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If there was one thing that infuriated Thor more than being defeated in a flyting, a test of wit and insults, it was being overlooked. It was being ignored. And as the dais carrying his opponent disappeared over the horizon towards the distant Chitauri portal, Thor howled in fury, the sound as loud as any that Fenris could have made. "G, get back here you, you do not turn your, no, R, RAAGGGGGGGGG!"
From nearby, the wolfish son of Loki looked on as Thor howled and smashed the ground like a berserker, each blow delivered with enough force to make the remnants of the mountain underneath them shudder. The man's screaming was so loud it hurt Fenrir's ears, and his lips pulled back in a snarl of his own. "Cease your whining, cousin! Else you will find yourself on my menu!"
Even in the midst of this war and despite his accumulated, and quite serious, wounds, Fenrir would cheerfully admit to a desire to see how he could stack up against the god who had killed his hated brother, Jörmungandr. There were family bragging rights involved.
Thor's howling ceased, and he glared over at Fenrir for a moment before he shook his head and turned away. "Bah, you are in no fit state to be a challenge even at the feast table, cousin. Keep thy fangs hidden behind thy lips."
That caused Fenrir to let loose his own snarl, but Thor ignored him now, hopping into his chariot and, with a flick of the reins, his chariot was on the move, flying high up into the air. As it went, Thor began to twirl Mjölnir above his head, reaching out to the weather around them for the first time.
It could've been honor, which had held his hand in terms of using the local weather against Thanos before this, a desire to make their contest a physical battle alone, or simply a desire to get it stuck in. Thor was the warrior of the common man, not of kings, after all, and a good set to was always fun.
However, the reason behind this choice was actually something even simpler than that. Thor just hadn't thought of it. Despite his enjoyment of a good flyting, Thor rarely won them even if he thought he had, because, to put it simply, Thor really wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed.
But now, in a fit of pique and a desire to punish Thanos's troops in his absence, Thor called on those powers. As he rose into the sky in his chariot, he whirled Mjölnir above his head, calling upon the storm as he made his way forward around a slowly crumbling mountain peak. Its sides had been literally carved into by the previous combat, leaving behind an almost fantastical shape that was only now yielding to reality in the form of gravity.
This allowed Fenrir to watch Thor for some time as his hurricane from Hel built up around and above him before smashing downwards into the defenders. Glowing bubbles of energy appeared, but several fell quickly, while others held only for a few moments, while Fenrir could see Rippers being tossed around or torn to pieces by the hurricane-force winds.
"My word, and I thought I was supposed to be the one with a temper," Fenris murmured, shaking his head before sniffing the wind. Hmm… how to get there… Unlike Thor, Fenrir couldn't fly, but here, at least, his massive size would be a help. He bounded over the mountains, leaping from one crag to another and then up sheer rock faces before closing with the ongoing battle between the Asgardian host and the dug-in Chitauri.
While Thor had joined the fight against Thanos, most of the Einherjar and Asgardians, like Tyr and Hogun, once Thanos was fully engaged with dealing with Thor, bypassed that portion of the battlefield that had once been a mountain range. The lack of flyers had allowed them to close and deal with a significant portion of the Chitauri's outermost defenses, but they had since begun to hit the truly organized portion of those defenses. By this point, those defenses were quite formidable, and even though the Asgardians were still making good headway, smashing this or that bunker, clearing out this or that trench, the going was far harder for the Einherjar.
To an outside observer, this conflict might've seemed almost like a mix of Middle Ages mountain warfare, perhaps like something during the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, mixed with the Italian front in World War I. The defending Chitauri opened up with their guns at range, and before he had moved forward to deal with Hela's team, Ebony Maw had brought in several ground-based units that, despite being direct fire systems, filled the same niche for the Chitauri as short-ranged artillery would for a human army.
In contrast, the Einherjar were wielding swords, spears, axes and armor. All of them were ancient warriors who had, through bravery in battle in their original lives, won a place at Odin's table before being allowed to start a new life in Valhalla. While most of them were superlative warriors, against dug-in defenders with energy weapons, they fared poorly, even if their armor gave them far more durability than any similar weight in Earth-made armor would have.
Worryingly, dying to enemy fire without even being able to come close to the enemy was not a way for such warriors to die. It was too common, too bland to earn them a return to Valhalla. Simply dying in battle was not enough for that, especially those who were on their second, or, in many cases, third lives after the war against the Fire Jotun. All of them knew that Odin and Freya would not be willing to simply accept them back. Odin had warned them all of such before sending them across the Rainbow Bridge. If they died in such an inglorious manner, they would die permanently, never to see the fields of Outer Asgard again.
The Valkyrie, too, were somewhat limited in how they could impact the battlefield. Their aim was superlative, and their range insane. Better, they and their horses were not, technically, part of this dimension of existence, the magic of their station meaning that as long as they were on horseback, they could not be struck by purely physical assault. But the Valkyries' arrows, as enchanted as they were, were not enough to make a real difference, coupled with the fact that there were only a handful fighting in this conflict. Most of them had been assigned to follow the Bright One in battle in Russia.
Ebony Maw had retreated straight back to the main portal when his Master had ordered him to. From there, he had been giving out orders, attempting to create an even better defense in depth than he had before by the use of bringing in further shield generators. He had hoped that his Lord Thanos would finish off the Asgardians that he was personally fighting, but since most of that horde had already bypassed Lord Thanos, he knew that the defenses of the main beacon would still come under heavy assault.
An assault that Ebony Maw knew would be the ultimate battle of this whole campaign. Unlike Thanos, he had checked in with the Chitauri and knew that, besides the portal that Supergiant had been in charge of, all of the other portals around the world had already been closed. While a part of Ebony Maw rejoiced in the demise of his competitors for their Master's favor, in particular Corvus Glaive and Gamora, that had not made for pleasant listening.
Now, as lightning and hurricane-force winds tore out of the sky down towards his defenses, shredding skimmers and rippers alike before crashing into the shields, Ebony Maw congratulated himself on his planning. The scattered shields held in places defending the dug-in ground forces, although once more, Ebony Maw was forced to watch as the majority of his air units, which he had barely begun to build up again, were wiped out within seconds. So devastating was the weather-based assault that he barked orders to keep rippers on the other side of the portal for a time.
While several interconnected shield generators protected the area around the actual main portal, the area within that shield wasn't exactly infinite, and Rippers were large units. "Damn it," Ebony Maw muttered. "And with so many losses in my CAP, I have no idea what is going on away from the battlefront. Who knows what the humans are doing, thus protected by their allies."
