(Marvel, DC, and all other images, manga, manhwa, anime, and intellectual properties referenced in this story belong to their respective owners. The main character, Karito/Adriel Josue Valdez, and this story's original elements belong to me.)
Miles away, the mountain Peter had kicked the Red Surfer into exploded.
Crimson cosmic power tore through millions of tons of stone and climbed into the sky as a pillar of red and silver light. The clouds split around it. A delayed shock wave rolled across the mountains surrounding Viktor's commune, rattling every window in the settlement.
Artoria and Adriel both saw it.
Adriel clenched his fist and looked beyond the pillar, toward the distant region where Piltover and Zaun waited.
The war had reached the commune.
Artoria stared at the destroyed mountain in alarm. She had sensed the Red Surfer strike Ace and drive him through one house after another. From this distance, she could not determine how badly he had been injured—or how many civilians might have been caught inside the buildings they demolished.
"We must secure the civilians immediately," Artoria said. "Ace was driven through several homes. We do not know how many people were inside them."
"We do."
Artoria turned toward him.
Adriel appeared almost unfazed by the destruction. His clenched fist and rigid posture betrayed the anger beneath that composure, but there was no panic in his expression.
"The moment I sensed something preparing to attack us, I activated my Barrier skill across the entire commune."
Artoria's eyes widened.
Adriel had not enclosed the settlement beneath one massive barrier. That would have turned the commune itself into a target and trapped everyone inside if the shield failed.
Instead, he had surrounded every individual resident with a separate protective field.
Every man, woman, child, and infant within the commune was now protected—including Vander, Vi, Jinx, and everyone else who had relocated to the mountains.
"Each barrier can withstand the combined force of at least five Hiroshima-scale detonations," Adriel explained. "With the kind of enemies invading this dimension, that might be as easy to break as flicking a finger. But falling rubble, collapsing houses, fire, and ordinary explosions won't get through them."
Artoria looked toward the damaged section of the commune.
"Then the residents of those houses…"
"They're alive. Even a baby would survive being buried beneath one of those buildings."
That knowledge eased some of the tension in Artoria's expression.
Only some.
"The barriers will not protect them indefinitely."
"No, but they buy us enough time to evacuate everyone without causing a stampede."
"To the underground bunker?"
Adriel nodded.
He had constructed the bunker shortly after helping establish the commune. At the time, its defenses had seemed excessive.
They no longer did.
The structure rested deep beneath the mountains and had been reinforced against physical, magical, cosmic, and conceptual destruction. It contained enough supplies to sustain the commune's population for an extended period.
It also possessed one final safeguard.
"If this dimension is destroyed, the bunker will automatically teleport into a pocket dimension," Adriel said. "Once everyone is inside, they'll be safe from almost anything happening out here."
"Almost?"
"I stopped believing in absolute safety a long time ago."
The door behind them opened.
Vi stepped outside first, already wearing her Atlas Gauntlets. Jinx followed with her minigun held against her side, while Vander emerged behind them carrying a weapon of his own.
All three stared at the cosmic pillar.
Vi looked visibly panicked. Jinx's usual restless energy had sharpened into something far less playful, and even she seemed to recognize that whatever had produced that light was beyond anything they had faced before.
Vander appeared calmer than either of them, although the way he positioned himself slightly ahead of the girls made his protective concern obvious.
"What the hell is going on?" Vi demanded.
"The Red Surfer is here," Adriel answered.
Vi stared at him.
"The what?"
"Carnage bonded with the Silver Surfer. He has the Power Cosmic, a symbiote, and an entire army following him."
As if summoned by the explanation, screams erupted from the outskirts of the commune.
Dark shapes emerged from the surrounding forest. Others descended from tears opening above the mountains. Some resembled corpses dragged back into motion, while others were completely covered in red symbiote biomass. Their limbs reshaped into blades, claws, and tendrils as they charged toward the settlement.
Carnage had brought his entire horde.
Vander watched the approaching army.
"What do you need us to do?"
"Take everyone to the underground bunker," Adriel said. "Immediately."
Vi tightened her gauntlets.
"What about the people still inside their homes?"
"Artoria will lead the evacuation. The three of you help her gather everyone along the way. Don't stop to fight unless something gets between you and the bunker."
"You expect us to hide underground while you deal with all of that?"
"I expect you to help keep everyone alive."
Jinx looked between Adriel and the approaching horde.
"What about—"
"No time, Jinx."
His answer came more harshly than he intended, but he could not give her time to finish the question.
"You can complain about it after we survive. Right now, move."
Jinx's mouth closed.
Adriel had already sensed Peter reach Ace before the Red Surfer destroyed the mountain. He had also sensed Ace's presence suddenly break away from the battle and begin moving toward Piltover.
Adriel narrowed his eyes.
He had not given that order yet.
He opened a telepathic connection with Peter.
Peter, Ace needs to—
Already sent him.
Adriel paused.
What?
Ace is heading for Piltover, Peter answered. You're going there to deal with Anansi and whatever else took over the city. Artoria and I are staying behind to evacuate the commune and kill Carnage.
That was precisely what Adriel had intended to say.
Every part of it.
I hadn't given you the plan yet.
You didn't have to.
Adriel stared toward the distant pillar.
How did you know?
Because I know how you think.
There was no hesitation in Peter's answer.
Piltover and Zaun are the center of the invasion, so that's where you'll go first. Ace has the power and experience to help you survive whatever is waiting there. Artoria won't abandon an entire settlement while civilians are still in danger, and I'm the one wearing the suit fast enough to keep the Red Surfer occupied.
Peter paused for half a second.
Also, you'd never allow Carnage to walk away from this.
Adriel could hear the anger beneath his calm voice.
So, yes. Ace is joining you. Artoria and I will protect the commune, secure the civilians, put Carnage down permanently, and meet you in Piltover afterward.
Adriel remained silent.
Peter had not read his mind.
He had not overheard the order or received some hidden message through their connection. He had simply understood Adriel's priorities well enough to reach the same decision before Adriel could communicate it.
Peter had already been one step ahead of him.
That was exactly what I was going to say, Adriel admitted.
I know.
You sound way too proud of yourself.
Let me have this.
Adriel almost smiled, but not quite.
Make sure everyone reaches the bunker.
We will.
And Peter?
The humor disappeared from the connection.
Carnage dies this time. No containment. No attempt at rehabilitation. Don't leave a single piece of that symbiote alive to crawl away and regenerate.
That was always the plan.
Peter's answer carried absolute certainty.
Ace and I already agreed. The Red Surfer dies here.
Adriel nodded.
Once he's dead and the civilians are secure, you and Artoria come directly to Piltover.
We'll be there.
The psychic connection closed.
Artoria had been watching Adriel throughout the silent exchange.
"What did Peter say?"
"He already sent Ace to Piltover."
"You had instructed him before now?"
"No."
Artoria looked confused.
"Then how did he know?"
Adriel glanced toward the distant battlefield.
"He knew what I was going to do before I told him."
Artoria's expression softened slightly.
"Peter understands you remarkably well."
"Apparently, he understands me a little too well."
Adriel extended one hand.
Green lines of code appeared in the air before him. They intersected and folded across one another until the space between them tore open, forming a circular portal.
Smoke, fire, and crimson light waited on the other side.
Piltover.
Even through the portal, Artoria could feel the wrongness consuming the city. Entire districts lay in ruins. Organic masses climbed across buildings, and something beneath the streets pulsed with enough corrupted power to make the opening unstable.
Adriel looked back at her.
"Lead everyone to the bunker. Then help Peter kill the Red Surfer."
Artoria tightened her grip around her sword.
"You intend to enter Piltover alone until Ace arrives?"
"I'll wait for him there. Peter sent him ahead, so he shouldn't be far behind."
"That city has already fallen."
"That's why I can't waste any more time."
"And if you are attacked before Ace reaches you?"
Adriel looked through the portal.
"Then I'll remind them why conquering Piltover before I arrived was the easy part."
He stepped across the threshold.
The portal closed behind him.
Artoria turned toward Vander, Vi, and Jinx.
"You heard him. We move now."
Vander nodded first.
"Vi, take the eastern row. Knock on every door and direct everyone toward the central path."
Vi glanced toward the approaching creatures before forcing herself to turn away.
"Got it."
"Jinx, stay with her."
"I don't need someone watching me."
"She's not watching you," Vander said. "You're watching each other."
Jinx rolled her eyes, but she did not argue.
Artoria raised her voice so the nearby residents could hear her.
"Everyone is to proceed to the underground bunker immediately! Take only what you can carry without slowing yourselves. Remain together, follow the marked path, and do not stop until you are inside!"
Doors opened throughout the commune.
Terrified residents poured into the streets as the invading horde drew closer. Vi and Jinx ran from house to house, directing everyone they encountered toward the bunker. Vander remained near the center of the evacuation route, guiding families and preventing the frightened crowd from collapsing into chaos.
Artoria moved between them and the approaching army.
Only then did she unsheathe her sword.
The concealment surrounding the blade unraveled, revealing the golden light burning along its edge. That radiance spread across the road and drove back the shadows cast by the crimson pillar.
