smile. "One must be pretty for one's guests, after all." Balder snorted at that, then headed away, back down their side of the ridge toward where his tent rested among those of the majority of the army. Only Freya, the healers, injured, and alfar and dvergar had been left at the base camp.

Soon, the remaining members of the skirmishing parties began to filter back through the woods and up the hill to the fortifications, where they were hauled up the walls by their fellows. There weren't many survivors, though, and realizing such left only Thor looking at all upbeat.

The jarl in charge of the retreating men moved to where Balder now waited on the wall at the center position. Gone was his everyday apparel. In its place, he was clasped in lamellar armor, the steel shining almost like silver. Marked on the armor over his chest shone a symbol of the sun, glistening with all the light of the real thing. Upon his head rested a helm of silver steel, unadorned yet clearly masterfully made. At his side rested a large round shield and his sword, longer and heavier than the blade he had been using up to this point, gleaming in the day's light like the rest of his armor.

There would be no retreat this time, no planned withdrawal. Balder intended to hold this field until the Fire Jotun were broken, or they broke him.

"The fire bastards're coming, my Lord. But they are using their transformation powers more freely now. Tell him, Arnold."

Arnold was a scout who had been with Balder ever since their first skirmish. He knew what he was talking about and currently looked very worried as well as exhausted. "My Lord, the jotun are growing. They were barely a few feet taller than a normal Asgardian when we first fought with them. Now, most of those we saw were as tall as a longboat set on its tail. And some of them be even larger."

Balder nodded and waved the man off, ordering him to head to the main camp miles distant. If things began to go poorly, Balder fully intended his mother and the others with her to be able to flee back to Asgard the city. The Bifrost Bridge would create a good defensive point for the survivors, a unavoidable bottleneck.

Stop that Balder, he thought to himself, turning away to look out over the battlements again. Do not plan to lose, or you will create a self-fulfilling prophecy. We will win here. We'll break this army and then push them out of our realm!

Moments later, the outer scouts quickly began to filter back towards the battle line as well, shouting out, "The jotun're coming! They just hit the second to last line of traps!"

One of the scouts stopped to report to Thor and Balder, gesturing with the end of his bow, twisting it around, so it waved from one end of the ridge to the other. "They have spread out as they have come, my Lords, and don't seem to be in any rush to form any kind of true battle line thanks to the trees. But they are spreading," the scout emphasized. "They might be looking to try and forge around the ridge."

"I have stationed the majority of our Asgardians on the tops of the ridges at our flanks for if they tried such a tactic. Thor, you will lead the charge down into them on whichever's flank seems most needed," Balder said, tapping his brother on the chest with a finger.

"Aye! I'll not let you down, nor our people! These jotun will rue the day they challenged Þór!" Thor bellowed boisterously.

For just a moment, the way Thor spoke his own name felt as if it had shifted. However, such a thought didn't stay in Balder's head, slipping away like smoke, and he simply nodded, turning back to the front as the first of the jotun came into view. Massive figures forged up the ridge towards them, smashing anything in their way as they came. "Archers fire when they reach the markers."

With that order passed along the line in either direction, Balder turned to a runner, a young boy born here in Asgard to a warrior spirit and his wife after they had passed on from Midgard. Six such youngsters were waiting for Balder to give them orders.

"Run to the catapults. They are to begin firing into the woods now." Even as that runner raced off, Balder turned to Thor, gesturing up into the sky. "A cold wind, brother, add some chill to your wind. But no snow. Just a bit more of a chill would be nice."

Thor looked confused for a moment, then began to laugh. "You think to douse the flames of the Fire Jotun? I rather doubt it will work, brother."

"Not on its own Thor, but with the special ammunition that Mother and her ladies have created, we will be able to give them a truly chilly reception," Balder smiled.

Thor laughed heartily and then stepped forward, twirling his hammer idly as he meandered to where Lady Sif stood with her own command. Even as he did, the wind began to pick up all around them, helping the men's arrows along and chilling the air. Within seconds it was cold enough to be uncomfortable even to men dressed in winter apparel. The Fire Jotun didn't appreciate the change one bit and roared as one their fury at the cold. But they were about to get a much harsher example of what being cold truly meant.

The jotun continued on, making their way up the ridge, each of those in the front targeted by dozens of arrows each. The arrows, enchanted as they were, hit like the bolts of ballistae. Despite their armor and their own enchantments, hundreds fell. Still, thousands more came on, and this time, they too were armed with arrows.

Simple looking in comparison to the arrows of the Valkyries, these arrows were in barely curves lengths of wood with sharpened volcanic stone as tips. Balder wondered what genius among the Jotun had thought them up, but the jotun didn't seem to be very good with them, although there were a lot of bows within their army somehow. Such a advancement in their long-range skills had not been reported before this.

Still, even as arrows shattered upon the enchanted walls at the top of the ridge, the jotun showed that this weapon was not one they were at home with at all. Most Jotun took a single shot and then tossed their bow and quivers aside. And despite the number of arrows fired, few got over the battlements.

But when a lucky arrow from the jotun managed to strike an Asgardian Near Balder, he cried out in pain, falling back off of the battlements to curse and tumble down the friendly side of the hill. One lucky human was able to raise his shield in time, the arrow smashing into it with enough force to cause him to stumble off the battlement similarly, although his landing was far less amusing given the sickening sound of his back snapping. Another karl wasn't fast enough, and the arrow punched straight through his armor, despite Freya's enchantment on him and all of those around him.

The human warriors began to take losses. Pinpricks for now, but despite how horrible the jotun were at it, the use of arrows and archery was something that the defenders had not seen the jotun use before. Previously the only long-range weaponry the jotun had used had been throwing spears. They still used those now as well, but they didn't have the range of the arrows, clattering short of the battlements to a one.

There was also the miasma to consider. Warriors who took wounds beyond the scope of small scratches and bruises soon found themselves falling victim to the poisonous air, falling out of line and going to their knees in suddenly crippling exhaustion, or simply dying where they stood.

Minutes into the battle, many of the larger jotun started to grab the trees they had smashed down arriving, hurling the trunks like they were tossing sticks against the defenders. Several of these impromptu missiles smashed into the battlements here and there, wiping out Einherjar by the handful.

But the defenders were not idle. Balder sliced one such tree in half before it could land, sending the pieces hurtling over the heads of his warriors to crash harmlessly on an empty patch of land on the friendly side of the hill. Thor also smashed several such missiles out in the air, his laughter booming out.

"To war, to war! And after, the drinks will be on me, for my thirst is never-ending, as is my lust for battle furious! Woe to Thee who bringeth down the lightning upon you, for I am the defender of gods and men alike!" Thor bellowed, his voice heard from one end of the battle line to the other.

As one, the Asgardians, karls, jarls, even the few Valkyrie's serving as scattered snipers all roared, buoyed by Thor's words. And as they did, Balder could feel it as well. Thor's aura of divinity, specifically his boisterous battle lust, reached out for all of them, giving them courage and strength as Balder's own did. A double helping, as it were. Excellent!

Ahead of them, a large wedge of the jotun had pushed out of the woods and was actually keeping formation, using massive slabs of granite as shields to protect themselves from attacks from on high as they tried to get up the ridge. Seeing this, Balder also bellowed, raising his sword to the sky and thrusting it downward. "For Odin and Asgard!"

A blaze of light erupted from Balder, a searing beam of magical power that carved into several of the approaching jotun and broke their formation. Following up on this attack, Balder leaped down into their midst just as they reached the top of the ridge and had began to batter away at the wooden palisade. His sword flashed this way, then that, laying the Jotun low even though many towered above him like an adult would over a young child. It took barely a moment to bring them down to his level, and none of them could match his strength or even come close to his speed.

With Balder thus engaged in front of the battlements, it normally would have fallen to Sif, Hogun, Tyr, or one of the other Asgardian commanders to watch the overall battle. However, they were all in direct combat at this point, leading their men at distinct points along the wall. All the Asgardian commanders were among the best warriors of their folk as well, unfortunately.

This left it to the Jarls, human leaders who had died in such a manner to attract Odin's favor and had been brought to Asgard in ages past. Spread out along with their men across the battlefront, these spirits stepped for war now. It fell on them to command the reinforcements forward in small amounts to help at disparate points along the battlements, send runners back for more arrows if need be, or even pull men from the line if they became wounded, replacing them with men from the reserve.

Meanwhile, the catapults well behind the battle line began to fire, each of them sending dozens of stones the size of a man's head over the battle line to crash into the forest. They weren't targeting any one particular area. Rather, they were spreading their pain across the entire battlefront, breaking further what cohesion the Fire Jotun might have attempted. And these rocks had been enchanted to be even deadlier to this particular foe as well.

When they crashed down, bursts of cold spread from them, the entire area around the strike point quickly being covered in frost. This included any jotun unlucky enough to be in said area. The Fire Jotun affected area found their outer skin frozen, even as the magma within continued to boil. Others, those who had been wounded already, found out what happened when extreme heat and extreme cold met directly, exploding with screams of agony. Steam rose like fog throughout the forest as these enchanted boulders crashed down, and the cold spell within them went to war against the heat of the Fire Jotun.

Behind the fight, Surtur seethed at the sight and sent forth his power into the earth. Heat bloomed as lava burst from the ground to combat the cold, new stone formations growing from the blistering wounds, slamming into the power of Freya and the goddesses of the Earth, Breya and Irpa.

The battle furiously seesawed, magic, mortals, and godly might fought against the primeval power of the jotun, with neither side gaining an advantage. Elsewhere, others watched on…

OOOOOOO

Viewing the battlefield from more than fifty leagues away via a spell that allowed him to see through the eyes of birds, Malekith, king of the dark elves and Svartalfheim, smiled while breathing in the air of Asgard in delight. While the miasma of Jörmungandr was slow anathema to all but the hardiest among humans and Asgardians, to the Dark Elves that same poison only added a certain extra flavor to the air.

But that was neither here nor there, and the blue-skinned white-haired elven man, clad in form-fitting black leather and plate mail armor, looked around at his commanders. "And now my followers, it is time. Relay my commands to the Brethren. We attack. It is the time of Ragnarök, and we will have our share of the spoils."

Nor were the Dark Elves the only other forces in play, as at that moment, far removed from the battle, aid had arrived in the boughs of Yggdrasil.

OOOOOOO

But the Dark Elves were not the only other forces in play. For that moment, far removed from the battle, aid had arrived in the boughs of Yggdrasil.

The moment they felt outsiders arriving in the boughs of the World Tree, the Shadows knew that the same enemy who had broken Hela free from their control, who had stolen away Sigyn's body, was upon them. When they gazed down in confused, worried fury at the intrusion and found the Wanderer aspect of Asgard's King among Harry and his followers, they instantly knew that Odin had somehow found a way to call for aid.

With that understanding, the Shadows reacted swiftly, attacking the interlopers on several different fronts at once, as was their way.

The first was magical, covering the area in illusions designed to interact with the physical senses rather than the mind. These phantasms mostly took the form of giant leaping Ratatoskr, attacking Dark elves, and other rabid beasts. Other trickeries were more subtle, though no less aggressive; the odors of burning wood and flesh, a taste of rotten meat in the air, or simply tree limbs where no limbs were.

But Harry, Hela, Kitty, Dr. Druid, Dr. Strange, Wanda, Clea, and Ororo were ready. They went to work dispelling the Shadows' assaults with wide-area Finite Incantatum spells or other defensive spells meant to dispel illusions. At the same time, the runes embedded in the helmets or headsets of all present went to work, allowing the wearers to see the reality underneath those illusions when they did get through.

The scent-based illusions still threw many of the Earthers off unfortunately, with two of the Oh Damn's even crashing in midair, one of them shouting out, "Gah, what's with the rancid meat sme—oh fuck!" before slamming into his compatriot.

Meanwhile on the Astral Plane, the Shadows' will crashed down, hammering into the minds of the humans who had come to aid the Asgardians, seeking to break, blind, or control. If their mental assault hit, the humans would each find themselves stuck in their own personal hells, their minds trapped as the Shadows pulled their deepest fears out from the depths of their minds.

On the Astral Plane this attack took the forms of hundreds of millions of Shadowy tentacles, each reaching for the minds of the embattled Earthers, visible only to the telepaths who could discern the Astral Plane.

But when the attack began, Charles was there instantly, reacting to the telepathic assault faster as any rattlesnake. "I think not!" he boomed, thrusting out his hands in every direction, pushing back at the enveloping shadows with an eruption of pure presence.

When the other telepaths appeared on the Astral Plane, they each had a different type of avatar, shaped and molded by their personalities. Jean's almost looked completely normal, if not for the fact her hair was on fire, and she had wings that looked vaguely draconic sprouting from her back. Her attacks burned away the Shadows with blinding fire, a scream erupting from her astral self's lips that sounded animalistic as she struck.

In stark contrast to his admittedly fit, if elderly and crippled physical frame, Charles Xavier's astral self was big, larger than even Warpath or the Thing, heavily muscled, with a stern, scowling countenance. It almost looked as if someone had created a statue of a bald Greek God. And Emma Steed and the other telepaths all had to pause for a second when they first formed on the Plane as they stared at it.

"Goddammit, I knew that deal I made with you lot was too good to be true!" Emma shouted. More specifically, Emma Steed shouted, even as she joined the others on the Astral Plane.

Within the mental realm, Emma (Frost) looked like a woman made of diamond, with strings of golden filament in her hair. From her body, she flung out precise, diamond-shaped telepathic bolts of agony, barely visible on the Astral Plane until they exploded, dissipating the attacks around them but finding no purchase in whatever mind was behind the ongoing assault. "Bah. You know nothing, Steed. If you want to flee, do so, it will be no big loss."

Rolling her eyes, Xian took a moment between blocking telepathic attacks to look down at herself and take in the others.

The young Vietnamese girl appeared much like her normal self, except a bit bigger, more than a bit taller, and with longer hair. Her mental attacks came in the form of spheres that looked aquatic in nature, which she could shift and transform in various ways. Similarly, Betsy looked much like herself in the real world, but instead of purple, Betsy's astral projection had hair that was almost like that of a pearl, changing color depending on what angle you looked at it.

Steed's form was very different. She appeared like a woman made of multi-sized chains, all interlocking and tangled to form her body. This theme continued into her mental attacks when she struck against the Shadows all around them. Her telepathic assaults took the form of long chains with dagger-like protrusions at the end, much like her main telekinetic attack.

With Charles directing them, the telepaths created an impenetrable defense. While each of their attacks appeared different, all of them could disperse the Shadows' assaults in the Astral Realm before they could hit their marks. It was tough, and none of them had any concentration to waste on what was going on in the physical world while they fought but combined and able to defend a single semi-concentrated area, the telepaths had the advantage, though not an overwhelming one.

As the battle on the Astral Plane roiled continuously, the magical assault had been dealt with in a far more overwhelming fashion. Harry had requested aid on this mission from the start from Dr. Strange and his household, and combined with Harry and Ororo, they could easily deal with the illusions as soon as they appeared. It took a few seconds to recognize them occasionally against the immense background magic of Yggdrasil, but that was all. The earthers had simply brought too much magical power to bear, and the Shadows could not overwhelm them, weakened as they were by Níðhöggr's death and the destruction of the tether within.

But within seconds, these illusions were replaced by actual Fire Jotun. Several hundred of the fiery giants appeared amongst Harry's folk quite suddenly, teleported there by the Shadows from the ongoing battle elsewhere.

So quickly were they pulled from their previous fight that for a moment, the jotun were disoriented just as much as their foes. But this only lasted for a second, and then the jotun, not a one of which was smaller than three stories at this point, roared and began to attack. "GRAAAHAH!"

"Ghigau, Coyote, Uzume, get high and provide cover fire. Blink, Nightcrawler, Strange, remove the noncombatants, get them away from the enemy however you can. Don't forget to get the supplies out of danger!" Harry ordered. Already on the move, even as Dr. Strange piloted the magic carpet containing all the telepaths up and away from the jotun, a protective barrier snapping into place.

Nearby, Scott did much the same thing, taking command of the group nearest him, a mix of the flying carpets on which the ODMs were riding, Husk, and the participating trio from the Fantastic Four. "ODMs spread out! Husk, pull back Johnny, into the air, try not to use any wide-area attacks. We don't want to start a forest fire here. Thing, Thundra, sic'em."

"Woot, now that's the way ta give orders!" The Thing bellowed a laugh, charging forward and crashing into the nearest jotun, grunting at the impact. He quickly found that jotun were almost as strong as he was, if nowhere near as coordinated. The jotun's footwork, in particular, was pretty bad, and that let Ben use more of his strength overall than the enemy could.

Steve also started to bring order to the chaos of the assault at speed, although he discovered that he was too late for at least a few of the ODMs, caught completely flatfooted by the suddenly appearing jotun while also being in close range of the massive, red-skinned monsters.

Quickly, the rest of the Oh Damns used their jump jets, putting distance between themselves and the multitude of jotun. As they did, one of the company commanders announced calmly, "Fire by squad boys, let's see how our new toys work."

The answer was very well indeed.

