The Dark Phoenix walked forward. Violet and black fire curled around her, leaving scorched impressions in the air where it passed.
"Hand over the child, creature," she said.
She stopped.
Okkara had not moved back. Had not flinched. Had not shown the fear she expected to find on the face of whatever this manifestation was.
He was grinning.
Her eyes narrowed.
Then she saw the figure emerging from inside the house.
Okkara stepped backward, holding Aurora protectively against his chest, and from the doorway Firehair walked out.
Her face was calm. Completely, absolutely calm.
Her eyes were another matter entirely.
They blazed with fury.
The Dark Phoenix smiled behind her golden mask.
Firehair's gaze moved from her to Doom, who stood at the edge of the shattered balcony with his back half turned, looking out toward the ocean and the sky beyond as if he were waiting for something.
"I knew something was wrong," Firehair said. Her voice was conversational. Almost gentle. "Perhaps it was instinct. A mother's intuition." Her eyes came back to the Dark Phoenix. "And here I find I was right."
"Why do you want my daughter?"
The Dark Phoenix tilted her head. "We are here for her, and we will take her."
"I see," Firehair said.
A portal opened behind her. Agamotto's students stepped through, four of them, young and frightened but holding their positions.
Firehair did not look back. She reached out and took Aurora's small hand in hers, and for a moment she just looked at her. Aurora's blue eyes looked back, wide and wet, the crying gone quiet, something in the baby recognizing the presence of her mother.
Firehair pressed her forehead briefly to Aurora's.
Then she straightened and handed her to the nearest student.
"Take her," she said. "Go."
Violet and black fire erupted from the Dark Phoenix's hands in a concentrated torrent aimed directly at Firehair's back.
Firehair turned and answered it with her own.
The two forces met in the center of the room.
The house ceased to exist.
The collision of Phoenix fire, one golden and one violet-black, consumed everything. It tore through every wall, every beam, every carefully placed stone in a single catastrophic instant.
They rose.
Both of them rising together, trading fire, the battle moving upward as the island shook beneath them. The ocean around Okkara's shores heaved, waves rising and crashing without pattern, the water reacting to their battle.
They fought, two Phoenix silhouettes, one gold, one violet-black, climbing into the sky above the island, trading strikes that lit the clouds from within, becoming smaller and smaller as they pushed upward through the atmosphere.
Doom had not moved through any of it.
An emerald blast came from the east without warning.
Doom didn't flinch. An orange shield snapped into existence around him in an instant, the Starheart's light flaring outward as the blast hit it and broke apart across the surface.
Max appeared as he descended from the sky, and Doom rose to meet him.
"Victor von Doom," Max said.
Doom's eyes went to Max's ring. Stayed there.
"The Green Lantern," Doom said.
"At last."
"Let's not talk," Max said.
He shaped a construct around both arms, the most powerful weapon in his arsenal, and fired.
Doom did not move as three figures appeared between them.
Max pulled up short.
Three men with visors across their faces, the familiar X shape unmistakable. They stood in a line between him and Doom, and before Max could process what he was looking at, all three of them fired simultaneously, optic blasts converging on his own attack and stopping it cold.
Jade. What are those?
I don't think they're anything like your constructs, Jade said.
Max stared at them for half a second.
Then he hit all three at once.
He drove a sword construct through the first, split the second with a concentrated blast, and caught the third with a sweep from the sword again that sent it tumbling.
"Impressive," Doom commented.
Max flew down, a massive construct fist slamming Doom into the mountainside, the impact cratering the rock beneath them. Then a blast, full power, point-blank.
Doom took it head-on.
He hit the ground and kept going, gouging a long furrow through earth and stone.
Max landed in the crater and hit him again.
And again.
Each time Doom absorbed it, the orange energy surging and dimming with every strike, his armor cracking in places, the Starheart and the ring on his finger burning brighter as it compensated.
Max drew back for another.
"ENOUGH."
The orange light exploded outward.
It wasn't a directed attack. It was just force, raw and in every direction at once, and it caught Max completely and sent him backward through the air.
The forest came up fast. He hit the treeline and went through it, ancient pines snapping around him. He carved through a hundred meters of forest before stopping in a crater of broken timber and churned earth.