He might have continued down that vein if not for the battle around the beacon changing once more.
Thor was able to keep control of the storm well enough to keep the main strength of it away from his host, while blinding and tearing away at the defenses. As the Thunderer continued to release his fury, bellowing a war cry as he sent lightning down against their foes, the Einherjar and his fellow Asgardians, the attacking host cheered, and the Einherjar charged up the various slopes or climbed up the various walls of stone to close with their foes.
And with them came Fenrir, howling and barreling into the first of the hardened defensive points. A shield that had held against all that Thor could throw at it shattered as the massive wolf crashed into it. His numerous wounds were still bothering him, but Fenrir was the Wolf Who Eats The Sun, and he would not simply retreat or let others do his fighting for him.
Even as he reached down to rend a large, snail-like gun station into pieces, finding the meat much more to his liking than the Chitauri themselves, Fenrir's eyes widened. A chunk of the ruined meat fell away from his slack jaws as he stared, ignoring the Chitauri infantry's attempts to injure him with their puny weapons. Instead, all his attention was on the sight of his friend Dani, hacking her way through a trench. "I thought she had been magicked away!"
Thanks to the vagaries of the battle against the Mad Titan, Danielle had actually survived the clash between him and Thor through the simple expedient of being too far away from ground zero to be killed by the reverberations or aftershocks of their clash. Fenrir and the others had at least done a great job of pushing Thanos around in the air, even if they hadn't really done the purple-skinned prune any real harm.
That didn't mean she had gotten out of that or the preceding battles with Thanos unscathed, though. One of her boots wasn't functioning right, forcing her to basically use the other one as if it was a pogo stick at times when she needed to jump, while also skimming along on one foot like a ballerina, which had taken a great deal of getting used to, especially in this kind of environment with so many vertical surfaces. Her helmet had also been almost shattered, and she had discarded it somewhere.
But she still had Sigyn's gift in one hand, and now Fenris watched, his eyes wide, she leaped out of the first short trench she had been fighting in, charging towards another trench that the Chitauri had dug out of the solid stone of the mountain as a shield covering it, and several more went down. In her other hand, her gauss rifle boomed, clearing several of the Chitauri ahead of her before she skidded into the trench. Sigyn's Gift shifted from short sword to spear, and she stabbed it forward before she whirled, changing it into a broadsword for a second to cut another Chitauri's head off. This opened her up to being shot in the side by one of the defenders, but luckily, her armor still held even as she hissed in pain, and twisted around, lashing out with a whip that cracked into the man's face.
"More courage than sense that girl," Fenrir mused before shaking his head. In the next second, he charged to join her, a wide grin on his wolfish face before he howled, bounding from one mountaintop to another, then down onto the same large, flat escarpment Dani had reached. Perhaps that is why I like her so much!
As the Einherjar reached and began to breach the defensive line of the Chitauri, Thor was forced to rein back his storm. The rain and wind remained heavy enough to bother the Chitauri's ability to target anyone more than a few yards away from them, while he began to aim his lightning at specific targets down below. However, I the air, the Chitauri began to bring in more aerial forces, pushing out from the shielded area around the main portal as quickly as they could. This process was fought by both Thor and the Valkyries, who closed, swords flashing and attacking with impunity. There were a few magic-users among the other Asgardians, but in comparison to Thor's lightning, their attacks wouldn't have been able to do much against the sheer numbers of Chitauri coming through the portal.
At the same time that this allowed more air-based Chitauri units to come through the main portal, Ebony Maw used them to shield his flight up into the air. Soon, he was above where the main aerial battle was, and slowly drifted down, coming in behind Thor's chariot. The oddity of that creation struck Ebony Maw for a moment, but then, he was within range to use his voice.
He started small, soothing, his voice that of a friend, almost, a non-threat, causing Thor's almost instant turn to swat him away to stop in place. "My, you are powerful, aren't you! So strong, so fierce…"
Ebony Maw continued in this vein for a few moments as Thor resumed attacking the Chitauri, the voice doing its work on his mind swiftly. After Those who Watched Above in Shadow had been dealt with, Odin had begun to develop circlets that could protect the mind from telepathic assault, yet even they had yet to be finished, as he had not wanted to ask for help from the mortals on the project, a bit of hubris from the god of kings. Even if they had, though, against something that came through Thor's ears like this, they would have been no help.
Thor had almost no defense whatsoever against such an attack, not the ear-covering coms, not even the feral nature which had allowed Fenris to try and keep a similar attack at bay for long minutes during Ebony Maw's clash with Hela and the rest. Within a few seconds, Ebony Maw had moved on from making himself seem like a friend to directly controlling Thor, whose eyes seemed to dull to the hue of glass rather than sparkling with life. Mjölnir fell to his side, almost out of his grip entirely, while his goats reared and stomped, trying to turn around enough to see what was going on with their master.
"You should prove it. You should prove how strong you are. Prove it by wiping out your fellow Asgardians!" Ebony Maw hissed, a small triumphant smile on his alien features, ignoring the snorting and glaring coming from the two strange creatures that pulled his chariot as he settled into place behind them. If I can turn him against his fellows, possibly alongside that giant animal, then I can win this battle! By the time the Custodes or other world powers turned their attention our way, we would spread out throughout this entire mountain range, and it would be insanely costly to dig us out, especially once Lord Thanos returns from dealing with the Phoenix Force Avatar.
For just a moment, Thor's very nature rebelled. Thor was the defender of the common man, the chief guardian of Asgard. It was he who had for ages stood between them and the jotun, between man and the fell beasts beyond the fires of their settlements. Never had a moment come when he would turn his hammer against the Asatru, the believers, or his fellows. Never. Not even when he was his drunkest or when his blood was hottest would Thor ever be unable to tell friend from foe.
Thor stood there, his face a rictus of indecision, his eyes glazed, his grip around Mjölnir's gripping it so hard the wood began to creak, his other hand cracking the metal frame of his chariot's rim, while below, no one was in a position to see what was happening. And not one of them had seen Ebony Maw take to the air. Now, even as Tyr and Hogun, Thor's closest friends in the host, wondered why his lightning had slackened, they still couldn't see Ebony Maw, hidden by the walls and bottom of the chariot from their view.
Eventually, Thor's mind could not sustain the contest, unable to push out Ebony Maw's influence. His eyes still those of a corpse, Thor began to move once more. Mjölnir rose in the air as he flicked the reins of his chariot, commanding his goats to turn toward the ground. A second later, lightning arced away from him, aiming not this time at the Chitauri, but at the nearest of the Asgardians.
