"You bastard!" Thanos roared, fury overriding tactical thinking.
An intense beam of soul energy erupted from the Soul Stone, brilliant orange light that bypassed physical defenses entirely. The attack went straight through Hela's raised sword as if the blade didn't exist, completely ignoring the physical obstruction.
The soul-targeting energy hit Hela directly.
As a consequence of Thanos focusing entirely on that devastating attack, Hela's sword continued its arc toward his neck completely unobstructed, no longer meeting any resistance from his defenses.
At the last possible moment, Thanos managed to sidestep slightly, his enhanced reflexes saving his life by millimeters.
But not enough.
The blade still connected, slicing cleanly through his shoulder instead of his throat. The legendary Asgardian steel directly severed his entire right arm, cutting through flesh, bone, and the reinforced tissue of his Titan physiology like they were made of soft clay.
The limb, still clutching half of his weapon, spun away into the void of space.
Intense pain ran down Thanos's spine like liquid fire, threatening to overwhelm his consciousness, to make him black out from the sheer agony of losing a limb.
But he forced the sensation down through sheer willpower, decades of torture resistance training kicking in. His mind focused intensely on maintaining the highest possible output from the Soul Stone, channeling everything into that one desperate attack.
If he could kill her with this strike, then losing an arm didn't matter at all, Thanos thought through the pain haze. A small price for victory.
And in the next moment, the concentrated soul energy hit Hela squarely on her chest, right over her heart, with enough power to annihilate a Celestial's essence.
But the expected scene—Hela's body crumpling, her soul being ripped from its vessel, her divine essence scattering into cosmic winds—did not happen.
Instead, a purple energy barrier materialized exactly where the Soul Stone's attack made contact, glowing with beautiful, intricate patterns.
The soul beam pushed against this barrier, and for a moment it seemed like the attack might break through. The purple shield rippled, compressed, bent inward under the assault.
But it didn't shatter.
Instead, the energy stalled at that exact moment of maximum pressure. And no matter how much additional power Thanos threw at it, channeling the Soul Stone's energy until the gem burned hot enough to sear his remaining hand, the damned barrier didn't budge at all.
It just... absorbed everything. Endlessly.
Hela's sword had been about to move toward Thanos's neck to finish what it started, to complete the execution.
But her hand paused mid-swing.
Instead of the killing blow, she directly landed a devastating kick to his chest, her boot connecting with enough force to shatter mountains.
Thanos went flying backward through space, tumbling end over end for hundreds of meters before finally arresting his momentum.
"Cough! COUGH!" He spit out a massive amount of purple blood from his mouth, the internal damage catastrophic. Broken ribs, ruptured organs, crushed tissue.
Although the injuries were quickly being repaired using the Mind Stone's restorative energy—broken bones knitting back together, torn organs regenerating—his eyes drifted morbidly toward his currently missing right arm.
Although most injuries could be healed using the Mind Stone's power relatively easily, Thanos realized with growing dread, that sword seemed to be far from normal. Not just any Asgardian blade.
The wound could still theoretically be healed, regeneration was possible, but the process was slower than a turtle crossing a continent. It might take a full year to properly regrow his arm at this rate.
So he simply closed the bleeding stump using emergency cauterization energy, sealing it to prevent further blood loss, and shakily got to his feet.
Floating in zero gravity while missing an arm and bleeding from a dozen wounds wasn't dignified, but Thanos had long ago abandoned concerns about dignity in favor of survival.
"It's called Infinity," Hela's voice suddenly sounded across the distance, calm and almost educational in tone.
"What?" Thanos asked unconsciously, his mind still trying to process his catastrophic failure.
"This barrier," Hela clarified, gesturing to the purple shield still shimmering around her. "The defensive spell protecting me. It's called the Infinity Barrier. I thought you might appreciate understanding exactly why your attack failed so completely."
"The moment any attack makes contact, it hits the first barrier layer," Hela explained as if teaching a student, her voice carrying easily through the void. "Then that attack immediately encounters a second barrier directly behind it. Then a third. Then a fourth. There are countless barriers layered infinitely close together."
"The moment the first barrier is broken, in that exact same instant, another barrier is constructed at a quantum distance," she continued. "The barriers themselves are only a 1/100 to the power 100 Planck length thick, but there are effectively infinite numbers of them."
"So this barrier's primary function isn't actually to block attacks—it's to delay them," Hela said. "To delay them infinitely. Your attack is still technically traveling forward, still breaking through layer after layer. But it will reach me in finit amount of time but it might take you Infinit amount of time."
"Although some energy is inevitably lost in the process of barriers breaking down and new ones being constructed," she acknowledged, "that energy expenditure is so minuscule that it's replaced immediately. Effectively zero cost to maintain."
Hela's eyes gleamed with genuine curiosity. "So now you understand the principle. Now that you know exactly how it works—can you break it? Can you find a flaw in the logic?"
Hearing this inexplicable explanation, Thanos's mouth suddenly twitched violently.
What kind of absolute bullshit cheat ability is this?!
The soul energy he'd just unleashed—even if a Celestial had been directly hit by it, they would have at minimum shed their outer form, suffered catastrophic damage to their cosmic essence.