Ahead of her, hundreds of corpses and red symbiotes flooded from the forest. Tendrils crawled across the ground. Bladed limbs scraped against stone. Their collective shrieks rolled through the commune as they charged toward the fleeing civilians.
Behind her, the evacuation continued.
Artoria lowered herself into position and held her sword with both hands.
None of Carnage's creatures would reach the bunker.
⟡ ⟡ ⟡
The pillar of cosmic light dissolved as abruptly as it had appeared.
Crimson radiance peeled away from the clouds, leaving the ruined mountain beneath a darkened sky. The Red Surfer hovered above the devastation on his board, staring across the distance at Spider-Man with a menacing grin.
"It has been far too long since we killed a Guardian."
Carnage's biomass crawled across the Surfer's face, stretching that grin beyond anything human.
"There is something about the way Guardians taste. All that power, all those lives woven into one soul…"
Several smaller mouths opened along his neck.
"Exquisite."
Peter's lenses narrowed.
Disgust rolled through him, cold and immediate. Normally, he would have answered with a joke, an insult, or something irritating enough to drag his opponent's attention away from everyone else.
Not today.
He was not in the mood to trade jokes with a psychopath wearing the Power Cosmic.
The Red Surfer's shoulders sagged theatrically.
"Nothing?"
Peter remained silent.
"No joke? No clever little remark?" Carnage asked. "Every Spider-Totem we meet has something to say."
Blue-white electricity snapped around the Velocity Suit.
The Red Surfer's grin returned.
"Perhaps you merely require encouragement."
Peter vanished.
The Red Surfer reacted before the displaced air could explode behind him. Carnage's biomass surged down the Surfer's arm and expanded into a thick crimson shield just as Peter materialized beside him.
Peter's fist struck the barrier.
The collision buckled the air.
His knuckles sank several inches into the living shield, but the symbiote folded around his hand on contact. Crimson tendrils coiled around his wrist and forearm, trapping the punch before he could withdraw it.
Peter did not pull away.
He seized the connection.
He rotated his shoulder, planted one foot against the mountainside, and swung his entire body through the motion. The Red Surfer was ripped from the air and hammered into the ground hard enough to create a circular crater.
Peter reversed direction and slammed him down twice more.
The Red Surfer became a silver-and-crimson blur at the end of Peter's arm, smashing through stone as Peter whipped him from one side of the mountain to the other. Each impact fractured another section of the ridge.
On the final swing, Carnage liquefied.
The Red Surfer's body collapsed into a stream of red and silver matter that drained into the surfboard. The shield around Peter's arm softened with it, slipping through his fingers before he could tighten his grip.
Peter's lenses widened.
The Red Surfer emerged upside down from the underside of the board, his body hanging beneath it as though gravity had forgotten which direction it was supposed to pull him.
His arm stretched across the distance like a rubber cable and drove its fist into Peter's stomach.
The Velocity Suit compressed around the impact.
Peter folded over the punch and shot down the mountainside.
His body struck the slope, bounced through a boulder, and tore through several trees. He rolled faster with every impact, scattering stone and splintered wood until the entire world became an uncontrolled blur.
Peter fired a web behind him and attached it to an exposed section of bedrock. He clenched his fist, and the line went taut hard enough to tear a trench beneath him.
His descent stopped violently.
Peter dug one hand into the ground and looked up.
The Red Surfer was already diving toward him.
A compact sphere of cosmic energy burned inside his open palm, dense enough to distort the light surrounding it.
Peter disappeared an instant before Carnage struck.
The cosmic blast hit the mountain.
The entire ridge split from its ruined summit to its foundation. Both halves lurched away from each other as red energy tore through the divide, vaporizing everything caught between them.
Peter reappeared above the Red Surfer and fired both web-shooters.
The Velocity Suit accelerated the braided web into a hypervelocity projectile. It crossed the distance like a railgun round and struck Carnage across the face.
The Red Surfer's head snapped backward.
A furious growl escaped him. Carnage reshaped one arm into a long crimson blade and slashed upward.
Peter shifted to the right, and the edge passed within inches of his chest.
It never touched him, but the space surrounding the blade twisted beneath its passage. The clouds separated in a perfectly straight line, and the blue sky beyond them appeared to split as the spatial distortion continued beyond the horizon.
Peter stepped inside Carnage's reach.
The Velocity Suit flooded his right arm with Speed Force energy. His muscles vibrated until the limb became a collection of overlapping positions.
He drove his fist beneath the Red Surfer's ribs—the old angle for a liver shot, whether the monster still possessed anything resembling a liver or not.
Carnage gasped.
The strike transferred its momentum past the symbiote's surface and deep into the cosmic body beneath it. The mountain caved beneath the Red Surfer's board as he anchored himself against the blow. A narrow pressure corridor erupted from his back, pierced the cloud layer, and continued beyond the atmosphere.
The reaction excavated a crater beneath both fighters.
Yet the Red Surfer remained in front of him.
Peter allowed himself half a breath.
A crimson hand clamped around his wrist.
Carnage had endured the punch.
Symbiote tendrils coiled around Peter's arm and tightened with enough force to deform the Velocity Suit's armor. The Red Surfer pulled him closer as cosmic energy accumulated inside his other palm.
Peter stared directly into a miniature sun hovering inches from his face.
"Fu—"
The blast struck him.
Peter disappeared into the earth.
Cosmic energy flooded the crater and expanded across the surrounding mountains for miles. Stone liquefied beneath the heat. Forests vanished into incandescent ash, and the ground rolled beneath the commune in a violent earthquake.
By the time the light receded, the battlefield had become a wasteland.
The Red Surfer hovered above the crater, cackling with unrestrained delight. Carnage's face twisted with something approaching reverence as he stared into the destruction below.
"A Spider-Man connected to the Speed Force…"
The symbiote shuddered ecstatically across his body.
"Do you have any idea how long we have dreamed of killing something like you?"
Smoke and molten rock churned inside the crater.
Nothing moved.
Carnage's laughter echoed into the hole as he enhanced the Surfer's cosmic senses, extending his vision through the heat, radiation, and debris.
A web attached to his face.
The line ignited with Speed Force energy and snapped taut.
The Red Surfer was ripped from his board and dragged headfirst into the crater.
Peter erupted from the smoke beneath him.
The Velocity Suit was scorched almost black across one side. Several armored sections had cracked open, exposing damaged circuitry beneath them, but the suit remained functional.
Barely.
Peter drew back his right arm.
It began to vibrate.
Not merely fast enough to blur. The fist occupied so many positions in rapid succession that the space around it appeared grainy and incomplete. Blue-white electricity condensed along his shoulder before pouring toward his knuckles.
The Red Surfer recognized what Peter was preparing.
His grin widened into something manic.
"Yes."
The Power Cosmic flooded into Carnage's arm. Crimson biomass tightened over silver muscle as a white-hot corona formed around his fist.
"Show us everything!"
Peter's lenses narrowed.
The Infinite Mass Punch was a dramatic name, not a literal description. Nothing possessing mass could reach the speed of light. As his fist approached that limit, however, its relativistic energy and momentum rose without any practical limit.
The Velocity Suit was pushing his arm close enough for the distinction to become academic.
Carnage was answering with a concentrated Power Cosmic strike carrying comparable energy in the opposite direction.
If their fists met normally, those equal and opposing momenta would largely cancel within the center-of-momentum frame.
The energy would not.
It would convert into heat, gamma radiation, particle production, and catastrophic spacetime curvature. Concentrated within an area no larger than their fists, that energy density would cross the threshold required to form a trapped surface.
An event horizon.
If the resulting black hole remained unstable, its evaporation would release a radiation burst capable of sterilizing the planet. If the Power Cosmic continued feeding it long enough to stabilize the horizon, Runeterra would disappear first.
The rest of the solar system would follow.
Peter had less than a picosecond to solve the problem.
Inside his Speed Force-accelerated mind, that fraction of time stretched long enough to examine thousands of possibilities.
Redirecting the punch was impossible; Carnage would adjust. Phasing through him was too dangerous while Peter carried this much relativistic energy. Canceling the attack was no longer an option either. The Velocity Suit had already committed the momentum, and attempting to stop it inside his own arm would tear him apart.
Then Peter remembered the orb.
The pocket-dimension device he had taken from Adriel's Gamer Inventory before the attack remained secured inside his damaged suit. He had intended to use it to reach his laboratory.
A laboratory did not matter anymore.
Peter reached his conclusion.
Their fists connected.
For the smallest fraction of a second, the expected catastrophe began.
The atmosphere became white plasma.
A dark ring appeared around their knuckles as spacetime folded inward. The surrounding mountains bent toward the collision, and the light of the distant sky warped around the forming gravitational well.
Carnage saw the horizon beginning to close, the ground preparing to collapse beneath them, and the first wave of radiation expanding toward the commune.
Then Peter activated the orb.
It did not attempt to store the explosion inside ordinary space. Compressing that much energy into a physical container would only have completed the black hole's formation.
Instead, the orb unfolded.
