In a roadside restaurant in London, a French tourist stared at a plate of baked beans mopped up with bread, wearing a look of shocked hesitation before finally muttering, "It's the twenty-first century, and Londoners still eat like the Luftwaffe might bomb them any minute."
At that moment, terrified shouting broke out in the street outside. The tourist cursed under his breath and turned to look around.
"What now? What happened? Why did it suddenly get dark?"
Then he looked up, and the knife and fork slipped from his hands.
High above, an enormous starship slowly tore through the clouds. Milky-white vapor streamed across its outer armor like waterfalls pouring through a sea of clouds.
Its shape was a giant T. The hull was black and abyssal, with cold, razor-sharp lines, and the shadow it cast covered half of London.
"Holy crap," people cried out.
After many years, the shrill wail of air-raid sirens echoed over London once again.
By the Thames, Skyl and Gally looked up at the warship while the crowd around them pulled out phones and filmed it, yelling excitedly the whole time.
"This is Independence Day for real!"
"The aliens are invading Earth!"
"Aliens, take me with you! This lousy planet is unbearable!"
Skyl could not help shaking his head. This generation of spectators really refused to believe anything until it hit them in the face. They would not run unless the aliens fired a few volleys first. But as the saying went, if it is something small, you do not need to run, and if it is something big, you probably cannot. Faced with disaster dropping from the sky, there would always be people willing to stay and livestream it for clicks.
"They didn't come in peace," Skyl said, narrowing his eyes.
He cast an Eagle-Eye Charm on himself. His gaze pierced through miles of cloud and dust and fixed on the upper bridge of the ship, where Malekith of the Dark Elves stood behind glass, looking down over London. Skyl could see every pore on his face, and naturally, he could feel the malice radiating from him.
This was absolutely not a friendly alien visitor arriving with gifts for diplomatic talks.
And the moment Skyl looked at Malekith, that gaunt, gloomy, gray-skinned elf noticed him as well.
Alien physiology really was something else. Their senses were extraordinarily sharp. If beings like this were dropped on Earth, the average one would basically count as a superhero, the sort of monster who could cut through an army and take a general's head.
From far away, Malekith bared his teeth in a cold smile at Skyl, as if to say: Found you.
Gally chewed her gum and asked around the wad in her mouth, "Want me to have Alita eat that ship?"
Skyl shook his head. "The ship's useful."
He called Moonshadow first.
"Hey, Lady Moonshadow, are you free right now? I'm in London. There's a Dark Elf ship parked in the sky, and it looks like they're about to start something... This universe's Dark Elves aren't under your jurisdiction? Still, you could give it a try. Their ship looks pretty nice... Yeah, London, the British Isles. How long? Three more minutes? That works."
He hung up, and his eyes shifted to the magician Steven, still flailing around in the Thames.
"Steven, come here."
With a light tap of the Infinity Scepter, the soaked man vanished from the river with a splash and reappeared in front of them.
"Huff, huff, Jesus Christ, I almost drowned!" Steven coughed up a few mouthfuls of river water and scrambled to his feet. "Aliens, there are aliens, we need to run!"
Skyl raised a hand slightly.
[Scourgify]
A tiny whirlwind spun the magician around in place, and the next second he was clean and dry.
"Whoa. Holy hell, what kind of magic was that? You really are from Hogwarts?"
"Gryffindor," Skyl said.
He produced a wizard hat, tipped it slightly to the magician, and added, "Your magic act was excellent, Mr. Muggle. Now watch one of my tricks."
He casually pulled a deck of cards from his pocket. Steven patted his own pocket and blurted, "Hey, those are my cards."
"They are. I'm borrowing them."
Skyl fanned the deck and had Steven pick one.
The magician's hands were shaking. He was far too rattled, so he hesitated there for a moment.
At the same time, the Dark Elf mothership had already begun launching attack craft. These strange L-shaped ships looked like the heads of Viking axes, and the way they dived made it seem as though they could split mountains and seas. If those blade-like hulls rammed into a building, they would slice it clean in two.
Then the ship's guns opened fire.
Missiles loaded with high-mass, high-energy explosives screamed toward targets on the ground. A single one could wipe out an entire city block, and now the sky was full of them, like a flock of deadly birds returning home.
Skyl spoke softly.
"Gally."
Galactus's daughter spread her fingers, and ten narrow blue beams shot from her fingertips like ten anti-air guns. She swept her hands casually across the sky, and the lasers carved through the air, detonating most of the missiles before they could hit the ground.
"Steven, there's no time to agonize over the choice."
The magician pointed at one of the cards. Even from the back, he used a few of his own little tricks to identify it.
"That one's a king. I pick it."
Skyl drew the King of Spades and said quietly, "Hero who slew the giant Goliath, king of the united kingdom of Israel, David the valiant, today you will appear here and defend London."
He flicked the card high into the air, then raised the Infinity Scepter. The crimson Reality Stone blazed with brilliant light.
"Transform."
The light card became a vast crimson outline hundreds of miles long and wide, stretched across the sky above the city like a magnificent Persian carpet.
The king depicted on the card was David. The famous statue David portrays the same biblical figure.
Empowered by the Reality Stone, the unreal David reached one arm out from the flat, two-dimensional surface of the card and stepped into the three-dimensional world, changing in an instant from a mere outline into living flesh.
One arm, then the other, then his head, neck, and torso, and finally his legs, all breaking free from the prison of the flat image until he stood in the sky.
All of London stared in wonder. Wireless signals carried the image of the giant in the sky around the world.
And Steven, the magician who had drawn the card, could only stare in a daze, mumbling to himself.
"Magic... magic..."
The giant stood bare-chested, his body masculine and powerful, and lifted his head to watch the oncoming starships. The massive attack craft looked like boomerangs beside him, or swallows gliding through the air. Their heavy fire exploded against David's body, but aside from staggering him a step or two, it could not truly harm his godlike frame.
Then David reached out lightly, caught the attack craft one after another in his hands, and pressed them down into the card-shadow beneath his feet.
The three-dimensional ships instantly became two-dimensional images.
They, along with the advance troops inside them, were sealed into the card.
Only after the Dark Elves no longer dared to launch more attack craft did David smile and dissolve into mist, fading away like a phantom beneath the sun.
The card shrank back to normal size and dropped into Skyl's hand. Steven could clearly see the dozen or so attack craft printed on its face, while David himself was gone.
"You don't mind if I keep this one, do you?" Skyl returned the rest of the deck to the magician, then gave him a nod. "You should go now, Mr. Muggle. Don't give up stage magic. You really do have talent."
Steven nodded blankly.
At that moment, a beam of transport light descended from the Dark Elf mothership. Their leader, Malekith, came down to the surface with a group of elite soldiers and headed straight for Skyl.
The moment the civilians along the route saw those aggressive-looking aliens coming, they fled at once. For all their recklessness, they still had enough sense to know when danger was real. Steven ran with the crowd. After that day, he never saw Skyl again, though many years later, when he had become a successful magician, he would write about the encounter in his memoir.
Malekith of the Dark Elves stopped five paces in front of Skyl.
The soldiers behind him looked wary. Skyl's magic had clearly frightened them. Even so, they still chose to stand against the wizard, determined to reclaim the supreme treasure of their race.
Malekith stared deeply at the Infinity Scepter resting in Skyl's hand. His eyes flickered, and his voice came out harsh and rasping.
"That Stone does not belong to you."
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