Njor screamed as a bolt of lightning slammed into him from on high, sending him sideways and burning his shoulder and neck badly despite his Asgardian durability. The father of Freya wasn't as physically durable of their race, but he still withstood the strike better than most, the wounds healing over quickly as his skin shifted into water before reforming. Around him, several of the aliens spasmed from being so close to the lightning blast that had hit the god of the sea. This attack was followed by still more raging down on the Asgardian host, hitting more than a few Asgardians and the Valkyries.
Even now, somehow, Thor's basic divine nature wouldn't allow him to strike at the Einherjar, the common men among the host. However, given that Thor was both a fellow Asgardian and his lightning was partially magical, the Valkyries started to take losses as they had earlier when Thanos had struck the host.
Snarling, Tyr raced up into the air to engage Thor, shouting, "What worm has invaded your brain, Thunderer? You're hitting your own!"
Tyr was a mighty warrior, a strong swordsman, and one of the most physically powerful of the gods, a god of justice, bloodshed and order. Yet Thor was stronger physically than even Odin with his girdle of strength and Mjölnir in his grip, although nowhere near as experienced, skilled in war or learned in magic. Whereas Gungnir would have easily repelled a strike from Mjölnir thanks to the magic in the spear and its wielder, Tyr's sword shattered even as it deflected a blow from the mighty hammer.
A second later, Thor was staggered by a shoulder charge to the point where he nearly fell off the back of his chariot, knocking Ebony Maw off in turn. This did not break the gray-skinned alien's mind control, however. Instead, Thor wrapped his mighty arm around the other man's neck, twisted, and tossed him aside down towards the ground below. Before he landed, several lightning blasts slammed into Tyr, causing him to cry out in pain, although nowhere near as much as Njord, the Aesir having more durability than the Vanir. Better, this was a just war, a war against a friend who had been mind-controlled. The justice inherent in his cause powered Tyr still further.
He hit the ground and rolled down it into a ravine, cursing volubly, before stopping his dissent and beginning to climb back up towards the battlefield above, barely worse for wear. "Curse it, Thor, I knew someday your bullheaded nature would bite us all on our fundament. And you owe me a sword, you strawberry-bearded ass!"
Normally, any attempt to call his hair or beard strawberry would have resulted in a wrestling match. Thor knew his hair was the color of sunset, thank you, and anything else was vile calumny. However, Thor simply turned his attention elsewhere, saying nothing as he launched another lightning bolt downward.
His target at the moment was Hogun, the dour mace wielder. He now held a shield above his head, grimacing as the metal of the shield began to melt and the wood began to smoke despite the many enchantments on it, as he shouted at his friend, trying to get through to him. "Friend Thor, this is not you! You are our war leader, our mighty hammer. Whatever has happened, do not forget who you are!"
This did nothing. Thor's mind was wholly locked under Ebony Maw's control. He kept up the strike, burning Hogun's magically enhanced shield into slag on his arm.
Snarling, Fenrir tried to leap up to engage Thor, but before she could reach him, the giant wolf found himself suddenly simply stopping in the air. Telekinetic energy wound around him in the form of several bands, and then he was slammed back down into the ground, causing his wounds to ignite in renewed agony even as Ebony Maw's hated voice hissed out, "I think not, beast!"
Holding Fenrir pinned with his telekinetic powers, Ebony Maw began to hiss into his ear, a smile of triumph on his face as he went to work on creating a second thrall. "So sore, so wounded, so ill-used. Why should a mighty beast like you fight for these Asgardians? They are not your pack, not your family. Why should you fight for the humans? They are so weak, so fleeting. Why…"
Throughout this turn in the tide, Ebony Maw had not reckoned for Danielle, nor had Thor, concentrating as he was on his fellow Asgardians. Even as Ebony Maw began to work his will on her friend, Dani had been crossing through the battlefield, not an easy proposition, until she was hidden among a group of dead Chitauri close enough to Thor she could maybe, just maybe, use her powers on him. Oh, I so hope he's within my range! There's no way I can get up to from here, not with my one hover boot barely working at this point, Danielle thought, as she reached towards Thor with her empathic-based powers.
Like before with Thanos, she found that her strange mental assault could easily find a target, and instantly, whatever Thor was seeing under Ebony Maw's control changed. Where before he had seen himself standing against his fellow friends in the firm belief that they had betrayed him, not the other way around, now Thor saw his former family. The family he'd had before Those Who Watch Above in Shadow fad felt they were surplus to the great play the Shadows wanted to put on. He saw his sons, his wife Sif. And then he saw himself, attacking them, his eyes blank, visible shadows wreathing his limbs, his face.
It was a mix of Thor's most horrifying memory, as he remembered his sons, how they had died in battle against the Jotun, and his deepest horror: the idea that he could be controlled, compelled to turn on those he loved, as he had now thanks to Ebony Maw.
"AAAAAHGGG!" Thor screamed, trying to banish the image. His Ebony Maw-controlled mind tried to fight through the images, trying to dispel them, causing him to nearly freeze in place.
This allowed Tyr to pull himself out of the crevice he found himself in, and then leap up towards his friend, Hogun doing much the same. They grabbed at the bottom of the chariot, then hauled themselves upwards, only to find Thor fighting off phantasms, shouting curses and screams at the Shadows. "Damn you all, you will never control me again!"
"Nay, my friend never will they nor that short, gray-skinned alien," Tyr growled.
He grabbed his friend's arm, holding it still with all his might, while Hogan crashed his mace down onto Thor's wrist. The Thunderer's hand released, dropping Mjölnir where it rattled on the bottom of his chariot and then out the back, falling towards the ground below. It hit with all the power of a comet, tossing Chitauri in all directions.
Without the hammer in his hand, Hogun and Tyr began to grapple seriously with Thor, restraining him as Tyr began to prepare a spell to rid Thor of the mental malady controlling his actions.
Elsewhere on the battlefield, the Asgardian host, with several of their strongest sidelined and the weather clearing up, began to be pushed back and away by the defenders. With more of them coming through the infantry-sized portals, and now with air units coming in, once more, the differences in their weapons and tactics began to tell. The badly battered Dani and a few Asgardians scattered around the area held, but the Einherjar were forced to duck into cover or retreat back down the exceedingly nasty slope that they had already felt their way up.