With a loud retort like a World War II tank cannon, several Boomsticks fired as one, the troops aiming at several jotun to one side and just above of Harry's position. He was bsuy creating protective shields and lashing out with attack spells as he covered several of the troopers who hadn't been quite as quick on the mark as the rest. Blink too, had frozen in shock of the sudden violence around her.

The jotun struck by the trooper's fire screamed in agony. The small gyro-rockets exploded against them destroying armor and some flesh beneath. It took several such strikes to put the monsters down, but eventually, the giants fell to loud whoops of delight from the troopers. "Oh my gods, I love these things!"

"Boom, baby, boom!" Several of the troopers shouted in awe at seeing their guns just tear apart a far larger inhuman creatures which had only moments ago crushed or speared their fellows.

E, Uzume, and the other long-range fighters had also gotten enough distance now. E hovered in the air as Falcon flew around him, laying down fire on the nearest jotun. Somewhat limited in how many gyroscopic rockets he could constitute without materials, E instead transformed his arms into their normal plasma guns and began to fire, to little impact, much to the AI's annoyance. Similarly, Magma's tectonic-energy bolts didn't have much effect on the jotun, so far removed from the ground as they were in the boughs of Yggdrasil. The Neo-Roman didn't have any other type of attack available to her either as cut off as she was, and decided to fall back with the noncombatants for the time being, for once using her oft-ignored rifle as she did.

Fortunately, Uzume, Coyote, Vanguard, and Ghigau had better luck. If their gauss rifle rounds took the jotun in the eyes or mouth they could punch through. But if they missed those vulnerable areas, the shots wouldn't put the jotun down. Shots to the skull still seemed to hurt like blazes judging by the whimpers and roars of pain from their targets, but even the giants' bare flesh was up to stopping the penetrating power of the gauss shots.

Similarly, the Gatling guns that were the main line of sight weapon for the Heavy Gunners couldn't penetrate at first either. They certainly caused the jotun anguish, and they fell back under the unending assault, but the rounds just couldn't penetrate. It was like hitting a living tank with a machine gun. The tank felt the shots but couldn't be killed by them.

One Heavy Gunner's attempt to get away from a jotun in his face put him right in the way of another's spear. He managed to block it but would have been overcome if not for Coyote putting a railgun round through one of the jotun's eyes.

Both men stared in shock as lava burst out of the gaping hole, searing the Heavy Gunner, who retreated quickly. "What the hell?!"

Elsewhere, the fight wasn't going nearly as well for the invaders. One squad of ODMs had been pinned in a kind of wooden culvert by three jotun, with too many branches around them to get away with their jet packs. Two men died to a single jotun's blow, which cut through armor and individual within alike.

Another jotun attacked one of the remaining troopers, who jumped up. The man flipped in midair using his jet pack, coming back down onto the giant's back.

A specially made ceramic knife stabbed forward from the trooper's off-arm, slamming into the back of the jotun's neck before breaking off as the trooper jetted away into the open air, leaving his knife embedded in the jotun. The monster slumped instantly, a howl of agony coming from the jotun's mouth even as nothing below the neck responded to its frantic commands.

"Whatever their insides look like, they 're still built like humans! They've got spines, they've got necks and eyes," the trooper, a Frenchman, reported.

"And balls," a Heavy Gunner said, having just slammed his fist up and into the fork of the jotun pinning him in place. Uzume and Ghigau's sniper shots had already dealt with the third, and this attack caused the remaining jotun to scream in agony, dropping his sword. Shaking, it moved to attack the Heavy Gunner with a double-handed blow. The trooper's other hand, which had been chopped off right before where his human hand began within the suit, was useless, but he rolled away just in time, opening up the giant to the bolts of fire from his fellow troopers.

Nearby, another jotun fell, hurled off his feet by a double kick from Colossus. The young Russian effortlessly flipped himself in midair like a world-class gymnast, landing between two other jotun, fists and feet flashing out.

Above the area where most of the attackers had appeared, Cannonball blasted across a tree limb that stretched across the upper area of the battlefield clearing it of jotun. This allowed many of the regular troopers to set down there, whereupon they began to fire in every direction, far more accurately than they had in midair. The kick of the Boomsticks was still new to the ODMs, and they seemed to have trouble compensating for it when not able to properly brace.

Meanwhile, like E, Tony had discovered that his main weapons weren't very useful against the immensely heat-resistant jotun. The best he could do was blast them off the branches like Cannonball and the others were doing.

Thunderbird, Husk, and Rogue were also able to go toe to toe with the jotun, who came out the losers of these engagements. With the trio was a new face to the combined Custodes Mundi order of battle: Bruce Banner. Hulked out, the scientist roared and leaped from one tree branch to another, smashing into the jotun like Cannonball but without the need to go in a straight line. His greater strength and durability allowed him to knock them down by the dozens with ease.

Truthfully, as massively powerful as the jotun were, they just weren't quite as good at hand to hand as Thunderbird or Colossus were, let alone the more experienced Thing. Although they didn't take the time to pull out their specially prepared weapons, and both Thunderbird and Thing took hits, they delivered far more. And the juggernaut-type armor Colossus and Thunderbird wore easily handled the blows of the jotun, as did Thing's stone frame.

Thundra, Rogue and Husk were but they were much faster. Though they lacked the strength to just leap around the branches like the Hulk or others, they danced around their huge opponents, striking at legs and feet, which quickly brought the jotun down to their level. And with the noncombatants taken care of at this point, Nightcrawler and the recovered Blink were started teleporting the trio around to areas where the troopers were having trouble for one reason or another.

On the other hand, Polaris was not having as much fun. She had risen into the air and now was trying to find something within the jotun to use her powers on, but whatever kind of molten elements constituted their blood, they didn't contain enough ferrous substances to allow her to manipulate them. Their weapons were likewise a no-go. "That's not metal, or at least not a ferrous metal," she reported, lifting herself up off of the ground and away from one of the jotun's attempts to stab her. Sneering at the giant, she flew out into a more open area between the massive boughs.

"Don't worry, sugar," Rogue said, intercepting a punch from a jotun then twisting, watching as the Fire Jotun's savage grin turned into astonishment as the tiny human woman with the frizzy hair pulled then whirled around him, kicking him in the side and sending him up into the air. The strength that she had permanently drained from Juggernaut was more than a match for these beasties, and the jotun didn't even realize he had been outmaneuvered until he was in midair and falling. "We got this."

Polaris snorted but had to agree that at least on the physical side of things, they were winning this fight now. The jotun didn't seem to have much in the way of long-range weaponry beyond a few scattered bows and hurling their spears. And since they didn't seem to have many such spears, those who wielded them refrained from using them in such a manner.

Busy as he was launching attack spells and making certain that he spotted any of his people going down, Harry had to chuckle when he spotted a jotun spear Colossus in the face, only causing him to stumble back. The expression on the jotun's face as his obsidian-tipped spear shattered without injuring Colossus at all was made even more hilarious as the metal-clad Russian then charged under the jotun's guard and crashed into its knees, shattering one of them, before grabbing and hurling the broken enemy away.

While the majority of the X-Men and Custodes stayed and defended themselves where they were, the troopers, Tony Stark, and the other flyers slowly spread out throughout the strange combat zone among the boughs and leaves of Yggdrasil. The effect was devastating, and worse, the jotun seemed to have a mental block on what enemies they thought were truly dangerous. They seemed to believe that only the Hulk, the Thing, and the other physically stronger members of the Custodes were the main threats. This allowed the troopers to have a field day after those first few chaotic moments, where they had seemingly been targets of opportunity.

Scott also proved to be very deadly. His kinetic eye blasts either shattered jotun on impact or hurled them off tree branches altogether. And despite how strong they were, none of the jotun were dexterous enough to try and save themselves once they were blown out into the space away from the rest of the tree. The Shadows did their best, grabbing any whole jotun they could and teleporting them back into the fight, but even that didn't save them as such were quickly became rarer.

With no weapons to match that of guns, all the jotun could hope do was try to close, which was a losing game against groups of people who had jump jets and knew how to use them. Even if the current battle was the first time the humans had fought in such a strange environment, their mobility was telling. With Harry's orders to spread out and with the organization and superior firing power of the ODMs and Custodes, the physical battle was slowly ending, even as the telepathic and magical side of the conflict showed no sign of abating.

But Harry knew that for all the jotun posed a threat, the most dangerous part of the Shadows' attack came on the Astral Plane. Stealing a glance upward, Harry grimaced as he saw the strain bleeding through onto the faces of the two telepaths he could see from his current position, Xian and Jean.

Much like when they had attempted to reclaim possession of Hela and assault Harry in the halls of Niflheim, the Shadow's unending telepathic assault came from all around them, crashing down on the minds of the humans and their allies. An all-encompassing fear attempts to fill the Earthers' minds with illusions to try and control them and sensory attacks. All of these and more were represented on the Astral Plane as roiling clouds of blackness or tentacle-likes probes of brown and grey.

But none of it was getting through, feeding the the unfamiliar emotions of shock and horror that Those Who Watch Above In Shadow were currently feeling. Some of their toys, their sources of fun and fuel, had stopped acting like they should and had even killed one of their tethers on the realm of Asgard. And now, when it was time to sweep their toys away and remake them, who came into this realm but the original chaos causer, the human who broken Hela free, the one who had sent a team capable of bringing back the dead body of the soulless one, Sigyn.

{}

Had it just been Harry, their response would've been apocalyptic. But Harry had brought what amounted to a small army, and they had prepared for this a lot over the past 10 days. Whereas the Shadows hadn't had any hint this was happening.

Even worse than that, the Shadows could sense the aspect of Odin, standing among the people from earth, laughing and shouting encouragement. The sensation of the runaway, Amora, was not nearly as bad as knowing all of this was caused by Odin, who the Shadows thought they had been playing for millennia.

Only now did they realize that the destruction of Níðhöggr was not a chance event. It had been planned, and now an aspect of Odin had brought back a strike force. The Shadows still didn't think that the humans could hurt them, but what 'them' would be left without the tethers tying them to Asgard? Those Who Watch Above In Shadow had long left behind any physical shell in their quest to be beyond death. But in so doing, they had left beyond any means of life not bound up in the power they took from their control of the Yggdrasil pocket dimensions. Without it, Those Who Watch Above In Shadow would be simple immaterial souls, shrieking their grief and pain into the void.

Regardless, even as they began to make long-term plans, his betrayal, this show of rebellion, had to be dealt with above anything else. Even as the telepathic assault was paired away, a final magical strike lanced out toward Amora and Wander-Odin. After all, the bodies of those like Amora were just an extremely high-level transfiguration, fake bodies made by the Shadow's magic. The souls within those forms were creations of the Shadows as well, bits of personality and power torn from the original Asgardians.

And as they could create that life, so too could they snuff it out.

For Wander-Odin, this was easy. He was but an aspect of a greater self, a portion of Odin's power and personality broken off to act independently as only a God could have created. He was not a complete soul or mind, and thus he was vulnerable.

The assault crashed into Odin, and he screamed, his very self disintegrating as the Shadows ate of his power, as they would when Odin died during Ragnarök. If the Wander-Odin aspect had been the original, he could have fought this attack off, such was the strain the Shadows were under at that moment thanks to the surrounding magic users. But Wander-Odin had only a very limited understanding of magic that did not directly affect his mission, and his aspect was the Wanderer. And a second later, Wander-Odin simply blinked out of existence.

Nearby, Blink, who had been running several jotun ragged on the same tree branch that Wander-Odin had taken over, making them easy targets for the surrounding troops, stared. "I, I what, what just happened? That didn't look like any teleportation I've ever seen… Oh…"

She looked to nearly collapse, but Thundra saw this and leaped down from the branch she had been fighting on. Thundra grabbed Blink up, retreating quickly as Uzume and Coyote laid down cover with several squads of ODMS.

However, the attack on Amora missed. She dodged to one side, dodging a blow from a jotun even as the attack struck, and warned of the assault on Wander-Odin, Ororo lashed out with her own powers, creating a powerful shield around Amora, who gasped as the shield was splashed with green bolts of energy coming out nowhere.

It was almost like a long-distance killing curse, and Harry shivered at the sight of it. To use spells like that, you had to hate, to want to snuff out the life of another person, not just their lives, you wanted to erase them from existence, a level of raw hatred and loathing for other people that Harry had never been able to convince himself to feel. But it was evident that the Shadows could do so easily. And as the rest of the magical assault lost power, they put more strength into the spell targeting Amora.

Thankfully, Ororo's quick thinking protected Amora for just long enough, and the next second, Kitty grabbed her. "Take a deep breath!" Quickly the two of them were both immaterial, hiding within the tree limb underneath them.

Amora would have panicked at this point if the people that Kitty took into things like this could do so. But they couldn't, and with Kenny's head sticking out and watching the action all around, Amora was hidden within the magical essence of the tree, blinding the Shadow's ability to find her.

But those twin assaults seemed to be the last gasp of the Shadows. Their magical power disappeared from the area around the earthers, and the last jotun was dealt with by a strike from Thunderbird, which removed its head.

"Company commanders, team leaders, sound off," Harry barked, staring over at where he could see Blink slumping down on her knees, staring at where Wander-Odin had been. "Get any wounded to the doctors, and note down any dead."

He watched as Cyclops gently took Blink's arm, guiding her away as he explained to the distraught girl what had happened. "The enemy was waiting for us or reacted almost as soon as we arrived. They were able to attack him somehow, attack him and Amora both. The attack, whatever it was it… it disintegrated Wander-Odin."

Nearby Kitty pulled Amora out from the wood of Yggdrasil, shivering slightly at how close she had come to death just like Wander-Odin. No, it was as if his entire being was snuffed out like a candle. But, but if they were using the same spell on both of us, then, then am I an aspect of someone else? Or….

While Kitty and Wanda tried to make certain Amora didn't collapse into a philosophical dead end, Harry turned his attention to the rest of his people. "Get me numbers, people. How many did we lose?" Even as he asked that he watched Cyclops pull the grieving Blink into his arms, gently stroking her hair as she began to sob into his shoulder.

From here, he could only hear a vague mutter about how "the old curmudgeon grew on me like a weed, add I didn't even like him most of the time. S, so why am I sad he's gone!?"

Watching the two of them, Harry decided that he had never been more proud of the man that Cyclops had become before this. The stiff, straightlaced, by the books Scott Summers that Harry had initially met would have been awkwardness personified at a moment like this or would have entirely left it up to someone else. But since Blink had announced she would like to join the X-Men in America, Cyclops had taken it upon himself to watch over her.

"Twelve of the ODM's dead," Falcon said, alighting nearby shaking his head. "You weren't kidding. Those giants were just nasty. Some of our men were literally torn apart."

"Agreed," Sean announced as he and the other ODM company commanders landed without nearly as much aplomb as their trainer. "But that was in the first few minutes. Once we got the range open, that and our guns…"

"Bolters!" Marcus shouted, holding his gun to him like it was a baby. "These guns are bolters, and this one is mine. I will name him George and pet him and oil him and keep him safe and working forever."

"Ookkay… ignoring that…" Harry shook his head while many of the other troopers looked like they were close to doing the same thing. Although he also noticed the act seemed to be bringing the men out of whatever limited shock they had all been feeling. Veterans all, even the jotun held no real fear for these men. Heck, I wonder if their shock is more because of the illusions and such more than the jotun.

Leaving the ODMs to their commanders and the other units to Steve and his officers, Harry looked around for the bodies, but only two had been recovered. The others had been kicked out into the void surrounding the tree.

"Accio bodies…" he murmured, only to sigh as the spell failed. Those bodies were gone, lost in the void beyond the pocket dimensions of Yggdrasil.

Ororo asked about setting up a small service, but Harry shook his head. "We don't know if the Shadows will attack us again, and you can already see the strain Jean and the others are under protecting our minds. We can't just stay here and wait out those attacks. Let's get moving."

"I agree, although I will warn you. If we spread out, the strain on our telepathic allies and ourselves will rise. We were able to overcome nearly every assault Those Who Watch Above In Shadow sent our way, but even then, they still snuck attacks through," Steven warned. "They are a most slippery foe."

"Agreed, but hopefully, we will be able to find magical allies here and teach them how to spot the Shadow's illusions. On the astral plane, though…" Harry winced.

"Standing around and talking is not making that strain any easier," Jean barked before smirking. "Besides, we're dealing with it well enough so far."

Chuckling at that, Harry began to organize the trip from Yggdrasil down to the dimension of Asgard. That turned out to be quite a sight for most of the earthers, while actually getting across the dimensional gap into Asgard was far simpler than Harry had feared. It was much like jumping from a tree to the ground, only both tree and ground were in different soap bubbles, and you had to pass through the intervening distance, and there was a bit of sheer nothingness between them. And the ground was, in this case, a massive pocket dimension hanging within the boughs of an even larger tree-shaped one.

Analogies did often fail when it came to reality.

It was very disconcerting for several of the men, particularly among the Orbital Drop Marines. But all of them made it safely across in large groups covered by spell work and on equally large carpets. Once in Asgard, they quickly began to organize, with Harry attempting to use magic to detect where to go.