A causally isolated pocket dimension opened directly around their colliding fists. The device mapped the entire reaction into the newborn space, redirecting the energy, radiation, opposing momentum, and gravitational curvature across its boundary before any could propagate through Runeterra.
The forming event horizon vanished into the aperture, taking the explosion with it. The mountains snapped back into place as the warped sky straightened.
A blast that should have destroyed the planet disappeared with a soft, hollow pulse.
The orb sealed itself around the pocket dimension and dropped between them, its surface glowing white from the strain.
The Red Surfer stared at it and laughed—not mockingly, but with genuine admiration.
"Clever."
Peter twisted his hips and kicked him across the face.
Carnage's head snapped sideways, but the symbiote stretched one arm behind him and whipped it back across Peter's stomach.
The backhand shattered the armor covering Peter's abdomen.
Both fighters were launched in opposite directions.
Peter tore through the remains of the mountainside and crashed into the commune's outer district. He passed through several evacuated houses before plowing across the street. Carnage's own minions disappeared beneath his body, their limbs and symbiote biomass mangled into the debris as he continued through them.
The Red Surfer shot across the opposite horizon, penetrated another mountain, and crashed into the lake beyond it.
The impact lifted the entire body of water into the air.
For one suspended moment, the lake ceased to exist. Millions of gallons hung above the crater in a glittering wall before gravity reclaimed them.
Water crashed over the mountain and fell across the battlefield like rain.
Peter finally stopped inside the ruins of a house.
He rolled onto one knee.
The armor surrounding his lower face separated just before he vomited blood onto the shattered floor. Pain twisted through his abdomen, and several warnings flickered across the inside of his damaged lenses.
"Fuck…"
Peter wiped his mouth and forced himself upright.
He had known killing Carnage would not be easy, but damn, this was already worse than he had expected.
⟡ ⟡ ⟡
Artoria tore through the invading horde like an endless storm of steel and golden light.
Every movement of her sword produced another wave of destruction. An upward swing launched a crescent of compressed energy through an entire column of zombies. She turned through the follow-through and swept the blade horizontally, sending another golden arc across the opposite side of the battlefield.
Both attacks struck simultaneously.
Explosions erupted throughout the commune's outskirts as dozens of corrupted bodies were torn apart. Symbiotes attempted to reform, only for the remaining energy to burn through their biomass before they could reconnect.
A brute covered in several layers of crimson muscle leaped over the others and descended toward Artoria with both fists raised.
She never looked at it.
Her sword moved backward beneath her arm and pierced its chest in midair. Without disrupting her momentum, Artoria continued the upward motion, drawing the blade smoothly through the rest of its body.
The brute separated into two burning halves above her.
A zombie lunged from her blind side.
Artoria turned and cut it horizontally through the waist.
She did not stop.
Every step carried her into another attack. Every swing killed something. Her blade moved so quickly that multiple golden afterimages remained suspended around her, making it appear as though an entire formation of invisible knights fought beside her.
For one fleeting moment, it felt like the battlefields of her previous life.
No court. No throne. No impossible decisions disguised as acts of kingship.
Only enemies and a sword.
The horde closed around her anyway.
Zombies flooded the road from every direction while symbiotes crawled across the surrounding buildings and descended from the rooftops. Bladed tendrils stabbed toward her through the crowd, leaving no visible opening through which she could escape.
Artoria reversed her grip and drove her sword into the ground.
Golden energy erupted from the point of impact.
The shock wave expanded across a fifty-meter radius, disintegrating every zombie and symbiote caught within it. Buildings shook beneath the pressure, but every civilian remained protected inside one of Adriel's individual barriers.
Silence briefly replaced the horde's screaming.
Then Artoria sensed Peter crash nearby.
His presence tore through several buildings on the commune's outer edge before finally stopping. The impact was followed by a sudden weakening in the Speed Force energy surrounding his suit.
He was hurt.
Artoria ripped her sword from the ground and ran.
More creatures attempted to block her path. She cut through them without slowing, alternating between killing the invaders and protecting the last civilians still making their way underground.
A falling support beam nearly crushed an elderly couple. Artoria caught it with one hand, hurled it through three approaching zombies, and directed the couple toward the bunker before continuing.
She encountered the others near the central evacuation route.
Jinx fired controlled bursts into the advancing horde while Vi guided the remaining families toward the entrance. Viktor and Sky stood beside the bunker, combining their Arcane abilities to hold back anything that passed through the outer defenses.
Vander was fighting at the front.
At some point during the evacuation, he had taken Vi's Atlas Gauntlets.
The enormous weapons should have slowed him.
They did not.
Adriel had enhanced Vander's restored body with a version of the super-soldier serum, elevating his strength, speed, durability, and reflexes beyond the limits of an ordinary human. Combined with the Atlas Gauntlets, those enhancements transformed him into a rampaging warrior.
Vander slipped beneath a symbiote's claws and drove one gauntlet into its abdomen. The impact folded the creature around his fist before launching it through several others.
He turned immediately.
A zombie attempted to seize him from behind, but Vander caught its arm, pulled it over his shoulder, and smashed it headfirst into the ground. He brought the other gauntlet down before it could rise, pulverizing its upper body inside the crater.
Three symbiotes attacked together.
Vander moved faster than Artoria remembered him ever moving. He blocked the first strike, shouldered through the second, and drove both gauntlets into the third. The shock wave scattered the entire group.
Nothing touched him.
Viktor and Sky supported him from behind, restraining enemies with interlocking currents of Arcane energy and exposing them to his attacks. Jinx eliminated anything attempting to flank them, while Vi continued directing civilians into the bunker.
The defenders were holding.
More importantly, the evacuation was almost complete.
Viktor's commune had never possessed an enormous population. At the rate everyone was moving, the final residents would be inside the bunker within another minute.
They could survive without Artoria until then.
Peter might not.
Artoria accelerated toward his position.
She found the Red Surfer cutting directly through the settlement, destroying every structure in his path as he hunted Peter. The symbiote reshaped one arm into a blade and thrust it toward Peter's exposed throat.
Artoria became a golden blur.
Her sword intercepted the blade inches from Peter's neck.
The collision released a burst of crimson and gold.
Artoria stepped forward and forced her sword upward, knocking the Red Surfer's arm away from Peter. The sudden resistance staggered him, and before Carnage could correct his balance, she spun and drove a back kick into his chest.
The Red Surfer slid several feet across the road.
Peter forced himself upright.
Most of his mask had been destroyed, exposing one side of his face. The armor covering his abdomen was completely gone, shattered by Carnage's previous backhand. Bruises were already spreading across the bare skin beneath it.
Peter examined the damage and clicked his tongue.
Then he looked toward Artoria.
She stood beside him with her sword raised, placing herself between Peter and the Red Surfer.
Peter cracked his neck.
"You ready, Artoria? This is serious."
She glanced at him from the corner of her eye.
"I am aware of how serious it is."
"Just checking."
"He does not deserve to live. Let us end this."
Peter faced Carnage and lowered himself into a fighting stance.
"Yeah. He's way overdue."
The Red Surfer stared at them.
Then he cackled.
Their determination meant nothing to him. Carnage did not require a cause, a kingdom, or even the promise of victory. He lived for blood. He existed to kill, and every massacre merely created an appetite for the next.
"How touching."
Crimson tendrils spread from his shoulders.
"Two exhausted heroes standing together against the monster."
His grin widened.
"Do you want to know how this ends? This entire world painted red. Every city drowned in blood."
Several mouths opened across his body.
"And your corpses lying somewhere among the rest."
Carnage leaned forward on his board.
"But please, keep making this enjoyable. With both of you here, we might finally have some fun."
His complete lack of concern visibly irritated Artoria.
She attacked first.
Artoria raised her sword high and brought it down toward his head. The Red Surfer formed another blade and deflected the strike, forcing her weapon away from its original path.
Instead of allowing the parry to stagger her, Artoria followed its momentum into a spin.
Her sword swept horizontally toward Carnage's neck.
He ducked.
The swing carried Artoria's arms briefly across her centerline. Carnage drove an uppercut through the narrow opening between them and struck beneath her ribs.
Artoria was launched into the air.
The Red Surfer rose after her.
Peter moved before he could reach her.
The ground shattered beneath Spider-Man as the Velocity Suit converted Speed Force energy into forward momentum. He struck Carnage across the waist and carried him away from Artoria.
The symbiote grew additional arms.
Fists hammered Peter's head, ribs, stomach, and spine while both fighters climbed through the air. Peter answered every strike he could, driving punches into Carnage's body with equal violence.
The extra limbs gave the Red Surfer too many angles.
Peter's suit compensated in another way.
Every blow Carnage landed transferred kinetic energy into the Velocity armor. The suit absorbed what it could and stored the accumulated force inside its damaged core.
Warning indicators flashed across Peter's remaining lens.
The storage limit approached.
Peter seized Carnage by the head with both hands.
The Velocity Suit released everything.
Blue-white power detonated between them.
Both fighters were hurled in opposite directions and crashed into the ground. Peter recovered almost immediately, rolling across one shoulder and returning to his feet before the displaced earth had settled around him.
Artoria recovered in midair.