For his part, Ebony Maw's attempts to take over Fenris as he had already Thor was running into the rage just underneath the surface of Fenrir's mind at the moment, bolstered further by the sheer pain that Fenris was still feeling from the various wounds he had taken in his battle with Thanos. Ebony Maw's powers simply couldn't block out enough of that pain in order to take over the feral mind of the wolf as he had Thor. At least not quickly. Still, as Fenris howled and raged in midair in front of him, Ebony Maw Maw knew was only a matter of time.
However, while concentrating on the tactical battle, Ebony Maw had forgotten the strategic picture.
High above what had previously been a significant chunk of the Himalayan mountain range, Storm flew at the head of a mixed force of bombers and fighters. The fighters were a very mixed bag indeed, coming from numerous different nations around the embattled area, with the majority being American-built. The bombers were entirely American, the B-52 Stratofortress, nicknamed, Storm had learned, by the men who crewed them as the BUFF. What that meant, she had no idea, but she was glad they were there. They had been sent out from a US Base in the Middle East, and had been in flight within a bear hour of the invasion starting, sent this way because the local commander had decided that India and its neighbors would need the help against the invaders setting up shop in the Himalayas.
For her part, Ororo had finished evacuating Paris as she had previously evacuated Washington soon after the portal there had been closed. And then, after downing perhaps twice as much Pepper-up Potion as was good for her, Ororo had first healed those she could in the infirmary on Fortress Mars and then directed her energies down to this portal. It was only one of two remaining, and the sensor readings that Pinoptes had been feeding her and the rest of the world guard since this invasion began had told Storm that this was the main beacon. Destroy it, and the one portal remaining in China wouldn't be able to piggyback off its signal into the dimensional gap where the Chitauri invasion force resided.
In so doing, Ororo had joined an operation already underway. India and several other nearby countries had been fighting Chitauri skimmers in the air since shortly after the main portal had opened, aided by a US carrier group in the Indian Ocean. Now, these forces had been further reinforced by fighter jets and bombers from further away.
Now, as Storm flew down, lashing out with lightning strikes and spells alike towards Ebony Maw, disrupting his attempts to suborn Fenris, the B-52s flew on towards the main portal. The hundreds of skimmers and dozens of rippers moved up to engage Storm and the fighters, not seeming to realize at first that the Bombers were the main threat. This changed the moment bombs began to drop, but those bombs continued to hammer down, causing further destruction on the ground and tearing huge swaths into the defense in depth that Ebony Maw had tried to create from the first. This destruction continued on, a straight line racing towards the portal and the beacon buried under the Chitauri equivalent of concrete and granite.
Gasping in pain from a near miss from a spell that looked like a striking snake, only with multiple heads, which had just missed his side, Ebony Maw twisted around, darting towards the distant portal as still more bombs began to fall. He tried to reach out, tried to grab at those bombs, to toss them back up towards their motherships, but in concentrating on that, he opened himself up to a blast from Storm. The baleful blast of fire crashed into his back, shattering his telekinetic shield and hurling him down towards the ground.
Ebony Maw was able to halt himself well above the ground, but the normally calm, cynical alien stared around, desperate now. The rippers were getting a good showing of themselves, and more than a dozen of the human bombers had been smashed out of the air, but they in turn were being attacked by Fenris and arm as she twisted away from Ebony Maw. Too much was going on, and he had not brought forth enough Dreadwyngs to stop the humans in the air. He knew that his powers would not be able to turn the tide any longer as still more jet fighters joined the battle and rolled again across the battlefield, and then lightning once more began to crash across the battlefield from a second source.
Whether it was the smack to the side of the head from Hogun's mace or the spell crafted by Tyr to force Thor to see the truth would never truly be known. But Thor was back in control of himself, and more furious than he had been even when Thanos had ignored him to go after the Phoenix Avatar. Now he was everywhere, lashing out with lightning and hammer alike, riding rippers down in his chariot, hurling dozens of skimmers around with every blow and even the passage of his chariot.
Seeing this, Ebony Maw knew that the battle was lost. Looking around, Ebony Maw cursed his luck. There wasn't a single infantry-sized portal around him, although he could see that at least three of them had been in this position, but they had been smashed. The nearest portal seemed to be at least two hundred meters away, over broken, cracked terrain and up a sheer cliff face, set into another trench overlooking the area where Ebony Maw had found himself landing.
Lifting into the air and using his telekinetic powers in defense only, Ebony Maw charged towards that portal, determined to get away.
An arrow, of all things, flashed down from another position nearby. By this point, Dani knew what to look for in terms of what created the infantry-sized portals. Her arrow, shot from Sigyn's Gift, struck like a tank shell, shattering the device buried at the back of the infantry trench, the portal cutting out with the suddenness that cut a Chitauri in half as he came through the portal.
Ebony Maw skidded to a stop in midair, desperately looking around for another portal, only to scream as a blast of wind crashed into him so strong that it overrode his ability to fly. It slammed him back into the stone wall of the mountainside beside him.
And then there was lightning. Ebony Maw tried to raise a telekinetic shield to protect himself, but the lightning crashed into him, and he screamed as his shield failed. It protected him enough to survive the strike, but he was burned badly, and the next moment, a hammer slammed into his head with sufficient force to pulp skull and brain alike.
Thor growled as he pulled Mjölnir out of the hole in the stone he had made after splattering the vile creature's head all over the mountainside. "You puny, cowardly thing, you tried to control me, me!" Horror at the memory of their time under the shadows and fury at the attempt warred within him even now that he had avenged himself, and Thor spent several moments hammering Ebony Maw's body until not more than blood and viscera remained.
Only as Mjölnir's stone head slammed into the stone of the mountain without even a hint of flesh within, did Thor come back to himself. As he did, he turned his eyes towards the large glowing portal in the distance, as above him, while above, the last of the B-52s dropped their payloads. Already, most of them had emptied their entire ordinance, and had turned for home, but there were still a few up there dropping bombs while Storm took the battle ot the enemy in the air and the Asgardian host began to once more press in hard.
The battle still took quite a while. The Chitauri didn't seem to know when they were beaten, and more reinforcements were coming through every portal that Ebony Maw had set up. But with Storm there and the Asgardian host pushing back in, along with the holes torn out of their defenses thanks to the bombers, the battle was no longer in doubt. And around the same time that Thanos began to truly batter Pheonix into ruin, the main beacon was destroyed, and the portal in China popped out of existence, as did the main one. The invasion of Earth was over, with the Chitauri trapped in the space between dimensions, unable to aid their lord or his goals any longer.
