A/N: Thanks to all who've managed to stick around so long. This is the second to last chapter. Normally I post the last two chapters together, but I intend to continue on straight into Voluspa for anyone who wishes to continue the journey with me. So, we'll just have to be patient.
Chapter Forty-One: Endgame
"Why Australia?"
Wong posed the question as Steven conducted several volunteer masters to the EDF compound to help coordinate the world's defense.
"Telos re-established the bifrost," Steven said. He pointed to New Asgard, off the coast of Newfoundland, and then noted that Australia was almost opposite the globe. "Australia is at the antipode point from it. That makes it difficult for the Asgardians to use the Bifrost as a weapon. And it's an isolated continent, so it gives them a secure foothold on the planet."
Wong stared at the illusionary globe that took up the center of the New York sanctum's atrium. The illusion included earth's moon, and the alien ships that hid on its far side as if the Masters of the Mystic Arts could not see them.
"It just seems so…obvious," Wong muttered.
"Maybe. But it can't be ignored. Please head out, I'll be there shortly."
Wong nodded, and in a second was through a portal.
The moment his portal closed, the sanctum shook. It shook so violently Steven would have lost his feet if not for his Cloak of Levitation. Masters Antonia and Lamue stumbled as well, with Lamue actually falling to the floor.
"The sanctum is under attack!"
Master Antonia barely got the words out when the front of the heavily warded, magically protected building shattered in a rain of collapsing mandelas, dimensional magic, stone and mortar. The three remaining wizards raised their most powerful shields as they caught, through the distance, a glimpse of a massive ring-like craft hovering almost directly above their sanctum.
"Scatter!" Steven's warning came a split second too late. A blast of fiery green light emerged from the massive craft right into the heart of the sanctum.
In that split second, as he screamed the warning, Steven's mind plowed through all the magic he'd learned in the few years since he'd joined the order. And he realized that no matter what he did, he just didn't…have…time.
The explosion stopped–to the naked eye, it looked as if a frozen ball of green-tinted fire filled the sanctum. He got a terrifying glimpse of his two fellow-masters already partially immolated by the enemy weapon.
He harnessed the endless power of the Eye of Agamotto. The explosion seemed to pull back into itself; the faces and bodies of his three friends and fellow-masters restored themselves. Abruptly the sanctum was whole.
"We need to move, quickly!" Steven shouted. "Thanos is here!"
He summoned a portal, only to pause when his companions did not answer. Turning, a sense of dread growing as the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, Steven saw his companions standing perfectly still. Their faces were blank. They stood with bowed shoulders and empty eyes, not even blinking at him.
"Show yourself," Steven called out.
The Sanctum shattered around him. It didn't explode as if from alien weapons fire; or as if from a bomb. All around, the walls simply came apart in a roar of separating wood and crushed mortar. It shot out away from him in a cloud, as did the brownstones all around them, exposing the alien ship hovering in the evening sky overhead and the terrified screams of people trying desperately to escape the confrontation. The pieces of the sanctum flew away into the wind, forming a rain of debris that fell over the block. Only then did the true enemy show himself.
Thanos stood easily four to five feet taller than the other masters as he seemed to shimmer into existence–not from a portal, but from either some form of invisibility or other means Steven could not recognize. His lavender skin looked roughened by time and harsh environment, even clad as he was in golden armor. His bald head caught the lights shining down from the ship overhead.
One hand was clad in a massive, golden gauntlet upon which three powerful stones gleamed.
"I've been watching you, wizard," Thanos said. Though his voice was deep, his words were perfectly unaccented American English. Not even a translation device, but the creature somehow had learned English likely just for this day. "I must admit that I enjoyed your solution to the Jotun invasion. You are a smart man."
"I'm a determined man," Strange said firmly.
"Yes." Thanos held up his gauntlet. "The Mind and Reality stones were easy enough to gather. But the soul stone exacted a heavy price."
He placed his bare, massive hand on top of Master Antonia's head, dwarfing her with the light touch. "Their souls are beyond time, wizard. With just a thought, I can destroy your friends beyond even the time stone's ability to restore. Or I can warp their minds to serve me joyfully, and have them flay the skin from your body. Or each other."
Master Durand pulled a knife from his belt, and without any hesitation or emotional display slammed the blade into his own thigh. He went still again, as if nothing happened. Dark, unfocused eyes showed no sign of any pain or awareness.
