"I don't care, just get it out of her! NOW!"
"Michael, I have told you before: we simply do not know enough in order to do so safely. Given her pregnancy-"
"Maybe you should've thought of that, oh I don't know, before you shoved a fucking demonic spirit into her!"
"I understand your anger-"
"You think I'm angry?! You think this is angry?! I'm not angry: I'M OUT OF MY GODDAMN MIND HERE!"
"Michael-"
"SO YOU FIX HER, OR I BREAK YOU!"
The Ancient One's thin lips press together to form an even thinner line as she stares at me from several feet away with a severe expression on her torn-up face. We were originally standing almost chest to chest when this argument started, but the longer it went on, the angrier I became and the more heat I started giving off, forcing the sorcerer to quickly back away.
"Michael. I swear to you: I'll do everything in my power to make sure Jessica and your child will come out of this unscathed. Even if it means taking the Spirit into myself, then I'll do so. But I refuse to threaten their lives by acting too hastily! Now, you can continue to direct your fear and anger at me, or you can step aside and let me examine her so I can start working on a solution!"
For a moment, we simply stare at each other, before with a frustrated growl I turn away from her, trying to fight down my rage, allowing the Ancient One to pass. I keep an eye on her as she hurries to where Jess is still standing in the same place as before. Sterns is there as well, several scanners extending from his suit and (mechanical) arms as he circles the flaming form of the Ghost Rider.
His utterly confused expression doesn't really help the knot that's sitting in my stomach.
Picking up the familiar whine of repulsors I take my eyes off them right as the Ancient One calls up a magical array to cover her remaining functional arm. Turning around, I see Tony Stark flying towards me, his iconic armor definitely worse for wear.
As he lands heavily a few feet away from me, I notice that several parts of his armor seem of slightly different make, as if they were added later on. Guess he figured out the Veronica platform the Hulkbuster relies on a few years earlier than he would have in canon.
Good for him, I guess.
"McCole, we need-" Tony's mechanical voice comes in a hurried tone, before it trails off as his helmet turns into the direction of where Sterns and the Ancient One are fussing over Ghost Rider-Jessica, the mangled corpse of Shuri lying off to the side.
"… what." He asks flatly.
"Yeah, things got weird. We'll figure something out, after this Invasion has been stopped." I say, deciding that there's not much that I can do to help Jessica right now, so in order to distract myself I'll focus on the immediate threat to our collective safety.
For a moment, Tony just keeps staring, before I can almost feel him wrestle his curiosity under control, like me deciding that the army of Lovecraftian horrors dotting the New York skyline is somewhat more pressing.
"Right. Whatever trick you pulled on the portal from Hell. Think you can do the same on the portal in the sky?"
Automatically, both our eyes are drawn to the inverted 4th-dimensional sinkhole that's suspended upside down in the sky, whirling slimy tentacles coiling around it in impossible turns.
"It's a different kind of portal. It doesn't lead to Hell, but-" I begin, only to be immediately interrupted by Iron Man.
"To the Dark Dimension, a plane of existence ruled by an Eldritch Abomination that would make even Lovecraft himself shit his pants. I know. The wizards filled everyone in on most of the different Evil dimensions out there, right after Hell's opening move. And that's a sentence I never thought I would have to say. Like, ever." He deadpans.
"Right, so we can't use the same method. Fuck it, maybe we could, but the only one who really understands what method we actually used is Sterns, and he needs to get in real close for it to work, and considering the mass of tentacles and teeth up there… besides, he also needs time and proper back-up to set it all up, and someone to get him out of there so he doesn't fry himself as well. And with Oliver shut down, there's just no way of safely getting him in position and back out again. It's damn-near impossible."
For a moment, the two of us simply stare at the army in the sky, the silence stretching between us broken only by the sounds of combat and the far-off screams of the dead and the dying.
"… so, that's it then? With no way to close that thing we're facing an army that's literally endless. I don't know about you, but my ammo isn't. We'll lose. In the end. We'll go down swinging, that's for sure, but… there's no way we can come out on top. Is there?" Stark softly says, ending on a questioning note as he turns to look towards me.
Whatever his personal feelings towards me are because of me stealing his tech a few years back, he knows that right now I'm our best shot at securing the survival of the human race.
Even with his faceplate down, I can imagine the slight desperation in his expression as he's truly faced with the end for the first time in his life. Even during the One Day War against the Chitauri, when I had Harper and my Hysminai steal the Scepter, thus denying the Avengers the chance to close the portal too early, he hadn't been faced with such finality.
After all, that had been a single army, and they knew that the Scepter had to be around somewhere.
They had desperately managed to hold on to hope, then.
That hope is gone now.
Throughout his life, Tony has been able to push through despair and hopelessness in order to face approaching death head on, always trying to arm himself and others against the inevitable crisis that would be coming next. Even when he was dying of the very thing that kept him alive, he tried to make sure that Pepper and Happy would be able to go on without him, pushing everyone away so they (and he) wouldn't be hurt again when he would be gone.
But now… he had already been fighting for the better part of a week. Much of downtown New York was absolutely ravaged. They had lost Natasha. I had been the one to close one of the portals (or rather Sterns, who was on my team), but now I told him that I couldn't repeat that feat on the other one. And there was no way to defeat what was on the other side.
An entire dimension against one little planet.
You didn't have to be Tony Stark to figure out that the math didn't work out well for us.
But I knew something that he didn't (and couldn't).
"Not necessarily."
At his questioning look, I elaborate.
"I said that the method used on the Hell-portal would be practically impossible to recreate on the Dormammu-portal. I never said that was the only method I know of to close the portal."
Stark wants to question me, but I've already stalked away, making a beeline towards where the Ancient One is crouched in front of Jessica, one palm laid flat against her belly. Her eyes are closed in concentration, but fly open as I approach her, and she rises from her crouch, turning to face me with a wary expression.
I don't say anything: I just extend my arm, hand splayed open, my palm turned upwards.
Judging by the fact that her working hand immediately reached up to touch the Eye of Agamotto, I know she understood me just fine though.
"Michael… We've had this conversation before… The Eye-"
"That conversation happened when Dormammu wasn't in the process of invading Earth, the very thing the Eye is supposed to guard against."
"The Sorcerer Supreme-"
"Failed."
The Ancient One rears back as if slapped, but my expression remains hewn from stone as I stare her down, daring her to deny it.
Yes, Shuri opened the portal to the Dark Dimension because she wanted revenge on me, that's my own damn fault, but it had been up to the Masters of the Mystic Arts to stop her in her tracks long before we got to this point.
For fucks sakes, I wasn't even on the planet when she opened the portal! How the hell was I supposed to stop her from dooming the world when I wasn't even on it?!