OOOOOOO
It took Jean Grey a little over two hours to cross from where the Mandarin's bunker was and where the portal lay. In that time, Thanos had seemingly done nothing, content to simply sit there, directing the forces as they came through the portal, ignoring the drones, although Jean doubted he was unaware of them. What he was doing she didn't know, but it had to deal with his throne, and with a bracer he wore on one wrist. According to the Chinese analysts who were relaying this to Jean from the Mandarin's bunker, it looked to have been battered and warped, but he had replaced it with a second bracer that looked, to the drones, like it a datapad embedded in it, as Thanos immediately began to fiddle with it.
"His face, it is one of total concentration and, and more, Lady Pheonix," the analyst reported. "I, I do not know how to describe his face."
"Thanos is planning something, Jean," Pinoptes warned. He had previously wound his way throughout the unofficial command networks that were trying to restore order throughout China, offering what help he could, and since Phoenix's shouting match with the Mandarin, had seen no reason to not expand that network further. "I am looking at the real time data from these drones, which are actually quite sophisticated. He looks completely absorbed in what he is doing, but is… if he was human, I would say he was one preparing for a religious experience, almost? It is hard even for me to describe.
Grimacing, Jean acknowledged, flying into the attack. In the preceding hours, several hundred eel-like flying fortresses, an equal amount of the weird manta ray anti-air air units and whole divisions of skimmers had come through with even more infantry. They had joined up with what forces had already been around the portal, and now several dozen miles in every direction were totally in Chitauri control, while wings of skimmers and the ee-like things spread further away.
To any regular enemy, that would have seemed a formidable army, and the Chinese, fractured and still trying to regain control of some of tis scattered forces, would have been hard pressed to dislodge them, especially with more reinforcements coming through from the portal. Yet all of that, it was but a sideshow to the real threat. The threat of Thanos, and Jean knew it.
The redhead was barely within sight of the alien's outer defensive envelope when Pinoptes shouted a warning. "Pheonix, he's aware of you. Be careful."
The drones that the Mandarin had designed were good at what they did, that is recording events they observed in real time, sending that information back to their controllers. However, they lacked the ability to read the sudden energy spike in Thanos's throne, or the link that had been established between his throne, and through a bit of quantum engineering, to his distant flagship.
Once more, as had been the case many times during his clash with Hela's team and then Thor, a shield of power enveloped Titan and throne alike. It rippled, a series of energy waves, two solid barriers almost like glass, while between them, a dark bluish energy buzzed. "Come, Avatar," Thanos whispered behind these shields. "Come. I am ready for you, ready for the Everfire."
Despite Pinoptes warning, Jean made no move to retreat. Instead she screamed out her warcry, a harsh raptor's screech as her fiery aura flared, going from just covering her body to spreading out to cover miles in several directions. It then raced out directly towards the Chitauri. Heat and telekinetic force crashed over the Chitauri in a seemingly unstoppable wave that consumed much of the forces around the portal. It even flared into the portal, acting almost like a solar flare, the heat and energy released reaching the mustering zone and hundreds of thousands of Chitauri packed as they were to try and come through the portal as quickly as possible.
The sound of the impact between the shield around Thanos and his throne and the Phoenix's power also blasted outward, covering an even wider area. For hundreds of miles around the area where Jean's aura could be seen people fell to their knees, clapping hands to their ears at the strange noise, a mix of a loud mechanical screech, the *Fwoosh* of an out of control fire, and the sound of glass skittering on glass.
"Energy absorption shield, Life Energy variant holding. Degradation at .5% every second, increasing with every ten seconds passage at a variant of the Estos Five principle," Thanos's throne reported, mentioning a mathematical principle of material degradation Thanos had developed on a planet he had subsequently annihilated. "Transferal process to inbuilt reserves at 32%. Transferal process to main unit, designation Sanctuary, active and fully online, process is draining a further 50% of the energy in the Avatar's attack. Transfer process is degrading at .00387% every two seconds. Degradation increasing."
"Ahhh," Thanos let out a sigh of pure joy, a scientist whose work had been proven accurate. Accurately discovering a way to drain away the Pheonix Force was even harder than trying to create shields that could block Guardian and other fighters' reality altering powers. It was also a system that was internally energy intense. "It is always nice when theory becomes substantiated fact. There is still room for improvement, obviously, but, it works. Report to Sanctuary, have the main computer work on refining that shield design. Warn me once the shield is within ten seconds of failure, and prepare for my signal to release it back into the human female. Let us see if that tactic works here as it did against the weaker Asgardians."
With his orders given, Thanos began to laugh even as all around him for several miles Chitauri died, some of them lasting just long enough to spasm or release loud electronic squeals, the equivalent of their lobotomized race's version of screams of agony in the telekinetic fires of the Pheonix Force. Thanos did not see them, nor would he have cared. Like everyone bar Gamora, Thanos had no interest or care for any of the Chitauri. Certainly not now, when much of the planning, pain and research he had done since coming to this piddling world the first time was bearing fruit for the second time. "Yes! Empower me further, Avatar. I will enjoy breaking you and sacrificing you to Lady Death!"
Jean strove against the shield for several minutes. However, Jean wasn't only a telekinetic. Within moments, Jean realized that she could sense Thanos's mind still there at the very heart of her long-range attack. While she couldn't get into that mind, Thanos had some of the hardest, most powerful mental defenses, natural or technological, that she had ever felt. Yet she could still tell his mind was there in the first place.
Right, well, I didn't think this would be that simple. If Thanos could be overcome by sheer brute force, he wouldn't be the danger he is. Cancelling her technique, Jean pushed herself forward, lashing out instead with small bolts of TK energy.
Yet the moment that her large scale attack ended, Thanos took her under fire too. Energies flashed through the space she previously occupied, as Thanos in turn had trouble tracking her, the Phoenix's form around her shifting and moving, hiding her exact presence within it. Soon, they were within a hundred yards of one another, with neither having landed a real blow.
Thanos's triple barrier fell from around his throne at his command and he began to lash out towards the Avatar, a grin on his face Power Cosmic coalescing around his hands as he batted aside her attacks with his gauntlets while Jean raged at him. "Yes, yes! Fight, strive, it will make offering up your soul to Lady Death all the sweeter!"
"Y'know, most women prefer flowers and chocolate, not mounds of skulls or souls," Jean shot back as she dodged. Thanos could not fly per-se. His boots allowed him to hover, but his throne was his main mode of transportation. Thanos's reaction time was so fast it might have seemed he could teleport to normal people, but as a telepath, Jean's mind worked even faster than that, and her body, lined with her TK powers, followed.