"Point me, Odin," Harry said, holding out a rock he'd picked up from the ground. The spell, however, failed utterly. The stone didn't even twitch, and a few more names of other Asgardians Harry knew amounted to the same thing. "The Shadows are blocking magical means of finding people. I'd hoped a Point Me was too unknown to be blocked like that, but I'm not exactly surprised it didn't work. Obfuscating spells like that is a lot easier than blocking teleportation."

Likewise, Steven and Clea's abilities proved fruitless, and Harry turned to Emma, Jean, and the other telepaths. "What about you all?"

"We can sense several large population centers, but when we try to get a read of what is going on out there via the minds of the individuals involved, the Shadows are blocking us at every turn," Charles announced calmly, sitting in his wheelchair on the flying carpet as if he was simply sitting at home in the mansion, poised and controlled as he had been during the earlier battle.

Emma agreed, although she looked far less poised. "We can give you a direction, but that is about it. We can't dive into any of the minds out there. And even that is tough. The Shadows are pressing in hard."

"What's the matter, Frosty, can't hack it?" Emma Steed taunted, smirking. But the strain on her face was very visible.

"Chains, my dear girl, if you wish to take over this particular bastion, pretty please do so. But it's just like the attack on Hela, Harry," Emma reported, turning away from her self-proclaimed rival with nary a thought. "I can feel the attacks incoming through the telepathic plane, I can get between them and their targets, but I can't sense where the attacks are coming from to launch my own offense . Which is quite bleeding annoying, to use a British idiom."

"Then a direction will have to do," Harry interjected between the two Emma's, looking over to Jean.

She obliged by thrusting out a hand. "Luckily, two of the larger population centers are both in the same general direction."

"Let's get a move on troops. Load up on the magic carpets. They'll get us there faster and without burning through your fuel."

"That is one line I never expected to hear, outside of some alcohol-induced dreams anyway," Tony murmured, watching as everyone who couldn't fly or, like Tony, didn't have an inexhaustible source of power, re-boarded the magic carpets.

With Ororo and several others who could fly under their own power leading the way, the magic carpets made their way across the landscape. And almost as soon as they moved beyond the mountains that marked the 'inner' edge of Asgard, Dani, Amora and Hela all gaped or cursed in shock. "Wh, what has happened!?"

Their shock was easily understandable. Where before Asgard had been a land perennially locked in winter, a land of mountains, dales, plains and above all, green forests, now the land looked diseased. The green of the forests dotting the land had changed to brown. The grass of the plains and the crops of the scattered farms the earthers flew over were gray and poisoned. Even the air looked green.

"I, I don't know," Hela said, staring around her in shock. "Whatever malady this is, it wasn't affecting my realm when I was there but an hour before joining you all at the teleportation point."

"Do you think you can get there now to double-check?"

"Nay," Hela shook her head. "I don't think I can teleport out like that. Not with the Shadows knowing we are here."

"Whatever this is, it might be toxic. I recommend those of us who don't have masks or helmets get some, now," Steven said, his mouth covered by a bit of his living cape.

Nodding, Harry and Ororo went around, giving everyone masks. The Hulk, Thing, Colossus and Husk, some didn't need them. Similarly, Harry was feeling fine. But Wanda, Nightcrawler, and the telepaths were all already showing signs of illness before they took the masks.

This took about thirty minutes, making certain the masks kept out whatever this was and allowed the wearer to breath was a problem. And Harry wanted to make certain Tony, Ghigau, the others, and most worryingly, the ODMs suit kept out whatever the hell this was.

As the rest of the team were preparing for anti-gas warfare, Ororo, her own half-mask in place, spoke through it, already deciding she didn't like the thing but willing to put up with the annoyance. "Do you think we should go ahead, check out the lay of the land?"

Scratching his forehead scar thoughtfully at Ororo's suggestion, Harry nodded. "Polaris, Ororo, Hela, Torch, Cannonball, Banshee, with me. The rest of you stay here. If you could keep overwatch on us, Jean?"

Jean grumbled but called out specifically like that made no move to join them, lying back in her bed of cushions beside Emma and Charles on their magic carpet. Much like with Russia and Galactus (sans the Phoenix Force's direct intervention), she knew that she had no place in fighting this battle, as far along her pregnancy was. Indeed, she'd had an uphill battle even convincing Harry and the others to bring her along at all, only doing so when Emma joined in on her side, saying they needed all the powerful telepaths they could get.

She had prevailed, but once more, Jean found herself behind so many magical protections that Harry estimated she could walk through a field of nukes and come out the other side. "Right. I'll keep watch."

Nodding, Harry sped up, along with the other flyers pushing themselves through the air quickly, leaving Steve and Emma in charge behind them.

scene break

With Balder at the center, Sif and the others at hard points here and there, the battle line on top of the ridge held. The Fire jotun had come up against a defense that they could not break through with sheer strength or numbers. A human force might have been shocked, thrown by the change of tactics in the Asgardian's defense, going from small unit raids to this kind of full-scale battle. The jotun didn't seem to feel that, but the whole invading army was now stopped in its tracks.

Even as the jotun continued to eat any stone they could and grow in increments, with some of them now towering above most of the trees in the forest, the defense continued to hold. And those jotun who did stick out like this were targeted by arrow fire, blinded as several arrows smashed into their eyes, or struck by Thor's lightning from a distance, to crash down among the forest below sending their magma-like blood exploding everywhere to hiss and steam in the ever-growing cold being caused by the catapults special munitions and Thor's magic.

The ground started to rumble and shudder underneath the hill, but the magic in the defensive line meant the wooden palisade stayed in position. The ridge in front of it shifted and moved like mud almost under the touch of Surtur's magic, letting his jotun get up to the battlements easier, but that magic faded as it came to the top of the ridge. And those that reached there were pulled into the swirling melee around Balder, losing a lot of their numbers before they even attacked the palisade.

So stout was the defense that for the first time, Surtur had to think his way through what to do. Staring into the distance at the Bright One, Surtur fought down his fury, the magma-hot rage and hate within him to try and understand how to push through this position. "No… not through. Around."

With that, even as more forces pressed up the hill, the king of Jotunheim ordered his troops to shift to the sides. Instead of pushing directly against the ridgeline, they congregated to the right of it. There, they pushed through the forest, staying away from the height and moving around it to flank the Asgardians' position.

To do so, the jotun shrank back down to their original size, so they could move through the trees without smashing them down. This way, the jotun could sneak forward… as best as twelve feet tall mountains of muscle and made of magma and volcanic rock could.

At the same time, Surtur pulled back several hundred of his biggest, toughest people back. "Go back. Eat. Grow. We will break them one way or the other." With those orders given, Surtur turned and placed his hands back on the ground, closing his eyes as he pressed his will forward, trying to break the enchantments on the land under the ridge. The lava deep in the ground beneath his position roiled at his command and began to rise, but slowly, too slowly. The touch of the two earth goddesses was holding. But it would not hold forever.

Despite the Jotun's attempts to sneak by, Balder and the Jarls had planned for this. While they had used scouts through the forest in front of the ridgeline to warn of the enemy's advance, the sides of the ridge were where they had arrayed the most traps.

Not many, and few of them were of the painful variety. After all, despite the size of the defensive army, they had been ridiculously busy preparing this battlefield. But the traps were connected to bells, bits of iron, or other things that could make noise, drawing the defenders' attention.

Soon the word of that reached Thor, and he guffawed loudly, thrusting his hammer into the air, smashing aside another hurled log, looking over at where Sif was nearby, her own blade flashing out in a series of cuts to slice another log into pieces before it could crash down on top of the battlements. Chunks no larger than a human head still crashed down here and there, but they were taken on the shields of the defenders or simply dodged. "Sif, I go to our right flank to smash these fools who believe that they can get around us. Can you hold here?"

"I will try not to take that as an insult, boisterous one," Sif shot back, defending a man to one side as he stumbled from blocking a spear longer than he was tall.

"AHAHAHA!" Thor laughed loudly, fighting the urge to reach over and pull her into a kiss for some reason. He shook that thought off, then leaped down from the battlements to where his chariot was waiting on the reverse slope and once more, the goats bore him into the air. The men of the battle line cheered seeing him pass by above them and within seconds, Thor was over the area where the noise traps had been. While he was no war leader, no tactician or strategist, every fighting man revered Thor as their true defender.

"For Odin and Valhalla!" Lightning crashed down into the forest, turning trees into so much shrapnel or burning charred wood. Visible now, the jotun snarled in fury and fear as they stared up against the most impossible foe. Spears flew, but the goats twisted this way and that, reminding Thor almost of a human jet fighter he had seen during his time on Earth as they dodged the hurled spears, rocks and arrows coming up at them.

When a few came too close, Thor whirled his hammer, creating a buttress of air around his vehicle. So protected, Thor continued his attack, lashing down at the jotun with lightning. This scattered the jotun attempting to turn the flank of the battle line. A moment later, having created a bit of a runway through the forest, Thor ordered his chariot down into their midst.

With a final flick of his reins, Thor sent the chariot back up into the air, still protected by the bubble of furiously moving wind, as Thor stood there, cheerfully grinning around at the giants. "Well?"

"GRAAA!" The giants grew several feet each and then bellowed and charged. His laughter boomed out once more, Thor charged forward, his hammer flicking this way and that, ending or crippling a jotun's life with every touch.

The battle wavered back and forth. The boulders from the catapults continued to land, weakening the jotun, costing them numbers and energy by the time they reached the barricade at the top of the ridge. That barricade had been hammered here and there, but it hadn't been broken yet, and with the added benefit of height and their better weapons and organization, the warriors, human and Asgardians held the line, even as the humans slowly started to weaken, the poison in the air slowly weighing them down with their added exertions.

More jotun piled into Balder right before the battlements, but he danced among them, sword flicking, shield taking blow after blow. A beacon of hope, the Bright One drew the jotun to him despite Surtur's attempts to order them not to attack him.

The defenders took full advantage of this. Sif, Fandral, Hogun, Tyr and the other commanders made certain the karls and Asgardians kept a steady rate of fire while holding the top of the wall against the Jotun. By this point, most of the jotun were large enough to reach up to the defenders, but the Asgardians had the numbers advantage of the wall.

And the one attempt to flank was now swirling around Thor. The Thunder God's taunting shouts and bellows of laughter galvanized the warriors from one end of the battle line to the other, heard despite the sounds of battle drowning the world.

Slicing a large jotun's leg out from under him, Balder stabbed the creature in the side, punching through armor and flesh alike. As he pulled his blade out and dodged around another massive strike from a jotun's club, Balder was beginning to believe they could win this, all his earlier wary thoughts pushed away.

But several minutes later, those concerns roared back as he noticed that the catapult stones had stopped coming. More of the jotun made it through the forest to try and scale the ridge. There still weren't enough to endanger the defensive line, but there were many more of them now.

Across the battlefield, Surtur felt this, the lack of new cold spells striking his army. And he smiled, pushing his will into the ground even more. Steam and heat began to rise from the ground, fighting Thor's magic and breaking its impact on the battlefield.

Balder wasn't the only one who noticed this lack, although Thor did not, concentrating too much on the battle directly around him. Nor could Balder pull back and figure out what was going on. Tyr, Hogun and even Sif found themselves in a similar position thanks to the heightened pressure on the line.

But one of the human jarls was in a position to do that. The man raced over to the center-most portion of the line, where Balder had been before he leaps down to engage the jotun before the ridgeline. There, he found all of the runners assigned to Balder and bellowed them into motion. "Get back there and see why the catapults aren't firing!"

At that, the runners raced off, each of them taking a slightly different route through the heavy forest. But despite that caution, none of those young men could have prepared for what they found as they raced down the hill and into the forest.

From out of the forest around the back of the battle, dark elves moved. Silent and deadly, the dark elves were clad in dark green and dark blue armor that somehow blended into the forest like magic. They moved through the forest like wraiths, getting ready to attack up the back of the hill.

Other dark elves had struck the catapults and their guards where they had rested in a small dell more than a mile behind the ridge. The catapults were now destroyed, their operators dead.

The runners ran into the forest at the bottom of the hill. Two of the runners died, their throats slit. Two more were speared from behind. Another was garroted, pulled behind a tree and choked.

One turned and dodged a sword strike and raced back up the hill, shrieking in horror. "Dark elves, Dark elves!" Then an arrow took him in the back of the neck, and he fell forward, his eyes dulling as his head hit the ground.

With the element of surprise gone, hundreds of dark elves came up out of the forest, arrows flashing forward before they retreated back into the woods. The men and women of the strategic reserve, a force of over three thousand, howled in rage as they came under this attack, but warned by the runner, they turned, charging into the woods after their harassers.

There, the dark elves waited. Each dark elf was armed with a small buckler shield and long, slightly thin swords, their sword hands protected by basket hilts. As the humans charged forward, the elves moved, dancing around their strikes, their swords flicking out like serpent's tongues.

Few human warriors could respond fast enough, and the blades sunk into unarmored portions of their body, be it thigh, lower leg, shoulder, neck, or face. Wherever an opening could be found, those swords sought them out. Thankfully, the enchantments on the armor of the defenders was proof against any blows that struck it, or else the battle may well have ended quickly, but the need to target weak points kept the battle from turning into a rout. Yet men began to fall, and more dark elves moved out of the woods, slowly surrounding and cutting off the reserve from the battle line.

The Jarls were quickly informed of what was happening. Sif and Hogun were quickly pulled out of the battle line and sent to try and combat the dark elves with a heavy force of archers, despite the weakening effect this had on the defenders on the ridge. All of them knew if this force of dark elves wasn't beaten off fast enough, the battle would be lost thanks to how this weakened the troops on the battlements.

But Sif and Hogun quickly found that the dark elves had indeed come out in force. Their men smashed into the swirling melee under the trees and found every three out of five people around them were dark elves. Even the fire from the Asgardian archers was quickly suppressed.

"Damn it, where is Skadi!?" Sif shouted as her sword sliced a dark elf head from his shoulders. She twisted, and a leg flew before her shield crashed into the face of another dark elf. If you could hit the bastards, they were quite fragile. But they were so fast and accurate the human warriors were not of much use. "It was her job and that of the Valkyries to keep this from happening.

"So sorry…" a voice hissed from nearby, and Sif turned in just enough time to block a blow that would have taken her in the throat. Her sword shrieked as it skittered along that of the dark elf King, Malekith. "But I prefer to choose my own dance partners."

Hogun bellowed and lashed out with a lightning-fast strike from his mace, but Malekith danced around it, and a single spell lashed out, green energy blinding Hogun. Sif's sword too was deflected, and she felt his blade slicing through her hair as she ducked under a sword stroke. Magic or blade, Malekith was a master of both, and Sif knew she was overmatched.

Then Tyr was there, his own sword dancing with Malekith's as he pressed the dark elf back. The spell didn't hold on Hogun for long either, as he smashed several dark elves down before striking as Malekith once more.

The three Asgardians fought on, although Sif was still wondering where her friend Skadi was. Malekith taunted her about it as the battle went on, saying he had captured her, taunting Sif with all the things he would do to her. "And you as well, my dear. Oh yes, I have often wanted to break you to the saddle…"

That tore it, and with a wordless shriek, Sif attacked furiously, disdaining her own defense. Tyr tried to rein her in, but Malekith simply laughed, retreating, pulling them further away from the men they had been commanding.

Once more, it was up to the human Jarls to try and make sense of the chaos of battle. And it was quickly apparent to them that the battle in the woods was going against their men.

Worse, the ground of the hill was rumbling and shaking now, and more large jotun were coming against the palisade now. And they weren't targeting the men on the wall. Rather, they targeted the wood of the wall itself, smashing at it or melting it. The spells were slowly fading, and even the nonmagical Jarls and karls could see it, the wall was starting to take damage where it had not been before.

The Asgardian army was now caught in a vice pushing in on three sides, with the only bright spot being where Thor held the right flank. The left flank was solid for now, but who knew how long that would last? All it would take would be for the jotun to remember there were two flanks or for the dark elves to prove to have more reserves, and they would be attacked from three out of four sides.

"Damn it!" One of the jarls growled angrily. His name was Fangir Snowglare, and he and several of his fellows pulled away from the battle on the ridge to try and decide what to do. "Let's face it, with the dark elves crawling over our asses, it might just be time to die standing, boys."

"Nay." One of the jarls demurred, pointing to the right flank, where Thor's bellowing could still be heard. "We retreat that way. Pull back by segments, and head down the hill in that direction. Send word to Lord Thor, have him smash a road through the forest for us so that we can retreat all the quicker."

"We will come under heavy assault from either side. More and more jotun are coming at us here on the ridge," one of the other jarls warned.

As if to emphasize his words, there came a furious bellow, so loud that it silenced all the warcries across the entire sprawling battlefield. Across the mass of the enemy army, two jotun appeared, so large they looked like hills themselves. The rest of the jotun made way for them, and the creatures, so huge they could eat a normal man without even chewing, moved forward.

But before they could reach the ridge, which they could simply reach directly across to, there was a flash from the right flank, a second later a "BOOOOM!" arose as whatever it was smashed into the chest of one giant, punching straight through into the other one and hurling him off his feet too.

"HAHAhaha! The bigger you are, the better a target, fools!" Thor's bellow responded to the earlier one from the giants.

Every man on the line raised their swords and roared, "THORRR!" Such was the response the defender of the common men had.