She planted one foot against empty space as though the atmosphere itself had become solid beneath her, then launched herself toward Carnage.
Her blade flashed once.
The Red Surfer's arm separated at the shoulder.
Carnage roared.
His entire body erupted into spikes.
Artoria's eyes widened. She twisted away, but hundreds of thin symbiote needles shot outward before she could escape their range.
Several pierced her shoulders, sides, and thighs.
Artoria grunted as the impact knocked her backward.
Peter fired a web from across the battlefield. It wrapped around Carnage's torso, and Peter swung him away from Artoria before the symbiote could follow up.
The Red Surfer extended his claws toward her.
Peter changed direction and slammed him through the nearest house.
The structure collapsed around Carnage.
Peter reached Artoria a fraction of a second later.
Symbiote needles remained embedded throughout her body. Blood spread across her armor and the white fabric beneath it.
Peter attempted to access Adriel's Gamer Inventory.
The connection appeared inside his vision for an instant, only to distort beneath a layer of crimson interference.
ACCESS DENIED.
Of course.
The Darks had blocked their access to the healing items stored inside Adriel's system. They were not going to allow the Guardians to restore themselves between every exchange.
Peter clicked his tongue.
"Can you handle it?"
Artoria pulled one of the longer needles from her side.
"I have felt worse."
"That isn't an answer."
"I am still capable of fighting. Do not concern yourself with me."
She tightened her hand around her sword.
"Let us kill him."
Peter sensed danger.
He did not know exactly where Carnage was, but something powerful was approaching them.
Peter shoved Artoria aside.
A cosmic blast engulfed him.
The beam carried Peter out of the commune, through the side of a rocky ridge, and deep beneath the surface. He penetrated layer after layer of stone before crashing inside an underground cavern.
For several seconds, Peter could not understand where he had landed.
One moment, he had been standing beside Artoria beneath the open sky.
Now darkness and stone surrounded him.
His damaged suit attempted to map the cavern, but half its sensors returned static. Peter rose unsteadily and looked around.
His danger sense screamed.
The warning carried no direction.
Carnage crossed the cavern faster than light.
A thin cut opened along Peter's thigh.
He turned too late.
Another red streak passed him from the opposite side and sliced across his forearm.
Peter attempted to follow the movement, but Carnage's symbiote biology continued interfering with his Spider-Sense. The warning reached him without revealing the attacker's exact position.
A third cut opened across his chest, followed by slashes along his back, right arm, other leg, and cheek.
None of the wounds were deep.
That was the point.
Carnage possessed enough power to remove every limb from Peter's body. Instead, he was cutting him shallowly, allowing Peter to feel each blade without ending the fight.
He was doing this shit on purpose.
Peter's breathing became heavier.
A growl rose beneath it.
The mutation stirred inside him.
It had first begun consuming him several days earlier, threatening to bury the man beneath the arachnid instincts written into his altered body. Peter had forced it down then.
Now Carnage was dragging it back to the surface one cut at a time.
Peter screamed.
The sound echoed throughout the cavern and shook loose fragments of stone from the ceiling.
Even Carnage hesitated.
Then the Red Surfer smiled.
Peter still had not adapted to his mutation. He had suppressed it, but he had never gained complete control over what his body was becoming.
That gave Carnage another way to play with him.
He did not need to defeat Spider-Man.
He only needed to enrage him until the spider consumed the man.
"There you are."
Carnage moved through the darkness again.
"We knew something uglier was hiding underneath."
Another blade traced Peter's ribs.
"Come on, Peter. Stop pretending to be human."
Peter's growling deepened.
"Let the spider out."
Carnage approached for another cut, aiming at Peter's chest.
Peter caught his wrist.
The sudden stop jerked the Red Surfer's entire body backward. His board separated from his feet and crashed into the opposite wall of the cavern.
Carnage stared at the hand around his wrist.
Then he looked at Peter.
Two additional arms had torn through what remained of the Velocity Suit. Peter's exposed eyes had turned completely black, and his teeth sharpened behind lips pulled into an animalistic snarl.
The transformation had begun.
Peter's four hands tightened around the Red Surfer.
"Stand still, you fucking bastard."
He slammed Carnage into the ground.
The entire cavern quaked.
Peter pulled him up and attacked with all four arms. Fists struck the Red Surfer's face, chest, ribs, and abdomen in a relentless barrage. Carnage's head snapped from side to side beneath blows arriving too quickly to distinguish.
The Red Surfer smiled through it.
He had gotten what he wanted.
Carnage forced one arm between Peter's punches and seized him by the throat. His other hand pressed flat against Peter's chest.
Cosmic energy flashed beneath his palm.
The blast launched Peter through the cavern ceiling.
Spider-Man tore through hundreds of feet of rock and resurfaced beneath the open sky. He struck the ground hard enough to bounce before rolling across the ruined landscape.
Carnage followed through the opening.
His fist reshaped into an enormous hammer as he descended, aiming to smash Peter back into the earth.
Artoria appeared beneath him.
Her sword cut through the Red Surfer's leg.
The severed limb spun away, but Carnage regenerated it before it touched the ground. He redirected the newly formed leg toward Artoria while his hammer-shaped arm crashed against her sword.
The weight buckled her arms.
Artoria's knees bent, but she held firm.
Peter rose behind Carnage.
His fist struck the side of the Red Surfer's head in a massive haymaker and drove him into the ground.
Artoria seized the opening.
She reversed her sword and plunged it into Carnage's chest. Golden light burned through the symbiote as she forced the blade deeper until the guard struck his body.
Carnage screamed.
Peter dropped onto him.
The true beatdown began.
Peter's four fists hammered Carnage's torso while Artoria pinned him with her sword and repeatedly drove her armored fist into his face. Every attempt to rise was answered by another combination.
Peter broke the Red Surfer's jaw.
Artoria shattered it again after the symbiote repaired it.
Carnage's body cratered beneath them as the assault drove him deeper into the ground.
Then the Red Surfer split vertically.
His body separated into two streams of crimson and silver matter, slipping between Peter and Artoria before either could maintain their grip.
The two halves rose behind them and merged.
Carnage seized both Guardians by their faces.
His surfboard erupted from the ground at their backs. He stepped onto it and accelerated while keeping Peter and Artoria trapped in his extended hands.
The board dragged both Guardians across the ground.
Their bodies carved parallel trenches through the commune's abandoned outskirts. Carnage carried them through houses, trees, and boulders without slowing.
Peter reached for him.
Carnage extended the arm holding him, placing himself beyond Peter's grasp before driving him through the side of a mountain.
Artoria attempted the same.
The other arm stretched farther, and Carnage smashed her through a ravine.
They crossed another cavern, emerged through the opposite wall, and struck the ground again. Every impact tore away more of Peter's armor and more of Artoria's clothing.
The Velocity Suit failed section by section.
Peter's chest plating broke apart. One shoulder guard disappeared against a boulder, and the remains of his mask were ripped from his face. New cuts opened over his body while bruises spread across nearly every visible section of skin.
Even Guts might have considered the punishment excessive.
Artoria was in no better condition.
Most of her armor had broken away, and her dress hung in bloodstained tatters. Each collision opened another wound across her arms, legs, and back.
Carnage continued accelerating.
Peter's rage completed what the cavern had begun.
His body expanded.
The final pair of arms tore free from his sides. Coarse hair and chitin spread across his skin while his face pushed forward into something no longer human. The surviving core of the Velocity Suit remained attached to his chest, forcing Speed Force energy through the mutating body around it.
Peter was no longer merely developing extra limbs.
He was becoming the Man-Spider.
All six arms began to vibrate.
Carnage sensed the change and attempted to extend his grip farther.
Peter brought all three pairs of hands together. They met at once, producing a single combined clap powerful enough to bend the surrounding space.
Speed Force energy compressed the overlapping shock waves into one violent pulse. Reality seemed to short-circuit around the impact, twisting for an instant before snapping back into place.
Carnage's grip broke.
The three fighters separated and barrel-rolled across the ground before crashing into a wide, open stretch of shattered land.
The Red Surfer rolled to a stop.
Agony twisted through the symbiote covering him. The clap had struck every sonic vulnerability in Carnage's biology at once, and the sound continued reverberating through his body after the physical shock wave had passed.
"Damn it…"
Carnage twisted his neck at an unnatural angle and forced himself upright.
"Why the hell was that so loud?"
The fight was becoming dangerous.
That was an understatement.
Artoria groaned several yards away. Broken pieces of armor fell around her as she pushed herself onto one knee.
Her sword had been lost somewhere during the Red Surfer's charge.
Artoria raised one hand.
Golden light gathered inside her palm, and the sword returned to her grasp. She stabbed it into the ground and used the hilt to pull herself upright.
Blood ran from her nose.
One eye had become bloodshot, and each breath came unevenly. She spat blood onto the ground before looking toward Carnage.
The Red Surfer was no longer smiling.
Artoria followed his gaze.
It settled upon her friend.
Or what should have been her friend.
Peter's humanity had disappeared beneath the transformation. Six muscular arms extended from a hunched, monstrous torso. Black eyes reflected the ruined battlefield, and sharpened teeth crowded a mouth no longer shaped for human speech.
