A/N: Here is the sequel to Theogony. I have renamed the Theogony forum to Infinite and Divine, and will post all future review responses there. And just as a note for those readers who might be impatient-yes, everything is explained in story. This is another long one, comparable in length to Theogony itself.
I hope you enjoy.
Titanomachy
Book II of the Divinity Saga
A Worm/GoW/MCU Crossover by Darth Marrs
Prologue: The City on the Edge of Forever
In an endless city at the end of time, Mobius M. Mobius, Agent of the Time Variance Authority and all-around nice guy, took a long drink of his favorite soda of all time, Josta Cola, and turned his flagging attention back to the report.
"If I never see another Infinity Stone again, I'll be one happy camper."
The variant in question, one Johan Schmidt, managed to use the Tesseract to travel deep into Kree space in the Large Magellanic Cloud Galaxy. This caused a massive nexus event in two galaxies. Mobius hated having to deal with other galaxy timekeepers. Yes, it was one big, happy sacred timeline, but the bozos in the other galaxies tended to thumb their nose at the Milky Way department.
What really made things complicated wasn't just that an Infinity-stone wielding honest-to-time Nazi popped up in the middle of the Kree Empire. It was the fact that the Kree welcomed him and gave him a damn fleet to go wipe out the Nova Empire for them.
The variant timeline shot past the red-line so fast timekeepers in three galaxies jumped on it. But because Schmidt originated in the Milky Way, the final report fell on the tired shoulders of one Mobius M. Mobius, Agent of the TVA and all around... tired guy.
"Finally!" He finished the report, sent it on its way, and then popped his back. He fully expected to enjoy a good compressed 72 hours rest and relaxation before he had to go back on duty the next morning.
Before he could leave, though, something happened that had never happened in the history of the TVA.
The floor shook.
It wasn't a huge thing, like what outsiders might call an Earthquake. But it was noticeable enough that he didn't doubt it happened. He waited for alarms to go off. Something powerful enough to make the TVA shake at the end of all recorded time should have set off every alarm in every galaxy division building in the Great City.
But nothing happened.
Confused, Mobius left his cramped office. In the hall, other agents and hunters stood about with the same level of confusion he himself felt. One by one, they made their way to the balcony of the Milky Way division's building and looked out over the city.
At every junction between divisions, towers comprised of statues of the great Timekeepers who created the TVA stood with their arms raised. Atop their supplicating hands was a readout of the Sacred Timeline. It was the quickest, most efficient way for any individual in the Endless City to check the status of their lives and livelihood.
The timeline continued without any variants that anyone could see.
Something had to be wrong, though, because as he and his fellow agents gathered, the doors from the courts slammed open and a dozen judges came rushing out, Ravonna Renslayer among them.
The judges in their bright sashes pushed past the agents to look intently at the timeline. If Mobius looked hard enough, he could see the other towers of the Milky Way division also crowded with agents and judges.
"What's going on?" Mobius asked Revonna.
Before she could speak, Judge Oberron pointed and, in his dramatic and sonorous voice, cried out, "Look! There!"
Mobius followed the ancient judge's long, gnarled fingers and then froze as his mind shied away from the impossible sight.
The Sacred Timeline did not have a variant branch. Instead, somehow, a Nexus point had shifted the entire timeline out of its sacred path and into another. Mobius found himself shaking his head at the sheer impossibility of it. Even gods and Celestial beings could not just move the sacred timeline.
"What is going on?" he asked again.
"I don't know," Judge Renslayer said. She turned her dark eyes to stare right at him. "But you're going to have to find out fast. The whole Time Variance Authority depends on it!"
Part I: The Fallen
Chapter One: Daughter of Thanos
In the blood orange sky of Ahl-Agulla, while flying between columns of black smoke, a leviathan bellowed out its death song.
Chitauri war drones cried out in their own harmony, synchronizing subvocalizations while modulating their cyberpathic channels in both mourning and exaltation. There could be no greater fate for a leviathan than to die fighting for Thanos.
Agulla anti-aircraft cannons blasted away the thick, Chita-stone infused plates of the leviathan's belly, stripping it of its antigravity. The twenty-four meter long flying tank began to fall, but surrounded by the love and companionship of its kin, it did so with joy as it crashed into and destroyed the very anti-aircraft battery that killed it.