But even as his people applauded, Thor caught Mjollnir out of the air, frowning at it. The hammer looked almost like it was starting to melt. But that was impossible, wasn't it? Shaking his head at that and the odd thought the hammer should be stone instead of metal, Thor charged into the next group of jotun.

Back with the jarls, they all nodded as one with Fangir agreed with his fellow's earlier words. "Lord Thor will hold, as will Lord Balder. If Lady Sif and the other gods pulled off the wall to hold the dark elves, we can pull our warriors out before we're fully enveloped. Any losses we take in the doing will be much less than if we were forced to die here."

A consensus was quickly reached, the Jarls retreated to their positions. Soon horns cut through the tumult of battle, and the Jarl commanding the leftmost position pulled away, reinforcing his next most fellow with half his men while sending more the Asgardians under his command to fight with Tyr and the others

Not that the elves were having it all the wrong way because Malekith's words to Sif were indeed very false. Skadi was there, and the Valkyries. While the dark elves had bypassed them before this, Freya had sensed catapults' destruction and sent Skadi a message. Skadi had previously been moving around the battlefield, trying to find and attack Surtur, but pulled back on Freya's command.

Now they came in from every angle, the Valkyries shooting from below and Skadi and a few human hunters attacking from wherever they could. The battle slowly shifted as the battle behind the ridge became as bloody and drawn out as the battle on the ridge.

Yet still, it was the jotun who were the main threat. The rumbling of the ground throughout the battlefield was also now constant. Geysers of steam or streams of lava appeared as cracks in the ridge and elsewhere appeared and more jotun, all of them now four stories tall or more, reached the line.

More men began to pull back, retreating towards Thor's present position, those already wounded or weakened falling where they lay and left there. Word reached him quickly of what was needed and between strikes against the jotun who were still foolishly attempting to surround him. He laid down a furious barrage of lightning and wind strikes, smashing trees to pieces, clearing a road several miles long for the retreating warriors and Asgardians to race along. But at the same time, his hammer started to emit noises, as cracks appeared in the metal.

Thanks to the presence of their jarls, the retreat was a controlled thing even as more and more men died, the attackers pressing in from all sides now, wounds and poison building up in the men. The general battle against the dark elves was proving more deadly to the human warriors than the battle the ridge had been, as they lacked the speed needed to keep up with the dark elves. The dark elves were also simply better trained and, far more experienced than even the oldest warrior spirit. But while Hogun, Sif and Tyr were being taunted and led around by Malekith, the other Asgardians took a heavy toll on the dark elves, as did the Valkyries, their arrows flashing through the foliage.

Soon, half of the defenders from the ridge were gone, and Balder's position was no longer tenable. One of the jarls shouted down at him to retreat along the ridge with them.

In so doing, Boulder protected the men on the ridge still further, allowing them to better disengage. However, more and more of the jotun gained the ridge behind the retreating warriors toward their former left flank. Soon, the retreat was being so threatened from that side that the retreat was in danger of turning into a rout, forcing more of the Asgardians from the fight against the dark elves. Who started to strike at the human warriors who made up the majority of the Einherjar.

"Blast it Thor, use your lightning, not just your hammer! Lay down lightning on the Jotun!" Balder ordered, bellowing to be heard over the tumult of battle. Men were falling in, as unconscionable numbers as more jotun gained the ridge and pushed into the army from there, Asgardian and human both. If this continued, the entire army would be rolled up from that flank even as they tried to disengage from the other two attacks.

"Right!" Thor shouted, backing away from the battle line, letting several dozen humans charge forward to take his place, as he raised his hammer to the clouds above. His earlier attempt to bring down a cold front to battle Surtur's influence had been broken by this point, but Thor's power over the weather was such that even without any prep time, he could summon up a storm of lightning bolts at need.

Lightning rained down in sheets out of the sky, crashing down into the jotun on the hill. The jotun who were struck died or were flung about, while the remnants of the battlements were broken or set afire. This allowed the humans and the few remaining Asgardians facing the jotun to break contact for the most part. Men still died, felled in battle or slowly succumbing to wounds that would not normally have bothered them, the poison Jörmungandr working into their battered bodies.

But the others were able to escape down the hill before the Jotun's main force could try and follow their previous flank assault in striking at where Thor had previously been fighting. There, they began to march down the road Thor had created, retreating from the battlefield.

As the men formed up into combat crews, one of the jarls bellowed, waving a single-bladed axe with a berserker-like fury, forcing the men coming towards him into a shield wall, or rather a shield wedge, holding there as Balder continued his dance behind them to one side. "May Hugin and Mugin take yer eyes, yer pox-cursed cowards, get in line! Shields up! On my word, we will spread, and then close!"

Balder made to speak, but the human Jarl, Egnar Fainaxe, glared back at the Bright One, thrusting his axe out towards where the rest of the army was still under attack from the dark elves. With Thor's lightning cutting off access from the ride and somewhat to both sides, the jotun were too slow now to catch up with most of the army. Although Surtur's power was still causing the ground to quake, steam and magma boiling out of it in places. It truly looked like a scene from the end times, but the humans refused to break.

That still let the forerunners who had come too close to the retreating mass of troops before Thor's lightning hit, and some of the other jotun who had been trying to get around the ridge. "Go! We can at least hold them up a few moments, my Lord, get the rest of our people out!"

Balder hesitated, then raised his sword in a salute even as he raced past the makeshift shield line. "Your sacrifice will be remembered, Egnar."

The human smiled wryly, shaking his head slightly. "If any of us survive, my Lord," he whispered, "if any of us survive."

Then the jotun were on him, and his bellowed order broke up the shield wall. Against jotun, it would have been next to useless. Instead, the humans dodged all around, only two of them proving too slow as the jotun seemingly tried to charge through it. Confused at the lack of impact, the jotun halted confusion while the men pressed in from all sides. Not one of them lived, but they held the first of the jotun coming down the hill in place for a few moments.

Unfortunately, it didn't matter. With the dark elves still attacking furiously from the army's rear and now making an effort to get past Sif and the others, the other eight jotun that Surtur had pulled from his army initially to let them grow came upon them now. And they were huge. Larger than the hill that the fight had been happening on, they now arose out of the distance, stomping towards the army, who could not retreat fast enough.

Even normally, the human army would not have been able to get away from jotun of that huge such was the length of their strides. But now, the very ground was cracking and shifting, spikes of earth appearing, miniature volcanoes erupting everywhere around the army and occasionally within their retreating masses.

Surtur had finally broken through the goddesses' powers defending the area from his influence.

Well behind his army, Surtur smirked slightly to himself, clenching and unclenching his hands as he imagined the slaughter to come. I will gorge on Asgardian flesh!

However, a moment later, he frowned as he saw one of his overly large jotun collapsing. It had been sliced in two by a strike from Balder, a wave of power with all radiance of the sun behind it flashing out from his position. Obviously, even though the battle was lost, the fight had yet to leave the defenders.

Surtur watched as another massive jotun fell, then scowled as he felt a disturbance in the earth as if something was trying to calm it down. Turning his attention away from the physical battle, Surtur leaned down, pressing his hands back into the dirt beneath his feet, and was shocked to find another mind within the earth fighting him, pushing away his influence.

The remaining giant monsters continued, reaching down with huge hands, grabbing up scores of warriors, Asgardian and human alike, tossing them up into their massive maws. Another died to Balder, and a third to Thor while a fourth lost its leg to a strike from Tyr, who, though unable to project power very well, was able to cut through the stone-like skin of the massive giant such was his strength.

As his hammer returned to him once more, Thor twisted around, bringing it to slam into another jotun's face where he had been about to finish off the warrior standing next to Thor. But as he struck, the Mjollnir, the second greatest weapon ever grafted by dvergar skill and magic, Mjollnir, the symbol of Thor's place as a defender of man and god, shattered.

The jotun was hurled off of his feet, but the steel of the hammer's head exploded in every direction, including back into Thor, moving so fast and with so much of his own magic bound up into them that the bits of shrapnel were able to mark Thor's face and upper arms, slicing through his clothing here and there, and tearing through the chain mail armor he wore. One even nearly took out his eye, but Thor might not even have noticed such was his shocked dismay at what had just happened. "What, what?"

But Thor had no time to question what had happened to his hammer, as a giant barreled into him, the larger being knocking Thor off of his feet momentarily so stunned was Thor at the destruction of his hammer. But the impact woke Thor out of his stupor, and he reached up even as they fell, grappling the giant. He ignored the heat of the giant's body to grasp its face and with a roar, twisted its neck sharply to the right. There was a sickening crack, and the giant fell dead.

Grunting, Thor lifted the giant up above his head and hurled it away, smashing down several other jotun. "Mjolnir or no, I am still Thor!" He bellowed, charging forward.

Such was the vagaries of the battlefield that Thor soon found himself beside Balder, who looked at his brother's empty hands in shock. He could not spend the time to question this, though, as they were pressed hard on all sides. The humans had reformed somewhat, but there were still two overlarge giants attacking the army, and now, the main enemy forces were close to attacking once more, thanks to the attacks of their larger brethren and the dark elves.

The only thing Balder could internally remark upon as being good luck up to this point was that Surtur and his dratted spear had yet to show up.

Alas for Balder, someone else did, coming out of the steam from some underground vent to appear beside Balder on his left just as he got down another dark elf and turned his attention to one of the two remaining hill-sized jotun.

"Oh, good show, bright one, truly. It is almost admirable that you Asgardians never know when to stop fighting. Why, it almost makes you like my people, doesn't it?" Malekith said, and Balder turned, barely blocking a thrust from the dark elven king's spear. His block brought the spear to one side, and Malekith whirled, bringing the butt of the shaft around into Balder's leg.

His shield blocked that, but Malekith leaped upward before Balder could write himself, and a kick caught Balder in the face. It didn't hurt much, but it did blind Balder as Malekith twirled, bringing his spear down onto the outside of Balder's shield arm.

Balder was wearing armor on his forearm, and that armor, like the rest of him, was impacted by the blessing of Freya. No stone, steel, alloy or magic could have harmed him without fully overpowering that blessing, something that Malekith should never have been able to do. Armed with a seemingly magical spear of some kind, Surtur had been able to, but that was a special case.

Alas, so too was this. For there was one plant whose spirit had not agreed to refrain from harming Balder: Mistletoe. The spear that Malekith was currently using was tipped with mistletoe.

As if passing through paper, the mistletoe-tipped spear sliced cleanly through Balder's vambrace, cutting a long deep line in his arm.

Balder instantly lost all feeling in his hand, and his circular shield dropped from his grip. But rather than step back in appalled shock and horror at his being wounded so, Balder simply brought his sword around, forcing Malekith back. A series of thrusts and stabs were exchanged, and Malekith was now pushed on the back foot for a moment, Balder's greater strength and skill negating his own greater speed. Yet even so, several times his mistletoe-tipped spear had scored slight scratches, slicing into Balder's lamellar armor here and there.

And on Balder's arm, the skin around the wound was starting to go green and blue with the poison.

Seeing his brother in such dire straits, Thor turned, hurling his opponent, another regular-sized jotun, into several dark elves who had been encircling a nearby group of humans. He then turned and bellowed, charging towards Malekith. "Malekith, I will break you over my knee, you bastard!"

"Ahh, and here comes the dullard, no hammer this time, though. But tell me, Foolish Thor, what is all your strength worth if you can never hit what you aim at," Malekith taunted. With a gesture, he created two simulacrums disappearing from their senses for a moment, even as the two brothers fought his constructs.

As the two brothers were bamboozled, Malekith stood back for a moment, smirking silently at how the battle was going.

One last massive giant remained, smashing into and through the Asgardian force, scattering human and godling alike. Yet still, the warriors did not break. Still they fought, even as more jotun joined caught up with them, even as the dark elves started to envelop them.

Sneering, Malekith tripped Thor, sending him tumbling into a nearby steam vent, his hand flashing out, a gleaming gold chain dropping around Thor's head as he turned, roaring. Thor didn't even seem to notice his new accessory, turning and hurling himself at Malekith.

"Power and strength you might have, but what matters that if you cannot hit your foe?" Malekith taunted, laughing wildly as he dodged around Thor's charge once more.

When Balder moved to attack in turn, Malekith turned, batting aside the weakening Bright One's blow, returning it with his mistletoe tipped spear, which carved through the man's armor once more, creating a thin cut across his stomach. Malekith dodged another punch from Thor with almost laughable ease, tossing up another illusion spell in front of the man, causing him to cry and thrash out, lashing out to every side.

As Thor tried to lunge at Malekith, hands outstretched, Malekith danced out of the way, and Thor's blow caught Balder in the shoulder. Unlike the mistletoe did no harm, but the impact still sent him stumbling. "Thor, by all the gods! Regain control of yourself man!"

"He can't hear you," Malekith guffawed, gesturing to the chain Malekith had looped around Thor's throat. "While I can't kill Thor, unlike you he doesn't have any weaknesses, I was able to enchant that long ago. His ears are being filled with the roar of battle, and his eyes are fooled by my magics And Thor is not nearly bright enough to see through my illusions."

This was proven a moment later as Malekith once more created an illusion. To Thor, it was as if he appeared out of the battlefield to one side, before darting away, taunting the Thunderer. In response, Thor raged, lashing out with a blow at the illusion, darting away and smashing several jotun and human warriors out of the way as he barreled away from Balder.

"You see?" The dark elf king sneered raising his spear and pointing its mistletoe tip towards Balder. "Now, where were we?"

Balder stumbled back, grim-faced, before ducking under a blow from a nearby jotun, the blow catching on the side of his helmet, which tore it away from Balder's head. Twirling around the Jotun, his sword cut into the monster's thigh. Ducking under another blow from another dark elf, he punched out, shattering bone and depositing the dark elf on the ground before Balder once more went blade to spear with Malekith, only to stumble, as another jotun Thor had smashed down a moment ago grabbed at his leg. Balder fell, and Malekith smashed his sword out of his hand with the back sweep of his spear.

"You are good," Malekith said with a laugh. "But not good enough to overcome your sole weakness. Die Bright One and know that your death will be the final toll signaling the Ragnarök."

And then, there was a series of sharp explosions. Several unseen somethings crashed into the massive giant, exploding upon impact, sending bits of giant flesh and magma-like blood everywhere. Several men died from being struck by the lava-like blood, but everyone, elf, giant and beleaguered defender alike, stared in shock, wondering what had happened. That impact matched nothing anyone there had ever seen.

A second later, other explosions erupted throughout the jotun horde, halting their attempts to catch the Asgardian army. And a shield of some kind crashed into Malekith's armored back, sending him flying.

From seemingly nowhere, music began to blast over the battlefield aid as unlooked-for arrived with a roar of, "Then the Winged Hussars arrived!"

scene break

As the battle on the ridge truly began to go against the Asgardians, Jean contacted Harry mind to mind. "Harry, you're coming to where you should see one of the population centers. It's by far the smaller of the two, but it is under mental assault."

"Roger," Harry intoned, holding up his hand in signaling that the Flyers should all slow down, speaking aloud through their communication gear so the others could hear without Jean straining herself to create a telepathic communication line. "What kind of mental assault are we talking about?"

"The Shadows are still hammering into us here, but they sent some kind of telepathic attack that way. I disrupted it, but if the Shadows do what they did to us when we arrived, you might run into magical stuff when you get there," Jean supplied, answering in the same format now that Harry had reminded her, although this way, Harry could hear the strain in her voice far more. The trio of most powerful telepaths were under an immense strain, much more so than Emma and Charles had in Genosha during the campaign against Sinister.

Harry nodded, reflecting that long-range telepathic combat like this was intrinsically weird. "Thanks for the heads up Jean. We'll be ready." With that, he ordered the flyers to spread out, with Ororo flying slightly higher than the others and Harry down almost directly above the tree line. This way, they could hopefully see and intercept any magical-type attack before it got to Polaris, Cannonball, Banshee or the Human Torch.

It was well they had because a few moments later, just as Harry saw what looked like a large military camp, complete with a small outer wall, they came under fire. Arrows fired at a far greater distance than any human would've been able to do, a few spells and spikes of rock and dirt rising from below to flash towards the flyers as if they were missiles.

"Spread out and defend yourselves, but don't retaliate just yet!" Harry bellowed into the communicator device that was part of his helmet. "We don't know what kind of illusion or mental control the Shadows are trying to use here, and we can't afford to make enemies among the Asgardians."

Ororo and the other flyers all responded in the affirmative, although Banshee grumbled that "A bit of my personal song would probably do the locals a bit of good." One of the attacks had come close to nipping him.

As they spread out, Harry issued specific orders. "Polaris, be ready to pull weapons out of hands. Cannonball, I might want you to snipe someone for me. Just grab them and carry them up to us. Beyond that, you and Torch should keep an eye on the forest around the camp. Ororo, Hela, with me."

"Calling that a forest at this point is just wrong, Guardian," Johnny muttered, looking a little sick. I've heard of the effects of pollution, but this is like that multiplied by a thousand and then sped up.

The flyers continued forward with Harry using a Protego at one point when Polaris was busy dodging some arrows and nearly clipped the top of the tree. But after another five minutes of wild evasion, they came close enough to make out details within the camp.

