"That Stone does not belong to you." Malekith extended a hand toward Skyl. "Return it to us."
"You're obviously afraid of me, and you still think you can talk the Stone out of my hands. Who gave you that kind of confidence, Tony Robbins?"
A dim silver gleam lit Skyl's eyes as he read Malekith's mind. Even though he was an alien, Legilimency still worked just fine.
Malekith froze for a moment. Then, after thinking it over with complete seriousness, he replied, "I don't know Tony Robbins."
"Your race didn't forge that Stone. You merely possessed it once. Now it's in my hands, and you're getting nothing."
As the negotiation seemed ready to collapse, the elf warriors behind Malekith raised their energy rifles. These were powerful weapons, strong enough to drop an Asgardian with a single shot. Even iron bones and bronze skin would not hold up against them.
Skyl tapped the Infinity Scepter lightly.
Every rifle turned into a bouquet of flowers.
The armor on the soldiers transformed into tuxedos and wedding dresses, and to make matters worse, they were all suddenly wearing garish, eye-searing makeup. The whole place instantly looked like some giant disaster of a wedding reception.
Seeing the baffled looks on their faces, Gally and Jormungand both burst out laughing.
The Dark Elves stared at each other in shock. Plenty of them went pale with terror, though a few more carefree idiots had already started laughing at their companions' outfits.
Malekith's face turned a sickly shade of green. He looked around at the people fleeing across the streets and the crowds watching from farther off. Seeing the mixture of fear and curiosity in their eyes, he suddenly came up with an idea.
"This is your homeworld, isn't it?" he asked Skyl. "These are your own people."
"Close enough."
"If you refuse to return the Stone, then my race will regard your kind as enemies. We will begin a war. When that happens, how many of your people will you be able to save?"
"I could erase you before you even finished giving the order." Skyl found the whole thing funny. "Under normal circumstances, shouldn't you be trying to recruit me first? Why jump straight to threats? Have you been out wandering so long that you forgot how diplomacy works?"
A violent gust struck from behind him.
A massive fist came smashing toward the back of his neck.
A Dark Elf Kurse warrior had ambushed him from behind. No wonder Malekith had wasted time standing here talking. He had only been stalling. The man had absolutely no honor.
Boom.
The fist came down with terrifying force and the speed of lightning, enough that it should have snapped Skyl's neck.
But a small, soft hand appeared in its path and blocked it cold, like a shovel striking a mountainside. The hand did not move so much as an inch.
Gally blew a bubble with her gum and tilted her head at the savage, furious Kurse warrior. She had casually raised one hand to shield the back of Skyl's neck, and now she gave the attacker a light push.
That half-ton elven powerhouse went flying.
The supposedly unstoppable Kurse warrior skipped across the Thames like a stone, then slammed into the embankment on the far side with a crash, leaving only his legs sticking out.
"Thanks, Gally. I knew you were the most reliable."
That one sentence instantly put a radiant smile on her face.
Seeing that the ambush had failed, Malekith ran out of options. He immediately ordered the mothership to open fire on the surface, planning to use the chaos as cover for retreat.
Quiet, well-behaved Jormungand suddenly muttered, "Hungry."
Skyl said to her, "Do me a favor. Go wrap up that ship and don't let it get away, okay?"
Gally lifted a hand. A serpent-shaped shadow flew from her sleeve, shot straight into the clouds, and transformed into a world-devouring beast. The whole sky seemed to tremble beneath the majesty of her enormous body. The great serpent coiled around the mothership while golden sunlight flashed across her scales, brighter and harsher than even the broadest snowfields of the Alps reflecting the noon sun.
Jormungand inhaled gently.
The mothership's energy reserves plummeted in an instant, and the cannons that had been charging one after another all died out.
Once again, the people of London were left staring at the sky in shock. First aliens, then King David, and now a mythic world-serpent. Quite a few of them were starting to wonder if they were dreaming.
At the same time, Lady Moonshadow finally arrived.
She looked at the Dark Elves from this world, and Malekith and his warriors looked at her.
"And you are?" Malekith's heart pounded so hard he forgot to run. "Who are you, really? Are you one of our lost people? Come stand with me."
