The ground rumbled, violently shaking the foundation of the ruined city.
Gravel and shattered masonry defied gravity, floating upward in a reverse rain of debris.
From the heart of the destruction, a stalwart figure slowly emerged.
Apocalypse.
He advanced step by step, not even bothering to bend space.
Each heavy footfall caused the earth to shudder, making Chris and the others feel a cold twitch of absolute dread in their chests.
"You have angered me, ants," Apocalypse's voice boomed, resonating like grinding tectonic plates.
"I will now use the totality of my strength. You will die in unimaginable pain."
As the ancient mutant spoke, a shimmering, hard-light shield enveloped his massive frame.
In a blur of motion, he bypassed the frontline entirely, materializing directly beside Professor X.
He reached out to grab the telepath.
Apocalypse was wary. A full-strength kinetic strike might slip his control, risking catastrophic harm to Xavier's fragile human body.
His ultimate plan required a living host.
To prevent any further accidents, he aimed to secure the Professor first.
Yet, as Apocalypse's gray hand reached out, the fabric of reality tore open.
A jagged, black short knife sliced through the ether.
It was intercepted by Azazel.
The Red Devil was the only combatant present with a mastery of spatial folding profound enough to bridge the gap in time.
"What an annoying little bug!" Apocalypse snarled.
He lifted his free hand. A swirling cloud of dense yellow sand instantly compressed into a heavy, circular shield, blocking the enchanted blade.
The impact rang out like a thunderclap.
But Azazel's intervention had bought exactly one second of time.
It was enough.
The General and Clark arrived simultaneously.
The heavy combat synth and the young Kryptonian struck with devastating, coordinated force.
Apocalypse could not brace in time.
The combined impact blasted the ancient god backward, sending him skidding across the desert floor.
Inexplicably, Apocalypse abandoned his immediate pursuit of Professor X.
He planted his boots and threw his arms wide open.
With a deafening, apocalyptic rumble, the entire ruined pyramid tore itself free from the bedrock.
Millions of tons of stone levitated into the sky, blotting out the harsh Egyptian sun.
Intending to wipe the entire battlefield clean, Apocalypse brought his hands down.
The colossal pyramid descended like a meteor.
"Let me handle this!" Clark shouted.
The young boy soared directly into the sky, a streak of red and blue against the falling mountain.
He slammed his hands against the flat underside of the descending pyramid.
The descent stopped instantly.
Clark hovered in mid-air, effortlessly holding millions of tons of solid rock above his head.
Everyone on the ground was utterly stunned.
Was this a monster disguised in the flesh of a boy?
Only Chris knew the truth of Clark's Kryptonian biology.
Ernst had rigorously trained the boy in the art of absolute control.
Even at his young age, Clark regularly flew into the freezing vacuum of space to gorge his cells on unfiltered, raw solar radiation.
Lifting a pyramid was practically a warmup.
Apocalypse stared up at the hovering monument, genuinely taken aback.
He calculated the raw, terrifying potential of the child.
If the boy possessed this level of output now, what kind of apocalyptic threat would he pose as an adult?
In Apocalypse's eyes, eliminating the child would be a substantial victory.
But his absolute priority remained securing Professor X's telepathic brain.
He knew that despite the boy's physical invulnerability, the child could be easily dominated through psychic manipulation once he possessed Xavier's mind.
Seizing the moment while Clark was distracted by the crushing weight, Azazel acted.
With a massive expenditure of spatial energy, the Red Devil teleported the entire group hundreds of meters away to a safer vantage point.
Apocalypse glared up at the pyramid.
He clenched both of his empty hands into tight fists.
The massive pyramid detonated.
Millions of tons of stone shattered into hyper-accelerated shrapnel.
An asteroid field of jagged fragments swarmed Clark.
The young Kryptonian threw punches at blinding speed, smashing the incoming boulders into fine dust.
But Apocalypse manipulated the dust, swiftly reforming it into a dense, suffocating cloud that trapped the boy in the sky.
Simultaneously, a barrage of massive, golden tower fragments hurtled downward like artillery shells.
They were aimed directly at Professor X and the relocated survivors.
There was no escape from the wide-ranging area-of-effect attack.
Chris stepped forward, his hands empty but his eyes blazing with arcane power.