The camp consisted of dwarves or rather dvergar, along with a few dozen short, long-limbed elves. There were far more humans and Asgardians, although there didn't seem to be many menfolk. Most of the humans, elves and dvergar were dressed in what Harry mentally categorized as semi-medieval farmer's garb. Those not dressed in such a manner seemed to wear either extremely good clothing from the same general era or armor complete with helmets with wings on the side of them. Ah, those have to be Valkyrie. And the others…

Harry's thoughts stopped as he spotted the woman standing in an open area directly in the center of the camp, marked by what looked like an artificial pool, the water of which had frozen. She was a perfect example of a middle-aged drop-dead gorgeous woman, who, most importantly to Harry, was currently wielding a long broadsword as she directed spells up towards Harry and the others.

"Let me guess! That must be Freya, right? Because damn, if I thought that I could get close to that, sign me up for Sunday Mass, or whatever it is," Johnny quipped.

"Do you expect me to give you points for that? It is rather obvious that she is a goddess, is it not?" Hela said as she darted to one side, dodging blasts of power from the woman who, physically speaking, could almost be said to be her exact opposite. Where Hela's skin was pale white, her hair as black as night, and her body lithe with youthful vigor, Freya was a middle-aged beauty, her skin a ruddy pink that spoke of good health and outdoor living, the blonde hair a stark contrast to Hela's own. Which didn't even consider that Hela was wearing her mask and a faceless helmet, while Freya was wearing not even a helmet, simply a band of gold and silver around her forehead, the crown of her position as Queen rather than any material defense.

Shaking his head at Johnny's horndog nature, Harry flew forward faster than before. He dodged through a few spells only to run into a whole wall of arrows as one of the Valkyries shouted, "fire!" And another goddess nearby used a spell that multiplied the arrows in midflight.

Several arrows struck Harry, not penetrating his Crysis Suit but still knocking him sideways in the air. Harry moved with it, rolling as he struck the ground. Once on the ground, he flung his hands up in either direction, creating a shield around himself which stopped the next few attacks aimed his way. With a thought, he then thrust his shield outward, exploding it in a chorus skating blast of light, noise and magic. This acted like an extra-large flashbang, stunning the people nearby. "Banshee, make some noise! Cannonball, change of plans, disrupt the magic users. Polaris, do your thing."

"Cease-firEEEEEE!" Banshee bellowed, the words carrying along with his banshee streak, causing many of the defenders, including several dwarves who had raced forward with hammers to engage Harry, to fall to their knees, clapping their hands over their ears. Freya and the other Asgardians simply stumbled back, not bothered overmuch by the blast of noise and light, readying another assault.

But Harry had already created another shield spell around himself, and then Cannonball struck, blasting through the camp from one side to another before turning around and coming back in. Although each time he sent women flying, he did apologize for it. "Sorry, missus, but orders're orders, and you all did start this little fracas."

Meanwhile, Polaris also struck. Thankfully, her power over magnetism worked quite well on the weapons of the Asgardians and their followers. Soon hundreds of weapons were flying out of hands and into the air, although to Lorna's amusement, several of the dvergar refused to let their hammers go. They rose into the air with them, flailing and cursing.

While Banshee joined in and Johnny aimed down at the Valkyries, causing them to scatter further, Hela, Ororo and Harry gathered their magic. A few minutes after the chaotic battle began, Harry thrust out his hands as Ororo did the same from above, the two of them shouting out, "Finite Incantatum!"

Whatever strength the Shadows had in magic, and it was considerable, Harry and Ororo were equally powerful. With Hela doing the same with her own brand of magic, they were able to override the illusions that had covered the eyes of Freya and the other defenders.

For Freya, it was as if the world had suddenly shifted underneath her feet. Reality changed, and what had been flying lizards of some variety were now replaced by men and women. Men and women who she did not know, but one she knew, if only in passing. "What, what was… Hela, if this is some kind of jape on your part or if you have thrown in your lot with your fell brothers I…"

Ironically, if the Shadows had not instantly moved to retaliate at their illusions being broken, Hela and Freya might well have come to blows, regardless of the dire situation. While she loathed Jörmungandr, Hela held views on how Fenrir had been treated and would well have screamed them into Queen Freya's face for that little remark.

But they did, and a massive telepathic assault slammed down across the camp while at the same time the illusion magic tried to reassert itself. A second later, two dozen jotun and a hundred dark elves were pulled from the main battle and dumped here. The fire jotun, the chief tool for such moves, appeared throughout the camp while the dark elves were outside, for some reason.

Not that this mattered overmuch as, after a brief second of confusion, they instantly began to pour in through the openings made a moment ago by Cannonball. While the people of Svartalfheimwere not willing tools of the Shadows, they hated Asgard and would never look such a serendipitous moment in the mouth.

Even as Harry and Ororo shattered the illusions, the jotun and the telepathic assault hit. Jean, Charles and Emma instantly began working overtime from their distant position to keep it from taking hold in the minds of the beleaguered Asgardians, including Hela. Meanwhile, they too were under mental and magical assault but still being in the air, they were not dealing with jotun or dark elves attacking them.

Several dwarves were smashed flat, their bodies literally compressed as their bones and innards were crushed by the jotun who were wielding massive clubs. An elf and one of the Valkyries were also slain before the others could see the danger in their midst.

However, the earthers responded just as quickly now as they had when attacked in the boughs of Yggdrasil. As Cannonball and Johnny Torch gained distance and started to strafe the dark elves outside the camp, Hela launched herself at one giant, shrieking out, "for what you have done to my family, I will have my vengeance!"

Although they were mere pawns to Those Who Watch Above In Shadow, the jotun were willing ones, in the main. Thus Hela felt her shout of vengeance was fully justified. That, and shouting it in the face of her enemies was just much more satisfying than yelling at the ether.

Hela's sword sliced cleanly through one jotun torso regardless of its obsidian armor, then flashed up into the face of another one, cutting across it and destroying the jotun's eyes as he stumbled backward, dropping his club. Two of the nearby dwarves slammed hammers into its knees, sending it collapsing to the ground, where one of the Valkyries stabbed through the neck before it could rise, backing away quickly as blood spurted. But despite her speed, her weapon began to dissolve in the lava-like blood of the creature.

Alas, time had been an issue even when it came to enchanting the army's weapons. Many of the Valkyries and other scout or rear-type troops didn't have melee weapons so enchanted.

Reminded of that fact by the sight of an elf losing his blade similarly, Freya shouted out orders. "Valkyries spread out, dwarves and Asgardians to me! Elves to the wall!"

Freya charged forward with that, and a shrieking cry sounded almost like a hunting hawk. Wielding her broadsword with both hands, she chopped one jotun in half, then leaped up over a strike, bringing her sword down and bisecting that jotun. Hmm, neither of them have armor, nor are their weapons swords or spears, but clubs. Good to know we are not the only ones facing such difficulties.

Even as she thought on that point, Freya channeled magic into her blade. No enchanted weapon like her husband's spear or Mjollnir, the blade still could take an enchantment well and once more glowed with magic. Freya wielded it almost as if it was as light as a cutlass for a few seconds, slicing several other jotun into pieces, although she wasn't quite as careful as she should have been. The blood of her opponents splashed everywhere, and several of the human women cried out in agony as they were struck by droplets of lava even as they tried to flee.

And any wound, no matter how small, let in the poison of Jörmungandr. Many a woman who had only taken a few drops of lava to their arms or legs succumbed within seconds, their skin turning green and then black around the wounds, which sped quickly.

Grimacing, Freya was about to use her seidr powers before one of the human men who she did not know gestured. As fast as an eyeblink, the spell solidified, creating shields around several of the womenfolk, while another woman, this one with skin as brown as the odd cocoa substance that her sons had brought back from Earth, landed nearby. Her eyes glowed white, and she radiated a kind of power that Freya had not seen before.

An instant later blasts of extreme cold and wind began to strike the jotun. Those close by the woman's targets slowed so cold their lava-like blood started to chill within their bodies, their eyes widening in almost comical horror to the watching Freya. But this was still better than what happened to the black woman's actual targets, as the wind blasts launched at them took their heads off their shoulders as easily as a child could pluck an apple from a tree.

While Harry dealt with the defense of the noncombatants, he let Ororo, Hela and the locals take the fight to the giants. Instead, he focused on the Shadows, stopping them from using more illusions to muddy the waters. In a melee like this, especially with all the camp material and everything else around them, illusions could prove deadly, and the Shadows kept on trying to use them to force the Asgardians to see the humans as enemies. Elves and the noncombatants started to gather around him, his magical shield occasionally growing as he worked.

Above the camp, Banshee and Polaris were working together. Banshee launched his sonic screams at any jotun he could target without striking any defenders. Polaris had also returned most of the blades she had previously stolen and now used her powers to grab up every discarded sword and hammer she could, sending them at the jotun in various places throughout the camp.

Witnessing what happened when several hammers were hurled into a jotun with all the power of a hurricane, Freya had to admit, Whatever these humans are, they are powerful indeed! Although I do wonder where they came from and why they are here.

The battle within the camp was frenetic, so much so it was impossible for Harry or Freya to follow in its entirety from their position on the ground. Thanks to the number of tents, temporary long houses, and other obstructions blinded anyone on the ground from seeing the total of the battlefield. However, Ororo pulled back into the air and directed the other flyers into enemy concentrations. In particular, Torch was proving a terror to the dark elves. Their arrows melted into non-aerodynamic blobs long before they reached him, and his return blasts turned the dark elves into torches.

But the confusion was even worse on the telepathic plane. There, blackness roiled, spreading in from all sides both around the Asgardians' camp and the human forces. Tentacles of fear and power flashed out from that mass of blinding darkness, trying to get past the defenses of the trio of powerful telepaths. The magical assault striking the main human formation also pushed the other magic users hard. Even Dr. Strange was feeling it. He wasn't used to this near-constant medium-scale use of magic, being far more used to short, explosive uses of high-end magic whenever he fought in the past.

But he was handling it, and Harry, Ororo and Hela were pushing the attacks here back with some difficulty given Harry's need to split his attention. They were soon joined by Clea, who flew forward to aid their efforts on Strange's orders. When she arrived to add her might to theirs, the Shadow's constant attempts to use illusions broke for a few seconds, and Harry thrust his hands out to either side, staring on the ground past his shields. "Shi Jundai!"

People throughout the camp yelled in surprise as large clay men rose out of the ground, wielding massive clay blades. But clay or no, when those blades struck, giant and dark elf fell as Harry barked out, "Target the blue-skinned ones with long hair and the giant men with no neck and wielding clubs."

Almost instantly, the jotun who saw the golems roared as one, even more furious than normal. It seemed they somehow took the golems as an insult. Other golems picked up the noncombatants and began to carry them towards Harry's defensive area, defending them as they did.

The Shadows responded by bringing in still more troops and doubling down on their attempts to use illusions. This pulled Hela away from the physical contest to help Clea solely on that front. But with the golems, the Asgardians and humans were still holding their own.

Thankfully, Ororo and Clea didn't need to defend the rest of the Earthers for long from the illusions and aura of fear the Shadows were sending after them because not more than twenty minutes later, Steve saw the camp in the distance and ordered the troopers forward. "By squads, Oh Damns! Heavies remain in place, lay down suppressive fire. Husband your mortar and rocket ammo, for now. The rest, weapons free!"

"You heard the man move!" Sean and the other company commanders roared in response. The order was passed down to the squad level quickly, and a second later, the ODMs erupted out from the flying carpets, using their jet packs to spread like a flower in bloom.

This the ODMs did on the jotun attacking the camp or the dark elves that Cannonball and the Human Torch had been fighting outside the palisade, accompanied by shouts over the radio. "Woo, get some!"

"Say hello to my little friend."

"Conscript reporting!"

Those dark elf formations, if they could be called that at this point, completely wilted under this new assault. Boomstick or Bolter, whichever you wanted to call the rifles of the regular Orbital Drop Marines, they could not be stopped by the dark elves' armor, and once they struck, the small gyro-rockets exploded, turning the dark elves into so much offal.

However, the ODMs didn't have it all their own way. While the majority of the night elves were breaking, some weren't. Instead, they were firing back at the ODMs, their hands blurring as they sent arrows towards the armored men far faster than any human could have.

One of the troopers had apparently decided not to bother dodging arrows. A moment later, the man was smashed off his feet like he'd been hit by a cannonball.

His Corporal began to curse the man out volubly even as he moved to assist the battered trooper back into the air. "Private Warner if you are still alive son, you won't be for long when I get my hands on you! What kind of damn fool takes a blow when he can dodge!?"

"Sorry Sarge," the younger man grunted. "Those arrows have some kind of magic to them guys. I think I've got a broken rib at least, and it was just a grazing shot."

"What part of dodge fools do you not understand?" the the squad's sergeant shouted back. "You will be on KP duty for the rest of your pathetic little life for that stunt!"

Like in the initial battle, the effect of the Bolters on the jotun wasn't as dramatic, but the armor of the few jotun wearing any couldn't stop the bolter rounds. The armor would explode, taking large chunks of the jotun underneath with it. It took three rounds to down a jotun, while one round was enough for a dark elf.

Snipers like Nikolai, Carol, Wyatt and Dani stayed in the air, firing down at the masses of jotun within the camp, ignoring the now fleeing dark elves. Shots through the eye or mouth killed jotun throughout the camp, although again, their railgun rounds didn't do much damage otherwise. in contrast, Cyclops' blasts shattered any jotun they struck, hurling their broken bodies backward.

Minutes later, Colossus led the rest of the Custodes and X-men down to the ground, taking the fight to the dark elves and jotun within the camp. With this new wave of aid, Freya and her fellow goddesses fell back, adding their powers to protecting the camp from the illusion magic with difficulty. None of them had any real experience dealing with this type of illusion-based magic, and the raw power of it put even Freya to shame. Yet now that the two battlefields had merged, the earth magic users gathered were able to beat off the Shadows assault with some ease.

About twenty minutes after the ODMs and custodes arrived, Charles reported that the telepathic assault too had begun to wane, much to the relief of Emma and Jean, most particularly Jean. She had never faced a telepathic battle like this one before, while Charles and Emma had. But Jean had power to spare and quickly started to recover despite her pregnant state.

"My thanks for your help, strangers," Freya said, staring across at Harry, discerning with ease who led this group.

She looked away for a moment as Tony Stark landed nearby, along with several others. Tony had taken part in the battle out in the woodland beyond the camp like Colossus and many of the others but now rocketed over the palisade, shaking his head as he looked around, his visor falling away except for a small airbreather around his nose. "Really, dwarves, elves, and a wooden palisade. How quaint."

He caught sight of Freya and bowed grandly before flirting with the middle-aged beauty. "Do forgive me, dear lady, but we on Earth are a bit past the stone and wood construction phase. Although true loveliness such as yours would never be out of place. But that vision has yet to be seen in its full import where I come from. Would you like to come back to Earth with me to correct that? I could have artists by the boatload knocking at my door to pain or sculpt your form."

"A well-turned line does not mean ought to me. Especially since I can see that you are in love with someone else," Freya announced dryly, waving him off, causing Tony to stumble in shock. He opened his mouth, but she raised a hand. "I am the goddess of love, not just war and magic. Think you I do not know the hearts of men? You would do best to embrace your love rather than continually try to deny it."

Each word she spoke hit like a tiny arrow, and Tony winced, the truth of them spreading through his mind as Freya had wished. Despite that, Tony probably would still have tried to argue that he and Pepper weren't that serious automatically, if not for Steve tapping him on the shoulder. "She really is the goddess of love in Norse mythology. Just be glad that she didn't take your flirting with a married woman as something to get angry about. She could just as easily have made you fall in love with a toad."

"Nay. As I said, I can sense the love between him and this woman of his, and I would not muddle with it," Freya demurred. "And well do I know that habits can be hard to break. But it will be most rewarding to you if you can do so as it was for me."

"Married life? Really? How droll," Tony muttered, although Harry noticed he did look a little pensive.

Turning back to Harry, Freya addressed him pulling his attention away from Tony in turn as others began to move through the camp nearby, helping the locals recover from the chaos. "Yet aid unlooked-for often carries a price one is unwilling to pay. Pray tell me sir what brought you and your army forth from Earth? And indeed, how did you get here at all? For it was my Lord husband's edict that all contact with Earth be broken."

Staring back at her from behind his visor, Harry debated with Hela for a few moments via the mental link Jean was sustaining between them on whether they should come clean about the Shadows. But Hela decided against it.

Like most gods and goddesses, Freya was prideful. If she had no knowledge of the Shadows before this, then trying to convince her that she and the rest of Asgard as a whole, and Odin, in particular, had been under the thrall of another entity, would not go over well.

"Lord Odin released one of his aspects into Earth in preparation for the Ragnarök, my lady. He helped us in the past release Hela hear from endurance file, and she has become one of my…"

Freya interrupted then, clapping her hands together and for a moment, looking almost like a teenage girl instead of a middle-aged queen as she stared between Harry and Hela and the nearby Ororo, Jean and Emma. "My word! A pyramid! Fascinating to see the bonds of affection and love between all of you. Magnificent, in fact." She then seemed to fight with herself, pushing that aspect down, returning to the grim-faced war leader that Freya needed to be at present.