The whole point of the Masters of the Mystic Arts was to stop this exact thing from happening in the first place, so it was on them, not me, that Shuri succeeded (the rest is on me though, I'll admit at least in my own mind).
And the Ancient One knew it too. Still, for the multiple centuries that she has been the Sorcerer Supreme, she has kept the artefact safe from all imaginable threats. Civilizations have come and gone, and yet the amulet has remained in her possession.
It's understandable that's she's reluctant to give up such a powerful artefact, even now.
Understandable, but very annoying.
"Michael… the Eye is immensely powerful. The chance that you could kill us all are significant. The chance that you'll end up killing yourself… they are high enough that calling them mere 'chance' is being naively positive." She stresses, but I simply step closer to her, my expression not changing in the slightest.
Catching her gaze, I slowly track my eyes towards the skeletal Jessica, before pointedly turning back to look at the Ancient One again, whose face drops when she realizes what I'm getting at.
"You. Owe. Me."
The Ancient One is torn and looks close to giving in, so I push on, trying to break her resolve as I attack her weak points.
"Look me in the eye, and tell me honestly that you are in a condition to fight your way through his army, get past those tentacles and then face him in his own realm."
"And you can?" The sorcerer tries to challenge me, but I have my answer ready.
"Yes." I say with utter confidence, which takes the old sorcerer slightly aback in surprise.
For a moment we merely stare at each other as I can see indecision warring in her gaze, so I press on.
"Look me in the eye and tell me that I'm not the best choice to send."
The bald woman opens and closes her mouth a few times, her gaze flicking from the massive portal in the sky, to Jessica, to me and then back to Jessica again. When she closes her eyes with a pained expression, I know I've won.
It fills me with dread.
Slowly, the Ancient One reaches up with her non-shattered hand, undoing the clasp of the necklace. Instead of falling to the ground, the Eye of Agamotto remains floating in place for a few moments, before it gently moves to rest in her open palm.
As if she's Frodo and I'm Galadriel (… that's a weird mental image) she raises her hand towards me, offering me the powerful artefact her order has zealously protected for literal millennia with their very lives.
My own hand reaches down, dwarfing hers. The tips of my fingers close around the brass metal surrounding the Time Stone, but I can tell by a slight pressure that the Ancient One is still holding onto it.
The grip is not nearly tight enough to contest my strength if I were to take it anyways, and the Sorcerer Supreme knows it as well. It's a mere token resistance, more of an involuntary reflex from her centuries of dedication rather than any real attempt of her to keep me from taking it.
While I could just tear it out of her hand, I immediately decide against it. Yes, this is yet one more artefact that I've been chasing for literally my entire life and a large part of me just wants to take the damn Stone and run. But I have by now realized that I need to consider the people that I now share a universe with and not just my own quest for power.
This entire fiasco is an example of what happens when I don't.
"Do you trust me?" I ask, seeing the Ancient One look up in surprise.
She searches my face for what feels a long time, yet cannot have been more than a few moments. Exactly what's she's looking for, I cannot tell, but I do know when she's found it: the remaining pressure on the Eye falls away as the Ancient One lets go.
"I do. I dread what the future may bring… but whatever may come from this point in Time onwards, it is undoubtedly better than Dormammu's complete victory. Best of luck… Hyperion."
Giving her a nod, I place the ancient artefact around my neck, the shutting of the clasp almost sounding like a thunderclap to me, an unnatural weight now hanging from my neck (which may just be my imagination running wild due to me knowing what I'm actually holding here, considering that Strange didn't really seem to think much of the Artefact when he first put it on).
Unlike all the other Stones that I've collected so far, this one doesn't hurt. In fact, I barely feel anything Time-related shenanigans at all. It's powerful, that immediately jumps out towards me. Now that I'm so close to its energy signature, I'm fairly sure I could toss the amulet into the ocean and find it with my eyes closed in less than a few minutes.
But all that energy is just that… energy. Pure, simple and ready for use. The Mind Stone had distinct impressions of mental energy and the Power Stone had sent raw power rampaging through me, but the Eye works just like a generator of electricity, or something equally mundane. Its (relatively) neutral emission reminds me of the Space Stone. While the energy that we extracted from the Tesseract did have unique energy signatures and interactions, and had lent itself perfectly to experimenting with the Space-Time continuum, the Tesseract itself had mostly just felt as a ridiculously powerful energy generator, rather than a primordial singularity representing the concept of Space.
A buffer between infinite power and the user. This container is less… elegant than what the Asgardians built around the Space Stone, but it's just as effective at making the primordial levels of energy more manageable to interact with.
I can hear Tony walking towards me judging from the metallic impacts on tarmac behind me, but I ignore him in favor of placing my hands in the appropriate signs, slowly going through the movements to unlock the Eye.
"Right. The bald lady gave you a piece of jewelry. Mind telling me how pimping yourself will help us face a literal dimension full of evil?" Tony's voice comes from behind me, his tone biting because he's unsure of what's happening and considering what he's been through, his patience is running understandably thin.
Rather than answering him, I complete the last twisting motions that fully slide away the brass lock in front of the Time Stone, it's emerald light bursting forth from right underneath my neck. Closing my eyes in focus, I extend one hand as I hold the other close to my face, fingers alternatively curled and extended as if I'm a ninja from the Naruto world.
The energy from the Eye increases in brightness as I start turning my outstretched wrist, a green glow bursting around my form, startling Stark and even with my eyes closed I can feel the disapproval from the Ancient One.
I don't stop though, forcing the massive amounts of energies to do my bidding as I keep reversing Time through the spell I've cast. Given that I'm standing in the middle of a literal warzone, it's difficult to keep my concentration, but I've been through situations that required my absolute focus often enough by now that I manage to keep all of my attention on not fucking up the spell.
Only when the spell has been fully completed do I open my eyes, going through the final motions to properly end the spell and return the Eye to dormancy. As expected, the Ancient One is frowning at me, but when I raise a questioning eyebrow at her, she gives a reluctant nod of her head, acknowledging the necessity of my move.
Turning around, I can see that Tony's faceplate is up, showing his shocked face as he stares me up and down, and I can't help but grin at his expression. His shock is understandable of course: it's not every day you see time reversing itself right in front of your eyes.
Where only moments before my armor had been beaten up and I had looked like shit, we were now both in pristine condition with not a mark on us. A quick glance at my HUD showed me that all systems were green, all energy levels were at 100% and all ammo was fully stocked.
It was as if we hadn't even been involved in the fighting at all.