Even as more Chitauri began to come through the portal, the pair danced around one another, all of them which could firing at the Avatar, one of the primary focuses of this campaign that was hardwired into their heads. Growling, Jean concentrated, her aura flickering down as it became even more concentrated, then as she ducked under a blast from a Ripper, she let loose two beams of furious energy almost the size of her own body, not just towards Thanos, but towards the portal.
Knowing this blast was too powerful for his bracers, Thanos was forced to dodge under the attack coming his way, unable to do anything about the blast of energy that lashed towards the portal. A second later, the attack on Thanos petered out, and his eyes widened a bit. "Clever."
Jean hadn't empowered those attacks equally. Rather, the attack towards Thanos was hollow. The outer edges of the attack was all of it, whereas the other was full blast of energy, which slammed into and through the portal, a ravening beam of Pheonix Force amplified Telekinetic force and fire.
On the other side of that portal, thousands of infantry and skimmers, hundreds of rippers and other biotechnological creations burned, slowing the reinforcements forward. However, this opened up the Avatar for an attack from Thanos, who took his shot quickly. "But foolish!"
"GUH!" Jean grunted as she was smashed out of the sky, but her telekinetic aura and the armor she wore as part of her combat suit held even as the kinetic energy flung her down into the ground. She skidded through it for several hundred yards, creating a gouge in both dirt and concrete alike, then was back up in the air, blasting away as Thanos did the same, and the fight was on.
OOOOOOO
Harry Potter came back into his physical body once more, his face slowly shifting from the snarl of rage it had held as he fought Krakkan. The foolish ancient deity had finally realized he wasn't winning the battle and severed his connection to the gem, although not before Harry had supped deeply of his power.
As Harry became aware of the physical world around him, the crystal under his hand began to turn to dust in his hand. As it did, Harry grabbed at the the edge of the pillar which had held it. For just a moment, Harry clung there, shivering and shaking as the magic taken from the ancient primordial god and repurposed according to the ritual's design finished… changing him.
The first change was the easiest to figure out, although the second was almost as easy. His exhaustion disappeared, his mind and body, within seconds, going from exhausted to the point of collapse to brimming with energy. And looking down at his hands, Harry felt they were a bit bigger than they had been. When he stood up, too, the pillar wasn't where it had been, at chest height, rather it only came up to his navel.
Blinking, Harry stared at it, then looked down at his body. Huh, it looks like I'm at least, I want to say, a foot taller or so? Harry's body was also wider in the shoulders, and across the body. He was still trim and fit, but now it looked like he had gone from being a mix of sprinter and soldier to soldier and body builder. Heh, I wonder what the girls will think about that.
Shaking that thought off, Harry pushed his way out of the array, stumbling for a few moments, his sense of balance thrown off by the physical changes Krakkan's power had sparked within him as he became the equivalent of a Titan. And the physical changes are going to be the smallest, most obvious of those changes. I'll need to be careful about any mental ones I run into, and make certain that Ororo and the others tell me if they see any changes in how I act.
By the time he reached the door into the portion of the configured Room of Requirement that he had used to create the mix of enchantment and ritual site, Harry was back to normal. Ten paces later, his voice boomed out for the first time since he came back to himself, and Harry idly noted that it sounded deeper, stronger, and also as if he really needed some water. "Dennis, I need a sitrep. How are we doing?" he growled out, assuming that the intercoms placed throughout the castle would pick his voice up.
"Overall, I think we are doing well, although the Oh Damns have been hemorrhaging men, and our allies have lost far more. Storm nearly exhausted herself into a coma from teleporting the civilians out of Washington and then Paris even with chugging Pepper Up potions like they were water. But despite that, she is still in the fight even now. Fighting is still going on in both of those cities and in the Himalayas, where Ororo is heading right now. I've done some legwork there, and the US has done more. The fighting there's about to get a major upgrade," Dennis reported.
By the time he finished, Harry was walking into the main hall where Dennis had set himself up where he could use the hard light system to keep track of things, his voice coming from two directions at once for a second before he noticed Harry was there and flicked a finger, cutting off the intercom. The mild-mannered, middle-aged man looked drained dry, and it was clear he was close to exhaustion.
A clock hovering nearby as just one of many hard light screens told Harry that he'd been fighting the stupidly stubborn Krakkan for at least twenty hours, maybe more. Damn, I can't remember when I started the ritual. But twenty hours sounds right. "That's good to hear. How are we doing on closing the various portals?"
"I…" Dennis blinked, taking in Harry for a moment. Harry had already noticed his physical changes, but looking at him, Dennis was struck by the feeling Harry was giving off. If he had to put it into words it was amicable otherness, of being something relatable yet more than human. It was a bizarre difference, and it took Dennis a moment to get over his surprise.
It isn't like being in Skadi, Freya, or Heimdall's presence, that sense of undeniable alien power, but it is very strange, the spymaster thought, before shaking his head and telling Harry about how the war on Earth and in space was going in more detail. "With Storm on hand and the US's reinforcements arriving – and I really think the US Air Force is going to need to do something very nice for General Kellerman for seeing that his bombers would to best in an entirely different theatre – I think we can conclude that the main portal's going to be dealt with soon, regardless of whatever tricks the local alien general has up his sleeve. Thor and his forces are still there too, so…" he shrugged.
"Agreed, we can leave that front in their hands. Unless Thanos is there?"
"No. He's in China currently. Pinoptes thinks, and I agree, that he's there to fight Jean particularly. He'd basically crushed Hela's team. All of them were pulled out via emergency array. He was holding back the Asgardians, even Thor, before suddenly leaving the battlefield and then shifting to China. There was no other reason for that. If he'd stayed, he might well have been able to beat them or even kill Thor and the host with him."
Dennis's lips twitched. "Pinoptes has a local drone nearby, and is remarkably good at lip reading. Thanos is obsessed with taking 'the Avatar' and sacrificing her soul to 'Lady Death'." While he was generally agnostic, Dennis was still a little ambivalent about the whole anthropomorphic personifications of forces like death and life, although he had more problems accepting the idea of someone being obsessed with the personification of Death than anything else, really.
His humor fled him as Pinoptes gave him an update on the battle between Jean and Thanos. "I…I suggest you move fast, sir," A second later, one of the screens nearby began to show the same feed the Chinese drone controller was seeing. "Jean's fighting Thanos right now, and it isn't going well."
Before he had even finished, Harry was off, flying so fast a sonic boom blasted back into the main hall so powerful it shook the castle and tossed Dennis out of his chair.