Its consciousness faded from the cyberpathic channels in a cloud of satisfaction and contentment.
Swan watched the mighty, majestic creature die from her place high in the sky. Though she was not able to partake in the cyberpathic communications of the Chitauri, she understood the vocalizations of their caste, from small six-legged servitor caste to the warrior drones to the handful of male Others who served as servants both of the Chitauri queens, and of Thanos himself.
The death song of a leviathan was heart-wrenchingly beautiful.
Which was why she was so distracted that she made no effort to dodge the particle cannon blast that struck her right in her chest plate.
The blast could have destroyed a Q-ship. Against Black Swan, it just stung. The greater damage, though, was to her armor. As she tumbled helplessly through the air, she felt gravity grip the superdense neutronium weave of her armor and pull her down abruptly. The thruster pack on her back struggled and she flapped her black and silver wings desperately, but the flight system was dependent on a nullgrave field to negate the neutronium's weight.
Without one, the other failed; Black Swan, Daughter of Thanos, fell like a brick from the sky.
She hit an ornately shaped ridge of coral that framed a hatching pool of the Agulla, now abandoned. The coral shattered under the weight and momentum of an alloy derived from the superdense material of a neutron star.
More embarrassed than hurt, Swan clumsily tried to extricate herself from the coral shards while hot, mineral-laden water seeped into her boots. The shallow pool was long since abandoned, but she could see the shaped coral cradles where the Agulla would incubate their eggs.
"Die, monster!"
Blinking away the salty water, Swan had only a moment to brace herself as the Agulla warrior launched itself into the air. It bore a blood-red coral sword as strong as titanium in one hand, and a stolen Chitauri arm-cannon in the other.
Caught out of position with her great-sword still behind her back, Swan instead hardened her left wing and extended it forward. The diamond-hard feathers slid through the Agulla exo-armor as if it was made of air, slicing its organs before extending-by dint of the creature's own momentum-out of its back.
The animal coughed orange blood over her before she flicked the body away across the field. When she regained her feet, she saw a hundred more of the Agulla warriors charging her position. And why not? She was a daughter of Thanos; if they could kill her it would be a blow to the enemy they now hated above all others.
She didn't bother with the blasters set in her vambraces, assuming they even still worked. Instead, Swan reached over her shoulder and removed her two-handed great-sword. Like her armor, the meter and a half blade was forged from a neutronium alloy with dual micron-thick edges. It weighed over sixteen hundred kilograms.
In the hands of anyone but her or Thanos, it would be impossible to wield.
The Agulla that charged her all bore dull, armored orange skin, with a large, elongated head that featured small tusks to either side of their mouths. Though at first glance it looked as if they were crustacean, the adult forms of the species did not have an exo-skeleton so much as densely armored skin suitable for the harsh conditions of his world's oceans.
The first two cycles of their lives, though, were spent as invertebrates in the water. And when given reason, an adult Agulla could change gender and lay as many as fifty eggs each. The eggs would reach physical maturity within ten years. Meaning in the course of three generations their population could explode in numbers that could easily overwhelm themselves and all the worlds around them.
The average Agulla was twice as strong as even the strongest Chitauri war drone. They were brave, powerful, and technologically advanced. Even as she stood facing their warriors on the ground, the Sanctuary II continued to engage the small but effective Agulla fleet in orbit.
Which meant that until her own section of the Chitauri caught up with her, Black Swan was on her own.
Weapons fire began splashing against her heavy armor. Nothing less than heavy ordinance would even mark it. Even the woven mail of her armored skirt, and the articulated plates of her lower abdominal armor. could withstand the strongest hand-held weapons without issue.
Swan flared her black and silver wings and raised her blade. "I am a Daughter of Thanos! Be honored to die at my hand!"
Whether honored or not, the Agulla were certainly eager. The force rushed her as one, brandishing the coral swords and hand-held weapons. She charged them right back, and ten meters away jumped and spun with her great-sword.
Five warriors fell in pieces at her feet. The rest did not pause or hesitate, and Swan found herself in a storm of blades, angry screams, and orange blood. With her razor-hardened wings and her great sword, she became a storm of death that swept through the Agulla faster than they could respond.