"I know everyone in your world, Dr. Stephen Strange," Thanos said. "While you and my wayward daughter played soldier, I've been studying. Preparing. Your friend Dr. Palmer is standing on the ledge of a hospital. Her mind is aware and terrified; she does not know why her body does not obey her commands. There are others. You are a smart man, wizard. I control the power of the mind, the soul and reality itself. What are your odds? You know what I want."
"I can't just…"
Master Lemue's skin paled; the man folded to the floor like a de-stringed marionette.
"This is not a discussion, wizard." Thanos' hand began to squeeze Antonia's head. "You will watch everyone you know and love die in agony, and then I will destroy you in a prolonged battle before taking what I will; or you will give me what I want, and I will leave you all as you are. This…"
He waved his hand around as if indicating the whole of New York. "This is nothing. This world is a speck of dust. I have no need to exert dominance over insects. You are a smart man, Dr. Strange, but you are still just a man. Decide now."
~~Titanomachy~~
~~Titanomachy~~
Although he was far from it, while working with Peggy and Colonel Phillips in the SSR, General Steve Rogers remembered reading the intelligence dispatches from Stalingrad. The entire German 6th Army was crushed. It was only decades later, in another life, that he learned that the Soviets were so brutal with their own people that to kill the 840,000 Nazies of the German offense, they spent the lives of over 1.1 million of their own people. Almost two million people died in the Battle of Stalingrad.
He glanced at the chalkboard across the much reduced, temporary command center in the Kurrajong Hills. 623,000 confirmed casualties. 1.2 million estimated civilian casualties.
"General, we're getting reports that the Russians are in retreat. Their 38th Regiment is gone, 100% casualties. Tank regiment is down to 30%. They've fallen in with remaining elements of the Wakandia and Joint European EDF ground forces. High casualties across the board."
Steve nodded to the lieutenant. He didn't know her name-she wasn't even EDF, just regular Australian Army who came with them after their first command post was overrun and half the staff killed before Stark's Iron Legion, Thor and Hulk (and his pet dragon) helped Steve beat them back.
"Where?"
They were reduced to paper maps when they lost their holographic display equipment. Steven preferred the paper anyway. It felt more familiar-seemed more real. "The lines broke just past this racecourse, sir," the lieutenant said.
Beside her, EDF Colonel Everdine limped over. He was still bleeding from the HQ overrun, though he'd acquitted himself well. "Stark tells me they're holding the line at Auburn, and Prince T'Challa's group briefly pushed enemy forces back at Gladesville before Q-ship bombardment broke the Wakandan line."
They used thumb-tacks to mark the lines. Since they moved the HQ back, their lines were pushed further and further back. In most cases, they were engaged in a fighting retreat trying to slow the advance. Even Earth's fastest armor could not maintain the speed of the warsleds and Q ships, and the giant, dog-like outriders could actually rip a tank apart with their teeth.
Steve looked around the table until he saw Nat sitting at one of the few EDF communication hubs remaining. "Nat, who has eyes on Hulk?"
"He and his dragon are beating up some of Thanos' lieutenants in North Sydney."
"What about Thor?"
Nat typed a quick command and turned on the speaker for the desk-top communications box. "Thor, this is command. Do you read?"
"I hear you, Natasha."
"Thor, this is Rogers. We have the Russian volunteers in retreat with Wakandan and European EDF units two klicks north of you. Can you assist?"
"I shall, General! Has anyone seen Thanos? I've seen his servants, but not the man himself."
Nat shook her head.
"None yet, Thor. He may be waiting for Telos to take the field."
"Let me know when the villain shows his face," Thor ordered. "For now, I shall save these Rus!"
After they had to flee their first command center, they retreated to Kurrajong, easily 90 kilometers from the Sydney Airport where the enemy first made landfall. Because of the sorcerers and the instantaneous death of almost all of southern China, even non-aligned nations were willing to try and stop the invasion in Australia before it spread to the rest of the world.
They had military units from Russia, Northern China, Japan and India fighting alongside Brazilians, Wakandans, Europeans and Americans. EDF fought alongside normal military. And all the units were brought together within hours due to the magic of the sorcerers.
All they were able to do was just slow the advance. They could kill individual members of the invasion force, but the Chitauri and the dog-like outriders were so fast that the defenders didn't have time in most cases to even establish defensive lines.
They threw in everything they had. Armor, hundreds of the most advanced attack helicopters from around the world, infantry and artillery. They were lifting the Chitauri plasma cannons off the dead to complement the EDF weaponry, and still they were forced into running retreats.
Stark was right-it wasn't enough. For all their advancement, Earth was still not prepared for this form of war.
"Sir! SIR!"