He lay there for two seconds.
Above him, through the shattered canopy, two shapes moved against the clouds. One burning gold. One burning violet-black. Trading strikes that lit the sky from within, climbing higher with each exchange.
Getting smaller.
Max pulled himself up and formed the armor around his body, Uru-vibranium alloy locking into place. He launched back through the broken treeline toward the mountain.
But Max stopped as he saw what was waiting for him.
Doom stood there, and he was not alone.
Arranged in loose formation behind Doom were new constructs.
Multiple Thors with mjolnirs in hand. Multiple Iron Men, hovering in a line. Multiple Hulks. Multiple Doctor Stranges. Multiple Storms flying in the air, the weather already changing around them.. A Silver Surfer standing on his board, the Power Cosmic humming around him.
As if things couldn't get worse, Max recognized Sentry, and next to him was unmistakably the Scarlet Witch.
All of them burning orange.
All of them waiting.
Doom stood at the center of it, unhurried.
"Behold," he said. "My conquests. I took them all." He looked at Max across the distance between them. "And now they serve Doom."
Max looked at the line. Counted. Stopped counting.
"Oh fuck," he said.
Doom raised one hand.
They attacked.
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.
.
Azzuri jumped and struck at the Iron Inquisitor, Gram driving into the demon armor's shoulder plate with everything he had.
The blade bit. Not deep, but enough. A clean dent pressed into the armor, the ancient Asgardian metal edge finding the join between plates and forcing it.
The Iron Inquisitor's response was immediate.
A blast from his palm caught Azzuri in the chest and sent him skidding backward across the wet sand, the vibranium suit absorbing most of it, the rest rattling through his bones.
Tony, in his suit, came from the left, both repulsors firing simultaneously, twin beams hitting the Inquisitor in the chest. The Inquisitor turned and fired back, and the two blasts met between them and detonated, the shockwave melting and turning sand into glass.
"I thought I killed you, son," the Inquisitor said, his voice carrying an annoyed tone. "And here you are."
"You know me," Tony said, already repositioning. "Not that easy to kill."
The Inquisitor laughed. "Tell that to the last twenty of you."
He crossed the distance between them in a single burst of speed and hit Tony with a closed fist, catching him under the jaw. Tony left the ground and kept going, tumbling through the air before he steadied himself fifty meters up.
Azzuri landed beside a low rock shelf and took a breath, assessing.
The demons pouring out of the portals in the sky were not his immediate problem.
Max's constructs had arrived minutes after the invasion began, thousands of them, space marines as Max called them when he first showed Azzuri and the others what he called his emerald army. They moved through the sky and across the ground in coordinated formations.
They matched the demon numbers almost exactly, rank for rank, and they were efficient.
Every demon that poured through the portals above met a construct already moving to intercept it. The sky above the coast was a sustained battle between green light and dark, and the constructs were winning.
Along the beach to his left he could see Ghost on Tasi's back, the flaming mammoth moving with great speed across the wet sand. The Ghost Goblin circled on its glider, hurling bombs that burst in green flame wherever they landed.
One hit close to Tasi and she trumpeted furiously and charged directly toward the green variant. Ghost snapped the whip upward and caught the glider's edge, dragging it down. The Ghost Goblin twisted free just before Ghost could strike him down.
Azzuri turned right.
Nur was not faring as well as Ghost.
Nur was fast, his powers considerable, but Apocalypse was something else. Older. More refined.
The gap between them was not small.
Apocalypse drove a fist into Nur's chest that lifted him off the ground and sent him tumbling across the sand, leaving a furrow three meters long where he skidded to a stop.
He stood over him.
"Weak," Apocalypse said. The word carried contempt so complete it barely needed the voice behind it.
He raised one hand, energy gathering around it, and Nur began to rise from the ground, not of his own will. The power wrapped around him.
Nur's face twisted.
Apocalypse closed his fist.
Nur screamed.
"I have met other variants of ourselves," Apocalypse said, his voice completely level, the pressure never relenting. "Across many worlds. All failures." His eyes moved across Nur's face. "But never so much a failure as you. How far you have deviated from our purpose. From what we are meant to be."
Nur's eyes blazed white.
"I am nothing like you," Nur said through his teeth.