Lady Moonshadow narrowed her eyes. Then she complained to Skyl, "They're kind of ugly. I don't like them. Bringing a race that ugly under my banner would offend my aesthetic standards."
They were both dark-skinned elves, but Lady Moonshadow was delicate and beautiful, while the Dark Elves of this world looked more like orc-blooded half-breeds. Not that they were hideous exactly, but they certainly were not elegant, and they carried that unmistakable villain look. No wonder she found them distasteful.
That one sentence hurt Malekith worse than Skyl's magic had.
It broke him on the spot.
"Traitor! Race-sellout! May your soul be tortured by light forever, never to return to the eternal dark!"
Lady Moonshadow's eyes narrowed sharply, and a smile spread across her face, warm enough to feel vaguely nuclear.
"Who exactly are you calling a race-sellout?"
Cursing the Daedric Prince Azura to her face, that took nerve. Even Skyl could not help giving Malekith a mental thumbs-up.
"I curse you," Lady Moonshadow said, her voice echoing with vast power. "Your whole race, unblessed by wisdom, untouched by strength, denied the grace of speed, born low and fated to wander."
When she finished, the Dark Elves looked around at one another.
At first, nothing seemed to happen.
Before they could laugh, black smoke suddenly billowed from their bodies. Slowly, their forms began to shrivel. Their hair fell out. The flesh on their cheeks sagged. Drool dripped from their mouths. Their legs twisted out of shape. They looked like senile old men ravaged by dementia.
Malekith's scream quickly turned into dumb, broken babbling.
He had taken the worst of the curse. His body shrank down to dwarf-like proportions, his features became grotesque, his skin wrinkled and sagged like a soaked bedsheet, and his mind collapsed completely into idiocy.
The sheer viciousness of Lady Moonshadow's curse sent a chill through Gally. She hurried behind Skyl in fear, and even Skyl himself frowned a little at the Dark Elves' miserable state.
Once she had punished the disrespectful, Lady Moonshadow's mood brightened again. She looked up at the alien mothership in the sky.
"Well then, that's our spoils now. If I'd known this would happen, I wouldn't have bothered putting effort into building one myself."
Skyl smiled. "Compared with some secondhand ship that used to belong to somebody else, I trust a brand-new one made by our own people more."
"Oh? What a sweet mouth. Since when did I become one of your own?" Lady Moonshadow said with a beaming smile as she leaned closer.
Skyl always kept a respectful distance from this shamelessly flirtatious Daedric Prince, and Gally was already trembling.
"My, what a cute little girl. Is that snake in the sky your daughter? Call her back."
With the entire Dark Elf race turned into babbling fools, that civilization could effectively be declared dead. Skyl had originally wanted Lady Moonshadow to bring them under her control so they could handle grunt work for him once he started traveling through space. But Malekith had been utterly useless. His lifelong stubbornness had only ended with him being crushed by someone stronger.
After Jormungand returned to the ground, London's local superhero finally arrived as well.
Captain Britain, whose real name was Brian Braddock. Compared with Captain America, who still fell more or less within mortal limits, Captain Britain was already fully superhuman. He not only had magical abilities, but also wielded the sacred sword Excalibur. It was said that the blade could split the Omniverse itself, though of course he was nowhere near that absurd level yet. At best, he could probably manage some flashy Arthurian-style holy beam attack. It should still be barely enough to deal with an alien warship.
Captain Britain came together with MI13, the local intelligence service whose role and authority were broadly similar to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s, and approached Skyl to talk.
"London's still standing. Next time, you official types should get here a little sooner. You can't leave this sort of mess for tourists to handle," Skyl said, half joking, as he chatted with Captain Britain for a few moments.
The man quite clearly wanted to keep the alien ship for Britain. After all, the value of something like that was impossible to estimate. But after seeing what had happened to the Dark Elves, he ultimately did not dare say it out loud.
Skyl used the Infinity Scepter to shrink the ship down to the size of a tabletop toy and slipped it into his pocket before leaving. In the end, all the British got out of the whole disaster was a pack of mentally ruined aliens, though they could probably still squeeze some value out of them.
With the Stones on Earth collected, Skyl's next target was space itself.
Perfect timing, since the travel ship was already complete and ready to launch at any moment.
His journey through the galaxy was now right in front of him.
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