The lieutenant dropped her headset. Across the crowded room of the local school, Nat slowly rose to her feet. Everdine looked as confused as Rogers.
"First report of Chitauri falling dead," the lieutenant called. "Not all, but Defense Group 14 reports a leviathan fell and a force of thousands of Chitauri just dropped dead."
"One hive ship down," Everdine said with a tight grin. "Shelby's team is getting it done."
"We're getting more reports," the lieutenant said. "Across the line. Warsleds are falling out of the sky. Outriders and the humanoid Sakaarans aren't affected, but the offense is stalling."
"All right," Rogers said. "Nat, spread the word. We need to use the opportunity to form up our lines. Those outriders and the other aliens are still a threat, but…"
Nat ripped out her ear piece. "General, the main ship has descended into the atmosphere and is opening fire on us. Heavy fire."
Steve knew it was a possibility. It made sense. Thanos' ship was the largest weapon on the field. So far, it acted like supporting artillery with the still massive Q ships that moved just over the enemy ground formations. And they had nothing that could touch the 19-kilometer-wide ship.
~~Titanomachy~~
~~Titanomachy~~
Eileen Kincheloe's scream still echoed in Tony Stark's ears long after the warsleds blasted her out of the sky. She went down fighting, using the precious seconds between the first enemy blast and the last to empty her entire ordinance supply. She managed to kill the warsleds that killed her.
But a thousand warsleds each replaced those she killed; no one could replace Lieutenant Kincheloe.
Stark was on repulsor blasts only. His missile supply was exhausted within the first minutes of the battle. So far, they were down from fifty to nineteen suits. "Wilson, you still with me?"
"So far," Sam said.
"Pretty sure Jarvis just identified the antigrav system on that Q ship two clips west. How 'bout you, me and Thurston go kill it?"
"Best fuckin' offer I've had all day," came the thick, angry voice of Lieutenant Kevin Thurston Junior.
"You got it. Rhodie, where you at, bud?"
"South of you. Need back up?"
"Stay put Rhodie," Stark said. "See if this works. No need to risk the whole legion."
Even as they spoke, Tony was swatting Chitauri from the sky while doing his best to avoid heavy return fire. He banked on a dime and then shot north toward the Q-ship. Thurston in his interdiction armor fell in with Captain Sam Wilson forming up after. They were half-way through the swarm when the warsleds and the massive leviathan that were drawing on them just fell out of the sky.
"Does that mean what I think it means?" Wilson's voice squeaked a bit.
"Romanov, Stark. Are you seeing Chitauri falling out here?"
"Confirmed, Tony. The Lunar Defender squad just reported in. They and Telos have successfully destroyed all hive ships and have entered the theater. Repeat, Telos is in the Theatre."
"Huh, how 'bout that?"
The reaction among the remaining enemy was instantaneous. Q-ships began firing heavily at the defenders, as did the massive ship that hung in the sky off the coast. The shots began chewing up Australia and anything on it.
Stark dismissed it for later-they had a mission. All three of them wove through the heavy defenses, but all the Q-ships had depended on the Chitauri for local point defense and it showed in the broad gaps in their close-in fire. All three suits reached the section Jarvis believed held the machinery that kept the ship airborne.
Thurston had the plasma charges-Chitauri technology augmented to a low kiloton yield. Better yet, it was a shaped charge that they secured to the interior curve of the Q-shaped craft.
"Fire in the hole!"
They launched off the Q-ship, burning on full power away from the blast. When the blast hit, the shockwave sent all three men spinning through the air. Tony stabilized enough to watch the Q ship dropping like a rock into the burned, obliterated remnants of a high school.
"Rhodie, spread the word. Let's take these bastards down."
"Tony," Sam Wilson said. "On your left."
Tony turned and stared, uncomprehending.
Thanos ship was exploding. He couldn't see what was doing it, but something was blasting through the impossible hull, over and over again up and down the entire nineteen-kilometer length. Fire began to peter out and the Q ships were rising and flying back to the mothership when his lens filters flared dark to protect his vision.
The flash lasted only seconds, but when it faded he saw a streak of light blazing into the Sydney Airport. It carved a long, darkened trench in the ground where it landed. As the massive mother ship continued to flair and sink down into the bay, the Q ships halted their retreat and slowly turned back to continue their assault with the remaining alien forces.
"Telos appears to be on the field, Mr. Stark," Jarvis said helpfully.
"So it appears," Tony said. "Gentlemen, we have a job to do. How many of those charges do we have left?"
"We have enough," Rhodie said. "And I know a handy sorcerer who can get us more from New York if we need them."