As she did, she caught sight of Amara, and her eyes widened, as did the sorceress's. For a few fulminating seconds, the two blonde women stared at one another, and then Amara turned away hastily, shuddering as Freya gulped, also shivering. Something had passed between them just then, but Harry, despite having his magical senses on full blast, wasn't certain what it was.

"Perhaps my heart, we have just seen the meeting between an aspect and the original?" Ororo questioned. "Amara is not mentioned anywhere in Norse Mythology, and Freya's magical prowess is supposed to be as good as Lord Odin's."

Having read up on Norse mythology, Emma agreed. Hela did as well, although she added the caveat, "If that is the case, I believe that Amara has differed too much from Freya to be returned on to her. Whatever that might have been like in this instance."

By the time their private conversation had completed, Freya had regained control of herself once again, looking back at Harry in a wordless request for more information. Harry spent a few minutes explaining how they had arrived, the destruction of Wander-Odin, and the various strengths and abilities that they would bring to the battle.

"Although I am concerned about the poison. We weren't prepared for that, and I have no idea what is causing it. And although we were able to provide defense against it quickly, I saw its effect on your wounded, and that is… concerning." Harry ended with a grimace.

"That would be the breath of the great serpent," Freya answered, her face pensive as she went over all the humans had heard. "This is the Ragnarök, Jarl Potter, and all our enemies have come to tear us down at once. Monsters we had long banished, coming for our blood once more."

"Or for the first time," Dani mumbled from nearby as she set her rifle on her back. "Harry, I've looked around. There's no sign of Fenrir around here. Or if there is, the battle's covered it up to the point I can't see it."

"You look for the Dread Wolf?" Freya nearly scoffed, shaking her head. "Believe me, if it was on this battlefield, this battle would not have gone nearly as well for us. Naught can stand against the beast of doom when it…"

Freya found herself interrupted quite rudely as Dani turned to her, glaring, her helmet underneath one arm. "And why would you expect anything different? You banished Fenrir. You treated him like a monster because of prophecy, not even because he was born a wolf of tremendous size, or you could tell that he would become a danger. No, you banished him because of prophecy," Dani spent the word, shaking her head. "How foolish is that? All you do when you do something like that is make the prophecy come true."

Freya side shaking her head. Normally she would be angry at being spoken to like that, but on this topic, she actually agreed. "So I thought as well. We should have done more to befriend Fenrir, to be proactive about it in a positive manner as I was in ensuring my son Balder's defense against aught that could harm him and thus start the Ragnarök. But I was overruled by my king and husband, Odin. He, and indeed others, including Loki, Fenrir's own father, thought to exile him as we had the great serpent, who had already proven a terrible danger by that point."

She looked over apologetically at Hela, who simply shrugged. "I agree with the treatment of the serpent. He was always mean-spirited and hungry. But Fenrir, Fenrir could have been treated far better. He and I kept in contact over the millennia, and I did my best to help him deal with his anger. I cannot say I had much luck."

Not with the Shadows doing all they could and my being forced to leave lest I find myself under their sway once more, Hela added mentally. "But that is neither here nor there. Tell us of the war."

They were interrupted then as one of the dwarves smacked his hand against the thigh of Tony's suit, listening for a moment and shaking his head. "You don't have the mixture quite right there. Not enough aglrea. Not for mobility and strength combined at the very least."

"Excuse me!? I went through hundreds of experiments on what kind of metallurgical mix was appropriate for my armor. I don't care what magic you have, little man, my armor is perfect."

"Bah! Nothing is ever perfect. Perfection is what you strive for, to always get better. And I say that this leg at the very least is of poor quality to what it could be in terms of the metals involved," the dvergar retorted.

"Gentlemen, we are all on the same side. Perhaps putting artistic and metallurgical matters to one side would best serve us now? Tony, get set up somewhere with the repair and resupply assembly stations we need. Lady Freya, sorry for the interruption, but you were saying?" Harry questioned politely. "What exactly is going on with this Ragnarök?"

While the two leaders talked, the camp was put right, and Moira and the other doctors set up the aid station as Tony went to work with the Dvergar to set up the necessary machinery to repair or rearm the troops. Emma, Charles, and Jean moved to the camp center, where Charles was made comfortable in his wheelchair, and the two women gathered around him just in time to see off another psychic assault.

Meanwhile, Freya explained what had been going on in this war since the last time Asgard had been open to Earth. In the distance, the sounds of battle could barely be heard here, but it was getting louder, and the ground underneath them was already starting to shiver and quake.

The news of the Odinsleep was immensely disturbing to Harry and the others who knew anything about Odin or indeed magic. Steven Strange was called in at that point, and even he was deeply concerned by the idea of a Sky Father being so ensorcelled.

"We need to free him from that sleep. The longer Odin is so asleep, the more of his power and self becomes vulnerable to becoming tainted or twisted."

Freya made to protest, but Harry simply asked her, "Even if this Odin sleep is natural as you say, madam, this is Ragnarök. Something could happen to Odin, so we need to check on him. And we have already proven that we have magic and abilities that you don't."

The Queen of Asgard could not gainsay that, and soon, Harry and Steve went over a map, arguing quietly with Freya about their priorities. Both humans wanted to concentrate on the army of jotun, but Freya was just as concerned about Fenrir, to say nothing about Jörmungandr. "His poison has killed more men, especially women and children, than the jotun invaders. He is not the in-your-face problem, but he is the greater one, for certain."

Harry was forced to admit that, as any damage to the ODM's helmets, or indeed most of the rest of the team, could prove fatal in the long term despite their medical aid.

Eventually, after around fifteen minutes of discussion, Harry reluctantly agreed to break off more than the one team he had already decided to break off in search of Fenrir. "Ororo, you'll take the strongest members of the team with you to deal with the Jörmungandr somehow. You don't have to kill them. Just stop him from releasing his poison further into the atmosphere. We've thought about fighting him before this, so just follow the plan and hold his attention until Thor or I arrive."

"Be warned, where Jörmungandr breaths out his special toxin, it spreads quickly. He also has created dozens of massive waves, which have destroyed numerous hamlets near or on the shoreline," Freya said, shaking her head. "And of our people, naught but my husband or Thor could deal with him, and Thor would die in the doing. Needling him, taking his attention away from breathing his foul gas could be doable, but is very much like poking a bear the size of a mountain."

The team members who had been on the mission to retrieve Sigyn's body could well believe that. There was nothing on Earth to match the size of Jörmungandr, and indeed, the only creature any of them had come into contact with that was on the same scale was Galactus.

"And you're positive that we need to free Odin as fast as possible?" Jean asked, worried about that aspect of the discussion, which had also changed their plans going forward. She had been listening in on the conversation until now and was becoming deeply concerned. Yes, they brought a ship ton of firepower, but still, diluting it into smaller teams like this? "You could go with the group to deal with Jörmungandr and then free Odin."

Instead of answering Jean's concerns directly, Harry looked at Freya. "Tell me, did you have any hint that all of you were acting underneath an illusion when you were attacking us?"

"None at all," Freya answered instantly. "Indeed, that transition was so smooth that I did not even detect any buildup in magic around us. Nor did I sense such a spell during the battle when you and your magic-using brethren saw them off earlier. I can follow your spells, add my power to them, but I cannot sense the targets you so assault."

Freya allowed a faint smile to appear on her face as she said this. Despite the seriousness of the discussion, she was still somewhat amused at a man beyond her husband and Loki (whose gender was quite… fluid) willfully using magic spells. Using magic, yes, every Asgardian did to a certain extent, to enhance their bodies or their weapons or interact with their purview, like Thor could the weather or Balder the sun. But that was vastly different from using actual spells, manipulating magic beyond that limited scope, which had always been seen as women's work.

"And if the… individuals… who were able to use those spells on you attempted to do so on Odin and were also able to wake him up, would he be able to see through it?" Harry asked slowly, building up to his question through a series of small lies, considering they all knew who was behind this after all.

"… I want to say that Odin would see through it. Part of his ability is to discern truth from fiction, after all. And yet, when it comes to magic, he and I are closer in terms of how we can manipulate it than otherwise." Freya scowled, then admitted. "I do not think that he would be able to see through it quickly."

"We need to free Odin as quickly as possible then," Harry said with a sigh. "Which means Hela and I need to break off quickly, and that means it will be on Ororo and the others to bait the serpent from the ocean."

"That and remember that the Asgardians don't have any natural defense against telepathic assault. Or are you saying the three of you would be able to figure out and stop an assault on Odin wherever he is in Asgard while also being attacked here?" Silence answered Harry's rhetorical question, and he sighed while nodding. "This Odin sleep has complicated things tremendously, as has the fact that Jörmungandr is having such an impact already. We need to stop the one and wake him up from the other."

Freya snorted, but Ororo just nodded, having heard both sides of the conversation. "Indeed. Luckily, we have tools available to fight Jörmungandr. Whether or not we will win is a question, but if you're certain Harry that you need to be the one to wake up Odin…"

"I'd like to send Wanda and Amora, but I doubt they are strong enough," Harry admitted. "Amora doesn't have any natural defense on the telepathic plane, and I don't know if either of them or even combined would be powerful enough to break whatever enchantment is on Odin. And Steven needs to be here to defend the camp and the assault team if I'm not here. And between us, I've got the better chance of freeing Odin."

"Verily. I can feel your power, seidr man, and I know it is immense. In truth, you could be more powerful than I, in terms of raw magic at any rate," Freya admitted with becoming grace. "But if there is indeed a spell on my husband, it would need someone of your strength and someone most skilled to remove it if such a thing is in truth there at all. Do recall that I have said several times now that the Odinsleep is a natural event. It is just its timing at this moment that is most distressing."

"I understand that you believe that lady Freya, but we don't, as nowhere in the tales and histories that mention the Aesir and Vanir is such an event mentioned." Hell, I'm just glad that the Shadows didn't have time to place any greater control spell inside Freya or any of the others. That would've been very bad indeed.

"We took them by surprise Harry, both arriving as we did and in such strength. They have been scrambling ever since, and I don't think that the Shadows are good scramblers," Emma said, even as she, Jean and Charles sent out to their power into the telepathic plane again to ward off yet another assault from that angle. 'You're right, we need to strike at Odin, get him freed from this Odinsleep thing before using him against us occurs to them. I don't think any of us want to see that happen."

Eventually, it was decided that only Harry and Hela would head to Asgard the city. Even with Team Fishermen broken off, along with the quintet of Garm, Dani, Betsy, Clea and Johnny, the main force would still leave with enough firepower, both normal-style and non, to aid the Asgardians against Surtur's hordes.

Leaving Freya for the moment, Harry and Ororo decided who would go with her to attack Jörmungandr. This was relatively easy, as it simply built on the plan they already had. But the reality of the pressures they had found here meant the plan did have to change slightly. That change came in three women: Wanda, Xian and Emma Steed. Having two telepaths with the team would add to the protection they could call on, and Ororo could help on the magical side of things.

Of course, that demanded that Emma and Xian, along with Rogue and Thundra, needed to be given a means of transportation. There weren't enough magic carpets to go around, not when they talked about providing for aerial combat. But Harry and Kitty had thought of that too, and Harry had decided to take a page from his old world.

Emma and Xian ruefully stared at the broomsticks in Kitty's hands then at one another, an odd moment of comradery between the two young women whose backgrounds could not be any more different. "I realize that we practiced with these things, and yet, even with my enforced association with that bitch Selene, I can barely fathom that we will actually be using them to fly into battle. 'Cauldron burn, and cauldron bubble' indeed."

Xian snorted. "At least you come from a culture where magic and broomsticks like this came together. Witches and broomsticks have never been part of Vietnamese culture."

"Stop complaining. At least you too can ride those things without them creaking every time you try to shift direction," the Thing muttered, shaking his head from where he was pouting as he looked at the broomstick in Thundra's hands. "Damn, but I bet I could perform some mad turns on that."

"Face it, ya big lug, someone as heavy as you could never fly like me," Johnny chortled as Ben's girlfriend whooped, flying straight up on her broomstick.

The rest of Team Fisherman soon followed on their broomstick and smaller flying carpets, with Clea and Ororo, the only natural flyers among them, staying behind to bid farewell to Harry and Steven before racing after their fellows.

Freya wrote out a note, a formal missive to the last guardian, Heimdall, to allow them to pass. "Hand this to Heimdall first thing, tell him that you are there on my word of honor, and he will allow you over the Bifrost bridge."

"Do you think he will be afflicted by the same illusions and magic that you were?" Hela asked, crossing her arms as Harry took the message and stowed it in his magical pouch.

"…" Freya fell silent again and then breathed in deeply, clenching her hands together as she remembered how she and her ladies had been tricked so badly, resulting in even more attacks on them all. "Yes. It is more likely than not that even Heimdall would be taken in by those illusions. If you can but shatter them for a moment, his power of All-seeing will come into its own, but given how well those illusions worked on me, I cannot say that even he would be immune in the first place."

Harry nodded, then Dani asked, "Do we have any idea where Fenrir was the last time he was spotted? That would give me a clue."

"He was spotted to the northeast of here, gorging on a herd of reindeer. Wait a moment, I can give you something that will help you find Fenrir." Freya turned aside, whispering a few words to one of the other goddesses, who hurried off. She came back quickly, and Freya took the item she was holding, a wolf's fang. "This was smashed out of Fenrir's mouth several years ago, but it is still his, and I can still use the signature upon it to connect to the whole."

Dani nodded, having seen Harry do similar things before. After a few moments, the fang began to glow and then shifted almost so that it fell out of Freya's hand. She caught it, and Harry conjured up a bit of rope, tying it around the fang and holding it out to Dani.

"Remember, your mission is not to engage Fenrir in a fight," Harry warned. "If you must fight to escape Fenrir, do it. But all three of you have emergency teleport arrays for a reason. They will return you right here." Wanda and Kitty had seen to that aspect of their preparations as Freya and Harry spoke. "Do not try to fight that wolf on your own."

Dani nodded, but Harry and Hela both saw a certain look in her eyes that she didn't like it. But that was fine by Harry. She didn't have to like it. She just had to not get herself killed trying something stupid.

"Oh, that is so rich coming from you, Harry!" Jean howled telepathically, having to bite her lip to keep from breaking out into laughter as she heard Harry's thoughts.

Harry winced internally, admitting that, but shot back with the fact that Jean was in no position to point it out. Ororo stepped in and ended the argument by pointing out that all of them "Lack in self-preservation instincts. It is part in parcel of becoming heroes, is it not?"

"I would rather that we had Skadi here to aid thee. But she is busy trying to break up a flanking attack on our main army," Freya said worriedly, staring at Dani and interrupting the mental communication.

There was something about the girl. Something that both called to Freya, demanding that she mother the girl, and told her of hidden strength. Yet for the life of her, Freya, for all her magical abilities, could not see why. It was similar to the recent issue with the illusions, but also very much not. Something deep, something powerful is in this young red-skinned woman. But what it could be, I cannot say.

In this, Loki's magical skill with obfuscation and trickery beat out Freya's ability with general magic. Of course, it had to. The enchantment to pass his wife's soul into the blood of a specific believer had been designed to not only beat out Freya or Odin but Those Who Watch Above In Shadow. If he hadn't been able to do so, many things would've been different.

Dani shrugged. "I have a way with animals and people occasionally. And if nothing else, I can also use my mutant power to scare him the hell away." I wouldn't want to. Fenrir has been treated poorly all his lie for something he had no control over. But I will if we need to get away.

Dani shifted her attention back to the world around her and moved over to where Betsy, Clea and Garm were waiting. The three of them boarded one of the smaller, faster carpets that had been brought along, and with the fang tugging them in the proper direction already, the group set off with Johnny flying alongside the others.

"We're set up," Amelia Voight reported, moving over to Harry and nodding politely to Freya. "I'm very pleased by the amount of help we've gotten. All the locals seem to understand that we have a much better understanding of medicine than they do and are willing to follow our suggestions in how to deal with the wounded who have been infected by this poison in the air."

"We use healing magic for most things, but there aren't many of us who can use it, so after a big battle, there are always warriors who cannot be healed before they pass on thanks to that blasted poison. If you can help us with that, then you have done is a great service on top of the great service you already did by breaking whatever spell we were all under," Freya answered.

"Good. James, Ororo, everyone ready to go?" Harry asked, toggling his helmet's microphone so that he talked to all the unit commanders at once. He was answered by a series of affirmatives and looked over at Piotr, who would be backing up Scott and Steve in the main battle. He and Paige were the only super-strong members of the X-Men or Custodes who hadn't gone with Ororo.

As he did, Harry's face became deadly serious, and he reached forward to wrap the innocent-looking box that Piotr was carrying at his side. "Get that box to Thor. That is your main priority, Piotr. Everything else is secondary."

Freya frowned at that, staring at the box strapped at the human Piotr's side, ignoring for a moment the fact that he looked as if he was an example of a living metal golem. Stretching her magical senses out, Freya's frown deepened. She couldn't tell anything about the box. It looked like a wooden box to her, and a part of her wanted to ask about it, but Freya decided against doing so.