The sheer numbers meant she would receive blows-blades and particle blasts alike struck her helm. They chopped at her constantly-moving legs and the bare stretch of her biceps between the pauldrons of her armor and her vambraces.
No warrior got more than a single blow in before she dispatched them, usually in two or more pieces. Those that got past her blade or wings she gripped with hands a thousand times stronger than their own and punched through their long, curved skulls, or threw them bodily away.
In a final orgy of orange blood and shattered chitin armor, Swan broke free from the massed attack, only to look up into the wide cannon turret of an Agulla crabtank.
"Chita," she muttered.
The particle cannon hurt. It was the same weapon that knocked her out of the sky, but this time it fired from almost point-blank range. The hyper accelerated particles struck her armor right in the articulated plates over her stomach and blasted her back and down into the steaming, shattered hatching pools deep enough she became submerged in water and coral.
Her stomach ached from the blow, and for the first time her head began to hurt. With an angry growl, she slashed herself free of the coral bed, but had to jump to avoid another powerful blast. This second one caught her in her legs. The neutronium weave skirt shielded her from the worst of it, but the kinetic energy sent her spinning wildly until she crashed into another pool.
"Damn it, just die already!" Genuinely angry, Swan picked herself up and this time avoided the third cannon blast as she rushed forward.
The crabtank's six legs moved with surprising speed, and its under turret tracked her with mechanical precision. But braced as she was, when it landed another hit she set her feet and took the blast on her pauldron. It made her ears ring loudly and made the muscles of her stomach and neck ache painfully, but it put her into the position she needed.
Her great sword clove through the half-meter thick mechanical legs just as easily as they might have cloven the Agulla warriors themselves. She took another blast as she took out two more legs, until the crab tank collapsed.
The bottom turret swung around the orb-like shell, repositioning itself on the top with the top-mounted turret. But with the tank's mobility limited, she was more easily able to dodge even the doubled blasts, until finally she was close enough to attack the body of the tank itself.
The massive, powerful turrets repositioned themselves on the smooth coral-steel armor to pelt her again at point blank range. But this time, she was ready. With an angry cry she swung her great sword up and around, breaking the powerful magnetic grip that connected the nearest turret and shattering its base.
The now useless canon fell into the filthy blood-stained water and coral. The second got off a shot almost in her face that sent her helm flying from her head and left her ears ringing and her eyes dimming for a second before she slashed at it angrily with a wing.
The turret sparked dangerously as her hardened feathers pierced the tank shell. She thrust her great-sword once more into the orb-shaped hull of the tank using the opening her wing provided, and then jumped clear into a nearby hatching pool as the monstrous vehicle exploded in a spectacular bloom that vaporized the water from around her.
Her control vambrace blinked; she glanced down and saw a message from the Other coordinating her forces. They were closing in on her, and would reach her within minutes, if not sooner.
With a single-touch acknowledgment, Swan looked around and tried to estimate where she was on the planet in relation to the capital city. Doing so gave her a spectacular view of the Sanctuary II, hanging like a distant picture in the orange-blue sky, pelting an Agulla destroyer.
Lower on the horizon, she saw a massive pillar of fire and smoke as another destroyer fell through the planetary atmosphere in its death throes. Her father had finally gained orbital superiority.
"Murderer!"
Swan spun at the voice, surprised to find any Agulla still alive in her area. She stood in a sea of their shattered corpses, after all.
The warrior who approached stood a head taller than any of those she fought already. Powerful muscles bulged under his dense, armor-like skin. He'd painted himself in the arcane symbols of his people's gods, and wore gold rings on his tusks and around his biceps. His claw-like left hand bore a great orange-gold coral sword that glowed with empowered symbols, while in his right claspers he carried an Agulla disintegrator.
The warrior shouted the words of his native tongue in a voice pitched high for water. Swan learned the language as soon as she found out this world would be her first mission fighting for her father. "Pillagers! Foul demons! For my father! For my world! You die today!"
Swan felt no physical exhaustion, at least not in her six months of life serving Thanos. But neither was she accustomed to the lingering ache in her stomach and the throbbing in her now helmless head. She climbed out of the pool, slowed by the heavy armor, and met the challenge with a scowl.
"It is an honor to die for Thanos, animal. I will give you that honor."