Or it would be if I didn't feel a stinging feeling in my side, right where Belathauzer had stabbed me. The pain wasn't as severe as before, almost as if had dulled with age or something, but the wound was definitely still there. Once I manage to get some down-town, I should take a look at the Hell-flame inflicted wound, but right now I have more pressing matters to attend to.
"That was extremely dangerous. One mishap, and you would've reversed your mind in time as well, not just your body. That would have either made you catatonic, shoved you outside of our timestream or made you forget you were casting the spell, causing you to keep reversing time until you made yourself younger than a baby and simply unmade yourself." The Ancient One says, and I can see Stark's eyes widen even further at her words.
"It worked, didn't it?" I reply over my shoulder, half of my mind on checking over all of my body and armor, looking for anomalies of any kind (other than the impossible remains of the wound I received from a Dark God).
The rest of my mind wonders if what the Ancient One is talking about could've really killed me… or if it would've returned me to my home dimension instead.
"Fair enough." The Ancient One says with a frustrated sigh, before she turns her back on me and moves towards Jessica again.
Putting the ancient sorcerer (and questions about time-travel and dimension-displacement) out of my mind, I look back to Stark, who seems to have recollected himself somewhat.
"… you. You are very weird. You know that, right?"
"It has been pointed out to me before, yes." I calmly reply, stepping up and glancing at my target: the Dormammu-portal.
Seeing what I'm looking at, Tony becomes businesslike immediately, stepping closer to me as his faceplate slams down.
"What do you need?" asks Iron Man in his metallic voice, and despite everything that I have been through and despite our current situation, I cannot help the small glow of pride growing in my chest at the realization that Iron Man is looking to me for leadership.
That's just about every nerd's dream on some level!
Immediately and effortlessly, I shake off the childish hero-worship that's a left-over from my previous life, my mind flashing through all the possible approaches to the portal, identifying any and all opponents and hindrances.
"I don't think there's any individual in Dormammu's army that can pose a threat to me, at least on this side. But if they swarm me, and they will, then they can keep harrying me away from the portal. They'll try to delay me from going through so that Dormammu can send in more and more heavy hitters. He's searching to make this into a war of attrition, since he knows that if he's successful in doing so, his victory will be inevitable."
"We'll set up a cordon for you. Everything that isn't shiny and golden gets shot to pieces. You got a plan for dealing with those tentacles? So far they've only formed a cannon-thing once, but it was enough to completely vaporize the Quinjet, Thor's arm and a large part of Fifth Avenue."
Hefting my shield a little higher, I give a confident smirk, which is hidden by my restored faceplate.
"That energy attack won't be a problem for me. In fact, I'm counting on it."
"… Is this the part where you extend your hand to me like you're Aladdin and ask me if I trust you? I mean, I'm pretty sure I own stocks in several zoos, so I probably own a tiger or two, but I'm not putting on harem pants and a mid-riff baring top just so you can live out your Disney fantasy." Tony dryly says, and despite the severity of the situation, I can't quite keep myself from letting out an amused scoff.
"Shame. You'd make it work." I say with a grin, my mind flashing to Robert Downey Jr. appearance in Sherlock 2, complete in drag and make-up.
Tony is naturally oblivious, and manages to somehow puff up his chest despite being in power-armor made from a titanium-gold alloy.
"Of course I would. I can pull anything off."
We share a grim chuckle, even as we know that Jarvis and Phineas are listening in and are already coordinating the battered remains of Earth's defenders into preparing a final assault on Dormammu's forces according to our conversation.
"So, smash through his forces, deal with the tentacles. Then what? How are you going to close the portal?" Stark asks, and though he tries to keep his voice neutral, I can tell that he has some idea of what my plan is.
The Ancient One already suggested doing it herself a few days ago after all.
"I'm going to fly through the portal, confront Dormammu and make him an offer that he cannot refuse."
For a moment, the glowing slits in Tony's helmet keep staring at me, before he speaks up in a grim voice.
"Something tells me that a primordial, extra-dimensional entity of absolute evil won't be impressed by your Marlon Brando impression." He says dryly.
"You just say that because you haven't seen me on movie nights. I do a hell of a Marlon Brando. Others too: Robin Williams, Morgan Freeman, Walken and Eastwood, you name it." I say blithely and I can hear him softly chuckle in his armor, before we both fall silent.
Realizing that we're stalling, we shake ourselves out of our quiet contemplations and the small, surreal moment of peace is broken. We both crouch a little in preparation for take-off, before I can see Iron Man's helmet turn towards me.
"McCole… in case this is a one-way trip, I want you to know: you're a dick, but even so, it has been a genuine honor."
"Likewise, Stark."
We exchange a nod and without any further words, active the boosters in our armor, blasting off side by side. I could outstrip him somewhat due to a combination of better armor and my natural flight, but there's little point in turning this into a race, so instead we fly at roughly the same pace towards a collection of flying blobs of exposed skin, teeth and far too many (or too few) eyes.
As I predicted, Dormammu's forces all drop what they're doing and start converging on me, moving like a massive beehive. The ground forces immediately turn around when I fly overhead, trying to chase me down, while some of the more athletic ones immediately start scaling the surrounding buildings as fast as they can. They ignore everything else, and I can see them throwing themselves at barricades manned by soldiers and SHIELD Agents in a desperate bid to keep up with me.
Some of the barricades are overrun due to the sheer swell of numbers, but Phineas' drones are keeping a close eye on everything (and are working together with Jarvis' own surveillance systems) and the VI in my Aurelion Armor quickly lets me know that the vast majority of the brave fighters survived, the Mindless Ones ignoring them completely.
The few deaths are because some unfortunate souls couldn't get out of the way of the sudden stampede in time and were simply trampled underfoot.
For now though, the flow of chitin and teeth on the ground isn't much of concern, especially since we're closing in on the flying forces that are retreating to the portal. Those that are already there start swirling around it like a tornado made of flesh, wings and eyes, clearly meant to halt my advance as a living funnel extends down from the portal in the sky to the skyscrapers down below.
As Tony and I prepare to engage the outer vanguard of flying demons, a loud staccato of gunfire rings out from behind us and several score of the smaller demons go down in great spurts of dark glowing blood. The larger ones survive, but are definitely wounded and start struggling to remain airborne.
Looking over my shoulder, I can see several Raptors and Quinjets fall in formation behind Stark and I, making us the tip of their V. The nearest Quinjet contacts us, and I can see Hawkeye's face pop up on my HUD.
He looks pissed.
"Keep going. We got your six. Fry those fuckers."
"Copy that." I reply, before looking over to Stark, who looks back at me, before we give each other a nod, communicating without the need for words.