"Then let's get this done," Tony declared. "I'm sick of retreating."
~~Titanomachy~~
~~Titanomachy~~
Taylor exhilarated in the power of the two Infinity Stones as they gave her the strength to emulate her friend, Carol Danvers. She now understood just how fun it was to blast through bad-guys' ships.
That exhilaration, though, was short lived when she saw the sheer devastation that the battle wrought over the city. Memories of a shattered, obliterated Bockton Bay made her wince as she realized how many lives must have been lost.
Abruptly, everything she just accomplished stopped. Taylor stumbled and stared in confusion as Sanctuary II somehow rose back up out of the bay. The massive, orange-black billows of ruptured plasma lines and exploding fusion plants sucked themselves back into existence. She'd never seen anything like it before. It looked as if time itself reversed, but just for the warship.
"I'm disappointed in you, Daughter."
The deep, familiar voice raised a wince from her. She turned and saw Thanos stepping from a tear in reality. He came alone, moving casually as if observing a sparring match among his children. Upon his hand she saw a dwarven-made gauntlet with four glowing power stones, and empty sockets for two more.
Mind, reality, soul and time.
"Did you kill the wizard?"
"I had no need. Those who need to die will do so in time."
She spun around to find a second Thanos behind her. Then a third, and a fourth. "It's not too late, daughter." Their voices formed a chorus as Thanos used the stones to manipulate not just her perception of reality, but reality itself.
If she were Black Swan, restrained to the purely physical, his tactic would have worked. But with two Infinity Stones to reconnect her to this new multiverse's divinity, she was far closer to Telos of American than Black Swan. And seeing the devastation around her, and remembering what her battle with Scion did to her beloved home, Taylor felt there was only one possible response.
It was so easy to see, now that the threads of existence flowed through her veins again. With a surge of will and determination, she formed her own tear in space and pulled Thanos with her. She heard the faintest shout of surprise, and then a thud as Thanos stumbled and knelt down to one knee on the hard scrabble of chita stone.
"What is this?"
"The last time I had to fight and kill a titan, it blew up my city," Taylor told him. "If we're going to have collateral damage, let it be in the cursed home of a race dedicated to death."
She lensed space, forming a series of micro-singularities that captured and then projected one of the myriad floating remnants of the Chitauri homeworld. The stone quickly burned into a stream of hyper-dense plasma as it went from almost no relative motion to a third the speed of light in a second.
Thanos bent reality at the last second, shouting as he just managed to redirect the blow into his palace. The energy of the blast didn't shatter his home–the chambers where he and his children planned the annihilation of half of all life. No, it reduced it to subatomic particles. The entire top half of the central spire of the planetary remnant blasted away in a backward shower of gasses and plasma.
"Petty," Thanos snarled.
At his will, the gas reformed into a mile-long Oligarian drake. The scaled, serpentine monster flapped its six wings against the atmospheric envelope of Sanctuary and charged toward her, only for a surge of gravity to grip it and pull it down beyond the atmospheric envelope.
"When Danvers pulled the slave chip from my head, I didn't regain all my memories yet," Taylor told him. "But it allowed me to realize just how evil and insane you are. Not stupid. You are a brilliant man, Thanos of Titan. But insane. You don't understand the balance of life; the beauty and tragedy of existence."
"I understand far more than you ever will, daughter." He raised his gauntlet and Taylor prepared for the next blow.
Instead, they abruptly stood on the surface of an intact, verdant world. Chitauri–simple, un-augmented Chitauri–moved about multi-level mounds of fired clay. Rotting tree trunks were laid out in long beds filled with fungal growths that the chitauri used as their primary nourishment, while gentle clouds passed overhead in a purple-hued sky. The distant dwarf star shone in the sky in his bed of nebula clouds.
Wasn't Chita destroyed by a nova?
Abruptly, the world began to shake around them. Taylor lifted off the surface, and Thanos followed easily. On the horizon, she saw something impossible shatter the world's surface. A hand the size of mountain ranges pierced the planetary mantle in a shower of burning, liquid metal. Another hand punched through the surface hundreds of kilometers away.
Massive gouts of magna burst into the sky as a head larger than most moons thrust up from the planetary core, cracking the world like an egg. "What is this?"
"This, daughter, is life," Thanos said. "Agamir, this one was called. Where do you think the Celestials come from? You stood inside the skull of one, and yet you did not consider what it would take to birth a creature the size of a world? The celestials have been seeding their offspring into the cores of worlds throughout the history of this universe. They feed on the energy of life itself, and when they mature, planets die. And as life continues to spread and grow, the Celestials will mature faster and faster, until they extinguish their food source. Only Celestials will remain, and all organic life will cease."