And now she was telling him that simply creating multiple barriers in rapid succession could completely stop such an attack? Although the mechanism sounded incredibly complex, although it definitely required sophisticated magical engineering and precise control, in the end wasn't it fundamentally just... creating multiple barriers?
There probably was a way to deal with this defense using the Soul Stone and Mind Stone working in perfect concert, Thanos realized. In the end, the Infinity Stones were fundamental rules of the universe itself—they should theoretically be able to override any magical construct.
But he clearly couldn't execute such a technique. Not with his current limited understanding of the Stones' deeper functions.
Otherwise, why would he have waited until his hand was cut off and he was almost half-dead before trying something desperate?
Thanos directly sat down on the floating debris of a destroyed ship, all fight leaving his body in a rush.
He could only use the most basic, surface-level powers of the Infinity Stones—raw energy projection, basic shields, simple healing. So there was absolutely no chance of breaking through that barrier with his current skill level.
And meanwhile, that sword Hela wielded could directly cut through Infinity Stone energy, capable of severely harming or killing him.
The mathematics of the situation were brutally simple: he couldn't hurt her, but she could easily kill him.
"Hela Odinson," Thanos said with surprising dignity despite his situation. "I truly, catastrophically underestimated you. That was my fatal error."
"Nothing can be helped now," he continued, looking up to meet her eyes. "You can kill me whenever you wish. I won't resist further."
He'd lost. Completely, undeniably. Better to die with some shred of dignity than to pathetically scramble for survival that wouldn't come.
Hela's face suddenly fell, genuine disappointment replacing her battle-joy.
"What do you mean, you're giving up?" she demanded, sounding almost offended. "I clearly explained the barrier's mechanism specifically because I wanted to see you struggle more! Watch you get your hopes up, thinking you'd found a solution, then become desperate again when it failed!"
"That's the entire fun of fighting!" Hela continued, gesturing in frustration. "The back-and-forth, the mounting desperation, the increasingly creative attempts to overcome impossible odds!"
"But this eggplant-colored idiot directly gave up!" She threw her hands up in exasperation. "Seriously? You're the Mad Titan? Did you buy that title? Did you earn your fearsome reputation by buttering chicken?!"
The moment Thanos lost his will to fight, Hela also lost all interest in the battle. The fun had evaporated entirely.
What was the point of fighting someone who'd just sit down and wait to die?
She directly lifted her sword again with a resigned sigh and started walking toward him through the zero-gravity battlefield.
Might as well finish this quickly and get back to Elric, she thought. At least he appreciated proper dramatic combat.
But in the next moment, before she could close the distance, suddenly a circular portal of golden energy opened in the space between them.
"ASGARD, REJOICE!" a voice called out dramatically from within the portal. "YOUR PRINCE HAS ARRIVED TO SAVE YOU IN YOUR DARKEST HOUR!"
A slow, theatrical clapping sound echoed out of nowhere, completely at odds with the battlefield carnage.
And then a figure stepped through the portal with practiced dramatic flair—one arm raised triumphantly, cape billowing despite the absence of wind, expression carefully arranged into heroic determination.
Loki, God of Mischief, second prince of Asgard, opened his eyes fully expecting to see a desperate battle where his timely arrival would turn the tide.
Instead, he found himself looking at a very different scene than anticipated.
Thanos was sitting on debris like a defeated refugee, one entire arm missing, covered in wounds, looking like he'd been through a meat grinder. Of the massive invasion force he'd brought—thousands of elite Chitauri warriors, three capital ships—now almost all of them were dead. The survivors were currently being systematically slaughtered by Asgardian soldiers who'd emerged from the city once the barrier dropped.
And most importantly, most damningly, Loki's eyes landed on his sister Hela.
She looked completely spotless. Immaculate, even. Without even a single spot of dust on her armor, not a hair out of place, barely even breathing hard.
She looked less like someone who'd just fought a desperate battle and more like someone who'd taken a leisurely morning stroll.
With Loki's arrival, every eye on the battlefield—Asgardian soldiers, dying Chitauri, Heimdall watching from the Observatory, Thanos from his defeated position, and especially Hela—focused directly on him.
The silence was deafening.
Loki stood frozen in his heroic pose, one arm still raised.
His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
"So..." Loki said slowly, his voice much smaller than his dramatic entrance had been. "Will you believe me if I say that I came to the wrong coordinates? That this was supposed to be a completely different Asgard? Parallel universe situation?"
He tried an apologetic smile. "Anyone? No?"
Hela's expression shifted from disappointed boredom to absolutely delighted malice.
"Hello, little brother," she purred, her sword beginning to glow with renewed interest. "We have SO much to discuss about your recent activities. And about that wonderful theatrical entrance just now."
"I can explain!" Loki said quickly, already backing toward his still-open portal. "Actually, no I can't. I'm just going to—"
"STAY."
Hela's command hit with divine authority, and Loki found his feet frozen in place, unable to move through sheer force of her will.
"Oh, you're definitely staying," Hela said pleasantly, walking toward him with predatory grace. "We're going to have a lovely family reunion."
Dear sister we can talk about it.
Behind Hela, even Thanos felt a momentary flash of pity for the God of Mischief.
At least my suffering would end quickly with death, Thanos thought. That poor bastard is going to wish he'd never been born.