Everything shook as Mephisto punched down into the God Quarry.
"AHAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHA!" His laughter was the sound of pure, triumphant madness. "YES!… YES!!"
Each strike removed a layer of dead gods' remains from the Quarry. His massive fists crashed down again and again, pulverizing corpses that had been compressed for eons, scattering the crystallized essence of Elder Gods like dust, and driving deeper and deeper toward the core where the First Firmament waited.
Max and Firehair flew toward Mephisto.
Max looked around frantically. "Can you sense her? Aurora, can you feel where she is?"
He could feel her too, that faint connection he had always shared with her, but he couldn't pinpoint exactly where she was. It was like trying to grab smoke: present, yet intangible.
"We will find her," Firehair said. "First, we kill the demon."
Max's eyes fell on Mephisto, who greedily tore deeper and deeper through the Quarry's layers with savage abandon.
Max concentrated, pouring power into a construct modeled after Unicron. The mechanical titan materialized, just as large as Mephisto's current form.
The construct's massive hand shot out and grabbed Mephisto's head, its fingers closing around the demon's skull and yanking him backward, away from the Quarry's depths.
"EVEN YOU CANNOT STOP ME NOW, LANTERN!" Mephisto roared, twisting in the construct's grip.
He uppercut the mechanical titan with enough shatter its head and crack its torso.
Max flew in from above, abandoning the damaged Unicron construct and creating a laser cannon the size of a skyscraper. Green energy gathered in the barrel, condensing and compressing into a single point.
He fired.
The beam hit Mephisto point-blank in the face, leaving a smoking crater across the titan's features.
Firehair joined in, transforming fully into the Phoenix, a bird of flame, as she flew in like a meteor and struck Mephisto in the stomach with both talons extended. The impact pushed him backward, away from the Quarry.
"If the Lantern cannot defeat me, then what chance do you have, little bird?" Mephisto laughed, his burned face already regenerating.
Blasts erupted from his eyes, twin beams of pure hellfire that struck the Phoenix directly, driving her back across the void with tremendous force.
"Red!" Max immediately flew to her side, abandoning his attack to check on her. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," Firehair said, her voice strained.
She saw another blast coming: Mephisto's eyes glowed red again, preparing to fire while they were grouped together.
She grabbed Max and moved. The two twisted through space as the beams cut through the spot where they had been hovering only a moment before.
They quickly went on the attack once more.
Max created a massive construct hammer and swung it at Mephisto's head. The demon caught it with one hand and crushed it, but the distraction allowed Firehair to rake his back with phoenix fire, burning deep gouges into his flesh.
Mephisto spun and backhanded the Phoenix, sending her tumbling. Max retaliated with a chain construct that wrapped around Mephisto's legs, trying to trip him.
The demon simply flexed, and the chains shattered.
They kept at it. Max created weapon after weapon, each one designed to exploit a different weakness. Firehair attacked with telekinesis and phoenix fire that burned hotter than stars. But Mephisto was stronger now, empowered by absorbing eight other versions of himself. He weathered their attacks, laughed at their efforts, and continued fighting his way back toward the Quarry.
Max created the Celestial construct once more, this time embedding himself inside its chest.
A battle of titans began.
Mephisto punched. The Celestial blocked and countered with an uppercut that snapped the demon's head back. The demon kicked. The Celestial caught his leg, twisted, grabbed Mephisto, and suplexed the Hell Lord into the Quarry's shattered surface.
The impact created a crater within the crater, dead gods' corpses pulverized by the force.
Mephisto erupted back upward, tackling the Celestial around the waist and driving it backward. They grappled, each trying to overpower the other, their struggle causing the entire realm to shake.
Firehair burned Mephisto with her phoenix flames, helping Max by flying around the battlefield. She targeted weak points: joints, eyes, anywhere the demon's guard dropped for even a moment.
She went for an attack on his face, diving in with talons extended, and struck true. Her phoenix fire burned Mephisto's left eye, the cosmic flames cooking the demonic organ in its socket.
Mephisto screamed.
"AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH! YOU WILL PAY FOR THAT, BIRD!"
Max used the distraction to land devastating punches, pulling Mephisto farther away from the Quarry.
But just as Max and Firehair got the upper hand, the entire realm started to destabilize.
The void itself began to crack, fissures of light appearing in the darkness.
Mephisto laughed.