Yellow mandalas formed around his hand, spinning faster and faster before he released them. The magical chains shot outward and wrapped around Apocalypse, layering across his enormous frame, binding his arms to his sides.
Apocalypse strained against them immediately.
Nur hit the ground hard as the grip on him released, landing on his feet and straightening.
Azzuri was already moving.
He came in fast with Gram, closing the distance before Apocalypse could fully register the threat, and drove the blade across his chest in a clean diagonal slash.
Apocalypse screamed. Blood poured from the wound, dark and thick, and Apocalypse looked down at it with an expression that moved through shock and arrived at fury.
He broke the chains.
The mandalas shattered, magical energy scattering across the battlefield in fragments of yellow light, and Apocalypse's power surged outward. Azzuri left the ground at once, caught in the telekinetic grip, and was hurled sideways toward Nur.
Nur caught him.
They hit the ground together and rolled, Azzuri coming up first, pulling Nur with him.
"Together," Azzuri said, breathing hard. "We fight him together."
Nur nodded, blood from the gash above his eye already slowing as his healing worked.
Apocalypse gave them no time to plan further.
The wave of compressed force came from both outstretched hands, a wall of directed energy that crossed the distance between them in less than a second. It picked them both up and drove them into the rock shelf twenty meters behind them.
The impact drove the breath out of Azzuri completely. Nur hit face first, the gash above his eye reopening wider, blood running freely down his jaw.
They got up and looked at each other for half a second.
Azzuri went left. Nur went right.
Nur's hands moved simultaneously, matter manipulation pulling at Apocalypse's left side while the mandalas reformed around his right, the two forces working together to drag the larger figure off balance. Apocalypse twisted against it, compensating, his attention splitting between the two pressures.
Azzuri came through the gap.
Gram caught Apocalypse across the shoulder this time, a deep slash that opened through the armor plating and drew another scream from him.
Apocalypse created fire.
It came from his hands in a concentrated burst that caught Azzuri across the chest and blasted him backward.
Then he turned and hit Nur with a direct energy blast that lifted him off his feet and dropped him twenty meters away.
He then rose slowly into the air and looked down at both of them across the battlefield below him.
"I will enjoy killing you both," he said. "Slowly."
His eyes began to glow.
The attack was not physical.
But one of the mind.
Both Nur and Azzuri's hands went to their heads. The pain was excruciating.
"I will break you," Apocalypse said from above, his voice carrying down. "In mind first. Then in body."
Azzuri reached inward, past the pain, past the white noise of it, and called on Bast.
The panther goddess answered.
A golden light pushed back, not eliminating the attack but creating space within it, a boundary the mental assault could not cross. The pressure receded enough for Azzuri to breathe, to think, to move.
Beside him, Nur drove his own mental power outward against the hold, his considerable will pressing back against Apocalypse's from the inside, forcing the intrusion back the way you forced a door closed against something pushing from the other side.
It broke.
Nur gasped.
Azzuri was already on his feet.
He released everything the vibranium in his armor had absorbed from every blow he had taken since the fight began, directing it outward in a single concentrated blast aimed directly at Apocalypse above them.
It caught him clean and sent him backward through the air.
It bought them seconds. Maybe less.
Apocalypse landed on his feet forty meters away. Straightened. Looked back at them.
"You cannot win this."
"Perhaps," Azzuri said, breathing through the pain in his ribs. "But we are still standing, are we not?"
Nur rose beside him, blood covering his face and arms, the wounds already closing as his healing pushed through. He looked at Apocalypse across the distance between them.
"Like he said," Nur said. "We are still standing."
Apocalypse smiled.
Then he began to grow.
It happened steadily, his frame expanding upward and outward, armor plates shifting and reshaping to accommodate the change, until he stood forty feet tall above the battlefield, his shadow falling across both of them.
Azzuri and Nur looked up at him.
Then looked at each other.
"Good thing we've fought something larger before," Azzuri said.
Nur laughed. "You go up. I'll strike down."
Both of them charged.
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Sadurang used a Crimson Obliteration hex, a blade of pure destructive energy that cut through the air toward Agamotto's chest.
Clea stepped in front of it and answered with the Flames of the Faltine, green-white fire meeting the hex head-on and consuming it completely before it could reach him.