Simultaneously, several flaps on our shoulders, back and even calves slide away, showing rows and rows of explosive ordinance. We madly accelerate towards the outer layer of the swarm, which is continuously being fed by streams of flying monsters from all over down-town.
As we pour everything we have in speeding up even further, the distance between us and Dormammu's creatures quickly closes, but we hold off on unleashing our payload for just a little longer, even as we race in close enough to make out individual teeth and eyes on the wide variety of Dark Dimension creatures.
Right on cue, bullets and missiles slam into the swarm with a vengeance courtesy of our escort, taking down the waves in front of us in gory explosion and torn off giblets from the creatures that perish under a veritable storm of gunfire, allowing Stark and I to punch through Dormammu's outer defenses.
Behind the scattered flyers lies a swirling wall of flesh and chitin and without needing to say a word, Tony and I unleash our entire pay-load into it, before swerving off to the side, curving around the dark column. A whole host of macro-missiles, lasers, explosives and exotic ammunition crash into the swirling tornado of creatures.
For just a briefest second, the world seems to hold its breath.
Then there's a lightshow big enough to shame any Fourth of July celebration as gargantuan mushrooms of fire bloom all along the column of creatures, concussive forces punching literal holes in their formation. As they are rocked by one explosion after the next, they die in droves and the simultaneous screams of hundreds of demonic creatures rings out across the city.
Music to my ears.
The half dozen Quinjets and Raptors that had formed up on Iron Man and me had fallen behind when we made our push, instead laying down covering fire into the outer layers of creatures. Now they had punched through as well, and released their own missiles into the already weakened swarm, before veering off as well.
I could spot the Quinjet that Hawkeye flew unleashing something that looked suspiciously like a toned-down version of the Jericho-missile. Either Fury had gone behind Stark's back, or this was part of an older (or new) contract.
When I didn't see huge explosion, I briefly thought that either the weapon had malfunctioned (maybe it had been Hammer-tech instead) or that Barton had somehow missed (which seemed unlikely). But then explosions flared into being behind the layers of the swarm, and I realized that Hawkeye had managed to aim his missiles through the tiny gaps between the swarming bodies to get them into the heart of the column.
I'm somewhat grateful that the man sticks to a bow and arrow, to be honest.
As I fly in for yet another strafing run, I can clearly see the carnage that Barton managed to do with his salvo. In sheer numbers, Stark and I hold the highest kill count (with mine being higher due to packing more ammo in my Cross Technology armatures), but by taking out the core of the swarm, all of the concussive force had hit the creatures from the inside outwards, greatly destabilizing the entire formation.
In the general chaos that ensued, Stark and the jets kept making strafing runs while I sought an opening within the writhing mass of flesh. By my estimates, we had taken out roughly a third of the creatures already, but more were adding themselves to the defensive formation every second, either coming from the city or through the portal.
Those coming from the city were thankfully hindered by other jets and choppers harassing them, taking out their numbers before they managed to group up, but there were simply more demons than there were aircraft. The ground forces were becoming a problem as well. The majority were still far below us in the streets, but the buildings surrounding us were getting covered in Mindless Ones that clawed their way up the vertical surfaces.
Most of those weren't really a problem either, as we were flying both too fast and too high for them to make jump and try and board us (not that that stopped them from trying). There were a few amongst them that had ranged attacks of some kind though. Most of these were energy beams, but I saw at least three that appeared to shoot out bony protrusions.
I think one of them was actually spitting its teeth at us.
They weren't that dangerous on their own (they also had rather poor aim, we quickly found out) but combined with the hectic aerial combat that was going on, they took up a chunk of our attention, which was deadly enough on its own, as shown when a Raptor narrowly swerved out of the way of a blinding violent laser beam that was aimed directly at its cockpit.
The plane smashed itself into a nearby skyscraper instead.
Still, Dormammu's losses were far greater than ours at the moment, which meant that if there was ever any chance to swing this battle into our favor, it would be now. There was no Hell to harass us on the ground. There was no Dark Dimension fueled, Darkhold empowered Ghost Rider running interference with our battle plans.
It was now or never.
Firing up boosters on the right side of my body in order to aid my natural flight, I abruptly right myself from a deep tailspin with a sudden jerk, scythe raised high as I gather energy around the Mind Stone. A bright yellow beam lances into the writhing tornado of eldritch flesh, right where their formation has been destabilized the most and their numbers are thinnest.
The beam of energy punches through the harried creatures, nearly bursting through the other side of the funnel entirely. In a flash, I've hurled myself trough the created opening, finally finding myself inside the tornado and in clear view of the portal.
And the tentacles that are sprouting from it. Each one is easily as large as a Chitauri Leviathan, and seems to be either thinner or thicker than one, though I'm not entirely sure (it seems to change randomly whenever I'm not looking). There seem to be roughly half a dozen of them, though it's impossible to tell exactly how many, due to them twisting around each other so much (and because their number seems to be inconsistent).
More importantly, they're bundling together, just like Phineas showed me when I just arrived back on Earth. Bright (ultra)violet/yellow/green light pulses down their impossible lengths in a steady rhythm, almost like a heartbeat.
And it's speeding up.
Light starts to warp due to the sheer amount of energy that they're giving off as they start wrapping around each other, forming an inverted mountaintop of pulsating flesh which grows brighter with every heartbeat.
And the tip of said mountaintop is pointed straight at me.
I'm not that worried as I raise my shield in front of me, the Power Stone in its center burning brightly in anticipation as I wait for the inevitable energy blast.
The funnel is trying to collapse onto me, trying to force me to move my shield and expose myself, but Stark and the jets are still fighting the ever-growing swarm, and now that the creatures aren't in a tight formation anymore, presenting a unified wall of hardened chitin, claws and teeth, it's easy pickings for my allies.
Due to the sheer number of creatures that start to surround me, Stark and the others can only attack the outer layer, and the innermost demons are nearly upon me, ready to hurl themselves at me in a suicidal attempt to give the tentacles a clean shot.
Which is when the yellow of the Mind Stone flares like a sun and Harpe starts rapidly spiraling around me, blade outwards. Within seconds, I feel like I'm stuck inside a humongous blender.
Untouched by the demons and with my allies chipping away at their numbers, I'm feeling pretty confident as I await the final buildup of the massive organic structure above me. In fact, it's somewhat necessary for what I have in mind.
So, I curl slightly inwards, raise my shield higher, and send my scythe spiraling even faster…
When a roar suddenly rings out very close to me, startling me and dragging my gaze to my left side. I can see that a section of the whirling, smaller flying demons had parted when I wasn't looking, allowing a massive shape through, right on a collision course with me.
It looks like it's a bastard offspring of the Skullcrawlers from Kong and the Terrasque from D&D, which was so ugly neither parent wanted it so they tossed into a toxic wasteland instead.