He tapped into the ambient earth magic. The desert itself rioted in response.
A hundred-meter-high, swirling sandstorm erupted from the dunes, forming an impenetrable wall.
Amidst the churning grit, a colossal manifestation of Chris's face appeared in the sand.
The sand-titan opened its mouth and unleashed a deafening roar, clashing head-on with the descending golden tower fragments.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The pyramid fragments collided violently with the magical sandstorm.
Chris's massive, conjured face was battered and gouged by the relentless debris.
It became a brutal, grinding contest of sheer magical endurance.
The onlookers, the X-Men, and the world leaders observing the chaos via military satellites were gripped by absolute terror.
The immense, world-breaking power displayed in Cairo was more difficult to comprehend than nuclear warfare.
It caused a deep, existential unease among the global superpowers.
Down in the ruins, Apocalypse sensed the kinetic tide turning slightly against him.
His consecutive killing moves had been stalled, and the pyramid fragments were diminishing.
He gritted his teeth, digging deep into his ancient, cellular reserves.
Suddenly, he thrust both hands forward, unleashing a shockwave of raw, telekinetic pressure.
Chris felt the invisible force slam into his chest like a freight train.
His ribs groaned. His chest tightened violently, and he spat out a mouthful of bright red blood.
Chris's concentration faltered.
The massive, controlled sandstorm collapsed into a harmless pile of dust.
The remaining pyramid fragments plummeted toward the exposed group.
In the critical microsecond before impact, Kyle stepped forward.
"Simba!" Kyle roared.
"Devour!"
Beside Kyle's leg, the half-meter-tall, three-headed Crup rushed forward.
Simba's biology mutated instantly, his mass expanding violently.
He grew from a small hound into a towering, two-meter-tall nightmare of muscle and teeth.
With a guttural roar, Simba opened his central mouth.
The air warped. The laws of physics inverted.
His jaws acted like a gravitational black hole.
A terrifying suction force gripped the sky, pulling every single plummeting pyramid fragment directly into the beast's bottomless maw.
The observers stared in sheer, paralyzed disbelief.
Was this a dog, or a cosmic monster wearing a canine skin?
The events of the day had completely shattered their understanding of reality.
Simba was not satisfied with just the stone debris.
The massive hound turned his terrifying, gravitational gaze toward Apocalypse.
He opened his jaws wider, intending to swallow the ancient god whole.
Apocalypse felt the immense, impossible suction force dragging at his armor.
He bowed his body, digging his boots into the bedrock to withstand the gravitational pull.
He projected a thick, blue energy barrier to anchor himself.
Realizing physical resistance was futile against a singularity, Apocalypse folded space.
He teleported high into the air, escaping the direct line of the gravitational cone.
He pressed his hands down toward the beast.
Dozens of streams of hyper-accelerated, glowing yellow sand shot downward, attacking Simba from every conceivable blind spot.
Simba's devouring power was absolute, but it was strictly unidirectional.
Faced with a swarm of lethal projectiles from all 360 degrees, the hound was entirely vulnerable.
The yellow sand struck Simba's thick hide.
Every point of contact caused immediate, horrific cellular decay.
It was the absolute embodiment of Apocalypse's decomposition ability.
In the split second before the beast was turned to ash, Azazel acted.
BAMF.
The Red Devil teleported directly into the line of fire, grabbed Simba, and vanished just as the sand converged.
He materialized safely behind the lines, successfully redirecting Apocalypse's blinding anger toward himself.
"Watch me!" Kyle shouted, stepping in front of the enraged god.
Kyle held up a heavy, leather-bound magic tome.
A complex, glowing magic circle composed of interlocking triangles and hexagons materialized in the air before him.
Kyle flipped the parchment to the very first page.
The ancient ink depicted a divine, majestic bird completely engulfed in living flames.
Kyle extended his hand, pressing his palm directly against the glowing magical matrix.
The intricate pattern projected forward, expanding into a massive, fifty-meter-wide glyph in the sky.
"I summon thee in my name!" Kyle chanted, his voice echoing with arcane authority.
"Phoenix!"
"Chirp!"
A melodic, soul-piercing cry shattered the silence of the desert.
A colossal bird of prey, over fifty meters long, erupted from the center of the magic circle.
It was completely bathed in blinding, sun-fire.
