Under Thor's cover, Daisy slashed the Godslayer across Jörmungandr's flank a dozen more times. Even without much power behind them, the blade's sheer keenness carved long, narrow wounds through the serpent's scales. Then Thor would follow up with a hammer blow straight into each cut, and the combined effect was excellent.
Hm? Daisy blinked. She'd only just noticed that Thor was grumbling to himself while he fought.
Extended combat was beginning to tax even a god's stamina. Having to hit as hard as he possibly could while simultaneously shielding Daisy put him under enormous strain. She could hear him panting like a draft horse—labored breaths punctuating a low, incessant muttering.
"With great power comes great responsibility…"
"With. Great. Power. Comes. Great. Responsibility!!"
Daisy nearly jumped out of her skin. She had no idea Uncle Ben had just delivered a critical hit to Thor's soul from beyond the grave, and she was thoroughly baffled—did Asgard have that saying too? Had it filtered down from there to Earth? Or was Uncle Ben secretly an Asgardian who'd been living in disguise this whole time?!
She turned this frankly alarming theory over in her mind for a moment, fought alongside him for another five minutes, and then hit her limit. She handed the Godslayer to Thor, made herself a ghost in the ranks, and slipped away to rest.
Tucked in among the Asgardian warriors, she made the faintest adjustment to her vibrational frequency—like a fish dissolving back into the sea. Several thousand soldiers packed the field around her; Jörmungandr had no hope of picking her out.
With the pressure off, she could finally get a proper look at Thor and Loki in action.
Thor had planted himself on the serpent's back, Godslayer in one hand and Mjolnir in the other, hammering and slashing like a man possessed.
Loki had joined in with sorcery, encasing sections of Jörmungandr in ice and snow. The serpent's speed dropped noticeably, his stamina burning through reserves at an accelerating rate.
Gungnir blazed ever more brilliantly—its radiance looked capable of shattering mountains. The energy it drove into Jörmungandr with each blast left him flailing and ragged, a spectacle growing more pitiful by the moment.
Daisy played at being an ordinary Asgardian warrior and threw a few javelins along with everyone else. She quickly concluded that the soldiers below, beyond serving as an audience, had essentially no way to contribute.
She quietly signaled to several men who looked like officers: spread out. She wanted to pull Jörmungandr back down to the ground.
Thanks to her earlier bravery, the warriors were fairly cooperative. The formation gradually dispersed.
Working through Jörmungandr's blind spot, Daisy watched for her moment and sent a lasso snapping around the serpent's jaws. That acid breath was far too destructive to leave unchecked—the Bifrost itself, a structure that would have taken repeated hammer blows from Thor to breach, had already been corroded into a surface of deep, pitted craters.
Daisy hauled with both arms, dragging the serpent's head downward. Thor mirrored her from above, pounding the skull in tandem.
Sif rushed over to help. The warriors had come prepared; they tied ropes as thick as arms to their javelins and hurled them in a blanket volley from every direction.
Hundreds of ropes caught Jörmungandr from all sides. Then nine-thousand-plus bodies heaved in unison. It took everything they had, but they dragged the kilometers-long serpent back down to the ground.
A mob of berserkers howled and swarmed.
Thor's strikes were the most devastating of all. He abandoned all pretense of defense, threw the Godslayer back to Daisy, and swung Mjolnir freely in both hands. Every blow thundered home; nearly a third of the serpent's body had been hammered to ruin.
Thor's constitution was something else. He was coated head to toe in Jörmungandr's blood—the same blood capable of eating holes through the Rainbow Bridge—and it had done him surprisingly little harm. His golden hair, silver armor, and red cape were completely buried under a coating of black-purple gore. Yet he fought on without a moment's rest.
Daisy found an angle and fired another Atomic Cutting, then used the Godslayer to open up more wounds in the serpent's flesh. Asgardian warriors rushed in with all manner of weapons, stabbing deep into each cut she created.
Seizing the opening, Loki dropped down to the ground. He was deeply fatigued. Nearly fifty minutes of sustained combat had pushed a sorcerer's magic and stamina close to their limits.
Fortunately Thor was fighting to the death, keeping Jörmungandr's full attention fixed on himself—that was the only reason Loki had any chance to catch his breath.
Loki and Daisy were similar in this: magic consumption and chi consumption weren't so different. When energy was plentiful, both were formidable—but the moment reserves ran dry, they wilted immediately. In the long run, neither could match Thor, who lived and fought on raw physical strength.
Then: a lapse. Jörmungandr zeroed in on him. His head snapped around, and a fang punched straight through Thor's body.
A collective gasp rose from every side. Sif's voice cut above all others. Even Daisy flinched—victory had been within reach. Was Thor about to go down?
Thor didn't spare a glance for his own wound. He roared, shattered the fang still buried in him, and flexed every muscle in his arms to their absolute limit. He brought Mjolnir around in a full arc and drove it into the side of the serpent's face.
He had watched Daisy fight until she had nothing left. He had watched Loki throw everything into a battle he couldn't win. He had watched nine thousand Asgardians charge in wave after wave, each pass dealing no more than a fraction of damage. His heart bled.
But breakthrough couldn't be forced. In the heat of battle, he had no way to manufacture a sudden revelation—so he did what he did: hammer, and hammer again, one stupid blow at a time.
There was not a shred of fear in him. He thought of Uncle Ben's words, and his resolve locked into place harder than it had ever been before.
The force of his legs, his core, his arms—every ounce—discharged in a single strike. He let the wounds tear back open. It didn't matter. He was going to leave a mark on this serpent that would never fade.
Lightning flickered in Thor's eyes. He raised Mjolnir in both hands, carrying a power like nothing before it, and brought it down like a meteor. Pure kinetic force and the hammer's thunderstrike detonated together against the side of Jörmungandr's face.
The already faltering serpent took another devastating blow. Flesh and blood fountained into the air; scales rained down across the field like a sudden shower.
Realizing he could not continue, Jörmungandr thrashed his tail to drive back every enemy, wrenched free of the ropes, and launched himself skyward like an arrow—aimed straight for the Great Hall, for Odin's chambers.
"Stop him!" Frigga cried out.
No one needed telling. They all understood the stakes: the serpent at half-strength had already pushed them to their absolute limits. If he reached Odin and fed—there would be no coming back.
"Put some of that flame energy into the spear—now!" Loki urged.
Is compatibility not a concern for this thing? Seeing his urgency, Daisy channeled a heavy surge of Phoenix flames into Gungnir regardless.
Loki's expression was the most focused she had ever seen on him. He poured his own frost sorcery in alongside her Phoenix flames.
Gungnir refused nothing. Whatever energy it received, it absorbed and transmuted. Red and blue—two streams of power—churned and converted at speed.
"Die!" Loki was a sorcerer first, but throwing a spear was still within his range. He hurled Gungnir with everything he had.
Faintly visible behind the golden shaft were two wings: one blazing crimson like fire, one cold blue like frost—two energies propelling the sacred spear forward at tremendous speed.
Thor saw it coming. He launched himself into the air and brought Mjolnir crashing down hard against the butt of the shaft.
The hammer's thunderstrike poured into the mix. Three energies merged into one. The spear flew with wings on one end and a tail of lightning on the other—a spiraling cyclone—and cut open the sky.
It struck Jörmungandr dead-on in mid-air.