And its fang-filled mouth was mere feet away from me.
Of course, Harpe was still in blender-mode, and the creature (Skullque? Terracrawler?) had paid a heavy price for jumping off a nearby skyscraper to hurl itself towards me. My scythe had sliced clean through parts of its neck and upper body and had even managed to turn one of its clawed arms in nothing but strips of flesh, barely held together by cords of skin and sinew.
But it wasn't dead yet.
And those teeth were still very much intact.
I almost move my shield to intercept the creature, when I can see from the corner of my eye that the energy buildup of the tentacles is complete: briefly there's a bright star of blinding non-light at their intertwined tips.
Then a beam about as thick as the one I used on Belathauzer comes screaming down towards me.
I curse as I franticly go over every option that I can think of in the few milliseconds that I have left. Either I use my shield to block the incoming SkullTerraCrawlerQue and get de-atomized by the energy wave. Or, I use my shield to block the incoming energy wave and get mauled by the TerraSkullQueCrawler. I could try to block the energy beam with my shield and use Harpe to stop the demonic creature, but the problem is that my Harpe is simply too sharp and has too little mass to stop the momentum of the (likely) multi-ton creature.
Enlarging Harpe to giant-size could work, but the enlarging process takes a little bit of time (and I'm kicking myself for not having it giant-size to begin with), and however brief the transformation may be, the energy beam of the tentacles and the teeth of the creature are still faster.
Right when I'm about to take my chances and mentally command the Cross Tech in Harpe to enlarge the scythe, salvation arrives.
In the form of something impossibly large and on fire crashing into the side of the hideous Void creature, carrying it into the side of a skyscraper. I can't really pay attention to it though, because immediately afterwards, the tentacle beam slams into my shield with all the fury of an evil god.
Despite the fact that the beam is several dozens of times larger than I am, the entirety of the laser is halted by my shield instead of blasting past me, the beam ending abruptly in a flat surface right where it meets my Power Stone, a perfect cylinder forming between me and the tentacles.
The sheer force of the attack pushes me back down several feet, but I grit my teeth and fire up every Blue Box in my armor and I start forcing the beam back. I can sense all that power crashing into my shield, but instead of atomizing the metal, it meets a force field of literal endless Power and slowly but surely, the beam starts getting sucked into my shield.
The attack is bright enough that I'm completely blinded, even through my polarized, auto-adjusting, anti-glare helmet, so instead I just close my eyes and continue pushing upwards against the waterfall of force and energy that's crashing into me.
After a few moments however, everything goes quiet as the pressure disappears as suddenly as it had crashed into me.
The tentacles were spent.
As the last streams of light are sucked into my shield, I madly accelerate upwards, throwing my shield towards the portal. After a few feet, I grip it in a strong telekinetic hold as I light up my right fist with my golden Chi.
With a roar, I slam my Meteor Fist into the back of my shield and… well, I suppose that's what a full-powered Kamehameha looks like then.
A beam easily twice as large as the one the organic cannon had fired at me screams towards the portal, fueled by their own earlier attack, my Chi and the Power Stone, on a collision course with the tentacles which are still in the process of untangling themselves.
It impacts them… and isn't even slowed down. The enormous beam of energy simply punches straight through the intertwined mountain of otherworldly flesh, cutting several of the tentacles cleanly in half as it engulfs the portal itself. The outer parts of my attack stream past the non-edges of the inverted sinkhole, but the majority of it keeps travelling into its infinite darkness, crashing into Dormammu's dimension.
As the flare of light fades away, I'm right on the tail end of the attack, shooting past the burnt out, flailing husks of the tentacles as I see the portal getting larger and larger, until it encompasses my entire field of vision.
There's a feeling of falling… upwards? Which lasts for an undeterminable amount of time as I just keep on hurtling forwards, feeling as if I'm stuck in a twisted version of the Bifrost. Finally, the twisting energies and lights stop swirling and stretching, the world coming back into focus.
I really wish it didn't.
The scenery itself isn't that unfamiliar. It's the same LSD-fueled collection of planets, strings, nebulae and clouds that Strange saw when he went to confront Dormammu. Now however, I'm faced not only with Dormammu's face forming from the literal backdrop of the surrounding universe, but between him and me… is his army.
Seeing art of the Chaos forces from Warhammer 40K hadn't prepared me for this.
The art of the darkest creatures and planes in Magic The Gathering hadn't prepared me for this.
Fuck, not even seeing art for HP Lovecraft had prepared me for this.
Every possible nightmare that humanity has ever had was arrayed before me, every creepy, crawly, slimy thing man has feared from the time it was holed up in caves and didn't know what fire was.
Worms longer than trains. Spiders larger than buildings. Tentacles and eyes where they shouldn't be. Slime and pus trailing from countless oozing wounds. The chittering sound of endless wings and mandibles. Their number represented the physical manifestation of 'infinite'.
And all of them were now looking at me.
There was a stretch of no-man's land between us, the ground appearing cracked, glowing and fuzzy, like a microscopic particle when viewed completely high on acid. The reason why I wasn't instantly buried in literal waves of pulsating and twisted flesh quickly became clear when I looked closer at what exactly I was standing on.
It seemed to be the remains of what could've been the kraken, if it had dozens and dozens of tentacles and a bulbous body that looked like it belonged on a spider. More than half was missing though, and the twitching remains showed a clean, circular cut: seems I didn't just take out the tentacles it had on my side, but managed to blast what was hiding on this side to smithereens as well.
"Hyperion… Come to die… Behold as-"
SCYTHE TO THE FACE!
I wasted no time or words as I enlarge to my full size and hurl Harpe with all my might towards his face. Despite the fact that it's so large that it's basically the entire sky at this point, I underestimated just how large he truly was. He merely looks only that big due to the vast distances between us.
Still, powered by my Mind Stone enhanced telekinesis, Harpe races at multiple times the speed of sounds, slamming into his face after a few seconds. Which incidentally gives me a rough estimate for how large Dormammu truly is.
Enlarged, Harpe is roughly eighty feet tall (about 25 meters).
When it hit Dormammu's face, it hit him right between the eyes with the blade end, yet the bottom of the Beserker-staff only barely reached past the end of his "nose".
Fuck. Me.
And of course, there's still his army to consider as well.
As an arachnophobe, well over a third of the creatures arrayed before me have the required amounts of spindly legs, glistening beady eyes and hideous bodies to make me breath hard in panic and fear. Still, feeling the magic around my neck, I try to find my confidence again as I ignore Dormammu's screams, even as they shake the very ground beneath my feet. Instead I immediately recall Harpe as I let out a massive beam from the Mind Stone into the first ranks of the demonic army.