It boasted a slender, majestic neck, razor-sharp obsidian claws, and beautiful, elongated tail feathers that trailed liquid heat.
The Phoenix flapped its massive wings, generating a thermal shockwave as it soared directly toward Apocalypse.
From a hundred meters away, it opened its beak and spewed a devastating, concentrated pillar of divine fire.
Sensing absolute, mortal danger, Apocalypse hastily summoned his thickest blue energy barrier.
The fire struck the shield.
Surprisingly, it did not reflect. The flame possessed a volatile, magical frequency.
It slowly, methodically eroded the hard-light energy shield.
This was no ordinary combustion. The extraordinary fire damaged the spatial fabric itself.
Nothing could escape its burn.
This was the same Phoenix Ernst had cultivated on Skull Island.
It had evolved drastically after swallowing the wisp of the Eternal Flame.
Now exceeding fifty meters in wingspan, its fire bore the terrifying characteristics of true eternity.
Though it was physically smaller than the Black Dragon Smaug, it vastly surpassed the dragon in raw, elemental strength.
In the rigid hierarchy of Kyle's magic book, the Phoenix had rightfully claimed the first page.
Fearing the Eternal Flame's absolute power, Apocalypse knew he could not let the beast attack unchecked.
He gestured wildly, summoning dozens of massive, serpentine constructs of yellow sand into the sky.
A brutal, mythical dragon-and-phoenix aerial battle commenced.
Phoenix continuously spewed divine fire, incinerating the sand serpents into glass.
Yet, two streams of sand managed to persist through the inferno.
Apocalypse seized the microscopic opening, lacing the sand with his maximum decomposition ability.
Sensing the lethal danger, the Phoenix blazed brighter, attempting to burn the incoming threat.
However, a single, concentrated strand of the yellow sand struck true.
The decomposition ability instantly inflicted horrific harm, creating a massive, rotting hole directly through the bird's abdomen.
Apocalypse smiled coldly. He had underestimated the beast, but it was still mortal.
However, his arrogant smile instantly shifted to profound astonishment.
The rotting wound on the Phoenix's abdomen burst into blinding white flames.
The necrotic flesh burned away, and new, pristine tissue swiftly healed the breach.
As a divine creature of the Eternal Flame, it possessed the absolute power to be reborn from its own ashes.
A wound posed zero challenge.
Its recovery speed easily rivaled, if not surpassed, Apocalypse's own super-cellular regeneration, fueled by an endless well of magic.
Annoyed and frustrated, Apocalypse commanded a massive wave of yellow sand to assail the bird.
The Phoenix retaliated with a tidal wave of raging fire, locking the two in a fierce, elemental stalemate in the sky.
"Bro, why not just summon more beasts from your book?" Chris asked, wiping blood from his chin as he rejoined the frontline.
"Can't they just swarm him and join forces to defeat Apocalypse?"
"Your tactical thinking is too simplistic," Azazel interrupted, shaking his head.
"Aside from the Phoenix, your other summons are merely cannon fodder."
Azazel gestured toward the sky.
"The Phoenix's unique ability to be reborn from ashes is the only thing allowing it to endure those necrotic attacks."
"Any other summoned beast would instantly disintegrate under his yellow sand. They wouldn't withstand a single strike."
"Even the dragon, Smaug, would only buy us a few seconds of time," Azazel explained grimly.
"And we do not know the full extent of Apocalypse's hidden abilities. I will not endorse taking that risk."
After a moment of dark consideration, the Red Devil raised his hand.
He snapped his fingers, tearing open a massive, stable blue space wormhole behind their lines.
He turned to address the exhausted group.
"It is completely unclear when this battle will end," Azazel commanded, his voice leaving no room for argument.
"Your injuries are severe, and your raw abilities are currently insufficient against a god."
"Those not suited for absolute, high-tier combat must evacuate immediately."
Azazel looked directly at the wounded X-Men.
"Staying here will not benefit you. You will only become a tactical hindrance to the rest of us."
In truth, the Red Devil proposed this logical retreat with a massive degree of personal self-interest.
Mystique and the Blue Devil were both heavily wounded and bleeding.
They would be entirely out of harm's way if they walked through that portal.
It was a calculated, desperate move by Azazel to ensure the absolute safety of his wife and son.
-------------
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