Rage had consumed him.
The Man-Spider raised its head toward the sky and screamed.
The force of its voice shook the entire area.
A visible shock wave expanded from its jaws, throwing dust and debris away from its body. Artoria covered her ears as pain stabbed through her skull. It felt as though both eardrums were on the verge of rupturing.
Carnage suffered worse.
The symbiote recoiled from the piercing frequency. Crimson biomass peeled away from the Surfer's body in writhing strands as he twisted in agony.
For the first time, genuine intimidation appeared on his face.
"This…"
Carnage forced himself to look at the creature.
"This is not the power of a normal Spider-Man."
The Man-Spider lowered its gaze toward him.
"We have killed Spider-Totems. Powerful ones. We have faced a Cosmic Spider and one carrying the Phoenix Force."
Carnage's grin had disappeared completely.
"But what the hell are you?"
The Speed Force alone could not explain this. Even Peter's mutation should not have produced this degree of raw power.
There was something else inside him.
Something beyond the human, the spider, and the borrowed Speed Force.
"Is this because you are a Guardian?" Carnage murmured. "Or are you something more?"
Whatever the answer, Peter had become an actual threat.
Carnage needed to kill him before the transformation grew any stronger.
Then he glanced behind himself.
Artoria remained standing.
She could barely support herself, but her hands were still wrapped around her sword. Carnage knew she would never allow him to kill her friend without interfering—even if Peter could no longer distinguish friend from foe.
The Guardians always found something: a plan, a weakness, or one final burst of impossible strength when the fight should already have ended.
Carnage straightened as the pain from the scream began to fade.
Then his smile returned.
"Come on, then."
Crimson tendrils spread from his body while cosmic energy gathered around both hands.
"Round two."
⟡ ⟡ ⟡
Meanwhile, miles away from the battlefield, the ruined commune heard the Man-Spider scream.
The sound crossed mountains without losing any of its force.
Vander released the zombie he had been holding and clamped both hands over his ears. The Atlas Gauntlets struck the sides of his head with enough force to stagger him, but even their bulk could not block the piercing frequency.
Vi doubled over and cursed.
Jinx dropped her weapon and covered her ears. Viktor and Sky recoiled beside the bunker entrance, while Mel instinctively surrounded the group with a golden barrier.
It did almost nothing.
The scream passed through their bodies as though its source stood directly beside them. Vander felt the vibration in his bones. His restored heart hammered against his ribs, and for several terrible seconds, he thought the sound would rupture his eardrums.
None of them knew what had produced it.
They only knew it had come from the direction Peter and Artoria had gone.
The invading army reacted far worse.
Every symbiote within the commune froze.
Crimson biomass peeled away from stolen bodies, writhing violently before collapsing into lifeless piles. Creatures that had survived Artoria's sword dropped from walls and rooftops. Their tendrils curled inward, twitched several times, and became still.
The zombies did not fare much better. The shock wave ruptured their damaged ears, disrupted their balance, and threw many of them to the ground. Those that remained standing wandered without direction, their coordination broken.
Then the scream ended.
A painful ringing replaced it.
For several seconds, no one moved.
Vi recovered first.
The final civilians were already disappearing through the bunker entrance behind her. She looked across the meadow, confirmed that no one else remained outside, and turned toward Vander.
"Vander!"
He could barely hear her.
Vi cupped both hands around her mouth.
"All the civilians are inside! We need to go!"
Vander looked toward his adopted daughter.
Blood and gore covered him from head to toe. Most of it belonged to the creatures he had killed, although several wounds beneath his clothing had contributed their share. His breathing was heavy, but Adriel's enhancements were already regulating his heartbeat and repairing the worst of the damage.
He could have continued fighting.
Vander lowered his hands and looked at the Atlas Gauntlets.
Only minutes earlier, the commune had erupted into chaos.
Everyone had run toward the meadow while Artoria intercepted the first wave. Viktor and Sky were already near the bunker, desperately directing frightened residents underground. Mel had stayed beside them despite having only just recovered from her escape from Piltover.
Vi had prepared to join Artoria at the front.
Vander had stopped her.
"Give me the gauntlets."
Vi had stared at him as though he had lost his mind.
"What?"
"You heard me."
"I'm not handing you my gauntlets so you can play hero."
"I'm not playing anything."
Another explosion had shaken the commune.
Vander placed one hand on her shoulder.
"You know these people. They'll listen to you. Get them into the bunker."
"And leave you out here?"
"Adriel rebuilt this body stronger than it has any right to be. If one of us can hold that line, it's me."
Vi's expression had hardened.
"That doesn't mean you're invincible."
"No. It means I'm the best option we have."
She hated those words.
Vander knew because Vi had inherited the same habit from him. She would place herself between danger and everyone she loved, then become angry when someone else attempted to do the same.
For once, however, she had listened.
Vi surrendered the Atlas Gauntlets and concentrated on the evacuation. Jinx covered the eastern approach with a stream of gunfire, while Viktor and Sky used their Arcane abilities to restrain anything that reached the meadow.
Mel remained behind them.
She did not know the commune or most of the people fleeing through it, but she understood defensive lines. Golden barriers appeared wherever the formation weakened, intercepting claws and tendrils before they could reach the civilians.
Vander held the front.
Adriel's serum had changed everything about how his body moved. The weight of the Atlas Gauntlets no longer pulled against his shoulders. His reflexes kept pace with threats his eyes had barely registered, while muscles that should have exhausted themselves continued answering every demand he placed upon them.
He and the others had held the line.
Not easily, but successfully.
Then that scream had crossed the mountains and killed almost everything Artoria left behind.
Vi approached him carefully.
"Vander?"
"I'm fine."
"That's what everybody says right before falling over."
Despite everything, Vander almost smiled.
She had clearly spent too much time around Adriel.
"I'm still standing."
"Yeah. Covered in enough blood to fill a bathtub."
"Most of it isn't mine."
"That is not as comforting as you think."
Jinx retrieved her weapon and hurried toward them. She looked over her shoulder repeatedly, as though expecting the lifeless symbiotes to rise again.
"Vander, what's wrong?"
"Nothing."
Jinx studied his face.
"That's a lie."
Vander looked beyond her.
The bunker entrance stood clear. Viktor waited beside it with one hand pressed against the wall for support. Sky stood near him, bruised and exhausted but otherwise unharmed. Mel remained slightly apart from the others, her gaze fixed upon the distant mountains.
Everyone was accounted for.
They had done their part.
That knowledge did not make retreating any easier.
Vi looked in the direction of the scream.
"That came from their fight."
Viktor's hearing appeared to have recovered enough for him to understand.
"The frequency specifically destabilized the symbiotes' cellular cohesion," he said. "Given their reaction, I suspect the effect was intentional—or at least useful."
Jinx rubbed one ear.
"Useful? I think my brain is leaking."
"It is not."
"How would you know?"
"You remain capable of speaking."
"That proves nothing."
Sky pressed one finger beneath her ear and winced.
"Whoever produced it saved us from the remaining horde."
Mel finally looked away from the mountains.
"Was that one of the Guardians?"
No one answered immediately.
Mel had met them less than an hour before the attack.
Ace had found her half-dead outside the commune, carried her to safety, and healed injuries that should have required weeks of treatment. Adriel had listened to her account without dismissing anything she could not explain. Peter had accepted the existence of incomprehensible enemies without hesitation, while Artoria had treated the invasion as a war already demanding difficult choices.
Then they had separated and entered battles capable of reshaping the landscape.
Mel had spent her life around powerful people.
She knew how ambition moved through a room. She understood the threat concealed inside a promise, the violence behind political courtesy, and the way rulers turned extraordinary individuals into weapons.
The Guardians belonged to no nation.
No council commanded them. No army could restrain them, and no existing political structure possessed the power to hold them accountable if they ever decided that Runeterra should obey.
Any stateswoman with sense would find that terrifying.
Yet Ace had used one of their powerful healing items on a stranger without asking what she could offer him. Adriel had been more concerned with saving Piltover than claiming authority over it. Peter and Artoria had remained behind because civilians they barely knew needed protection.
Mel did not trust them yet; she had not known them long enough for that. But she could no longer view them merely as weapons.
Weapons did not exhaust themselves protecting people who could never repay them.
"We don't know what made that sound," Vi said. "But it came from where Peter and Artoria were fighting."
Jinx looked toward the dead symbiotes.
"So Peter or Artoria screamed hard enough to kill an army."
"That is one possibility," Viktor said.
"Got a better one?"
"No."
Jinx's fingers tightened around her weapon.
She hated that answer.
Adriel had already warned her that the weapon she had been constructing would accomplish nothing against Anansi. She had continued building it anyway, refusing to accept that all her talent, explosives, and firepower could become meaningless simply because the enemy existed too far beyond her.
Now she stood among creatures that had survived her bullets only to die from a scream released miles away.
It made her feel small and, worse, dependent.
The Guardians arrived whenever everything became impossible. They repaired what could not be repaired, resurrected people who should have remained dead, and fought monsters no one else could approach.