"Kill him! Rip off his skin! Tear off his flesh! Gnaw on his bones!"
Ear-piercing shrieks come from the army in front of me as it wells up like a tsunami, approaching me with thundering strides or on skittering stilts and icy fear grabs my heart in a vice-like grip. And yet, something within me gives me the strength to keep dragging the energy beam along their frontline as I catch Harpe in my hand, and I fly forwards to meet them.
I fly forwards… to my death.
The massive wave of creatures keeps closing in as the distance rapidly shrinks, though they die in droves as my Mind beam keeps frying those in front of me. And then we crash into each other.
I had my shield ready, crashing Power Stone first into their endless ranks. A massive shockwave of force expands from the point of impact, pulverizing those near me and throwing those further away clean off their feet.
And yet more horrors keep rushing towards me.
As before, when I stormed the Hell-portal, I keep Harpe in a tight hurricane around me, cutting them off at their multiple knees (if they had them) or simply cleaving them in half entirely (though that didn't always kill them). It didn't take long before I was wading through a river of caustic blood and stumbling over fleshy corpses and cracked carapaces.
The only reason I hadn't been ripped apart yet by a legion of teeth and claws was because the Power Stone offered me an absolute defense. I was almost immediately surrounded and was attacked from all sides, even from above and below as I waded deeper and deeper into their filth. But they couldn't press to close on me, due to absolute massive discharges of power from my shield whenever I slammed it into a creature or into the ground.
Still, I was but one man. These abominations were literally endless in number.
There was only one way that this could end.
I had been fighting for… hours? Weeks? Or maybe for no "time" at all. But I started noticing that my death was rapidly approaching.
The first sign was when I ran out of ammo. I had used up every single missile, bullet and grenade that I had stored in my armor using Cross-Technology, meaning they easily numbered in the thousands. After unleashing them all, I was surrounded by deep craters and flaming corpses, but other than shying away from the sudden light, my enemies didn't hesitate in throwing their disgusting bodies at me again and again and again.
The second sign was when I lost Harpe. After cutting through layers of mucus, flesh, bone and chitin, even the enchanted blade was beginning to chip, its enhancement gradually failing one after the other. Its final moment came when I recalled it to me because a creature that would make a Chaos Spawn look handsome in comparison had just barreled into me. It's various gaping maws were desperately trying to tear a piece out of me, and I had just used my shield to bash another demon away, leaving my guard open. With a roar, I had rammed my Meteor Fist into what passed for its throat, giving me some breathing room, before summoning Harpe back to my hand and ramming it into its hideous skull.
The blade snapped clean off when I tried to pull it out again.
The staff itself was sundered when a titanic being apparently made entirely of shadows and rivalling me in size swung a tentacle/claw/fist/blade at me and I tried to parry with the Beserker staff.
It cracked all along its length, before the bottom half was simply sheared off entirely.
I made the creature pay by breathing a tidal wave of fire onto it (making it appear more like a Balrog instead) which revealed its head. So I slammed the jagged edge of the Beserker staff in what I think was an eye socket, burying it nearly completely in its flesh. It shrieked and fell to the ground completely still, so I think that killed it.
Just to be sure, I slammed my shield down hard enough to entirely vaporize it and destabilize the "planet" I had been fighting on.
Taking to the sky only made it easier for them to assault me from all sides, so I desperately fought my way to a floating island not much larger than a sub-urban house. I landed heavily on its surface, and had to immediately defend myself from all sides as flying creatures assaulted me from above, while multi-legged rushed up from underneath this barren hunk of psychedelic rock.
The creatures kept trying everything in their power to swarm me under the watchful eyes of Dormammu, a very slight deformation in the ever-changing flesh between his eyes the only proof of the blow I had struck against him. Judging from the hunger in his burning eyes and the anticipation on his face, he hadn't bothered trying to vaporize me on the spot because he enjoyed seeing me swarmed and worn-down bit by bit.
It's not as if I was making a noticeable dent in his forces after all.
A bite here, a claw strike there, slowly but surely my armor started being more and more gouged and dented. Several parts started shutting down completely as its energy levels kept on getting lower and lower.
That was the third sign that my death was near: my Aurelion Armor simply shut down entirely. Without its actuators and hydraulics helping me move itself, its staggering weight quickly started wearing on me, my movements slowing down significantly almost immediately.
Which meant that I was hit more and more.
The fourth, and final, sign, was when an inverted scorpion managed to get in close and pierce me in the back of my right knee very deeply with all three of its stingers. Almost immediately, my leg collapsed underneath me as a consuming inferno of pain shot up through my leg and immediately started spreading to the rest of my body.
I managed to kill it by ramming the point of my shield through the carapace protecting its head, piercing his brain. Then I detonated a massive pulse from the Power Stone, which destroyed the rest of the body, the creatures that had jumped me during that short time and nearly breaking my little island completely in half.
There was a sudden lull in the fighting as I fell to my knee, completely and utterly exhausted. I could feel my regeneration trying to keep me going, trying to repair my body, but it had been doing so for every bruise, every scrape, every tear in my flesh and every broken bone, over and over again.
This poison… it was simply too much.
As I sat there kneeling, breathing heavily and nearly succumbing to the pain, my vision paradoxically became both brighter and darker at the same time.
The edges of my vision were darkening, signaling that I was passing out, yet the center of my vision was filled with something unbearably bright.
Dormammu's eye, I suddenly realize.
Looming over my broken form, Dormammu starts laughing, slowly and low at first, but steadily building up to an earth-shattering howling as he looks down upon me. With a grin several dozens of feet wide, he leers down at me, the rippling shifting of his face picking up pace in accordance with his malicious glee.
"Hyperion… Little Lord… I shall enjoy this…"
I slowly register his musings as my mind fights its way through the cobwebs of my utter exhaustion, and despite it all, despite having been attacked by and buried in my worst fears and nightmares, despite looking up at this near-omnipotent force of pure evil, I cannot help myself.
I start laughing.
It's weak, and more like coughing, but my defiance registers like a shock to the ancient being, judging by his widened eyes and his gritted teeth. With the very last of my strength, I look up at his furious face, and let out a challenging smirk, all of my fears falling away as I know that I'm about to die.
"No. You won't. You really wont." I manage to choke out, and the last thing that I see is a bright purple light racing towards me from Dormammu's mouth as a rage-filled roar rings in my ears.
"Ah, Hyperion… come to die… behold as-"
SCYTHE TO THE FACE!
"What-?! You-?! What is this?!"