OOOOOOO
Jean wielded the Phoenix Force, the primordial force of life and rebirth in the galaxy. Conceptually, that was a level of power that put her on the same plane as Galactus, Greater Deities like the Octessence and even the Externals. Thus, Jean Grey should have been more than a match for Thanos. However, there were a few problems. One, despite her unique connection with the Phoenix Force, Jean Grey herself was still only human. There was a limit to how much of that power she could use at any one time without burning away her physical body, let alone her mind and soul.
For another, unlike with Galactus, who Jean had fought alongside Harry, Ororo and the rest of their team in an ambush, here she was alone. Worse still, the boot was on the other foot in terms of preparation.
Thanos had known he would face an Avatar of what his people had once called the Everfire. Indeed, she was one of the main reasons why he had come to Earth in the first place, and returned this time. He'd had centuries to think up ways to deal with a avatar of the Everfire, hoping to run into one in order to slay them for his lady, and had sufficient technology and scientific knowledge to do something about it. Something he had shown from the first with his anti-avatar triple layered shield. Just as his throne's shields could absorb or redirect various types of energy, magical kinetic and so forth in the battle in the Himalayas, so too could this energy shield absorb the telekinetic force that Jean exerted.
Although it was a near-run thing despite his preparations. Only his throne's quantum connection to Sanctuary, his massive flagship allowed his shield to deal with the power of the Pheonix Force by shunting it to the larger vessel to let it convert to usable form. Yet in return, Thanos could concentrate entirely on offensive action.
Jean began to feel this a few moments into the fight after her first trick. That same trick proved handy several times, but It wasn't easy, and more often than not the diverted energy needed to bolster her telekinetic aura rather than an attack. Jean's mobility was also causing Thanos issues.
Or so she thought. In reality, Thanos was simply keeping Jean back as he prepared to unleash another trick. "Status?"
"Units are ready."
"Deploy."
From the back of his throne several drones rose from vent-like structures built into the dais underneath. They sped up into the air, and before Jean could do anything, beams of energy lanced out and down at her, burning out the onboard batteries of the drones. Her own energy attacks converted into Power Cosmic crashed down from everywhere, hammering into and around Jean, hemming her in.
Jean grunted as the blasts caught her from above and at an angle, smashing her out of the sky again. But even that Jean was able to deal with, she groaned and grunted, but her telekinetic barriers held.
Or they did, until Thanos struck once more. This time, the Power Cosmic radiating around his forearms was joined by a new kind of energy pouring out of his new bracer. The energy blast that came from the new bracer lanced out toward Jean in a condensed, arrow-like form was a dark, almost sickly looking green. In fact, to Jean it looked disturbingly familiar, and her eyes widened. Fuck me, that looks like the Arvada Kedavra spell I've seen in some of Harry's memories!
At one point in their courtship after they got together, Harry had allowed Jean to view some of his memories. A time or two since, when talking about how to combat other magic users he had used a pensieve to let Jean and the others plan out defenses against spells similar to the ones used in his old world. Hela also used a few spells of a similar variety, a school of magic based on necrotic energy.
Desperately Jean dodged, jumping up and bobbing to one side in midair. The greenish beam flashed under and to one side of her thigh, only to be joined by several more.
And as one came close, disrupting Jean's own desperate counter-attack, she watched as the greenish beam cut through her aura like a hot knife through butter. "What the…" FUCK! Necrotic energies are anathema to the Pheonix Force, I should have realized, but I've never been hit by the real thing before.
Thanos sent out another purple beam of power from his other hand, hitting Jean's weakened shield with pinpoint accuracy, causing her to crash down into the ground for the fifth time in the fight. Lashing out with another wide area attack, Jean covered her movements for a moment as she flew upward higher into the air than before, trying to use the sun to blind her opponent for a second sending out another series of attacks down at Thanos and his throne, the two having separated earlier in the battle.
That shield can't last forever, you ass, and thenNNN-! Jean's thoughts broke up as she was forced to dodge again. The sun did not blind Thanos at all. He had stared unblinking into supernovas. This was nothing in comparison.
Her aura flickering around her as if it felt the pain of the necromantic darts blasting into and through it, but luckily Jean herself avoided direct contact. Normally Jean would be in the center or the head in that form, but she had instead shifted the aura around so she was in one of it's wings. Yet Thanos was still able to target her.
While Thanos' regular purple and white rays of Power Cosmic were blocked or redirected, the green bolts ate straight through her aura again and again. Jean yelped and was forced to dodge, but one nicked her arm even so, having passed entirely through her Phoenix Form. And the response was immediate. Even as her armor took much of the energy, some seeped through, and Jean screamed.
Jean was the Avatar of the Phoenix Force, the power of life and renewal. What Thanos had created was an attack based entirely on entropy, the power of negative matter and energy that was almost precisely like that used by the source of his obsession. To say the two forces were entirely opposite was an understatement.
"Ok, that is not fun," Jean growled, feeling as if something had reached in and pulled something out of her just then. Fucking hell, it's like all the power of the Pheonix Force in that portion of my body was just negated somehow. I can feel the Pheonix Force trying to flow back in, but it's like the energy's moving in molasses.
Thanos smirked as he watched the telekinetic form surrounding the human female start to waver, firing as he did from both hands. "Throne, the Entropy Weapons system seems to work. Prepare secondary and tertiary weapons systems."
"Preparing. Warning: there is a 90% chance that overuse of Nectoric Energy by the living will be hazardous to even the health of the owner. Further, analysis by the main unit, designation Sanctuary, states it will act on this unit like antimatter connecting to matter on a tactile degradation of .026 mili-quadrants per second."
"That is within my own calculations." The throne was rocked by another blast from the side, as Jean recovered and went on the attack, and Thanos grimaced slightly at how quickly the female had recuperated as another blast washed over him, grimacing only slightly at the pain of it. And she is now keeping her distance even more. If I cannot close, even with my throne to aid me, I may lose this battle once my shields have collapsed. The Power Cosmic that is my normal attack does not do enough to the Avatar, and my Entropy-based attacks will not last long.
Thanos, as a living being, couldn't naturally use necrotic energy. While as a titan, he was nearly immune to it himself, that didn't mean he could use it to empower his attacks. And the Power Cosmic had proven insufficient to truly overpower the Avatar and her mix of telekinetic powers and Pheonix Force. The woman must have been a superlatively powered telepath before becoming an Avatar, and now that power is mixed at the most basic level with the Pheonix Force. That is… far beyond anything I have ever learned or discovered about what past Avatars were like. Odd.