Jinx should have found that reassuring.
Instead, part of her kept waiting for the day they failed to return.
People with enough power to save everyone still had the unfortunate habit of leaving.
Ace had spent the afternoon sitting beside the lake while she attempted to irritate him. He had complained, teased her, and answered her questions whenever he felt like it. For several hours, he had seemed less like an immortal Guardian and more like an annoyingly relaxed older brother.
Then Mel appeared, and that relaxed expression vanished.
Now Ace had gone to Piltover with Adriel.
Peter might have become whatever released that scream.
Artoria was still fighting beside him.
Jinx hated how quickly all four of them could go from acting like ordinary idiots to throwing themselves into something apocalyptic.
She hated even more that there was nothing she could do to follow them.
"So that's it?" Jinx asked. "We hide underground and hope the gods win?"
"Don't call them that," Vi said.
Jinx looked at her.
"Did you miss the scream that murdered everything?"
"I heard it."
"The mountain explosions?"
"Saw those too."
"The giant red space lunatic?"
"Jinx."
"They're gods, Vi."
The word disturbed Vi more than she wanted to admit.
She had trained with Peter. She had argued with him, challenged him, and watched him joke through situations that should have terrified any sane person. She had embraced Adriel in his office and told him he did not always have to carry everyone else's problems.
Neither of them felt like a god then.
They felt like people—complicated, reckless people with too much power and an even worse understanding of their own limits.
That almost made this harder.
If the Guardians had truly been distant gods, Vi could have watched them leave without feeling responsible. Gods did not need anyone to worry about them.
Peter and Adriel did.
She had seen enough to know that both men would allow themselves to be torn apart before admitting they needed help. Artoria carried pain beneath discipline, and Ace concealed his own exhaustion behind a carelessness that fooled almost everyone.
Now those same people were fighting enemies Vi could not approach without becoming another person they had to protect.
She despised it.
Every instinct told her to run toward the battle. Standing inside a bunker while someone else fought for her went against everything she had become.
But approaching that battlefield would not be courage. It would be suicide and, worse, would distract Peter and Artoria at the moment they could least afford it.
"They're not gods," Vi said. "They're idiots."
Jinx blinked.
"Really powerful idiots," Vi added. "But still people."
"Those two things aren't mutually exclusive," Mel said.
Vi glanced toward her.
Mel's tone held no mockery.
"Whatever they consider themselves, their capabilities are functionally divine compared with ours."
"Capability is not divinity," Viktor said.
Jinx turned toward him.
"You too?"
Viktor looked past them toward the devastated commune.
The Guardians contradicted every natural law he had spent his life studying. Adriel created matter and reconstructed living bodies. Peter manipulated machinery from realities more advanced than Piltover while speaking of the Speed Force as though it were a troublesome power source. Ace wielded fire capable of burning concepts, and Artoria carried a sword whose light could erase armies.
Any one of them could have transformed civilization.
Instead, Peter spent an afternoon teaching Viktor and Sky how to operate a television.
That contradiction mattered.
Viktor found it difficult to reconcile the man who enthusiastically argued about fictional stories with the being now fighting a cosmic monster beyond the mountains. Both were Peter, yet neither truth diminished the other.
"Calling them gods explains nothing," Viktor continued. "It merely replaces what we do not understand with a word that discourages further examination."
"Still sounds like gods with extra steps," Jinx muttered.
Viktor ignored her.
"What concerns me is not what we call them. It is how completely our survival has become dependent upon their intervention."
No one argued.
Every crisis eventually narrowed toward the same answer: wait for the Guardians, trust their plan, and survive long enough for them to win.
The people inside the bunker had helped evacuate the commune. They had held the horde back and protected one another, but none of them could deny what would have happened without Artoria standing between the town and Carnage's army.
It frustrated Viktor more than he allowed his expression to reveal.
He had devoted his life to eliminating human helplessness. Now he existed in a reality where humanity's greatest accomplishments appeared primitive beside threats capable of consuming entire narratives.
For all his admiration for the Guardians, Viktor refused to accept permanent dependence as the only future available to them.
Sky noticed the direction of his thoughts.
"We weren't useless," she said.
Viktor looked at her.
"Without us, Artoria would have been forced to choose between fighting the horde and evacuating everyone. Vander held the front. Vi and Jinx moved the civilians. Mel protected them. We gave Artoria enough freedom to reach Peter."
Sky looked toward the bunker.
"Surviving was our responsibility. We fulfilled it."
Her words did not erase the difference in power, but they made it bearable.
Sky had spent enough time around Peter to see the person beneath the abilities. He helped because he genuinely could not tolerate watching others struggle when he possessed the means to make their lives easier. Sometimes that meant repairing equipment. Sometimes it meant explaining technology. Tonight, it meant allowing a cosmic monster to destroy his body so that everyone else could escape.
The Guardians did not need worship; they needed fewer people to save.
"We should go inside," Sky said. "If they return and discover that we ignored the bunker after everything they did to protect it, Peter will probably drag us inside himself."
"Assuming he comes back looking like Peter," Jinx said.
The remark silenced them.
Jinx had meant it as a joke, but no one laughed.
Vander looked toward the mountains once more.
The sky had become unrecognizable.
Crimson corruption spread through the clouds, staining them like blood diluted through black water. The arrival of the Red Surfer had distorted more than the landscape. Nature itself appeared to recoil from him. Darkness, malice, and carnage had become environmental conditions.
Vander had seen war.
He had watched Zaun and Piltover tear each other apart. He had led men into violence, buried friends, lost children, and spent years trapped inside a monster built from his own ruined body.
None of it resembled this.
There had always been something he could do before. He could fight, negotiate, surrender, or sacrifice himself to buy someone else another chance.
Now the wisest thing he could do was enter a bunker and trust four people from other worlds to prevent his reality from dying.
Vander hated that.
He understood why Vi and Jinx did too.
"As much as Adriel would hate hearing it, Jinx isn't entirely wrong," Mel said quietly. "There may be no meaningful distinction between what they are and what most people would consider gods."
Vander finally turned away from the sky.
"I've never had much use for gods."
Mel studied him.
"Then what do you consider them?"
Vander thought of the strange boy who had fallen into Piltover years ago.
He remembered Adriel before all that power—lost, uncertain, and trying desperately to pretend otherwise. Time had changed the scale of what he could do, but not the person beneath it.
He thought of Peter sitting in Adriel's home and discussing television as though the world had not repeatedly demanded his blood. He remembered Artoria standing alone before the horde and Ace carrying Mel from the forest.
"People," Vander answered.
Jinx glanced toward the mountains.
"People don't do any of that."
"No," Vander agreed. "But they bleed like people. They make mistakes like people, and they carry more than they should because they think no one else can."
His gaze settled upon the bunker.
"Power doesn't make someone a god. Sometimes it just gives them more ways to destroy themselves."
Vi looked at him. She knew he was speaking about Adriel—perhaps all four Guardians.
The bunker's warning lights began flashing. Its doors could not remain open much longer without weakening the protections surrounding the pocket-dimension system.
Sky and Viktor entered first.
Mel followed, taking one final look toward the distant direction of Piltover. Somewhere beyond those mountains, Jayce was still trapped inside the conquered city.
If the Guardians failed, she might never see him again.
Jinx stepped through next, although she kept her weapon pointed toward the entrance until Vi pulled her farther inside.
Vi remained at the threshold.
"Vander."
"I'm coming."
She hesitated before joining the others.
Vander was the last person outside.
He looked over the ruined commune—the home Adriel had built for them, the streets Artoria had defended, and the bodies left behind by an enemy none of them had been capable of defeating alone.
If the Guardians lost, there might be nothing waiting outside the bunker when its doors reopened—no commune, no Piltover or Zaun, perhaps no Runeterra at all.
Vander had told Adriel that people from the Undercity rarely had much use for gods. If gods existed, they had always lived too far above the sump to smell what happened beneath them.
Yet Vander found himself praying anyway—not to the Guardians, but for them.
Please win.
⟡ ⟡ ⟡
The Red Surfer glared at the monster standing before him.
Something about this version of Spider-Man had felt wrong from the beginning.
Peter carried the history of the MCU's Spider-Man, but his power no longer corresponded with anything that version should have possessed. The Velocity Suit explained his connection to the Speed Force. Becoming a Guardian explained some of his impossible growth.
Neither explained the creature now wearing his flesh.
Carnage was still attempting to understand it when the Man-Spider lunged.
Blue electricity erupted from the surviving core of the Velocity Suit. The rest of the armor had been destroyed during Peter's transformation, yet the circular mechanism embedded over his sternum continued pulsing stubbornly between plates of chitin and matted fur.
It had no business remaining functional.
The Man-Spider crossed the battlefield before Carnage could finish that thought.
Two of its arms rose together, hands clasped into a massive hammer fist aimed directly at the Red Surfer's head.
Carnage tilted aside with help from his board.
The blow missed him by inches and struck the ground, collapsing an entire section of the battlefield. Before the Man-Spider could recover, the surfboard rotated beneath Carnage and swept across the back of its legs.
The monster dropped onto one knee.