"How do you like your daughter's doing?" he taunted, his remaining eye gleaming with malicious glee. "She is the one at the center of the destruction of the entire multiverse! Soon, everything will collapse, and from that ruin, I will reshape ALL!"
There.
Firehair could sense her more clearly now.
She could sense Aurora, her daughter's presence like a beacon: bright, pure, and terrified, suspended at the center of a ritual circle above them and being used as a cosmic anchor to destabilize the multiverse.
She struck Mephisto with a devastating attack that sent him crashing back toward the Quarry's surface.
"Max!" she called out, flying to hover beside the Celestial construct. "I know where Aurora is!"
"Then let's go!" Max said immediately.
"NO!" Firehair touched the surface of the construct, stopping him. "Agamotto will save her. We need to fight Mephisto. If we leave now, he'll win, and then nothing will matter."
Max hesitated, every instinct screaming at him to go to his daughter.
"Do it, and I have a plan to put an end to this fucker as well...."
Firehair immediately reached out to Agamotto.
Agamotto…
.
.
.
"I thought we killed them all!" Odin yelled as he struck the abomination with all his strength, Mjolnir and Stormbreaker slamming simultaneously into its stomach.
The impact created a shockwave that rippled across the God Quarry's surface, but the fusion of Apocalypse and Uranos barely staggered. Thor followed with another strike to its back.
"Die already, damn you!"
Vnn grabbed its legs, his hands burning with the energy of the Starbrand as he tried to hold the creature in place. Stellar fire scorched the abomination's flesh, but it kept thrashing, kept fighting with mindless ferocity.
Azzuri had been grabbed by the creature and was struggling to escape, trying to cut through its limb with Gram.
Fan stood on its shoulders, hammering its face over and over with her Iron Fists.
Nur had transformed himself to match the abomination's size, attempting to mentally incapacitate the beast while helping Vnn pin it down.
Tony flew around the creature's head, targeting the orange crystal in its chest with precision repulsor blasts. Ghost joined Fan on the creature's body and grabbed the abomination's face with both hands. His skull glowed brighter as he attempted to use the Penance Stare.
Agamotto and Clea flew around the battlefield, preparing a spell.
But the abomination finally struck back.
Orange energy erupted from the crystal in its chest in all directions, a wave of avarice-fueled force that slammed into every Avenger touching it or standing nearby. They were all thrown backward. Vnn and Nur released their grip on the legs, Fan and Ghost were blasted off its shoulders, and Thor and Odin tumbled through the air.
"Yes, I hear you," Agamotto said aloud as Firehair's mental message cut through the chaos. His expression became grave. "I will save her. You have my word."
He looked at Clea and said urgently, "We have to go. I have located Aurora."
"GO, MOTTO!" Odin yelled from below, recovering from the blast and charging back at the abomination. "We can handle this beast!"
Agamotto nodded, and with Clea beside him, he created a portal, opening a gateway to where Aurora was being held.
They stepped through and found her at the center of a ritual.
The infant floated in the air, suspended by tendrils of dark energy that connected her to a massive circular pattern.
"Oh, this is bad," Clea said, her voice barely containing panic.
Agamotto looked around, and to his horror, saw white cracks in reality appearing everywhere. Fissures spread through the void itself, across the God Quarry's surface, and through the very fabric of existence. Beyond each crack was nothing, only absolute emptiness, the absence of everything.
"Yes," Agamotto agreed grimly. "Yes, it is."
======
The abomination began to charge and attack mindlessly.
Its control by the Mephistos had been broken after the merging of the nine into one. Without their direction, the fusion of Apocalypse and Uranos operated on pure instinct: rage, hunger, and the desire to destroy everything in sight.
It swung all four arms wildly, creating orange constructs that lashed out in every direction without strategy or purpose.
"Now would be a good time to use the Odinforce once more, Father!" Thor called out, dodging a massive fist that cratered the ground where he had been standing.
"I'm trying!" Odin said as he dodged more attacks, frustration clear in his voice. "It's not happening!"
"Why not?!"
Odin snapped, his patience finally breaking. "Why don't you fucking use the Thorforce then?!"
"I don't know how!" Thor protested.
"THEN SHUT UP!" Odin roared as he, Vnn, and Nur were struck down by the abomination's fists and the uncontrollable orange constructs erupting from the crystal. Spears, hammers, and blades stabbed and slashed wildly in every direction.
