"Well, we can only try our best," Ethan Hunt nodded.
He suddenly relinquished his vector control over the massive steel dragon and launched himself toward the Dark Elf mothership docked nearby.
Under the full, focused exertion of Ethan's vector control, the colossal vessel naturally couldn't escape his grasp.
"You dare!" Malekith's expression contorted in rage. Despite his fury, the Dark Elf King maintained his vigilance.
After all, as long as he held the Aether, his people would not perish.
Repairing a damaged mothership would be a trivial matter compared to mastering a cosmic force.
However, just as that thought flashed through Malekith's mind, the cold scoff of a young girl echoed directly within his consciousness.
The moment the voice registered, an agonizing spike of pain pierced Malekith's mind.
Even the physical torment of being torn apart by Ethan's electromagnetic railguns paled in comparison to this sheer agony.
It was a direct, concentrated strike upon his very soul.
"A psych attack? Get out of my mind!" Malekith roared, clutching his head.
The blood-red light of the Aether flared violently in his eyes, actively fighting the psychic intrusion.
A short distance away, Luna, who had been stealthily closing in, let out a muffled groan.
Her small face twisted in discomfort as she suffered the painful backlash of the Aether's defense.
Having shattered Luna's psychic assault, Malekith finally regained his physical bearings, only to find a colossal black shadow plunging rapidly toward him.
"You aren't getting away this time," Ethan stated coldly. He had completely seized control of the forty-kilometer-long, sword-shaped Dark Elf mothership.
Manipulating its mass and velocity vectors through a massive electromagnetic field, Ethan wielded the colossal warship like a literal blade, bringing it crashing down from the sky directly above Malekith.
Boom!
The titanic ship slammed nose-first into the scorched earth.
The ground convulsed violently, sending a devastating shockwave of debris sweeping out in all directions.
The sheer impact completely buried the abandoned, ancient city in a tidal wave of pulverized stone and twisted metal.
"You have angered me," a suppressed, venomous voice echoed from beneath the rubble.
Even a strike of this magnitude hadn't been enough to severely injure Malekith. Beneath the crashed mothership, the earth suddenly mutated into a sickening mass of black and red energy.
Countless crimson tendrils erupted from the ground, latching onto the hull of the dreadnought as if attempting to devour both the ship and Ethan Hunt whole.
"Ethan!"
Simultaneously, a roar of endless grief and hatred—accompanied by a deafening clap of thunder—tore through the battlefield.
It was Thor.
The God of Thunder was on his knees, cradling Loki's lifeless body in one arm while gripping Mjolnir tightly in his other hand.
In the past, Thor had always treated Mjolnir as his most prized possession, something he relied on entirely for his strength.
But as he looked down at his fallen brother, he realized that a mere hammer meant absolutely nothing compared to his family.
'I don't need this anymore,' Thor thought bitterly.
"Kill him!" Thor roared in blind fury, hurling Mjolnir directly toward Ethan.
As Mjolnir sailed into Ethan's waiting grasp, the ancient enchantments placed upon it by Odin were temporarily overridden.
The divine hammer possessed a rudimentary consciousness of its own; sensing its master's absolute, vengeful will, it made a willing compromise.
In previous encounters, Ethan had been forced to aggressively manipulate the hammer's vectors to utilize its power.
This time, Mjolnir actively resonated with him, unleashing its full, unbridled might of its own accord.
A dazzling electromagnetic pulse erupted from the weapon like a detonating star.
The sheer density of the leaking energy sliced through the surrounding ruins as effortlessly as a hot blade through butter.
An invisible, crushing gravitational field warped the air, whipping the sky into a super-storm that threatened to drag everything on the battlefield into its blinding epicenter.
Crack.
A faint, almost inaudible splintering sound echoed as Mjolnir pushed past its absolute limits.
Two fine fissures appeared along the surface of the indestructible Uru metal.
Completely unaware of the strain on the divine weapon, Ethan gripped Mjolnir tightly.
Channeling the entirety of the storm's vectors, he brought the hammer crashing down onto the embedded Dark Elf mothership.
A sphere of blinding light expanded outward, mirroring a localized supernova.
The unimaginably dense concentration of kinetic and electromagnetic force violently warped the fabric of reality itself.
Jagged, pitch-black spatial fissures tore through the air, rapidly spreading outward like shattered glass.
The wreckage of the Dark Elf dreadnought at the epicenter was the first to be sucked into the void. Ethan was immediately dragged in after it, followed shortly by Thor, Loki's body, and the shattered remnants of the dead city.