That box was anything but simple, for within the box were two items. First was the belt they had found in Thor's old domicile on Earth, where they had fought the Draugr and gotten to know Hela and Garm. The second was the real Mjollnir, the magical item which had been hidden within the Tesseract. Thankfully, while none but Thor would ever be able to lift it, magically Harry had been able to put it inside a runic-expanded box, whose various enchantments absorbed the properties of both magical items, keeping anyone from realizing what was within.

Piotr nodded firmly, reaching out and grasping Harry's hand. "You can trust me, Tovarish. I will get it to Thor."

Frowning as no one seemed in any particular hurry to inform her what was in the box, queen Freya shrugged and then went back to speaking with Harry as the one in an odd red, white and blue outfit shouted for the assault companies. Within seconds they rose into the air on the enchanted carpets the humans had arrived in, where they headed towards the front.

Harry and Hela left shortly after, flying through the air towards Asgard the city under their own power. Behind them, Tony and his new helpers continued to create the needed material to repair and rearm the troopers.

The last thing Harry heard on the intercom from the main combat companies before he changed the channel was Sean saying, "No dammit, we're not going to go into battle with some kind of freaking medley going on from all corners! Each of us captains will pick one song, and all of you are going to listen and like it, dammit! And the first person listening to music when he should be listening to his superior's orders is not going to get written up. He's going to get my boot up their ass!"

"Ah, young men. They truly are the same the world over," Hela quipped, having heard the same thing.

"The world would be a far different place without such men in it," Harry chuckled. But soon, the two of them are silent, zooming forward towards Asgard the city, and whatever was waiting for them there.

Scene break

But of course, long before Harry and Hela would arrive at their destination, the Assault Force made itself known….

As the Asgardians and the other combatants paused to stare up at the contrails of the rockets as they crashed into the mountain-sized jotun, Cyclops turned his facemask's communications gear to speak to the ODMs, watching with a bit of envy as Steve, Nikolai, Colossus, Husk and Nightcrawler dropped to the ground below. Amara was already down there, with Polaris stationed above her, and Falcon was already swooping down, his guns blazing. So too were the rest of the team, but now it was time to really take the fight to the enemy.

"This is Cyclops, assuming tactical command. First company, disperse," Scott ordered calmly, while one of the elves kept it still, and he stared down at the battlefield, watching calmly as he saw the rockets hit home. While I could wish Falcon was willing to step up to the plate here, I suppose I can call this on the job training for larger unit tactics…

Shaking that annoyance away, Cyclops vowed to do the best he could, and started to radio orders once more. "Rocketeers, you are bang on target, fire for effect. Mortars, adjust distance just a little bit further out, no more than twelve degrees elevation."

As the Heavy Gunners responded, the first company of the Orbital ODMs peeled off, moving squad by squad off of the carpets, and down into the forest as Sean commanded them. Even as they fell back their bolters continued to bark, and the previous two battles served them well here. The marines' aim were far better, despite the fact there was still a lot of foliage in the way, to say nothing about the steam and the ragged terrain.

Even as he turned his attention to the jotun horde, Scott could hear the marines voices as their music cut off and they became serious. Or as serious as marines with new toys could be in a target rich environment. "Hell yes! Screw the normal guns, I want to keep these, the First Sergeant is right!"

"Yeah, keep the rail guns as backup, and these as primary. Look at those little blue bastards go boom!"

"That's right you little blue bitches, you better run!"

"This is what you get when you bring swords to a gunfight boys. Eat five hundred plus years of military technology bastards!"

"Now that just makes me depressed," another voice muttered as more bolt arounds began to pepper through the forest, and Cyclops almost automatically ordered second company went in, too amused to stop listening in on the local channels. "Sad to think about exactly how long we've all been fighting one another."

There was a very distinctly Russian snicker at that from second company. Scott understood there was some kind of rivalry going on between the various troopers along international lines, but despite the recent Eurasian War, it was a friendly one. Odd to think about how little the common fighting men blame one another for that shit.

"Do not worry about that friend and instead be proud. It is only because humanity is so good a war that we have any chance of surviving in this strange, universe of ours. Or do I need to remind you of recent history?" The Russian asked, his words mirroring Scott's thoughts.

"Third company, by platoons flank the allied force, provide cover fire," Cyclops announced, blasting down into the battlefield, creating a furrow in the ground around a group of human and Asgardian defenders who were about to cut off by a force of jotun, forcefully turning his attention away from the byplay between the troopers now as the music of the March of Cambreadth cut out across the all the channels.

I still think Ride Of The Valkyries would've been perfect, but I'm a classical sort of person Cyclops thought as he turned his beams onto several of the other jotun, two of whom were noticeably trying to bulk themselves up by eating nearby rocks. Meanwhile, the mortars and rockets continued to crash down amongst the invading army, destroying any hint of forward momentum, causing many to cry out and scatter. But they aren't running, blast it!

Looking over at Dr. Druid, he gestured to his throat, and the man obligingly cast a sonar spell. "Asgardians! Help has arrived. Keep falling back for now. We've got this." Another gesture and the Sonorous was canceled, allowing Cyclops to shift to the com net once more. "Falcon?"

"Wanted to warn ya, Cyclops, these dark elves aren't running like the ones back at the camp. Seems like it was the Torch and his fire they were afraid of. Morons," Falcon muttered, his handguns blazing as he flew around shattered trees then up over the foliage again. All around him, the ODMs were bouncing through and around the forest, introducing the dark elves to the devastation of modern squad tactics and jump packs.

"Any sign that the Shadows are bringing in reinforcements?"

"Negative. But those damn arrows of theirs still pack a punch if they hit, and these nights elves are fast!" Falcon growled, his current targets all ducking behind cover as he opened up on them. His guns didn't have the power of the Bolters or the sniper's rifles, but against the dark elves, that wasn't as necessary. The dark elves though were still too damn quick for his preferences.

"Roger," Cyclops winced as two of the ODMs were hit by those self-same arrows. One was ported back to the base camp by his emergency medical portkey. The other kept fighting but reported that his leg was broken inside his suit, his armor badly crumpled and he couldn't use the jump jets in it, badly limiting his range and coordination. "At least they're our only real long-range concern."

Turning his attention back to the rest of the battle Cyclops saw more than a dozen clumps of jotun hurling spears towards some of the ODMs. Every ODM thus targeted dodged to every side using their jet packs, the spears hitting nothing. One group of jotun was then punished as one of the ten Heavy Gunners that were still up on the carpets took them all under fire with his rockets. From above like this there was no way he could miss.

"Keep up the pressure on the dark elves, Falcon. I think we're pushing them hard, but the last thing Cap said to me was to keep our reserves out of it until right before they broke, and we're not seeing that yet. Say what you will about our enemies, they aren't cowards," Cyclops sent back, his voice trailing off as he fired his optic blasts once more. "Snipers spread out, fourth company, hold position for now."

Just then however, Dr. Druid shouted, "The Shadows! They are doing something!"

Illusion-based attacks struck the battlefield, washing over the entire area indiscriminately trying to make it impossible for the humans and Asgardians to tell friend from foe. The same was occurring back at the base camp. But Dr. Strange handled this assault with aplomb, breaking the illusions within seconds, no matter how layered.

But the Shadows had used these illusions as cover for teleporting their pawns/troops around the battlefield. The Heavy Gunners well away from the line launching mortars and rockets from beyond line of sight came under direct assault from several hundred, and seven of them fell to the jotun before the rest spread out using their jump jets to gain distance and starting to fire back. This cut off much of the artillery fire that had been keeping the main jotun army from pressing the attack on the Asgardians, leaving only the ten aboard the carpets focusing on long range artillery fire.

But the regular troopers were now there, and their gunfire took over, keeping the jotun from attempting to close with the Asgardians. Who, Cyclops was surprised to note, were also starting to reform, not retreat, but reform and come back into the fight.

That impressed Cyclops immensely. But then again, all of these folk are ancient warriors chosen to enter Valhalla because of their courage, aren't they. "Heavy Gunners, do you need reinforcement?"

"That would be affirmative Sir, these damned walking-magma fuckers are all over us!" shouted one of the Heavy Gunners, a scowl forming on their features. "The Shadows are porting them around the place occasionally, and that's screwing with our long-range advantage."

Cyclops nodded over to the other carpets, he ordered Nightcrawler in, to help offset the teleportation powers, while back at base camp, Steven finished dispelling the various illusions attacking their people there and in the main battle. However those moments had an impact. Several troopers were already pulling back. Their built in defensive arrays had allowed them to see through the illusions, but the drain on their bodies was pushing them nearly to exhaustion.

Within minutes of the Shadows' intervention, the battle was becoming far more even, and Cyclops scowled in anger. "Banshee, keep up the pressure on the jotun trying to reform on the ridge. Cannonball, pull back from the front and help the Heavy Gunners. Polaris, I know you can't do anything much about the jotun but be ready in case the dark elves are teleported over there too. Fourth company, third platoon, in to help your heavier brethren."

With that, Cyclops eyes began to gleam, and he blasted down towards a group of jotun surrounding a single ODM, who leaped away at his command. All three of the jotun were crushed by his kinetic beam, and he turned his attention elsewhere, lashing out from above. Meanwhile, Falcon again to push hard against the clump of dark elves who had seemingly retained their organizations so far.

Below, Colossus landed, darting forward along with Captain America who grabbed the rebounding shield out of the air. Whirling, the original Super Soldier blocked a blow from a dark elf's sword, before lashing out with a kick that doubled the elf over, hammering his shield into his face, breaking bones and hurling the dark elf backward.

Nearby, another dark elf with white hair and slightly more ornate armor who had been about to finish off Balder shook his head, grimacing at the impact of the hurled shield to his back. Looking at him, Steve recognized him from the intelligence they had been given as Malekith, the leader of the dark elves. Tougher, faster, stronger, both a good hand-to-hand fighter and magic user. Egotistical, vain, Captain America listed off in his head.

As if to prove these last two points, Malekith spoke, his voice a deliberate drawl as he wiped off his chest armor ostentatiously while looking at Cap. "And who are you supposed to be? Human for certain, there is no aura of divinity around you like there is around the pestilential Asgardians, yet your raiment and stance don't match one of their followers."

Not responding, Steve shifted to one side putting himself between Malekith and Balder, addressing the downed Asgardian instead of the dark elf. "You must be Balder. Thor and Harry Potter gave me a description of you.

Balder opened his mouth, trying to speak to these strange humans, to warn them away. But the poisons from the various cuts he had taken from from Malekith's mistletoe tipped weapons were already inhibiting him, helped along by Jörmungandr's miasma. "I, I…"

"Don't worry, we've got this." Steve smiled down at him and without even looking, launched his shield towards Malekith who had begun to charge forward. Malekith ducked and the shield whirled on, crashing into a jotun with enough force to cause the creature to stumble, rebounding up into the air, where Steve caught it having leaped up over Malekith's spear charge, kicking him in the shoulder as he passed, sending him stumbling to one side of the wounded Balder.

Malekith turned but Steve batted his spear to one side, the spear tip breaking on his shield while the spear's shaft was carried to one side. Snarling, Malekith brought it around towards Steve's legs, catching him before Cap could dodge. But then another shield crashed into the dark elf's face, hurling him away as Vanguard landed, his mask moving visibly into a smirk. "I don't think so."

Vanguard had his shield, the same one he had essentially stolen from the Russian Winter Guard Program, although it wasn't made of vibranium like Steve's, on his arm. In his other hand, he held a rifle, currently short-barreled, which he promptly fired at Malekith, rounds thundering out fast and accurate.

"Human fools!" Malekith shouted, thrusting his hands forward, and creating a magical shield of some kind of dark blue magic, which halted the impact of the various spells, like they had just run into a rubber wall, although the sound was more like someone had just run into an electrical field.

With their immediate enemy pushed on the defense, Steve took a moment to look for Colossus, who he had leaped down into the battle with a moment before. He found him nearby, embroiled with another dark elf and two Jotun as a group of human warriors retreated nearby, most of them wounded and losing vitality.

While Cap could understand that his Russian friend had stepped in to protect the Asgardians from being overrun, there were bigger issues at hand right now. "Colossus, find Thor! Get those items to him!"

Unfortunately, even over the tumult of the racket the other human was making as he fired into his shield, Malekith heard that order. And like any good commander, he knew that keeping an enemy from achieving an objective was always a good thing.

As he kept his magic shield up to absorb the fire from Vanguard, there was another splash of color signifying a second spell, grabbing Steve's attention for a second. Then Malekith shrieked out in his own language, a voice of snarls and deep tones, each word running into another, inhumanely loud and piercing. "#To all of my people who can hear me, target the steel plated one! Keep him from the Thunderer! jotun, you must do the same!#"

Although the humans could not understand this command, it was obvious an order that had quite a lot of weight behind it as the jotun nearby obeyed. Several of them even broke off from chasing the Asgardians to attack Colossus, further confusing the nearby combat zone.

Seeing this, Vanguard turned his attention that way, single shots from his gauss rifle taking down a jotun here and there. At the same time, Steve sent his shield flying crashing into dark elf and Jotun alike sending them sprawling.

Despite his teammates best efforts Colossus soon found himself surrounded, but the former Russian farm boy was undaunted and as he dodged through their blows punching back just as hard. "Come then, large ones!"

His punches pounded into jotun armor, shattering obsidian armor and the ribs beneath before he tossed them aside, or simply imploded the dark elves he hit. Hammers clubs and swords slammed into Colossus, but as strong as he was, Colossus was also quite mobile, that having been a primary goal of his training under Shiang Chi. More blows missed than struck as he danced through the battle while protecting the box at his side.

Despite the steel-clad Russian's best efforts, a few blows did catch him and when they did, the blows of these jotun, larger and stronger than the ones they had faced upon arriving in Yggdrasil's verdant limbs, dented his steel frame. Worse, they were keeping him from Thor, who was still rampaging around the battlefield, smashing anything in his way, friend and foe alike.

Seeing Malekith now covering himself with another spell to hide his presence from human eyes, Balder grunted, grabbing at Steve's arm. The human turned and looked at him, but Balder shook his head, gesturing towards the now distant Thor, his voice raspy with pain as he spoke. "You must know, he is ensorcelled. Malekith, he placed a necklace around Thor's throat. Remove it, else he will not know friend from foe."

Nodding, Steve raised a hand to the side of his head, activating his communication gear even as he tried to flank Malekith. the anti-illusion runic arrays in his helmet allowed him to see through the spell the dark elf had cast.

From his position above the battlefield, Cyclops heard Steve's report and cursed. Looking around, he ordered another platoon in from his reserves to that segment of the fight. Instantly the men, a mix of French and Australian if the accents were anything to go by, began to lay down covering fire around Colossus, slaying many of the jotun around him.

With Colossus being seen to, Cyclops searched around for Thor, finding him under attack similarly.

Using his visor to zoom in, Cyclops saw that while Thor's arm was black and blue from repeated strikes. But worse, Thor's face was a mask of blind rage and fury, his mouth moving, practically gnashing as a gibbering babble came from his mouth. He was still punching out hard, his blows smashing Jotun away, yet it was obvious Thor wasn't actually targeting them.

Seeing this, Cyclops turned his attention to their resident magical expert. "Dr. Druid!"

"I'm busy!" the British man shouted. "I can't… we're losing people!"

Cyclops moved over to the man, treading carefully on the carpet which, even stationary, was not exactly a stable surface to walk on. He clapped a hand on Dr. Druid's shoulder, noting the man was trembling. I guess that's the difference between a middling-strong magic user, and a powerful one like Strange or Harry. "I want you to wait for my signal, but when I tell you, cancel whatever spell is on Thor, understood? No matter what else is happening."

Wincing, Dr. Druid nodded, sweat pouring down his face, as he reached one hand down to his waist.

Cyclops pulled out a Pepper Up potion from the man's pouch, putting it in the man's hands even as he lashed out with a blast that caught a jotun down below who had been about to take Vanguard from behind. He then recalled Nightcrawler, who appeared a few moments later bamfing into existence to one side of him. Cyclops briefly explained what he wanted to his friend, noticing as he did that the rest of the battle was slowly becoming even more chaotic, which was not helped by the Asgardians and humans charging in to engage the dark elves and jotun once more.

Realizing he could no longer concentrate on everything happening, Cyclops knew he had to do something. And without Sam or Mister Rogers here with me, that leaves me little options.

With that thought, Cyclops turned his coms to the company commander's frequency. "Company commanders, I'm losing the bubble here. I'm turning tactical control of your companies entirely over to you and releasing the last company to engage at their discretion. The Custodes will concentrate on helping the Heavy Gunners and the locals. As for you all, you know what to, and you know how to do it. Wreck their shit."

The Australian company commander smirked slightly, as he sent a message to Sean and the other two. "I knew I liked that bloke for a reason."

With that, the last company bounded off the floating carpets, descending downward as the ODMs shifted, breaking down even further as they continued to bounce around the battlefield. Working in fire teams instead of squads or platoons, the Marines reveled still further in the sheer amount of mobility their jump jets gave them as they had all along, picking the jotun and dark elves apart. They didn't have it all their own way, but the mailed fist of the jotun army was definitely a thing of the past as the locals finished regrouping and charged forward into the melee.