Taking in my surroundings, I can let out a relieved laugh. I'm faced with a literal mountain of corpses, some of which are familiar to me. Creatures that I have decapitated, bifurcated and set on fire before I died.
Recalling Harpe to my hand, I turn to look at Dormammu's gargantuan face, ultimate satisfaction filling me when I see a tiny mark in-between the twisting flesh of his eyebrows.
Right next to a similar, slightly older looking mark.
Looking at the army of slobbering and chittering creatures surrounding me on all sides, fear and nervousness still thunder through my veins, but this time it is countered by a fire of determination from deep within my chest.
Hitching my shield higher on my arm and opening up flaps all over my armor, revealing my restored ammunition, I prepare to do battle once again with the most nightmarish creatures that I have ever seen.
Once more, the endless horde starts flooding towards me, somewhat hindered by where those I had killed before are already lying on the ground, spilling blood and pus everywhere. Giving a roar of my own, I fly towards them with a sonic boom, and once again I'm surrounded by fire, death and the broken corpses of my enemies.
I fare a little better this time. The creature that broke the staff and the creature that poisoned me are dead already this time around, so Harpe lasts me a lot longer this time around, until it is swallowed whole by what almost looks like Cthulhu. I manage to keep my telekinetic grip on it, and manage to rip the scythe straight out of his chest as if it were infected by an Alien, but the scythe is ruined beyond all use.
Apparently that had been one of Dormammu's more powerful minions (or he's simply freaked out by what's going on) since he doesn't wait for his minions to rip me apart, instead unleashing the same beam of energy he used to kill me with before. I manage to catch it on my shield this time, though it does send me crashing several dozens of feet backwards, almost straight into the "arms" of a large creature that would feel right at home in papa Nurgle's Garden.
I take care of both issues by simply dodging to the side, letting the beam continue on and vaporize the large demon.
Due to the nature of this dimension, it's impossible to tell how much time has passed and if I lasted longer this time around, but eventually, I simply can't compete against Dormammu's powers and endless army.
This time is worse than the last one, though. A humanoid creature, completely covered in the inverted Void-texture of the Mindless Ones, managed to summon a spear made of dark powers and pin me straight through my foot.
I managed to kill it by literally parting its head from its body with my telekinesis, but the damage had been done. Because of my immobility, Dormammu managed to get a clean shot this time, and managed to hit my left shoulder, right above the edge of my shield, taking off the arm entirely.
Left without my shield and in a mind-boggling amount of pain, I couldn't defend myself as a horde of creatures swarmed me, trying to bury my body under their maws, tentacles and spindly legs.
They kept clawing and biting me, steadily ripping through my armor and tearing of pieces of my flesh as I was buried under their sheer collective weight, even as I desperately punched and kicked with my remaining arm and leg.
"Let this be your end, Hyperion!"
Dormammu's hateful roar was the last thing that I heard before several sets of jaws clamped down on my head and the world went blank.
"Ah… Hyperion… wait-"
SCYTHE TO THE FACE!
"Cease this!"
SCYTHE TO THE FACE!
"I SAID CEASE!"
SCYTHE TO THE FACE!
"I WILL MAKE YOU BEG FOR DEATH!"
SCYTHE TO THE FACE!
"END THIS TORMENT! DORMAMMU COMMANDS YOU!"
SCYTHE TO THE FACE!
All was quiet. All that surrounded me was and endless expanse of the inverted colors of the Void, swirling endless overhead and far below. And the literal mountains of corpses dotting the surrounding landscape, those were here too.
With each subsequent reset, their numbers kept swelling and the bodies kept stacking higher. While I reset through "time" (as much as that concept was applicable in this dimension), they don't. Dormammu doesn't reset, he merely experiences all of time in a way that… well, I'm honestly not really sure just how exactly he sees time. He existed before it did, and now lives outside of it completely.
And he absolutely despises what I'm doing to him and his dimension. It's a neat variant on what Strange had managed to do. I had tweaked it though so that the absence of time in the Dark Dimension worked against Dormammu, making it only apply to me and indirectly to the Big D.
The more often he kills me, the more of his minions I kill each time I rewind. It's like the opposite effect of resting at a Bonfire in Dark Souls. And it's taking its toll, slowly but surely. I'm pretty sure I've been here for what would translate to decades, if not centuries (or perhaps just mere minutes, there's simply no way of telling). I have killed… maybe thousands and thousands of his demons.
That's only a drop in the ocean, but give me a few more eternities and those numbers would stack up significantly, especially since with each new attempt I grew stronger, faster and more skilled.
Like a gamer who has to redo a particularly hard level over and over again until he knows the entire map by heart.
And, in the end, what is the ocean if not a very large collection of individual drops?
Dormammu seems to have realized this though. In the last 42 resets, he has only sent an army against me 16 times, all with differing compositions and tactics. The other times he tried to use his own powers against me, trying to rip me to shreds immediately.
To be fair, those runs never did last long, his power was simply too overwhelming in his own dimension.
He had this planetoid swallow me whole, imitated the death star, blew me up, ripped me apart, filled the very air with uncountable spears made from dark energy turning me into a pincushion, and so on and so forth.
He always stops doing those runs after a few times, since while hist attacks are ridiculously powerful, I either mange to find a way to counteract them (usually by relying on the Power Stone) or he realizes that if killing me the same way ten times doesn't work, then killing me a hundred times probably won't work either.
One of the most annoying series of resets was where I died before I even managed to throw my scythe at his face.
Just, reset, boom!
I'm dead.
Rinse and repeat.
By using the Mind Stone to boost my perception to ridiculously high levels, I had managed to finally see what the fuck he had been doing: he had memorized the exact spot I reset to each time, and summoned a humongous spire right in that spot, impaling me as if I were an Ottoman and he was Vlad Tepes with a chip on his shoulder.
I'm kinda glad I died before I could fully register those deaths to be honest.
Most of my deaths have actually begun to blur together. I've honestly lost count of how many times I've died, though it's easily in the triple digits.
That's such a weird thing to say: I can't fully recall most of my own deaths. It's true though. Most of them involve pain, screaming, and then getting either ripped to pieces alive, eaten alive, impaled or blasted to my very last atom.
It's best not to dwell on them too much. The first couple of dozen times that I reset, the mental strain of dying in increasingly horrifying and violent ways, coupled with the knowledge I was about to face it again had gotten to me, and I had gone… insane.
Hysterically laughing, hysterically crying, trying to commit suicide by Eldritch Abomination…
Yet humans have the truly extraordinary ability to get desensitized to everything, even to insanity and their own cruel deaths, if exposed long and often enough.
Several resets after I had gone through all stages of Grief regarding… well, myself, I had managed to claw myself to sanity again, though I noticed that, for a while, I had become unnaturally focused and cold, as if to offset my earlier manic bursts of raw emotion.
