If Corvus Glaive had still been a creature of flesh and blood, his face would have flushed with humiliation.
But he was a skeleton devoid of flesh and… dignity.
He had mocked Soren, claiming the power gem had changed nothing.
Yet now his own strike couldn't so much as scratch Soren… and worse his Peerless Blade, his most sacred artifact, was locked in Soren's hand, completely immobile.
The stalemate was an illusion, only Corvus struggled. Through the Peerless Blade, he could feel it… the destructive energy inside Soren was growing stronger by the second, surging through Soren's grip and into the blade itself.
The Peerless Blade sensed the threat as well.
It trembled violently unleashing razor-like pressure waves in a desperate attempt to slice through Soren's palm.
Against the power gem, even the sharpest killing intent in the cosmos was meaningless.
"Let me go!" Corvus shrieked.
He finally understood Soren's true terror, especially now that Soren commanded multiple Infinity Stones.
Corvus couldn't hold him back, couldn't wound him, couldn't even stall him.
His only hope was that Thanos had received his warning… and that the Master would arrive before everything collapsed.
Because if not, the Black Order would fall here.
Soren didn't so much as glance at Corvus's panic… his grip instead tightened around the Peerless Blade.
Destructive energy spiraled violently around his arm.
With his free hand, he raised a second heavier and more oppressive force.
A gem pulsing with purple light appeared in his palm.
The Power Stone.
Corvus tried to scream a warning but~
He pressed the power gem directly against the body of the Peerless Blade.
"Ahshsshhh!!!"
A surge of pure destruction exploded through the artifact. The Peerless Blade, the weapon that had made Corvus nearly immortal, began to wail.
Its consciousness felt the doom descending upon it.
The blade thrashed in terror, but Soren held it still. Tiny, purple-veined fractures began creeping across its surface.
To destroy the Peerless Blade was something countless enemies had attempted across the galaxy.
None had succeeded.
It was an impossibility… an artifact forged to exist beyond ruin.
But impossibility meant nothing in front of power.
"Break."
Corvus howled in despair and Soren's hands closed with force.
CRACK!
The Peerless Blade shattered into countless shards of purple-lit fragments, its power and spirit dispersing in a final, dying scream.
Corvus Glaive collapsed backward, a nightmare unraveling.
"No!"
Black energy, once contained by the blade, burst from his skeleton in chaotic streams.
The aura was so violent that nearby Black Order soldiers disintegrated on contact, reduced to drifting ash.
The rest fled in terror, scrambling away from the confrontation between Soren and their now-broken commander.
"Aaahhhhh!!." Corvus's anguished shrieks echoed across the battlefield.
The other four generals, locked in fierce combat with the Avengers and mutant defenders, heard the cry and stopped.
Even amidst the war's fury, they saw… Corvus's body reduced to a trembling wreck, the Peerless Blade shattered into dust.
Soren's strength… was far beyond anything they had prepared for.
The four remaining generals of the Black Order felt their chests tighten as Corvus Glaive's screams tore through the battlefield.
They couldn't retreat.
Deep in their hearts, each whispered the same desperate prayer… hoping that Thanos had received Corvus's earlier transmission and would arrive immediately.
Because defeat was not an option.
Losing to Soren was terrifying… but losing in front of Thanos would be a fate far worse.
As the Mad Titan's right hands, they knew his temper intimately.
Even his own adopted daughter Nebula, when she merely lost a sparring match to Gamora, had been brutally punished… her limbs severed, parts of her body carved away, replaced piece by piece with machinery.
If they failed?
Their end would be a hundred times worse.
Corvus Glaive's skeletal body writhed as black aura poured out of him, the backlash from the destroyed artifact ripping through his marrow.
But every tendril of black energy that reached toward Soren was instantly erased, burned away the moment it touched the purple glow surrounding him.
The sensation reminded Soren a bit of recounting of Hela crushing Thor's hammer, an invincible artifact reduced to nothing.
There was a certain satisfaction in it.
Corvus's agonized shrieks filled the air, his form bending under the violent backlash.
"…" Soren looked upon him without a trace of pity.
The Five generals had slaughtered more lives than they could ever count, showing mercy to them would have been the true cruelty.
Soren raised his hand, destructive power swirling. "Allow me to end your suffering."
Energy converged, dense enough to erase Corvus entirely.
But before he could strike~
A shudder ran through Soren's heart.
A sense of crisis more intense than anything he had ever experienced slammed into him.
Without hesitation, he dissolved the gathered energy and deployed layer upon layer of defenses using the Infinity Stones' power.
Soren's eyes lifted sharply.
Far above the battlefield, a patch of sky folded into itself, collapsing into a black vortex.
From inside the distortion, an icy throne drifted forward.
A colossal figure sat upon it, purple skin gleaming like stone, the weight of his presence crushing the battlefield into silence.
He did not teleport and did not arrive through space tech.
He simply forced space open and stepped through with nothing but his own overwhelming physical might.
"Thanos."
There was no mistaking him.
Another being who could cross the cosmos with his body alone, but unlike Soren, Thanos had been doing this long before the Infinity Stones ever appeared.
And now…
He was finally come.