"Warning! Shield overload is imminent. Energy wave absorption matrix is failing. 58% impairment… 69% impairment…"
"Teleport, now!" Thanos ordered, and his AI, reading his mind to a certain degree via a chip Thanos had installed in his brain, did so to the coordinates Thanos wanted it to. It teleported only a short way, straight up in this instance, but that was enough to give Thanos the advantage again as he found Jean once more.
Jean had barely a second to react before the throne appeared to one side of her. This time Thanos' green energy beams struck out first, sizzling through Jean's defenses. She tried to fight back, but another near miss tore at her mental control, and for a second she floundered, into which the throne struck. From the front of the throne's platform two large webs of green energy flew out towards Jean.
Realizing that defense was off the table against that strange energy, Jean desperately dodged downward, returning fire as best she could, concentrating her attack to appear midair behind the throne, coming in from above. She also concentrated on thinner beams in one area and a wider somewhat enveloping assault from the other angle,
"Warning, absorption system impaired. 77% of the Avatars attacks are now going through. Further, signal to the main unit, designation Sanctuary, is degrading even faster. Only 10% of the attack's energy is being transferred. This units online energy system is compromised. Repairing. Estimate to full repairs: ten minutes, twenty seconds," The AI droned.
The web-like form of greenish energy seemingly did not travel as fast as the arrow-like bolts did, and Jean was able to dodge them relatively easily at range. But her defenses were only slowly reforming, from the barest touch of it, and Jean could sense some kind of disconnect between her powers and herself growing. Something seemed to be disrupting her ability to use her powers. Time to get a little desperate. For just a moment, Jean's mental avatar zoomed out past her mental defenses into the greater mental plane, surging forward towards Thanos' presence there.
On this realm, most people's minds were unformed blobs, more resembling gas or something similar. Wizards like Steven were shown by a pair of floating eyes, which became aware of those around them, but were slow to respond to assaults on this plane simply because they had to use spells to do so. Another telepath like Charles or Emma would have their own constructed forms, like Emma's Diamond avatar, or the godlike image that Charles somehow evoked.
Thanos was built somewhat on the lines of the last one. Here in the Astral Realm he was even larger, even more imposing looking, a giant statue made out of purple, dark green and white energy. While its eyes were open and staring, the statue was immobile, meaning he could not reach out and interact with the Astral Plane under his own power.
But in turn, Jean's own attacks on this realm didn't do anything. Jean was one of the most powerful telepaths in known space, both on Earth and elsewhere. Yet when her avatar crashed into the statue that was Thanos's mind, there was nothing. No shiver, no quake, no sign of anything that she could feel give. Her powers rolled over Thanos's mind, trying to find a crack, some weakness. But there was none. Even a full-bore attack, concentrated at one point like she had begun to do to her TK power, did nothing, breaking upon Thanos's stone-hard mind like a water hose on a concrete wall.
Then Jean's attention was back in her physical body as she dodged and ducked aside, putting all her effort in controlling her body, pushing ti to move so fast that even someone like Captain America wouldn't have been able to keep up. Even so, she was below Thanos's hovering throne which was not a pleasant place to be. And every time she tried to remain directly underneath, it would shift, letting Thanos take her under fire.
The attacks from Thanos crashed into the ground far below, causing further damage to the area around the still open portal.
Taking a second to glance in that direction, Jean saw that troops were still coming through. At this point they were mainly skimmers and the eel-like things, but that was still enough to annoy. The large biomechanical creatures launched attacks at Jean, which now, in her somewhat weakened state, she had to dodge rather than simply take on her telekinetic aura shield. A series of blasts wiped out the Rippers, and to Thanos' annoyance, shown by a loud grunt of irritation, did not distract Jean's attention from him as she kept on dodging his attacks.
But he was still able to keep her from regaining any of her previous altitude. I will take what wins I can, this woman is too adaptable and quick, blast it! And I can feel my bracer already eroding away from the weapon system within. I need my nanites to repair it, which will take time. Shouting our orders in Chitauri, Thanos allowed his throne to do the attacking for a moment, switching entirely back to the Power Cosmic.
Given Jean's weakendd state, that wasn't altogether bad, as she grunted and winced more than once. Her aura wasn't strong enough now to keep his attacks from hammering her, and her armor too began to give. Worse, Thanos's orders sent his Throne to attack her directly again and again. The thing, which, despite its shape, could move like a Chitauri skimmer, battered Jean from on high, as if it was a helicopter which had the high ground, forcing the Avatar to play a deadly game of cat and mouse to avoid any further hits from the greenish energy.
Another green energy weapon, this time something like a shotgun fired down from the sides of the throne's platform, through the weapon instantly collapsed into itself as if the weapon had been hit by powerful acid. "Warning! Units usage of Entropy Weaponry is being severely curtailed. Unit only has one more entropic weapon. Switching to other means of offensive action."
This was followed by still more types of attacks raining down on Jean. The lack of Entropic energy meant no one attack mattered, but she couldn't respond in kind. Rather, Jean was forced to dodge rather than attack, allowing further skimmers and rippers out of the portal. But Jean no longer could afford to care, instead concentrating on hammering Thanos and his throne. Can't let him keep the momentum, I need to push him, force his weapons to wreck themselves. With that, she began to launch attacks from elsewhere, hammering the throne and titan alike, as they began to try and bracket her in with the help of the Chitauri forces.
The next time Jean launched a massive attack at the throne, the attack blew backwards away from the shield, enveloping the entire area once more, wiping out the Chitauri units that had been attacking her, turning even the eel-like things into large piles of molten metal and seared flesh.
Worse for Thanos, that proved to be too much. While he'd had the basic principle correct, the design of his Anti-Avatar shield wasn't perfect, and had been slowly degrading. Now. the shield around his throne popped like a balloon, and Thanos grimaced as the same energy flashed over his own position. Both were made of stern stuff however, as had been proven earlier against the Asgardians. They both endured and fired back.
Purple-white bolts of energy from Thanos' original hand were intercepted by Jean's defenses. But again the greenish bolts from the bracer on his synth-flesh covered forearm flashed through her defenses, and this time, her ability to dodge wasn't up to the task and a bolt took Jean directly in the stomach.
"AYEEEEIEEEE!" Jean screamed, losing all control of her powers for a moment as she felt pain unlike anything she had ever felt before. Not only her connection to her powers but her body and vitality and had taken a major hit.