Sadurang's eyes moved to her.
"Nuisance," he said, and attacked again.
The Vapors of Valtorr came next, corrosive and fast, trying to eat through whatever defense she put up. Clea layered the Shields of the Seraphim three deep and felt the vapors burn through the first two before the third held. She pushed them back with a Faltinian dispersion burst and followed immediately with Bolts of Bedevilment, precise and targeted, forcing Sadurang to move rather than press forward.
Agamotto came in from the other side, the Crimson Bands shooting toward Sadurang's arms.
Sadurang shattered them with a gesture and sent a counter hex at Agamotto that would have taken his head off. Agamotto dissolved it with the Seven Rings of Raggadorr and pressed forward, golden energy building between his hands.
The three of them traded spells across the canyon rim, each exchange faster than the last.
"You are quite powerful," Agamotto said, deflecting a Crimson Obliteration hex of his own with a precise counter.
"Quite a compliment from the great Agamotto," Sadurang said, and there was genuine pleasure in his voice as he attacked again, a layered curse that came from three angles simultaneously.
Clea caught all three, the Faltinian energy in her hands flaring bright as she dismantled each thread of the curse before it could connect.
Sadurang looked at her.
"This fight is supposed to be between myself and the Sorcerer Supreme," he said.
"Good thing I'm one as well," Clea said.
Something shifted in Sadurang's expression. Not anger. Something closer to irritation.
"Your being here was a mistake," he said.
His hands moved in a pattern she hadn't seen before. The ground around them responded, massive rocks tearing free from the canyon rim, rising into the air around Sadurang before launching toward her all at once.
Clea spoke three words and brought her hands together.
The rocks exploded into dust before any of them reached her.
She stood in the settling cloud of it and looked at Sadurang through the haze.
Then she looked at Agamotto beside her.
"I think this would be more interesting somewhere else," she said.
Her hands moved.
The Mirror Dimension opened around all three of them, the canyon folding inward and outward simultaneously, reality bending into the fractalized geometry of the space between spaces.
All three vanished into it.
Odin watched as Clea, Agamotto, and Sadurang disappeared, and that moment of attention lapse cost him as Stormbreaker caught him across the chest. Odin left the ground and hit the canyon floor thirty meters away, the impact sending a shockwave of dust and cracked stone outward in every direction.
Uranos walked toward him, both Stormbreakers in hand, rolling one wrist slowly.
"Oh," he said, and the pleasure in his voice was genuine. "How I have been waiting to continue our battle."
Odin got up.
He spat blood, felt his ribs shift in a way they shouldn't, and got up anyway. He looked at Uranos across the distance between them and raised Mjolnir.
The lightning came down.
A single massive bolt striking toward Uranos with the full weight of the storm behind it.
Uranos crossed both Stormbreakers in front of him. The lightning hit the axes and split, redirected along the enchanted metal, and came back at Odin from two directions simultaneously. Odin threw himself sideways, the redirected bolt grazing his left arm and burning through his skin.
Odin did not wait. He quickly closed the distance between them and swung Mjolnir in a low arc aimed at Uranos's knee.
Uranos brought the left Stormbreaker down to block it. The two weapons connected with a sound that shook the canyon walls, and the shockwave from the impact threw dust and loose rock in every direction. Neither of them moved.
Then Uranos pushed.
He drove Odin backward with raw strength, both Stormbreakers pressing against Mjolnir, and when Odin's footing broke for a single instant, Uranos released the pressure and swung the right axe in a horizontal cut that caught Odin across the jaw.
Odin's head snapped sideways. He kept his feet.
He answered with an overhead strike, Mjolnir coming down with both hands behind it. Uranos sidestepped and the blow cratered the rock where he had been standing. Before Odin could recover the swing, Uranos drove a knee into his ribs, and Odin felt something crack properly this time.
He grunted and swung an elbow back, catching Uranos across the cheek.
Odin launched himself upward, taking the fight into the air above the canyon.
Uranos followed.
Odin came at him from above, Mjolnir first, calling the storm around him as he descended. Lightning wreathed the hammer, the sky darkening above the canyon as Odin pulled everything he had into the strike.
"FOR MIDGARD!" Odin roared.
