It was a massive flying creature, armored from head to tail, shaped like a whale, with Chitauri soldiers packed along its flanks.
"What the hell is that thing?"
Tony stared at the beast and swore.
"I believe that's the Leviathan Hermione warned us about."
Steve's expression went hard.
"Give the orders, Captain." Tony's voice was flat. Serious.
They'd set aside every grudge, every grievance. Right now, they were a team.
Steve nodded. "Before we close the portal, we control the situation."
"Barton, get to the roof. Watch the battlefield, call out enemy movements."
"Stark, hold the perimeter. Nothing gets past three blocks. Anything that does, you drive it back or you turn it to dust."
"Thor, summon lightning. Find a way to choke that portal."
"And Hulk!"
Hulk snapped his head toward Steve.
Steve took a breath. "Smash."
Hulk's grin turned savage. He launched himself skyward.
Tasks assigned. The Avengers moved.
Steve and Natasha held the ground, cutting through the enemy wave by wave. Thor flew to the top of a high-rise and raised his hammer.
"Mjolnir!"
BOOM!
A fat bolt of lightning split the sky and slammed into the portal. Chitauri soldiers screamed and rained down by the dozens.
Hulk had spotted the Leviathan. He roared, drove both legs into the pavement, and shot forward like a cannonball.
They'd been confident. Once they buried the old grudges and fought as one, they were sure they could hold the Chitauri back.
They were wrong.
"Damn it! Why are there MORE of them?"
Tony wrenched into a hard turn, a laser scorching past his ear. He fired his repulsors until his arms ached. Dropped a handful of Chitauri grunts. A fresh wave poured out of the portal before the bodies hit the ground.
It never ended.
"J.A.R.V.I.S., power?"
"Twenty-seven percent, sir. The armor has sustained damage in multiple locations. I strongly recommend disengaging."
Steve wasn't doing any better. One lapse in focus and a shot caught him in the side, hot and vicious.
"Captain, you're hit!" Natasha's voice was sharp.
"Minor wound!"
He ground his teeth and got back up.
On the high-rise roof, Thor panted in ragged bursts, barely keeping his grip on the hammer. He'd summoned lightning until there was nothing left to summon. Each thunderclap had cost him, and now the well was dry. He could only watch the portal churn out enemies he no longer had the strength to stop.
The worst of it was Hulk.
He'd finally torn one Leviathan apart, and the moment he did, every Chitauri in range turned on him. The barrage was relentless. They pinned him to the street, piling on, and blood ran freely from his nose.
Even the Hulk was being buried.
"This isn't working!"
Natasha rolled behind a chunk of concrete, shouting into her earpiece.
"We have to close that portal! Every second it stays open, more of them come through!"
Despair spread like a plague.
On the streets below, people ran screaming, stumbling over each other, the noise a constant roar of terror. Inside the buildings, civilians pressed against windows with shaking hands and watched the world outside come apart.
Iron Man had given them hope. The Avengers had given them hope. Surely the heroes would handle it. Surely the monsters would fall.
But the heroes were losing.
Hope died in pieces.
Some people had already stopped running. They sat down. Closed their eyes. Waited.
"It's over. It's really over this time..."
A hollow voice, choked with despair.
"God, please... save us..."
Someone knelt in the rubble, hands pressed together, praying to anything that might listen.
God didn't seem to hear.
The portal stayed open. The Chitauri kept coming.
---
Rooftop of the New York Sanctum.
The Ancient One watched the battle below with a cup of milk tea in hand, occasionally flicking a wrist to knock away a Chitauri soldier that drifted too close. Unhurried. Unbothered.
"That's about enough," she said, glancing at Hermione beside her. "If this goes on much longer, it'll reach the Sanctum."
Hermione shrugged. She watched the fires below, listened to the explosions, and coughed lightly. "Master Ancient One, are you really just going to stand here and watch?"
"Can't you hear the children screaming? Can't you feel the city tearing itself apart? Haven't you noticed the grin on the face of whoever planned all this? Have you ever even considered—"
The Ancient One looked at her.
"Scram."
"Right away."
Hermione pressed her lips together and disappeared.
A second later, she materialized above the battlefield and cast a Sonorus Charm on herself.
Her voice cut clean through the chaos.
"Thor! You're supposed to be the God of Thunder. Why did you stop calling lightning?"
A beat.
"What, kidney trouble?"
Every Avenger heard that voice. Every single one of them looked up.
That small, familiar figure hung in the air above them.
"Hermione!"
"You finally showed up!"
Thor was still catching his breath, but relief broke through the exhaustion. "Summoning lightning burns far more power than fighting," he said with a rueful smile. "I can't sustain it at scale for long."
"Then let me take it from here." Hermione's tone was easy, almost cheerful. "Sorry, I had something to deal with back at Hogwarts. You've all done more than enough. I've got it."
She raised her wand and pointed it at the sky.
BOOM!
The clear sky vanished. Dark clouds rolled in from nowhere, the wind screaming as it came, and then the lightning arrived, bolt after bolt as thick as tree trunks, crackling with a force that made Thor's look like a warm-up. They hammered down from the clouds and tore through the Chitauri ranks without mercy.
Ancient Magic: Thunder.
The Chitauri dropped like rain. They clattered off buildings, off each other, off the street. Even the armored Leviathans couldn't absorb it. They wailed and fell.
Hermione wasn't done.
She swept her wand in a wide arc. The temperature plunged. A howling wind drove in from every direction, and snow fell in thick white sheets. Everything the cold touched froze solid. Chitauri soldiers locked up mid-flight, became ice sculptures, and shattered against the pavement below.
Then the fire came.
Flames erupted around Hermione as she flew toward the portal. They twisted and writhed, forming into serpents that lunged at the Chitauri with open jaws. Where the fire landed, it didn't fade. It caught. It spread, racing from soldier to soldier like a living thing, and anything it touched was ash before it could scream.
Fiendfyre.
Thunder. Ice. Fiendfyre.
Three forces, all wrong for the same sky, all bending to the same hand. The air above New York blazed with color, pulsing with raw magical light, and the Chitauri army that had been crushing Earth's mightiest heroes moments ago simply ceased to exist.
Wiped out. All of them.
In the blink of an eye.
➤ Next: The Terrifying Cabbages
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