The first thing she registered was noise. Lightning crackled against minions in a relentless barrage, and somewhere beneath the chaos she caught faint, indistinct fragments of what sounded like Stark and Thor talking, along with other voices she couldn't place. Everything merged into a wall of sound, waiting for her brain to sort through it.
The second thing was pain. Her eyes burned as though someone had set them on fire, and countless phantom needles were driving through her eyelids from the outside in.
She tried to stand. Got halfway and stopped. She sat on the frozen ground, hands pressed to her temples.
What happened to me?
She forced herself to focus. Calm. Calm down.
Shou-Lao's power kept her head clear. This wasn't blindness. Her eyes were undergoing some kind of evolution.
She crossed her legs where she sat and began circulating chi through her body using the K'un-Lun method. The technique aimed at the unity of Heaven and man, and it was effective on any genetic state below the divine threshold.
As the chi moved, the violent genetic upheaval inside her gradually calmed, shifting from chaotic, aggressive growth into ordered, rational evolution.
After checking just twice, she understood her situation.
Skadi had given her a generous gift. The Eternal genes buried deep in her DNA had always been like a seed, but one left underground so long that critical information had degraded. Skadi was like a ladle of nutrient-rich water poured onto parched soil. The gaps in the code were filled. The seed could finally grow.
She needed time now. Time for the seed to break the surface. When it did, her Eternal genome would be complete.
Following Lei Kung's teachings, supplemented by her own concept of the Will of Fire, she guided the chi into a closed loop cycling from heart to eyes and back again.
The cacophony around her faded. The burning in her eyes ebbed.
She opened them.
The world was sharper than she'd ever seen it. Before, her senses had been good, like looking through glass washed clean by rain. Now someone had thrown the window wide open.
Hearing, too. It was as if a layer of insulation had been peeled away. The whisper of wind through leaves, the clash of combat in the distance, the rhythm of ocean waves beneath the Floating Island: if she chose to listen, every sound within a kilometer (0.62 mi) was hers.
These were only precursors. Skadi's gift hadn't granted her an instant power-up. It was a completion, patching together fragmented genetic code into a whole information chain.
Left to her own devices, Daisy would have eventually evolved something like heat vision, and that would have been the ceiling. Her genetic potential would have been spent.
Skadi had pushed back the timeline for that evolution but given her a vastly wider horizon in return.
The Eternal genome wasn't forming a separate strand. It was integrating with her Inhuman genes, pruning what was unnecessary and strengthening what remained, charting a path no one had walked before.
"Thanks, auntie." Daisy stood in place for three minutes, then muttered the words at the empty air.
In hindsight, she kicked herself. She really should have joined Reed and the others for that cosmic-ray exposure. The Eternals' power originated from cosmic rays; the radiation promoted individual evolution. If she'd stepped into that absurdly concentrated beam that had appeared out of nowhere, she might already be a full Eternal.
Regret was useless. She knew herself well enough to admit that even with foreknowledge, she'd never have taken the gamble. Slow and steady, one step at a time, was always going to suit her better.
When she overheard her own "death" being reported, she was speechless. But she had no stamina for another fight. A full recovery was out of the question. Her cells, battered by combat and now rewriting themselves, were completely drained. She needed fuel.
She teleported back to the Helicarrier and flagged Hill for food.
"Are you okay? How bad is it?" Hill took one look at the blood, the shredded armor barely covering a third of her body, the missing sword and shield, and knew the fight had been hell.
"Food! I'm starving!" Daisy couldn't be seen like this. She waved Hill toward the kitchen.
At Yu-Ti's level, bigu was possible: sustaining the body on chi alone, no food required. She wasn't there yet. Eternals drew on cosmic rays for energy reserves. She couldn't do that either. For now, food was the only option.
Hill, sharp as ever, cleared the cafeteria staff without being asked and dragged Daisy inside.
Two plates of pasta vanished first, fork moving at combat speed. Five Greek pita wraps went down in two bites each. Then some unlucky crew member's birthday cake, earmarked for later, disappeared in its entirety. By the time Hill set a plate of corn wraps in front of her, Daisy had clawed back a fraction of her strength.
While she inhaled everything in sight, the battle on the Floating Island reached its conclusion.
The heroes' morale was sky-high. Every last foot soldier had been wiped out. And the true terror finally showed its face.
A creature whose body stretched for several kilometers, covered in dark green scales, its head unmistakably serpentine, rose from the ruins. This was the World Serpent's true form: Jörmungandr, the ancient dread of Asgard made flesh.
His blood ran thick with negative emotion. His breath carried lethal toxin. At full power, his coils could encircle the Earth.
Jörmungandr despised this modern world. The humans here had gods-know-what jumbled nonsense rattling around in their heads, and every passing second something was sapping his strength. The Three Sanctums hemmed him in like a cage. Tremendous power sat locked inside his body, and he couldn't release it.
Golden serpentine eyes swept the ground below, finding the tiny, panicking figures of mortals. Contempt was all he felt. This resistance was a joke. If Earth had so little fear left to harvest, why stay? He would return to Asgard and take his revenge there.
He opened his jaws and sprayed a stream of purple breath at the heroes below. The stench was overwhelming, the toxin concentration unmistakable. It drove them back in seconds.
With the ground clear, Jörmungandr severed his connection to the Floating Island.
The island, a construct dragged into the Material Realm from another dimension, lost its magical anchor instantly. A deep, grinding rumble filled the air as it fractured into massive chunks. Before the heroes even understood what was happening, the debris was plummeting toward the ocean.
Thor grabbed Sif first. Storm caught Cyclops on a gust of wind. Susan could barely maintain flight on her own. Human Torch snatched Fandral and Hogun. Iron Man hauled the heaviest burden: Volstagg.
The Destroyer armor was too massive for anyone to carry. It tumbled into the sea with the rubble.
Jörmungandr didn't spare them a glance. He lifted his enormous head, tore through the fabric of space, and vanished from the West Coast.
Where did he go? The heroes searched and found nothing. Storm scoured the ocean surface, hoping to recover what she believed was Daisy's body, but the churning waves hid everything. With no other option, she and the others returned to the Helicarrier.