'Damn it, an impact of that level shouldn't be capable of tearing open a wormhole this massive,' Luna thought as she stabilized herself in the turbulent air. 'Is it because the Convergence of the Nine Realms has made the local space too fragile?'
Seeing Ethan being pulled into the anomaly, Luna gritted her teeth and dove directly into the spatial tear, chasing after him.
Inside the spatial fissure, Ethan found himself tumbling weightlessly.
The sensation was oddly similar to traveling through the Bifrost.
He could vaguely sense the cosmic architecture of Yggdrasil, realizing he was currently adrift within one of the many wormholes that made up the branches of the World Tree.
It felt like riding a small raft down a violent, rushing river without any oars; he had absolutely zero control over his trajectory, and no idea when he might be thrown overboard.
'If I make it back from this, I am absolutely forcing someone to teach me how to open a portal,' Ethan decided.
The magic systems of Earth had evolved from the knowledge of ancient, magically attuned beings, meaning that even a mutant or someone with an innate power could theoretically learn it if they had the right aptitude.
A normal human's magical aptitude was generally poor, but their potential was technically limitless.
In contrast, awakened individuals like mutants had incredible starting talent, but were rigidly confined by the nature of their gifts.
A pyrokinetic, for instance, could study for a century and never manage to conjure a simple shard of ice.
Ethan's vector control allowed him to intuitively grasp atmospheric or kinetic spells in seconds, but when it came to the abstract concepts of spatial magic, he was completely blind.
However, that limitation was no longer an insurmountable obstacle.
Ethan currently possessed both the original Book of Light and the Darkhold, texts containing fundamental magic that was universally applicable to almost any intelligent lifeform in the cosmos.
Both books, of course, carried severe drawbacks.
The magic within the Book of Light required an unwavering, compounding faith to function.
Meanwhile, the dark magic gleaned from the Darkhold belonged entirely to the user, but its vile knowledge would slowly and irreversibly corrupt the reader's soul.
Even with the risks, Ethan remained highly interested in the Darkhold.
He was confident he could eventually find a workaround for the soul-corrupting side effects.
But first, he actually had to survive the trip back home.
Drifting aimlessly, Ethan lost all sense of time. Hours could have passed, or perhaps mere seconds.
The flow of time within the wormhole was entirely disjointed.
His willpower slowly began to wane, a heavy wave of exhaustion washing over his mind.
Just as his eyes fluttered shut, a figure suddenly materialized in the chaotic distance.
Ethan couldn't make out the person's facial features, but he distinctly registered a flowing yellow robe and a bald head.
The figure effortlessly navigated the violent currents of the wormhole, instantly closing the distance.
Just before Ethan's consciousness faded entirely, the robed stranger reached out and gave him a firm, deliberate push.
When Ethan regained consciousness, the first thing he registered was the howling wind. Something soft and freezing cold brushed against his cheek.
The sharp chill forced his eyes open, and he found himself lying face-up in a deep snowbank.
Heavy, gray clouds dominated the sky, dumping thick flurries of snow.
Endless ranges of snow-capped mountains stretched as far as the eye could see, broken only by towering ice cliffs and bottomless, frozen gorges.
It was immediately apparent that he had been dumped into a hostile world of ice.
"Where the hell am I? Tell me I just landed in Antarctica," Ethan muttered.
He manipulated his vectors, levitating above the nearest ice cliff to get a better vantage point.
His expression soured as he surveyed the alien landscape.
He genuinely hoped he was just somewhere in Antarctica; finding his way back to civilization from there would have been a trivial matter.
Roar!
A guttural, bestial roar echoed through the gorge.
Ethan turned to see a massive, four-legged creature covered in thick scales emerging from the blizzard. It looked identical to the beast Thor had fought back in London.
Ethan vaguely recalled the Asgardians referring to it as a Frost Beast.
"Well, at least I know where I am now," Ethan sighed. "Jotunheim. Rare good news, I suppose."
The Frost Beast was incredibly hungry.
While it was considered an apex predator in this sector of the frozen wasteland, Jotunheim was notoriously devoid of abundant food sources.
Even at the top of the food chain, starvation was a constant threat.
Today had been a particularly unlucky day; an extensive patrol of its territory had yielded absolutely zero prey.
That is, until a few moments ago.
Spotting a solitary humanoid creature standing on the ice cliff, the beast decided to quietly stalk its prey from behind.
_______________________________
Word count: 1793
Comment below on what you think so far.
If anyone of you is interested in reading some advanced chapters, you can check out my p@ tr*on.
p@tr*on.co m/Rai_jin
Thanks for reading guys!