White cracks began appearing all around them, spreading across the battlefield.
"Okay, what is happening?" Tony asked, his sensors going haywire as they tried to analyze the phenomenon. "Is that supposed to happen? Friday, what am I looking at here?"
"Oh right, no Friday..."
"Focus on the battle, Stark!" Fan yelled, barely dodging an orange construct blade that would have cut her in half.
The Avengers made a combined effort to defeat the abomination.
Vnn unleashed the full power of the Starbrand, stellar fire erupting from his entire body and transforming him into a living star. He charged the abomination and single-handedly brought it down. Thor, Odin, Fan, and Ghost combined their powers, blasting the abomination simultaneously, pushing it down and driving it back.
Nur managed to break into its fractured mind, navigating through the broken consciousness of two beings forced into one body. He found the thread holding them together and pulled it. The abomination became dazed, its movements sluggish and its defenses dropping.
Azzuri, with Tony's help, jumped from above and stabbed the abomination with Gram, cutting through its chest and aiming for the orange crystal that bound it all together.
The blade struck true, piercing the crystal's edge.
But instead of shattering, the orange crystal became more and more unstable.
It began to increase in size, swelling like an infected wound and releasing more and more power. Orange energy poured out in violent waves.
"BY THE NORNS, WHY WON'T YOU DIE?!" Odin screamed in frustration.
The abomination released a massive blast from the crystal, an explosion of orange energy that struck all of them simultaneously, bringing them down and keeping them down. It was slowly killing them. The orange light clung to their bodies, burning through flesh and bone. It was avarice itself made manifest, consuming everything it touched, taking and taking and never giving back.
Only one of them had managed to escape it.
Ghost dodged and ran around the increasing waves of orange energy erupting from the abomination. The crimson hellfire surrounding him seemed to repel the orange energy just enough. He moved like a wraith, getting closer and closer.
He had a plan, and if it failed, his friends were going to die.
He got close enough to the abomination and struck it with both flaming fists directly in the chest, hitting the orange crystal with everything he had.
The attack broke the abomination's concentration, disrupting the sustained blast. The orange energy choking the other Avengers dissipated, giving them a moment to breathe and recover.
Ghost continued his attack, not giving the monstrosity a moment to regroup. He struck again and again, each impact pushing the abomination farther and farther back, driving it away from the fallen Avengers.
"Ghost, what are you doing?!" Odin called out, struggling to his feet as he realized where Ghost was forcing the creature, toward one of the white cracks in reality.
"What do you think?" Ghost replied as he pushed the abomination closer and closer to the fissure.
"Being an Avenger."
They watched, their bodies battered and burned, as Ghost used all his strength and power to force the abomination nearer and nearer to the white fissure.
Both of them struck its surface, the abomination screaming as it made contact with the crack in reality. Ghost's hands pressed against the creature's chest, directly over the orange crystal that bound it together.
He pushed.
The abomination resisted, trying to pull him away and reverse their momentum. Orange energy lashed out, hitting and consuming Ghost.
But Ghost didn't stop.
Images flashed through his mind.
He remembered Tasi, how he had found her when she was a little calf. They had grown up together. He remembered her final moments. He remembered his friends, the Avengers, and two decades of living and fighting beside them.
All the moments that had made his life worth living.
With all his remaining strength, Ghost screamed in defiance and pushed them both through.
The abomination went in first, disappearing into the white void. Its screams cut off abruptly, swallowed by the endless nothingness.
Ghost managed to pull away at the last second. His hands released from the creature's chest, his body twisting away from the fissure's pull.
Everyone cheered.
"YES!" Nur shouted, relief flooding through him.
"HAHAHA!" Azzuri laughed.
"Well done, you crazy..." Odin laughed.
"Holy shit, he actually did it..." Tony started.
"HUZZAH!" Thor bellowed.
Their cheers died as quickly as they had begun.
A hand emerged from inside the white fissure.
It grabbed Ghost by the torso.
And pulled him inside.
"NOOOOOOOOO!" Nur screamed, his voice breaking, filled with shock and anguish. He ran toward the fissure, but Azzuri caught him and held him back.
"Let me go! LET ME GO!" Nur struggled against Azzuri's grip.
"He is gone brother," Azzuri said quietly, his voice thick with grief. "He is gone."