Carnage stepped in and buried a fist in its abdomen. A concentrated cosmic blast followed from his opposite palm and detonated against the Man-Spider's face.
The creature's head snapped backward.
Carnage grinned.
Then the Man-Spider looked at him again.
The blast had scorched its face and burned away patches of fur, but it had not fallen. It seized Carnage by the shoulders and smashed its forehead into his face.
The Red Surfer struck the ground headfirst.
Before he could rise, thick organic webbing erupted from the Man-Spider's wrists. Six arms moved at once, wrapping Carnage from his shoulders to his feet and sealing him inside a dense cocoon.
The Man-Spider grabbed the trailing web line and swung.
Carnage became a wrecking ball.
The creature hammered him into the ground, pulled him free, and smashed him down again. Each impact excavated another crater. Stone burst around his cocoon as Peter's mutated body swung him from one side of the battlefield to the other.
Carnage formed blades inside the webbing and slashed.
The silk did not break.
Every strand he severed pulled neighboring layers tighter, causing the cocoon to constrict around him.
"What the hell is this made of?"
Peter's synthetic webs had never been this strong before his transformation. The mutation had changed more than his body. Whatever glands now produced the Man-Spider's organic silk were creating something far denser than his original web fluid.
Carnage's blades continued cutting without freeing him.
Concern briefly replaced amusement.
Cosmic energy erupted from inside the cocoon and disintegrated the webbing.
The Red Surfer emerged from the explosion, smoke rising from his body as he attempted to regain his balance.
Two web lines fired with sharp thwips.
Web lines struck the ground on either side of him.
Carnage looked down.
The Man-Spider crossed four arms over its chest and pulled.
A hundred-meter section of bedrock tore free from the earth. Carnage and his board rose with it as the enormous mass accelerated toward the monster.
The Man-Spider launched itself forward to meet them.
Carnage formed a shield, and Peter's fist struck its center.
The symbiote barrier prevented the claws from reaching him, but it could not erase the momentum behind the blow. Carnage felt the impact travel through the shield, across his arms, and into his chest.
He was driven backward through the airborne section of bedrock.
The entire mass exploded around him.
Carnage crossed the remaining distance and crashed into the earth, carving a trench through the battlefield before finally stopping.
The Man-Spider landed above him.
Carnage grew multiple arms from his torso. Cosmic energy gathered inside every palm, and he released them together.
Dozens of spheres shot toward the Man-Spider at faster-than-light speeds.
The creature reacted.
It dropped onto all six arms and moved like an actual arachnid, folding its body beneath one projectile before twisting around another. Blue electricity traced every change in direction.
Several spheres passed too close to evade.
The Man-Spider struck them aside.
Cosmic projectiles capable of vaporizing mountains changed direction beneath its palms and detonated across the distant horizon.
Carnage stared. The monster was not merely reacting to faster-than-light attacks; it was swatting them away.
The Man-Spider drove all six hands into the ground and propelled itself toward him.
Carnage's amusement finally receded.
If he continued playing, this creature could actually kill him.
Artoria had not attacked yet. She remained several dozen yards away with Excalibur raised, watching the Man-Spider with visible uncertainty. She did not know whether Peter could still recognize her, and joining the exchange recklessly might make her the monster's next target.
That hesitation had given Carnage an advantage.
It would disappear the moment Artoria realized he had stopped holding back.
Carnage released a disappointed sigh. He would have preferred to continue playing, but even he knew when it was time to lock the fuck in.
"What a shame."
The surfboard shot beneath him and liquefied.
Silver-red matter climbed Carnage's legs and merged with his body, returning every fragment of the board's cosmic energy to its host.
Carnage threw his head back and screamed.
The Power Cosmic erupted from him.
The surge caught the Man-Spider before it could complete its tackle and hurled it across the battlefield. Peter struck a wall of bedrock hard enough to disappear inside it.
Artoria's eyes widened at the Red Surfer's sudden increase in power.
She rushed to Peter's defense.
Artoria approached with Excalibur held in a high guard, both hands positioned to control the blade's descent. Carnage sensed her from the corner of his eye and transformed both forearms into swords.
Artoria brought Excalibur down.
Carnage crossed his blades and caught the strike above his head.
Rather than immediately withdrawing, Artoria maintained pressure through the bind. She stepped closer, using her hips and shoulders to drive her weight through the sword instead of relying only upon her arms.
Carnage allowed one blade to slide free and cut toward her throat.
Artoria leaned backward.
The edge passed close enough to sever several strands of blonde hair.
She stepped inside his reach before he could recover and drove her armored shoulder into his chest. The collision shifted him only a few inches, but those inches gave her enough space to disengage Excalibur.
Artoria pivoted around her forward foot and swept the blade horizontally toward his waist.
Carnage opened his body around it.
His torso separated into two streams of symbiote matter, allowing Excalibur to pass through the empty space between them. The two halves closed around the blade after it passed.
Carnage headbutted her.
Artoria's nose broke beneath the impact.
Blood poured over her mouth, but she did not retreat. She rotated with the blow and hammered her fist into the back of Carnage's head, forcing him to bend forward.
Her knee struck his face.
Artoria gripped Excalibur with both hands and cut upward across his torso.
Golden energy burned through silver flesh and crimson biomass.
Carnage hissed.
The wound refused to close immediately. Excalibur's energy remained inside it, burning every strand that attempted to reconnect.
He pushed through the pain and slammed both palms against Artoria's ears.
The pressure disoriented her instantly.
Her vision doubled. Her balance disappeared, and the ringing inside her skull smothered every surrounding sound.
Carnage seized her by the face.
He slammed Artoria into the ground.
The impact formed a crater beneath her body. Before she could recover, the Red Surfer dropped over her and began striking.
Fists descended from every direction.
Artoria raised her forearms and protected her head, but Carnage's additional limbs tore through her guard. Blows hammered her ribs, stomach, jaw, and chest, forcing her deeper into the crater.
She gritted her teeth and shifted Excalibur between their bodies.
With little room to swing, Artoria gripped the blade halfway down its length with one armored hand. The shortened grip gave her precise control over the point.
She drove Excalibur between Carnage's ribs.
The Red Surfer's body locked.
Artoria forced the sword deeper and stared directly into his eyes.
"Excalibur!"
There was no room for the familiar pillar of golden light, so the energy detonated inside Carnage instead.
For one instant, his entire body expanded around the blast. Crimson biomass ballooned outward, attempting to swallow and contain every fragment of Excalibur's power rather than allowing the beam to pass through him.
The symbiote stretched farther before rupturing.
A nuclear-scale explosion engulfed both fighters.
Golden fire consumed the battlefield. The ground vanished beneath them, and the shock wave stripped everything from the surrounding landscape.
When the light finally receded, Artoria lay at the center of a burning crater.
Her sword rested several feet away.
She coughed, spraying blood across the ground, and attempted to push herself upright. Both eyes had become bloodshot, although swelling had forced one almost completely closed.
Her hearing had not recovered.
The world tilted beneath her whenever she moved.
Carnage had absorbed Excalibur at point-blank range and allowed it to explode inside him simply because doing so trapped Artoria within the blast.
She had forgotten how insane he truly was. This was Carnage, a creature with an unmatched talent for attempting the most suicidal option imaginable and somehow surviving it.
Artoria found Excalibur and used it to stand. Her legs wobbled beneath her, leaving her with little sense of balance and only one reliable eye.
Two figures emerged through the dust.
The Man-Spider crawled out of the collapsed bedrock.
Across from it, the Red Surfer's scattered biomass pulled itself together around his silver body. He was burned, torn open, and missing several sections of flesh.
He was also laughing.
"A free-for-all!"
Carnage spread his arms while the last of his wounds closed.
"How exciting."
His many mouths laughed with him.
"Which one of us will be the last standing? Whose guts will decorate the survivors?"
The symbiote shuddered with anticipation.
"Oh, we cannot wait."
Artoria had endured enough of his psychotic monologues.
She tightened her hand around Excalibur and charged.
Her attention remained fixed upon the Red Surfer, which was why she failed to react when Peter attacked her.
The Man-Spider appeared beside Artoria and backhanded her.
The blow struck her raised left arm.
Bones shattered from wrist to shoulder.
Artoria screamed as the limb folded beneath the impact. Her entire body left the ground and skipped across the battlefield, striking the earth repeatedly before crashing through several trees.
She hit a boulder hard enough to become embedded in its surface.
Her body peeled away a moment later and fell face-first onto the ground.
Pain consumed her left side.
It was so overwhelming that Artoria could no longer scream. Her mouth opened, but her lungs refused to produce sound.
The Man-Spider did not pursue her. It lunged toward Carnage instead.
One clawed hand swept downward and tore a massive section from the Red Surfer's chest. Silver flesh and crimson biomass scattered across the ground.
Carnage retaliated immediately.
His arm became a sword, and the edge carved a deep line across the Man-Spider's upper torso. He followed by forming an enormous fist and smashing the monster into the ground.
The impact triggered a small earthquake.
Carnage took to the air.
The Man-Spider fired multiple web lines after him.