'God, that was a horrible period in my life-death cycle. Thank heavens I'm not insane anymore!' I happily think to myself, before bringing taking Harpe out of the immense bonfire I had built, gleefully biting into the roasted tentacle that I had speared on its bladed tip.
'Yup! Completely sane now!' I proudly reaffirm as I chew the rubbery flesh.
Honestly, Eldritch Abomination doesn't taste as good as you would expect, but… well, there's literal mountains of the stuff lying around and mother always said "waste not, want not!".
All in all, despite the sub-par food, this is turning out to be a rather nice pick-nick, considering the peace and quiet and the pretty colors overhead.
Sure the smell of the rotting corpses is absolutely horrendous, but you get used to it after a few decades. And I do mean "realtime" decades. This is the longest time that I've been alive in this dimension so far.
Dormammu seems to have gone for a different tactic this time around: when I reset and threw Harpe at his face he… disappeared.
Poof! Gone. Just like that.
I was all set and ready to throw myself into the remains of his army, or at least the remains of the forces that he had around this portal. Experience had taught me that what I had been facing and steadily killing off all this time was only a small part of Dormammu's total forces, which he could bring in from anywhere in the Dark Dimension.
But, to my surprise, they all turned tail (wherever applicable, of course) and fled, leaving me alone in a vast void.
Since I have absolutely no way to navigate the Dark Dimension, I decided to simply sit here and wait for something to happen or for an enemy to show up. Not knowing what Dormammu was up to was making me nervous at first: maybe he was off to charge some powerful ritual where I couldn't interrupt him, so that he could break my time-loop?
As "time" wore on though, I started to relax a little, realizing that, if Strange, a mortal human, could persevere and force Dormammu into submission, then so could I. So, I sat, and I waited and once the rations stored in my Aurelion Armor ran out, I started eating the corrupted flesh around me, making sure to always roast it in my Chi-fire first.
That seemed to remove any and all taint from the flesh, thankfully, since I kept a close eye on the energies within my body, mind and soul and could not find even a hint of corruption in any of them. It would seem that bathing the meat in my own, Light-attuned energies purged their Dark energies.
Unfortunately, it also purged all the taste from it as well.
Sigh.
Oh well.
And with that, I happily take another bite, before the sound of movement catches my attention.
Over the many, many, many, many "years", my abilities have grown considerably. Not just my proficiency with the Infinity Stones, but also the fledgling abilities that I had developed through my close interaction with them.
Continuous practice during life-or-death (or… you know, death-and-death) stakes had evolved my rather weak psychokinetic powers to levels equaling the greatest the Jedi or Sith had ever seen. Pure raw strength with impeccable fine control. I could throw (part of) a building with just my mind, but also calibrate nano-machinery just by looking at it intensely.
The ability that I developed from the Power Stone was one with a lot of potential, but one that I initially had trouble manifesting and nurturing: the ability to absorb and redirect energy. The first time that I tried it on one of Dormammu's massive attacks… well, only my skeleton remained, before I reset.
But I just kept on trying. First, I was successful with the smaller energy-based attacks that his army grunts sent me, such as a spider-wasp hybrid creature that shot lasers out of its bulbous tail-end. I had managed to catch that attack with my bare hand, the energy sinking into my skin instead of blasting my arm off.
Of course, then it destabilized inside of my body, triggering another reset, but I started working on that till I could safely absorb small amounts of energy, store them and then shoot them outwards again, mostly by practicing leeching power from the Infinity Stones. I found that blasting them from my mouth worked best, probably due to my experience as a human flamethrower.
I honestly can't wait 'till I get back to Earth so that I can start absorbing solar energy, see what that does to me. I doubt I'll turn into a Kryptonian right away, but with Peter's and Ego's Celestial DNA… the possibilities were endless.
And all I had to do for these power-ups was literally get torn to shreds several hundred times!
What a deal!
Right, back to the "present". Because of my increased psychokinetic abilities, my Spidey Sense extended to a radius of over several dozen feet around me, so once I heard the sound of movement, I extended my sixth sense in order to find the intruder, kind of like a bat using echolocation.
Feeling movement several feet off to my left, I come to my feet as I rip off the tentacle from Harpe's blade, before hurling the scythe at the intruder.
Said intruder rounds the corner of a mountain of worms covered in varying types of eyes, but instead of being struck in the chest by my flying weapon it raises a slim arm and the Harpe remains suspended in mid-air.
I'm somewhat surprised when I get my first good look at the humanoid that has approached my camp. It's roughly the same size as me (a hundred feet tall or so) and its face is very familiar.
The shifting face of Dormammu disdainfully looks from the scythe in his mental grasp to me and back again, before he sends Harpe flying towards me at a reasonably slow pace, handle first so that I can easily catch it, before he crosses his arms over each other.
For a moment, silence reigns between us as I watch in confusion as he stands there fuming in his (relatively) tiny form, apparently struggling to get some words out which he really despises saying.
When he does speak though, I can barely contain my laughter.
"Hyperion… I have come to bargain."
Fun Fact: In Marvel's Earth-616 continuity alone, Jean Grey, a founding member of the X-Men and better known as (Dark) Phoenix, has died fourteen times. Mind you, that's only the mainstream continuity.
AN: Alright, I'm cutting it off here, since we're already 11k words in. This concludes the Demonic Invasion Arc. Next chapter(s) shall be in Interlude form, showing how the world and several of the characters deal with the aftermath of this Invasion. I think it would be amazing if you could send in your suggestions for possible POV's or even better yet, write them yourselves and send your work to me! You'll get full credit in the story of course, like with the Interludes by SIDoragon! I'm really looking forwards to your contributions! :D Right on the heels of the Interlude(s) will follow a chapter in which we can see Michael get his hands on the last scientists and power-ups that he wants as he starts preparing for the Endgame. Then the Convergence Arc will happen, meaning that the focus of the story will shift towards Asgard. And after that Arc… the final piece of the story. The Thanos vs. Hyperion Arc. So, I hoped you liked this chapter, and there's a lot of cool stuff to look forwards to! (No Shuri anymore, thank God) Also, this story surpassed 1 MILLION views! Woohoo! So… yeah, cheers!
All of my thanks and gratitude to my lovely patrons! IronmanMarkIV, justlovereadin, Shaman95, Daniel Dorfman, Carn Krauss, DoctorTortoise, Sam, Thordur Hrafn, DavidJP, ReaperScythe, CJ Elsen, Devon, Khamalpreet Singh, Kyle Reese, RLStrained, Kahn, Vu, Roman Krupkin! Thanks so much!