Below, however, Captain America and Vanguard found themselves facing their own personal battle. They had followed Malekith through the battlefield as he tried to get to Colossus, hampered by the tumult his own order had created and the heaving, bucking ground beneath them.

Somehow sensing Vanguard's shots coming, Malekith turned, a smaller shield flicking out right in front of his chest to block the gauss round. He then disappeared under an illusion, six versions of the elven king appearing and shooting forward in different directions.

Meanwhile the real one darted forward, pulling out long short swords as he moved to engage Nikolai. Like the longer swords his people routinely used they protected his hands with basket hilts, but were shorter, about a foot long rather than the length of their arms.

The dark elf didn't know about the anti-illusion array and stopped in shock as Vanguard brought his rifle around once more shooting at the dark elf.

He dodged to one side with some difficulty, only to catch a blow from Steve's shield. Malekith was able to block it with one of his swords, but the sword was smacked out of his hand. Yet he still caught Steve's follow-on blow, upending the man, that going down to one knee and trying to go for a stab.

Steve rolled away instantly, breaking the grip on his arm. Kicking off the ground, Cap caught his rebounding shield and lashing out with the edge of it toward the dark elf. Malekith blocked the blow with his arms, the impact sending him rolling backward but doing no damage to the bucklers he wore on his forearms. As he did, Malekith barked out a single command, and runes on his armor began to glow.

Nikolai took the opportunity to fire again then but seeing his shots miss or smack off the dark elf's armor now, he charged, only to halt as Malekith launched a spell his way. It was a kind of green and red energy which quixotically made Nikolai think of Christmas.

The blast struck but Nikolai had raised his hands, activating his mutant power. While Vanguard rarely used it as his primary combat skill these days, his mutant power created a shield around Nikolai's body that reflected any energy that struck him. So long as it had a physical component to it, Nikolai could reflect even magic so long as he saw it coming, and his power was activated.

Malekith barely had time to blink before his own returned magic hurled the dark elf back through one particularly lucky tree that had survived being in the middle of the battle. The impact shattered the poor tree, sending splinters radiating around Malekith. But the blast didn't really hurt him, the magic being absorbed by Malekith's now-activated armor.

But it seemed to knock his senses loose a bit, which allowed Cap to close again. The blow from the shield doubled Malekith over, right up into an uppercut. Another few blows landed, breaking some teeth loose and causing Malekith's head to start ringing as one blow caught him in the ear.

Still he flowed with each blow, before finally redirecting one punch and launching an elbow into the human's face, sending him stumbling. A quick magical blast went off at pointblank range knocking the breath out of Steve, and another magical blast was only barely blocked by the man's shield.

Another magical blow sent Steve backward through the air, but before Malekith could follow up, Vanguard was there. He had pulled out a short dagger and now launched a strike at Malekith's stomach that was barely blocked. A blow to the side of Vanguard's wrist sent the dagger down to the ground, and Vanguard exchanged another series of blows with the dark elf before a blast from his magic caused Vanguard to shield himself with his mutant power.

The spell, which should have been a spell that would have set Vanguard on fire, was redirected back toward Malekith, who snarled as the energy of it was absorbed by his armor, a scowl on his lips as he spoke one more. "That is annoying! What kind of power…"

Seeing no need to speak to an enemy, Nikolai was already rolling away, his rifle once more in his hands taken from where he had slung it on his back. A second later it came up to point back at Malekith, pulling the trigger rapidly. The railgun rounds hammered into Malekith causing him to double over in agony. But once more, the magical defenses of his armor worked to deaden the impact of the strikes.

Still one of his ears was hit, ripped off the dark elf's head in a welter of blood. The elven king stumbled and seeing that, Vanguard's shifted his fire. His next shot flashed towards Malekith's head, hoping to end this fight now.

But then the Shadows once more intervened. Malekith had proven a good pawn thus far and would not be allowed to die so easily to outside interference. Between one second and the next, Malekith disappeared, and Vanguard whirled, staring all around him only to be engaged by several other dark elves and a jotun.

Malekith reappeared elsewhere, but unlike most of his folk, the dark elf king was learned enough to instantly understand the full implications of the sudden change in his fortunes. And his mind was so crooked that the Shadows didn't see the need to try and obfuscate things. In this they were correct, and had they bodies, the Shadows would have smiled as they senses his thoughts. So… we are being used here. Very well, I care not. So long as I can kill Asgardians, it matters not a whit if I serve a hidden master in doing so.

Steve dodged around a jotun's attack his shield smacking edge-on into the jotun's legs. As the jotun stumbled, Steve looked around, trying to spot their slippery opponent. But it was too late, and a arrow, taken from a dead dark elf along with his bow, caught Steve in the side, hurling him off his feet with a cry of pain. it didn't penetrate his suit, but the impact still was like being hit by a cannonball shrunk to the size of an arrow, and Steve knew he'd just cracked a rib.

Done with the attackers around him, Nikolai saw this and fired at Malekith again. But with more distance between them, the dark elf simply threw up a magical shield around him and stared around, pulling out a dagger.

Although he knew the idea was not entirely his own, finishing one task before going on to the next was still a good idea to Malekith's mind, and this was his last mistletoe-tipped dagger. Alas for Malekith, the Bright One was nowhere to be found. The tumult around them was blocking his line of sight in every direction

Whatever the dark elf was doing, Vanguard didn't care, and he charged forward, covering the intervening distance at a full sprint. He crashed shield first into Malekith's magical shield, which gave under the impact of Nikolai's the energy under the impact blasting outward and dissipating quickly as Vanguard stumbled forward. Malekith barely had time to switch to a regular steel dagger instead of the mistletoe one, as Vanguard fired at him point blank.

But he had come too close in shattering the dark elf's shield and Malekith lunged, being hit only by one of the several rounds the Russian fired. That one shot pushed Malekith's lunge off-center, but his dagger still slicing into the human's weapon.

His rifle now useless, Vanguard dropped it to the roiling ground beneath them and lashed out with a punch that Malekith dodged adroitly. The Russian trained soldier grimly kept up the attack, using shield, fist and feet as he had been trained to, but Malekith was slippery and Vanguard's blows slid around him. But when Malekith stabbed forward once more, Vanguard allowed it to hit, having covered his body with his shield power once more. The dagger shattered, and Nikolai went on to the attack once more.

But Malekith had suspected this from the previous times the human had used that odd power, and as he dropped the ruined dagger a spell prepared in that same hand went off. It was simply a blinding spell, a flashbang in magical form, and Nikolai stumbled back. Right into a jotun's blow from behind which sent him flying over Malekith's head.

He grunted in agony, but like Steve's, his outfit was reinforced with Orichalcum scale mail so he rolled as he landed. A pistol appeared in one hand from his connected magic pouch and Vanguard snarled as he lashed out with his shield at a nearby dark elf. He emptied the pistol into several more, while the jotun exploded under rocket fire.

As the jotun fell, Vanguard found himself looking at Balder, who was kneeling behind where the brute had stood. He had taken several more hits since the battle against Malekith had moved away from where he had fallen. None were serious though, and Balder's eyes were clear as they looked up at the human, and in his hand he held his sword, the tip pressing into the ground as he tried to push to his feet. The two nodded at one another and Vanguard turned, firing his pistol at several more dark elves.

Thinking quickly, Malekith, who had been moving through the battlefield unseen after Vanguard cast a spell on himself reaching down to grab a discarded sword. Two spells flashed out in quick succession.

One spell created a mist, which quickly spread out. It spread too fast and too quickly for Dr. Druid to spot, busy as he was. Soon the entire area around Malekith, Vanguard and Balder was covered in mist, although it was also rapidly dissipating, since Thor's earlier work with the weather was still in action.

The second spell was a sound-based spell a spell his people had long used to lure people into traps. And when he spoke, Malekith's voice took on the voice of the listener's loved ones. And since the spell was sound-based, it worked, "Help me!"

Startled and horrified, Nikolai stared around, trying to find his sister, unable to comprehend how she had been somehow transported to this realm. But that voice, that was the same he had heard when they were young, when she had been attacked by a gang of toughs looking for a good time and had screamed for his help. His mind tried to fight through it, but the voice, the voice was…

The sword came at him from out of the mist. And Vanguard had allowed his mutant power to fade, wishing to conserve his energy.

The dagger punched straight through the neck area where there was scant armor to allow ease of movement. Nikolai died before he even knew he had been hit, far too quickly for even his emergency portkey to activate in time, although it did activate a second later, sending his body back to base camp.

Seeing the human's life's blood gushing out from around his dagger, Malekith's face twisted into a sneer of victory. But then the human in front of him disappeared, leaving only his blood behind, having even taken the portion of his sword that had stabbed into Vanguard's throat.

Malekith blinked, staring at where he had been. "My word, that was sudden. I…"

He did have any time to ponder what had just happened, as, before he could pull his arm back, Balder lunged upwards, swinging his blade in a vertical arc. The blow wasn't aimed at Malekith's body. Instead, it came up aiming at Malekith's wrist with all the power the Bright One had remaining in his body. His blade sliced right through the leather armor covering Malekith's wrist sending hand and sword flying.

"AGGGGHHHH!" Malekith screamed, falling back, staring at where his sword was flying, his hand still attached to it. Blood erupted from his wrist and he turned, his eyes wide as he stared at the now collapsing form of Balder, screaming invectives as he tried to search around for one of his mistletoe daggers. But he had none left, having lost them at various points since the humans had interrupted his assault on Balder.

He used magic to slowly close the wound, concentrating through the sudden blood loss with a lot of difficulty.

But before he could finish, Captain America was there, standing over him on the arm of a dead jotun, his face a rictus of rage as he brought shield around, edge on. Malekith tried to dodge, but the edge caught him across the eyes, smashing his nose and pulping one of his eyes, causing Malekith to scream as he fell sideways.

Steve moved to finish the white-haired bastard off, but in a blast of magic the dark elf king disappeared.

The Shadows had intervened once more. Crippled or not, the king of Svartalfheim was too important a pawn to be lost in what was clearly a losing battle. Indeed, he was not the only resource that the Shadows was scrambling to collect by this point.

Far from the front where Nikolai had died, Magma had subsumed herself into the duel with Surtur for control of the tectonic energies within the ground, turning into her magma form and merging with the ground. Pushing back Surtur's influence with difficulty, she calmed the area down, pushed his mind away. The field advantage so to speak that Magma had thanks to her power started to let her win through, and although Surtur had enough willpower, enough to be called a near-god really, he couldn't quite overcome Magma's ability to better control the powers of the earth.

Roaring in anger, Surtur pulled himself out of the mental battle, and stumbling backward, staring around him as mortar rounds and rockets crashed into the air, hurling his people around. The bigger the jotun were, the larger a target they were as well for the Heavy Gunners. And with air superiority without a doubt, they could call down artillery fire on whatever position they wanted. This was quickly proving to be the deciding factor, as more and more of his army died before they could close with the ODMs, let alone the Asgardians, who were now fighting it out with his men once more and those of the dark elves.

From his vantage point, Surtur saw the dark elves were now fleeing, their fleeting courage when faced with strong opposition breaking like glass. And as he noticed this, his lords and masters informed him the battle was lost.

Svartalfheim had put forth it's might in this battle, what remained of it after a punitive campaign the Asgardians had launched months back when the dark elves had first caused trouble. That strength was gone now, the next best thing to wiped out. The Shadows estimated that few, if any, of the dark elves would survive to successfully break contact with the humans. And Surtur's jotun had also taken horrendous casualties. Even before the humans of Earth had intervened, the jotun and dark elves had certainly not been having it all their way.

Now the battle was going irreparably against them, and not even Surtur could hope to change the outcome. Surtur railed at that, raging that he was more than powerful enough, but that was Surtur's anger talking, and the rage within him, burning as hot as the flames at the core of his being, could not sustain itself under the implacable touch of the Shadows.

"Pull back," his masters ordered. "Pull back, retreat to rebuild. Sacrifice what remains of your army and leave. Quickly. We can rebuild your forces if you but survive and return to Muspellheim?"

And for the Shadows, the news was about to get far worse.

As Malekith began to move in on Vanguard, Colossus finally won through the tumult of battle coming close to Thor. Grabbing up a downed tree, he hurled it forward, taking Thor's feet out from under him before leaping forward.

This was what Cyclops had been waiting for. "Now!"

At his command Dr. Druid turned, wearily shaking his head before sending lashing a Finite Incantatum spell that he had learned from Harry down at Thor. At the same time Nightcrawler jumped in and grabbed at the necklace. from behind, pulling it up off of Thor's head.

The spell struck, and with that and the loss of the necklace, Thor's senses suddenly returned to normal, He gasped, raising his head and staring around them, almost absentmindedly smacking a blow from a jotun, reaching for the larger creatures arm, then hurling him through the air. "What, what happened? What vile sorcery was covering my senses?!"

"The most violent sort," Colossus said from nearby blocking a blow from another jotun who had moved to strike the still befuddled thunder God in the back as he knelt on the ground. The two titans grappled for a few seconds before Colossus pushed the jotun backward just enough to get the leverage to twist around and hurl the jotun over his head, sending him through the air to crash down into the ground nearby.

For just a moment, there was a lull in the battle around the two of them with no other jotun close enough to engage them as the troopers above them continued to lay down a withering hail of gunfire. "I believe, that these are yours, Thor." Colossus said turning to him.

Thor looked at him quizzically, remembering the metal-clad man from Earth, having met Colossus during the events in the country called Canada. He looked then said ruefully, "This is hardly the time to give me a present my friend I…"

Without a word, Colossus tore off the top of the box, and Thor stared at what was within.

For it was his hammer, but it was not quite the same Mjolnir as he had been wielding earlier. For one thing, unlike his previous hammer, which was metal, the head of this hammer was stone, a simple cylinder about the same length as the shaft rather than a square-shaped mass. Where the shaft and the head connected there were intricately etched runes and there were other runes around the head of the hammer. It certainly did not look as impressive as the hammer that Thor had been using previously. But just looking at it made Thor realize that the original had been but a pale imitation of this hammer.

The thick belt on the other hand, was not so compelling, yet as Thor hesitantly reached into the box, he first pulled out the belt, his hands almost automatically strapping it around his waist. Instantly, he felt strength rushing through him, not as much as when he put on his gauntlets of power, but still there was a distinct rush in power.

The Shadows noticed too. Hastily, they gathered jotun from and teleported them directly onto Thor and Colossus. Colossus instantly dropped the box, and hurled himself forward, crashing into several of the jotun.

For his part, Thor stayed put, ignoring the blows hammering into him. Such was the strength the belt gave him that the blows of the jotun couldn't even cause bruises any longer. He reached down, and grabbed up the box, reaching in and picking up the hammer within.

Power surged through Thor, so much so that it made the gauntlets that he had claimed from Volstagg's body and the belt that he had just put on seem like nothing. It was as if a circuit had finally been completed, the power within those two items now exponentially increased, the energy flowing through him madly.

With a roar, Thor whirled his hammer around his head, the mere wind of its passage picking the nearby jotun and Colossus up and hurling them away as lightning flashed through the air, slamming into Thor and Mjolnir. As Colossus watched, Thor's blonde hair shifted entirely to red, the last vestige of the Shadow's control, the mental commands and shallow personality changes had placed around Thor to contain his true personality finally breaking.

Thor was free, and he remembered. He remembered his marriage to Sif. He remembered his children, slain and discarded by the Shadows in the first Ragnarök. He remembered, his uncle, not his brother but his uncle Loki shouting at him, telling him they had been betrayed.

And Thor now knew his true enemies.

"RAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" Thor howled, a wordless roar of agony and fury that resounded across not just the battlefield, but all the way back to the base camp and beyond. "I will have my revenge on you , you foul bastards, you slinking cowards, you stalking craven! No army will stand in my way no creature you put in my place will stop me, I will end you all!"

As a renewed roar of battle lust and defiance rose from the Asgardians and humans, the Shadows became frantic. "Retreat," they shouted into Surtur's mind. "With Gungnir you might have a chance, but only a chance, and we have lost too much already."

More illusion magic, more telepathic assault followed, causing the three main telepaths to grimace under the effort of keeping the Shadows from the minds of all concerned, while Dr. Druid collapsed like a leaf, barely able to anything, leaving the full defense on the magical side to Strange.

And while Dr. Strange could dispel the magic that the Shadows were using against their defenders and the earth forces, he could not stop spells from hiding Surtur, as he retreated quickly, leaving what remained of his army behind, fleeing the battlefield that had barely two hours ago been the sight of what should've been Surtur's greatest triumph.

As the battle began to wind down, Steve and Cyclops worked with the other officers, linking up and being introduced to the jarls and the Asgardian officers, trying to organize some order from the chaos. The first campaign of the war had ended in a victory for the Asgardians and their allies from Earth. But the war would continue.

And indeed, even as that battle came to an end, battles elsewhere were already occurring …

end chapter

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So, the first time through, I forgot to think about travel times. So that had me rewrite and change large segments of this chapter. Still, I think everything worked out pretty well. I mean to have one more chapter, maybe a chapter and a half, dealing with the Asgardian Issue, and then another chapter of rest before the final arc of this fic. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it!