The Red Surfer twisted between them at cosmic speed, allowing each strand to pass within inches of his body. He reversed direction, transformed one arm into a blade, and accelerated toward Peter's neck.
The Man-Spider leaned backward.
Its spine arched until its body became nearly parallel to the ground. Carnage's blade passed above its face in a motion that looked as though it had been ripped directly from Lookism.
The Man-Spider drove a straight punch into his jaw.
Carnage's head snapped upward.
Before the Red Surfer could regain control, Peter rotated through his hips and buried a devastating kick in his side.
Carnage shot toward the ground.
He twisted in midair, struck feet-first, and slid backward without falling.
The Man-Spider was already approaching.
Peter punched.
Carnage answered with one of his own.
Their fists collided.
A circular shock wave blew both fighters backward and flattened everything surrounding them. Neither lost his balance. Their feet carved trenches through the ground until their momentum stopped.
Then both rushed forward again.
The Man-Spider slashed with its claws.
Carnage dropped beneath the attack and slid between its legs. As he passed underneath, a crimson strand fired from his wrist and attached to the monster's face.
Carnage stood and pulled.
The Man-Spider was ripped backward and struck the ground face-first.
The Red Surfer turned with a sphere of cosmic energy already burning inside his palm. He aimed it at the back of Peter's head from point-blank range.
The Man-Spider punched before Carnage could fire.
Its fist did not need to reach him.
The compressed shock wave struck Carnage across the face and snapped his head sideways. His arm moved with it, redirecting the cosmic blast toward the horizon.
The beam detonated miles away, sending an atomic fireball into the sky.
The Man-Spider tackled Carnage and pinned him against the ground. Four hands trapped his arms while the remaining pair seized his shoulders.
The monster leaned backward.
Carnage saw its chest expand.
His eyes widened.
The Man-Spider screeched directly into his face.
Sound became physical force.
The ground shattered beneath them. Space warped around the frequency, and the air distorted in concentric circles extending across the battlefield.
Carnage convulsed.
The symbiote separated from the Silver Surfer's body in writhing strands. For a moment, crimson biomass hung between them, unable to maintain its bond beneath the sonic assault.
The Man-Spider seized it.
Four hands closed around Carnage and ripped the symbiote completely from its host.
The surviving Velocity core released the last of its stored Speed Force energy.
Peter's hands began to vibrate around the symbiote. The movement created impossible friction, raising the temperature until the surrounding matter ionized into white-hot plasma. Carnage burned between the Man-Spider's palms faster than it could regenerate.
The symbiote screamed as its biomass blackened. Every tendril attempted to escape, but six clawed hands forced them back into the center. Then the Velocity core cracked and discharged its remaining energy at once.
Carnage burned until not one strand survived.
When the Man-Spider opened its hands, black ash scattered through the air and disappeared within the fading Speed Force electricity.
The Silver Surfer's body collapsed nearby and did not breathe. Carnage had controlled the cosmic being so completely that nothing living remained beneath the symbiote. The Surfer had been a corpse sustained and operated by the creature wearing him.
Without Carnage, the hollow body was not going anywhere.
The Red Surfer was dead.
The Man-Spider rose.
Then it turned toward Artoria.
She had dragged herself several yards across the ground before managing to reach Excalibur. Her shattered arm hung uselessly at her side. Every attempt to stand sent another wave of nausea and pain through her body.
Still, she forced one foot beneath herself.
Peter needed help.
He had not chosen this mutation. Without what AM had done to him, the arachnid side would never have possessed this much influence over his body or mind.
Ever since, the transformation had been waiting beneath the surface.
Other Spider-Men had endured similar mutations, temporarily losing themselves as their altered biology progressed beyond anything human. Peter would either revert with time or learn to control the creature within him.
Artoria intended to help him do the latter.
She stood unsteadily and looked across the battlefield.
Carnage's life force was gone. The battle appeared to be over, and relief escaped Artoria in a trembling breath.
Then she sensed the remaining presence approaching. The Man-Spider was coming directly toward her, and her heart accelerated.
She tightened her one functioning hand around Excalibur, but her body could no longer support another fight. She could barely stand, much less defend herself against the creature that had just killed the Red Surfer.
More importantly, she did not want to hurt Peter.
Artoria raised her gaze.
The Man-Spider already stood over her.
Its enormous body towered above her, black eyes staring down without recognition.
One hand closed around her throat.
The monster lifted Artoria and slammed her into the ground.
The impact forced the remaining air from her lungs.
Its fingers tightened.
Artoria grasped the creature's wrist with her only functioning hand. Her fingers sank into coarse fur, but she lacked the strength to loosen its hold.
The Man-Spider growled.
Then it screamed into her face.
Artoria gagged as the grip slowly crushed her throat. Darkness gathered around the edges of her remaining vision.
She was afraid.
There was no denying it.
For one brief, terrible heartbeat, Artoria wondered whether Peter would kill her before he understood what he was doing.
That flicker of doubt did not erase her faith in him.
Courage had never meant feeling no fear.
It meant choosing what mattered while the fear was still there.
Artoria looked into one of Peter's black eyes.
"Peter…"
The name barely escaped her.
The Man-Spider's fingers continued tightening.
"Please…"
Her voice broke beneath the pressure.
"It's… Artoria."
The monster growled again.
Artoria felt consciousness slipping away. A tear escaped her swollen eye and traveled down the side of her face.
"I'm your… friend."
Her eyes began rolling backward.
The words reached something inside the beast.
The Man-Spider froze.
Its grip stopped tightening.
Artoria fell to the ground as the enormous hand released her. She rolled onto her side and dragged air into her lungs, coughing violently as the pressure eased from her crushed throat.
The monster staggered away.
It stared at its hands.
Confusion passed across its inhuman face.
The rage did not disappear immediately. It fought against something deeper, pulling Peter toward the blood, the pain, and the animal instinct demanding that he eliminate the final living presence before him.
Peter fought back. When the Man-Spider looked at Artoria again, recognition appeared inside its black eyes.
The man resurfaced.
The transformation began reversing.
Chitin receded beneath skin. Coarse fur withdrew across his body, and the monstrous shape of his face gradually returned to something human. The additional arms folded inward and disappeared as Peter collapsed onto his knees.
The cracked Velocity core detached from his chest.
Its light flickered once before dying.
When the transformation ended, Peter remained kneeling beside Artoria with almost no clothing left. Only the ruined lower section of the Velocity Suit preserved his dignity.
Cuts, bruises, and burns covered his body.
Tears filled his eyes.
Peter looked at Artoria's shattered arm and the bruises forming around her throat. His expression collapsed beneath the realization of what he had done.
He reached toward her, hesitated, and finally placed one trembling hand against her cheek.
"I'm sorry."
Artoria pushed herself into a sitting position.
Peter shook his head as tears escaped him.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
She placed her functioning hand over his.
"I don't know what came over me," Peter whispered. "I was so angry. I couldn't think. I couldn't hear anything except that thing in my head telling me to kill."
His voice broke.
"I told you I would never hurt you."
Artoria studied him quietly.
"And I did."
She could have told him it was fine.
It was not.
Her arm was shattered. Her throat had nearly been crushed, and for one fleeting moment, she had feared she might die beneath his hand.
Pretending otherwise would not help either of them.
"Yes," Artoria said softly. "You hurt me."
Peter attempted to pull his hand away.
She held it against her cheek.
"But you also stopped."
"You had to beg me."
"And you heard me."
"I almost killed you."
"But you did not."
Artoria shifted closer despite the pain moving through her body.
"I was afraid, Peter. I will not lie to you about that."
His face twisted with guilt.
"Yet even then, I did not believe you were truly gone. You were confused. Your instincts had overwhelmed you, but some part of you was still inside that creature."
Artoria tightened her hand around his.
"The moment I reached that part, you chose to stop."
Peter stared at her.
"You controlled it," Artoria continued. "Perhaps only for a moment, but you did. That proves the beast is not your master."
She lifted his hand from her cheek and pressed it against his chest.
"It is part of you. Therefore, you command it. It does not command you."
Peter lowered his gaze.
"I don't know if I can."
"You already have."
Artoria moved closer and wrapped her one functioning arm around him.
Peter stiffened in surprise.
Her loose blonde hair moved with the wind, brushing against his bloodied shoulder as she held him.
"I am glad you came back," she whispered. "Welcome back, my friend."
Peter's face crumpled.
He carefully wrapped both arms around her, mindful of the limb he had broken.
"I'm still sorry."
"I know."
"I meant what I told you before. I never wanted to hurt you."
"I know that as well."
Artoria rested her head against his shoulder.
She would not excuse what happened, and she would not allow him to dismiss the danger of losing control again. That conversation would come after they healed, when neither of them was bleeding into the dirt.
For now, Peter was himself again, Carnage was dead, and the commune was safe.
Against every doubt, Artoria's trust in him had survived—not because she had never been afraid, but because her faith had proven stronger than that fear.
Peter held her more tightly.
He had not conquered the arachnid side by destroying it. He had done something far more difficult: he had heard his friend through its rage and chosen to become himself again.
For the first time, the beast had obeyed the man.
To Be Continued…