"I am Augullux the Mighty!" the warrior roared. "Augullux the Brave! For my gods and my king, I shall not lose!"
With his declaration made, Augullux the Angry charged forward, unleashing blast after blast from his disintegrator.
Swan took the blasts on her armor-the weapon was powerful enough to dissolve some of the bonds of the armor itself, but in such small quantities it barely caused visible damage.
When he closed, he tossed the disintegrator away with contempt and struck with a powerful overhand blow. To Swan's surprise, the blow forced her back even as she caught it on her own great sword. This creature was exponentially stronger than the other Agulla she fought.
Augullux's horizontally slit, pearlescent blue eyes narrowed as he disengaged faster than Swan could anticipate, spun under her wing, and slashed at the back of her knee with a blow that would have dismembered Corvus or even Proxima.
Swan's own constitution was too dense and powerful, but it was enough to knock her foot out from under her. She lashed down with one wing like a third leg and used it to vault over his second strike.
Augullux the Strong recovered in an instant, flowing with such fluidity it looked almost like he was dancing with her as he kicked her slashing wing away and stabbed his sword at her bare arm.
The shock of the cut, like the feeling of being struck by artillery, startled her more than it hurt. He did not give her time to stare at where her black blood welled up from her rune-covered skin. He pushed relentlessly against her, slashing and cutting with extraordinary skill that made her own seem non-existent despite the last six months training at her family's hands.
Her great sword became a hindrance against his smaller, swifter blade. No matter her strength, she had to use it as much like a staff as a sword just because he moved too fast for her to have any hope of striking true.
As they fought, she realized that while she was far stronger than him, Augullux the Swift had much better command of leverage, using it to offset her strength at every turn. He never slowed nor relented. Finally, feinting to his left to draw a wing-strike and her sword, he spun toward her, slipping easily inside her guard. He dropped his sword to the ground, and between one spin and the next, plunged a gleaming, black neutronium dagger right at her exposed neck.
Swan had no choice but to drop her own sword. She reached up and caught the warrior's flipper-like hand just as it touched her neck just under her ear. She felt the hot blood well as the micron-thick tip of the hyperdense material pierced her skin.
She saw in his eyes the realization that his endgame had failed. All his swirling and leverage was designed to keep her hands off him. Now she held his knife hand in hers, and though he kicked and hit at her, she did not let go.
"You cut me," she said, deigning to speak his language. It startled him that she could do so. "You dared cut me. You primitive animal!"
She crushed his hand around the knife. His dense skin cracked, and the bones within shattered.
The beast ground his wide tooth ridges together in a grating sound that served as his people's analog of crying, and kicked at her knee as best he could. She turned her hips to avoid the blow, and just as fast as he spun to infiltrate her guard, she spun and slapped him away with her wings.
Augullux the Agile shot away like a railgun projectile. His body exploded through the walls of a bombed-out structure. His passage carried so much energy it shattered the coral walls and brought what remained of the roof down.
Swan lifted her sword, and then with another thought lifted his as well. She walked over the bodies and blasted uneven terrain until she stepped into the hollowed structure. Augullux had fallen into a crater made from the Sanctuary II's initial planetary bombardment. As she entered, he picked himself up and swayed on his clawed, flipper-like feet. He held his broken hand at his side.
With a contemptuous snort, she tossed his sword to him. He caught it skillfully with his uninjured hand.
"If your foolish king had surrendered, half your people would live," she pointed out to the powerful but foolish champion. "My father does not kill for the sake of killing. What he does is for the well-being of the universe itself."
Augullux the Wounded held his ground. "You lie, demon. You attack us because we signed a treaty with the Nova Empire to fight the Kree. Your father does the Kree's bidding, not the Universe's."
"Now who's lying?" She smiled as she said it. The lies he told slid cleanly out of her thoughts. Her father could never be so petty. It was life itself which directed him. Death was the most final and important part of life. "But don't worry, little animal. Your people won't have to suffer long."
Augullux the Unyielding roared a final challenge and attacked again. Though the skill and power remained, his speed had diminished with his injuries and fatigue. And without his speed, he lost his battle to control the leverage between them.
She batted a strike of his sword away with the cross-guard of her blade, and with her other hand she slammed a closed fist into the champion's elongated head.
