The others didn't hesitate. The Asgardian quartet took point, Iron Man and the Destroyer covered the flanks with missiles and energy beams, and Storm held the center. Seven fighters punched through the encirclement and plunged into the inner sanctum.
"Goddess?" Daisy scoffed, sheathing her sword and shield. "Heh. Let's see what you've got." The Phoenix apparition shimmered into existence around her. Chi surged through every meridian, and her presence swelled until the air itself seemed to buckle.
Watching from the rear, the World Serpent found his attention drawn despite himself. He wasn't Odin—hadn't traveled the realms, hadn't seen a Phoenix before. He had no way of knowing that this wisp of Phoenix Force didn't amount to a billionth of the entity's true power. His instinct said strong, stronger than expected for a mortal. But that was all.
Phoenix fire played across Skadi's face. The power of destruction and rebirth stirred something behind her frozen mask—a flicker, gone almost before it registered.
The goddess's lips moved stiffly, parting as if to speak. But Daisy was already swinging, and Skadi had to raise her ice spear to block. The wolf launched simultaneously from the opposite side.
Two enemies at once, two enemies who shared a single will. For Daisy, whose martial skill had never been her strong suit, this was real trouble. She'd always relied on raw stats rather than technique to overpower her opponents.
Time to play to her one advantage by dragging everyone into the same arena of weakness. Then brawl.
She took the fight airborne.
Neither of them was built for aerial combat. Skadi's repertoire—elegant as it was on the ground—lost half its effectiveness in the sky. The wolf could barely hover, let alone maneuver. That opened a window.
Daisy tilted her head past the wolf's lunge and flicked a fireball at Skadi's eyes. The goddess ducked.
The fireball was a feint. It hadn't fully left Daisy's hand. Instead it looped in a tight arc and struck the wolf squarely on the hindquarters.
Small fireball. Still Phoenix fire. The wolf yelped and dropped like a stone, frantically trying to extinguish the flames.
Daisy hammered it in the flank with everything she had. Even Asgardian metal would crack under this kind of force, let alone a wolf—magic creature or not, it couldn't withstand a blow laced with Phoenix power.
The punch hit like a meteor. Kaldr sailed dozens of meters, tumbling across the ground before skidding to a halt. It tried to stand. Couldn't.
The damage was catastrophic. Its magical barrier was shattered. The silver-white fur around its midsection was burned away entirely. Flame and vibrational force had worked directly on bone, snapping the spine clean. Half the vertebral column jutted through the skin. Everything below the waist was dead weight.
Two crushing blows to the same spot. Even a shared life force couldn't keep the wolf in the fight. Kaldr dragged itself out of the combat zone to heal.
Daisy had overcommitted on that punch. While she steadied her breathing, Skadi was already on her with murder in every line of her body.
The goddess thrust with her ice spear, carrying an aura of unstoppable momentum. Front, back, left, right, above, below—every avenue of escape seemed sealed.
No room to dodge. Daisy tilted her head to protect her vitals, reached out to grab the spear shaft, and tried to deflect it. But Skadi's raw strength was staggering—like trying to push a mountain. Daisy watched the spearhead punch into her shoulder and through the other side in less than a second.
Ferocity won over pain. Left hand clamped on the spear shaft, letting it drive deeper through her body, Daisy surged forward. She closed the gap, and her right fist hurtled straight at Skadi.
The punch was rushed. Her chi wasn't fully channeled. She didn't care.
Practicality above all. Whatever she had, she used. No chi? Inhuman abilities. And somewhere beneath those, she reached deeper, pulling at something buried in her genetic core.
The day she'd knocked Shou-Lao to the ground flashed before her eyes.
Her bloodline answered the call. Pure physical force gathered in her fist, and in the next instant it crashed toward Skadi's chest.
Skadi tried to retreat, but the impulse was barely born before the World Serpent crushed it. He seized full control and made what amounted to a suicide play—detonating Skadi's ice spear while it was still embedded in Daisy.
The space between them erupted as if a bomb had gone off. A massive shockwave swallowed the corpses of countless foot soldiers, then the whole mass exploded outward with a deafening roar, scattering debris across the sky.
The ice-element blast barely scratched Skadi, but it hammered Daisy with everything it had. Her Adamantium armor hit its structural limit. The internal framework disintegrated into sand-fine shrapnel. Daisy coughed blood and went spinning backward like a kite with its string cut, hundreds of meters through the air.
Skadi fared only marginally better.
Daisy's punch had drawn on a sliver of Eternal bloodline, a measure of Phoenix Force, and her vibration powers. A messy cocktail, but undeniably devastating.
Skadi had used the explosion's force to twist aside at the last instant, so the blow landed slightly high—upper chest instead of dead center. Her deep-blue battle armor shattered on impact. Her breastbone fractured in several places. Suspended in midair, she too coughed a spray of blood.
The goddess's exquisite face contorted in agony. Even an Eternal's constitution couldn't absorb a hit like that cleanly.
Daisy's price was an ice spear-sized hole through her shoulder. Muscle and skin were pulped, half her arm frozen stiff, and the impossible cold resisted even the Phoenix fire's attempts to purge it.
Both had ways to regenerate. The World Serpent, fixated on eliminating this unexpectedly dangerous mortal, drove Skadi back into the fray.
Fists, sword, ice spear. They moved faster and faster, both stripped of armor now, both gradually abandoning defense. As the wounds accumulated, their stamina plummeted.
At least Daisy's did.
"Coward!" It was only the second thing Skadi had said. She gripped the spear two-handed and smashed through Daisy's shield. The price was a sword wound under her ribs.
"Would it kill someone to send me backup..." Knocked flying yet again, Daisy knelt on one knee, clutching her shoulder. If she'd known it would come to this, she'd have kept Iron Man or someone back to help. She was starting to lose. As the battle dragged on, Skadi's will was gradually returning, and with it, her full combat ability.
As it turned out, reinforcements were something of a pipe dream.
Captain America had noticed the television and internet anomalies and gone looking for Daisy, but by the time he reached headquarters she was already in California. When he hopped on the motorcycle his fanboy Coulson had gifted him and headed for Washington to find Baldy, he got pulled over by a traffic cop for speeding.
On the other end, Thor was perfectly willing to help—mentally prepared to sacrifice himself, even—but he'd been treed by the little lion for several hours and counting.