Uranos met him head-on.
The collision of Mjolnir against both Stormbreakers crossing to catch it sent a thunderclap across the canyon that cracked rock a mile in every direction. They hung in the air against each other, weapons locked, both of them pouring strength into the contest.
Uranos grinned.
He released the lock suddenly, let Odin's force carry him forward, and grabbed him.
Both hands, one dropping a Stormbreaker to get the grip, closing around Odin's arm and shoulder, and Uranos spun and drove him downward with everything he had. Odin hit the canyon floor headfirst, the impact creating a crater three meters deep, Mjolnir bouncing from his grip and clattering across the rock.
Uranos dropped into the crater and hit him twice before Odin could move. The first caught the cracked ribs. The second caught the jaw.
"Still getting up?" Uranos said, watching Odin's hands find the crater wall. "I broke three of your ribs on that last exchange. Let's see how many more I can break."
Odin hauled himself upright.
Uranos hit him again.
"Your sons fought better than this," he said, catching Odin's attempted counter and driving his fist into the damaged ribs a third time. "He lasted longer too. Much longer." He grabbed Odin by the throat and lifted him briefly before throwing him into the crater wall. "You want to know their last words?"
Odin hit the wall.
"He kept calling out." Uranos crouched down to Odin's level.
"Kept calling for you." He tilted his head.
"Over and over, right until the end." He stood back up.
"And you never came."
He hit him again.
Odin hit the wall and slid down it.
"Get up," Uranos said pleasantly. "I want you to get up again."
"I will kill you," Odin said.
"I will tear you apart."
Odin screamed as he came off the crater wall and hit Uranos with Mjolnir before the Eternal could react, the hammer connecting with his chin and snapping his head back.
Uranos stumbled.
Odin hit him again, the same spot, pressing forward, not giving him space to recover or reposition.
"Arhhhhhh," Odin screamed, driving Mjolnir into Uranos's chest.
Uranos swung the left Stormbreaker. Odin took it across the shoulder and didn't stop moving, closing inside the arc of the swing and driving his knee upward into Uranos's midsection, following it immediately with an overhead strike from Mjolnir that hammered the Eternal down to one knee for the first time in the entire fight.
"I will avenge him," Odin said. "Every one of them you killed."
He called the lightning.
It came down in a single concentrated column into Uranos at point-blank range. The explosion of it shook the canyon walls and sent cracks racing through the rock in every direction.
Uranos flew backward and hit the far canyon wall.
He slid down it.
Odin stood in the smoking crater, chest heaving, blood still running freely down his face, and waited.
Uranos pulled himself out of the rock.
He looked at Odin. The pleasantness left his face completely.
"I think we are done playing," he said.
He came in with both Stormbreakers moving in combination. Odin blocked the first strike, absorbed the second across his back, caught the third on Mjolnir, and felt his wrists buckle with the force of it.
Uranos grabbed him and drove him into the ground face first.
Then picked him up and did it again.
The Stormbreakers came down across his shoulders, his back, the sides of his head. Four strikes in rapid succession, each one precise, Uranos no longer fighting for enjoyment but to kill.
Uranos stood over him, both axes raised, lightning building between them one final time.
"Any last words?" he asked.
Odin raised his head. Both eyes barely open.
He called Mjolnir.
The hammer hit Uranos squarely in the back of the head before he could turn. Uranos caught Mjolnir mid-air and drove it into the ground, planting one boot on top of it. He looked down at Odin and raised both Stormbreakers for the final blow.
A second Mjolnir hit him from the side.
Uranos staggered, one step, two, genuinely caught off guard, and turned toward where it had come from.
A man stood on the canyon rim. Tall, broad across the shoulders, long blonde hair and no beard. Asgardian armor, a red cape moving in the wind, and Mjolnir already back in his hand as if it had never left.
"You," Uranos said.
Thor looked down at him with an expression that carried no warmth whatsoever.
"Yes...me?," Thor said slowly, studying Uranos's face. "Have we met?"
Then he brought the storm down, and Uranos was blasted back.
Thor flew down and landed beside Odin, reaching down, taking his arm and pulling him upright with steady hands.
"It looks like you could use some help."
.
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Now begins the Six chapter long battle.