Once more his body flew away, crashing into the last standing wall of the structure. She approached slowly, knowing from her vambrace that her Chitauri were now only minutes away.
The champion once again pushed himself to his feet. One of his eyes had ruptured from her blow, and the bone of his skull was dented but quickly swelling. They both know it was a mortal blow. And yet still he raised his blade defiantly.
He was so injured he did not even see the wing that sliced through his thorax-not until the hardened feathers pierced his back.
Augullux the Surprised stood staring at her with his one good eye as orange blood poured from between his tooth ridges. Though she was not versed in the expressions of his kind, in his remaining eye she could see surprise that he lost. After all, his cause was just. He was defending his people; how could his gods let him die?
"You aren't the first to die at my hands, and you won't be the last," she told the dying creature. "But I swear you will be the last to ever draw my blood."
She snapped her wing out of his thorax and then slashed with it to send Augullux the Short's head flying. His sword shattered. The body fell back with a loud thud against the deck plating. Orange blood pulsed out from the stump across the floor; one pulse, two pulses...three. After the third, the dual hearts of the creature finally ceased.
In the distance, she saw a column of black smoke trailing behind the falling form of the last Agulla destroyer. The shattered craft was unrecognizable as it disappeared briefly over the horizon, replaced instead with a white-hot flash of light and the billow of a distant mushroom cloud.
The ground shook around her and she turned to see her Chitauri rushing around her by the millions. The skies darkened with leviathans and gunsleds as the war drones ran by, lost in the cyberpathic exultation of battle.
In the midst of the horde, standing still, she saw a figure who should not have been there. Swan went perfectly still as her vision seemed to darken along the periphery. The figure was a humanoid male, massive but old. His skin was the color of ash, save for a faded, red tattoo that curled like a serpent around his broad torso and wrapped around his head to mark one eye. He wore a thick, iron gray beard that hung down to his chest, and his green eyes glared at her menacingly. He held in his hands a great axe that shimmered with a strange, ethereal blue light.
Swan braced herself for battle, but the figure did not attack. Instead, he turned his back on her. He turned his back, and walked away, and though she could not say why, Swan was seized by a terrible fear and sense of loss. Everything around her faded into dark save for that broad, pale back and a head bowed in disappointment.
She reached out to call for him; but abruptly the figure was gone. Instead, a much larger one approached her.
Thanos wore his war panoply. His dual-bladed great sword stood taller than Swan herself. Chitauri and Outriders swarmed around him as he stepped through the shattered bodies of Agulla dead until he stood before her.
A massive violet hand gently touched her neck and pulled away a spot of black blood. "Helms work best when they are on your head, Little Swan," he said with a wry smile. "Perhaps using your head is not the best way to shield from tank fire."
Despite herself, Swan smiled wistfully. "The thought occurred, Father. The tank disagreed."
Thanos stood at over two and half meters. His shoulders were as broad as her legs were long. He, and perhaps her brother Cull Obsidian, were the only beings who could even lift, much less wield, her sword. Well, and Ebony Maw as well. But he would just levitate it and use it as a projectile.
Thanos placed a hand on the pauldron of her armor and surveyed the battlefield. "This was one of their strongest points. Augullux was the spawn of the Agulla king, and their mightiest warrior. You took it all out by yourself."
"If a mere daughter of Thanos could do this, then they should know not to resist Thanos himself," she said.
He laughed. "Indeed, daughter. You have done well. Gather your gear-Maw can repair your armor well enough, though we may need to rethink its design. We still have work to do."
~~Titanomachy~~
~~Titanomachy~~
Thanos did not believe in prolonged sieges. His strategy called for a world's conquest in three days or less. If he and his advisors did not believe that possible, he would send in Gamora and Nebula to destabilize the society by sowing racial, ethnic or religious discord until the society was weak enough to fall.
His tactics were basic and inevitable. The Sanctuary II was the largest, most powerful warship the galaxy had ever seen. It unleashed a bevy of smaller Q-shaped ships that served as local destroyers and protected the Chitauri-hive ships that directed the planetary invasion. They arrived by warp instead of by jump point and immediately secured orbital supremacy.