He pointed to a large shard of the quickly shattering planet. Taylor followed his pointing finger, and to her shock saw another version of Thanos dying with the creatures he was fighting to protect.
"They created me," he continued. "Just like they made others like me. To protect their food until the new celestials were ready to be born. I died, over and over again, and was remade, until I was restored once again to shepherd in the celestial gestating within Titan. Something happened, and like you I regained my true memories. And I said, 'No more.'"
"So you murdered your own planet to keep it from dying?"
"If they had just listened to me, Titan would still exist and be alive. I do what I have to do, daughter. Surely, you can understand now? Better that at least half of life continues, than all life be extinguished."
Just like Scion. If what Thanos said was true, then the Celestials were just like the entities. Traveling from world to world, consuming the life as part of their own life cycle until destroying the world and moving on.
"Did you ever think about just aborting the damned celestials?"
"Of course I did!" He roared the words in his first open display of anger. "For five hundred years, I tried! Nothing less than a supernova can even hurt one! They're elemental beings, tied directly into the fabric of existence. To move against one is to have all the others strike you down. But they're too large and ancient to notice when puny mortal creatures perish. They're in every living world. Even your precious Earth."
The extraordinary sight of a planet-sized creature–this one shaped like some massive, semi-mechanized Chitauri-like creature–faded as reality shifted back to the shattered after effects of that long-ago birth.
"Don't you see, Daughter? I really do fight for life itself. I broke my bonds of slavery, and have spent a lifetime trying to save as many lives as I can."
The worst part of his words were that she believed them. She believed every single word, because she did stand inside the skull of a creature the size of a moon. She knew from Buri's stories that Celestial beings were born, and died. A cosmic food chain of horrifying proportions.
And yet, what he intended to do…
"You are so…brilliantly stupid," she said, shaking her head. "You wipe out half of all life. There are seven billion humans on earth, Thanos. Cut that back to three point five? That was the human population just forty years ago. Forty years of population growth. That's going to be true for almost all sentient populations. If these celestials feed on life, then just putting them on a diet won't change anything. All it will do is cause misery to those you claim to want to save. You're not doing this to save anyone. You're doing this to strike back at your former masters in the only way you can. You were just as much a slave to them as I was to you."
He shook his head with grave sadness. "I hoped, you of all people, would understand, daughter."
All it took was a thought. A surge of will be channeled through the stones set in her armor. An exercise of intent and divinity that was shaped into her very being by godly parents. In a surge of the rainbow light of shattered spectra, Taylor shifted from her position on the chita remnant right to Thano's face even as he finished the last word.
Thanos was a titan–a powerful being capable of reaction times faster than any human could conceive, with more strength most humans could ever imagine. But not even Thanos of Titan could think faster than the speed of godhood.
Her right wing slashed down, and the atmospheric envelope rang with the sound of a gauntlet striking chita stone.
Thanos stumbled away, staring at the bleeding stump of his arm in shock. "What have you done?"
"My father's name was Kratos of Sparta, God of War." Her left wing slashed, faster than even Thanos of Titan could follow, and he collapsed beside the severed trunk of his left leg. "My mother was Freya of Asgard, Goddess of Magic and Fertility."
With her right wing, she finished the swing and thrust it directly through Thanos' chest. "And I am not, and have never been, your daughter."
Purple blood ran from his lips as he stared at her. "What…do you think you've accomplished?"
She drew her wing out of his chest and stepped back before kneeling down to the gauntlet. It was as large as her entire chest plate. One by one, the stones moved as if by their own volition onto her Asgardian-made armor. One after the other. And with each stone, she felt another channel open to creation itself.
How to describe it? Colors faded to streams of energy. Matter faded into streams of denser energy. Gravity, nuclear force, all of time and space…were vibrations. Strings of quantum sound like…
"It's music," she whispered.
She saw the music that made up Thanos of Titan. She saw the twisted strings of vibrations where harsh experience altered his understanding of meaning. He perceived true things, but derived untruths from them to justify his own hate.
He stared back at her, his life's blood spilling from his Celestial-engineered hearts. "You are beautiful," he whispered before she undid the threads of his existence.
"I understand, now," she said. "I know what to do."
Before she could do it, though, the music suddenly changed around her. Not of her will, but of another's. And from just behind her came a new voice, one she'd never heard before.
"Well, this has been fun to watch, but I think it's this has gone on long enough, don't you?"