Once that was achieved, Thanos bombarded the planetary surface. His targets were always pre-selected from spies sent in advance-communications hubs, civil defense or police hubs, and any military targets. He always vaporized the five largest population centers as a matter of course.
With the planet's defense compromised, it was just a matter of landing the Chitauri and Outriders and pacifying the population.
In the case of Ahl-Agulla, however, the population refused to be pacified. As that first long day faded into night, the Chitauri and Outriders continued to encounter heavy resistance. At her father's side, Swan helped crush the most hardened points of the fighting.
Though she was strong, Swan's relatively small size made leverage a constant battle. More than once she wished her wings were large enough to let her fly unaided, rather than trudging through the ground with a broken thruster and anti-grav pack.
But Thanos? He was large enough that he always controlled the leverage in a fight. When they encountered the nest of four crab tanks and three hundred Ahl-Agulla warriors forty kilometers from the world's capital dome, he actually shoulder-checked one of the tanks into another. Swan could barely even reach the bottom of the devices.
His great sword did more than just remove the legs-with a mighty shout he clove two of the armored vehicles in half.
Swan herself took care of the fourth tank, but could only watch admiringly as her father destroyed three of the monstrous weapons. Swan's brothers and sister, Corvus Glaive, Cull Obsidian and Proxima Midnight led the outriders in the slaughter of the Ahl-Agulla warriors.
The surviving defenders withdrew to the large domed palace that housed their monarch. The pearl-colored dome bore several holes where their bombardment pierced the city shields. All around it, outriders and Chitauri formed a perimeter and finished off the fallen. The armies of Thanos did not take prisoners in war.
"Shall we bomb them, father?"
Proxima stood a head taller than Swan, with tightly fitted armor-weave clothing that glistened with orange blood and bits of shattered coral and bone. Her own campaign began opposite Swan's on the far side of the world, but her success brought her and the others of the Black Order together here.
"No," Thanos said. "We didn't come to exterminate them-we came to save them from themselves. They were just too stubborn to see it."
Proxima bowed to his wisdom.
They took the capital dome in an hour. The warriors they fought at the last appeared to be freshly molted juveniles, smaller than the adults and sometimes in the first hours of their adult life stage. They died quickly compared to the older, more seasoned of their kind.
Thanos led his adopted children into the vast interior of the dome while his armies of Chitauri, outriders and Sakaraan mercenaries surrounded the entire structure. Swan studied the mosaic of past Agulla kings barely discernible in shattered stones that once outlined a path of honor to a pearl-colored throne at the end of the room.
The king of Ahl-Agulla stood at the base of his elevated throne. He held his spawn's broken sword hilt in his hand-Swan was not sure how he recovered it. Behind him, in various states of shock or illness, stood the last survivors of a world that once boasted sixty million.
Even their very young pre-juveniles and their ancient elders stood holding particle weapons. The entire species appeared prepared to die fighting. Swan looked upon them with exasperation. They had already lost, what was the point of continued fighting?
"Speak my words, daughter," Thanos said to Swan.
"I am yours, father."
The Titan looked down at the broken king. "If you had surrendered, the Agulla would number thirty million," he said. "You did not surrender, though. Your people fought strongly-bravely. It broke my heart to kill such fine warriors. But I did. Then you sent your juveniles to fight. By then I was angry with you, because you had lost your mechanized forces and had no hope. It felt like you were killing yourselves against my blade. And now I find this. Tell me, are there enough of you left to even survive as a species?"
Swan repeated his words dutifully, incorporating his inflection and tone as the Agulla themselves might.
"Do not lecture me on morals, monster!" The king's voice was just as strong as his sons. "The Agulla would rather die free than live as slaves!"
The aged and the larval juveniles behind the king were weeping. The Agulla shed opaque tears, filled with pheromones that communicated their emotions to each other. The ancient ones intermingled with the few surviving larval youth wept as well.
"Daughter, this is your first cleansing," Thanos said. "You have done well. Explain to this king what his options are."
Swan stepped forward; the King tensed and glared at her, as if somehow he recognized her. He raised the sword that Swan herself likely broke and cried out to his gods a second before she slashed with her wing and sent his head flying across the broken mosaic of his ancestors.
Behind them, the ancients and pre-juvenile Agulla cried out in horror and despair. Only then did the Agulla break.
