After claiming the Aether particles, Malekith felt a surge of power and confidence he hadn't experienced since the ancient wars. The crimson substance, alive and malevolent, pulsed through his veins.
He could feel the fabric of the cosmos shifting, the convergence drawing near.
When the realms aligned, when the Aether reached its full might… he would unleash eternal night.
The era of Dark Elves, long buried under millennia of defeat and obscurity, would rise again.
And yet—
What awaited them on Earth was not triumph.
It was a massacre.
Only moments after their arrival, Malekith's once-proud legions had been torn apart like paper caught in a hurricane.
Soren's overwhelming magnetic strike, combined with the brutal countercharge of the empowered Avengers, had halved the Dark Elf forces before Malekith could even begin his masterstroke.
He stood amidst the carnage, corpses littering the battlefield, their twisted armor soaked in dark blood, and for the first time in ages, Malekith felt something foreign.
Disbelief.
How could it be?
His warriors, the same ones who once razed realms and challenged Asgard, reduced to bodies in the mud, slain by mortals and mages?
Across the battlefield, Soren's camp stood in a silence as well.
The magicians, bruised, stared at the aftermath of Soren's attack. They had prepared themselves for a long, bitter war, where every inch would be earned in blood.
They never expected a single man to turn the river in seconds.
Ancient One, her cloak fluttering in the smoke, narrowed her eyes as she watched Malekith raise his hand again.
"Kill them all!" Malekith bellowed, his voice shaking the very air.
The remaining Dark Elves, though shaken, roared back in fury and rushed forward with renewed ferocity, firing volleys of their signature laser blasts.
"Barrier!" the Ancient One commanded.
Instantly, all the gathered magicians, some disciples, some battle-hardened raised their hands. Runes blazed, circles spun in the air, and a wall of invisible magic shimmered to life just as the sky turned green with incoming fire.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
A series of devastating explosions rippled across the surface of the shield. The barrier groaned and flickered, each blast testing its limits. But it held.
It bent, but it did not break.
The Avengers didn't wait.
Now knowing that the Dark Elves could bleed, and die, they launched their counterattack.
"Let's finish this." Captain America growled, shield raised high.
The Hulk was already charging.
Roaring like a beast of old, he plowed into the enemy line like a wrecking ball made of muscle and fury. Blasts glanced off him as if they were sparks on steel.
He grabbed a Dark Elf and slammed him into another, bones shattering like glass.
"Now!" Cap shouted.
Iron Man followed with repulsors blazing, and Black Widow rolled beneath enemy fire, twin batons charged with electricity.
Hawkeye fired in quick succession, arrows finding chinks in armor.
Thor, thunder cracking above, hurled Mjolnir and turned three warriors into flying debris.
But the Dark Elves adapted quickly.
Realizing the chaos of the melee, they ceased their long-range barrage to avoid friendly fire. Groups of them split into tactical units , three to five soldiers per group, trained to isolate and eliminate.
Their goal was clear: divide and conquer.
Hulk and Captain America held their own with relentless ferocity.
But others, like Hawkeye and Black Widow, began to feel the strain. Despite their elite skill, they were still human, facing ancient warriors whose combat instincts were honed over millennia.
Black Widow spun and dodged a blow, but a second Dark Elf caught her shoulder. She gritted her teeth, stabbing back, but more came.
Hawkeye, down arrows, fought beside her, outnumbered and barely keeping up.
The only thing keeping them alive, what tilted the balance ever so slightly, was the enhancement from Soren's earlier empowerment.
They moved faster, hit harder, endured longer. Without it, they would have already been overwhelmed.
"Barton!" Black Widow shouted as she narrowly avoided a fatal blow, her leg nicked by a dark elf blade.
Three warriors surrounded her, their sickle-like weapons slashing with brutally.
She was in trouble.
A split-second later, a whistle split the air~ BOOM!
An explosive arrow from Hawkeye landed just behind her assailants.
The shockwave flung the dark elves backward, their obsidian armor shattering under the force.
Natasha used the moment of chaos to dive behind cover, panting, her hands trembling as she pulled a small, shimmering vial from her belt.
Soren's battle-enhancing potion.
"Now or never."
Natasha uncorked it with her teeth and drank it in one go.
Across the field, Barton followed suit. The potion, glowing faintly blue and gold, slid down his throat and immediately...
His breathing steadied. His heartbeat slowed to a perfect rhythm. His muscles tightened, and his vision sharpened as if someone had adjusted the saturation of reality itself.
He could see smoother, think quicker. The world became a chessboard, and he was suddenly three moves ahead.
The next moment, three dark elves charged him, but Barton spun, ducked, and fired a triple-shot arrow that took all three in the neck.
"I'm back." Clint whispered, eyes scanning for more targets.
Meanwhile, a blur zipped through the chaos.
Ant-Man, Scott Lang, became a one-man wall between the magicians and the enemy's flanking troops.
With the press of a button, he shrank to the size of an ant, then launched himself through the legs of a hulking dark elf, reappeared behind him at full size, and struck with a red-and-blue flying disc.
The elf's armor crumpled inwards from the impact.
Size-shifting with pinpoint precision, Scott created confusion in the dark elf ranks, punching holes in their charge toward the Ancient One's protective line.
"Where'd he go?" One dark elf growled before a tiny fist slammed into his helmet from behind.
CRACK.
He dropped, motionless.
Behind the frontline, the Ancient One and her circle of magicians remained composed, standing in perfect geometric formation.
They unleashed volley after volley of guided arcane projectiles, their magic slicing through the battlefield like radiant blades. Runes danced around their hands.
Fire, lightning, gravity, and light, all shaped into devastating attacks aimed directly at the dark elves' weak points.
They were not warriors of the flesh. But in long-range combat, with Avengers buying them space and time, they were devastating.
Yet amidst the mayhem, two figures remained untouched by the storm.
Malekith narrowed his eyes, his voice a venom-laced whisper.
"Who are you?"
Only Malekith and Soren stood still.
Opposite forces.
Soren's voice echoed in Malekith's ears.
"Soren Macaluso… of Everlife Medical Center."
He hovered midair, poised.
No dramatic aura, no flickering flame or cracking energy. He stood in the air as if the world itself supported him, manipulating the magnetic field effortlessly beneath his feet.
Malekith narrowed his eyes. He had no idea what the "Everlife Medical Center" was, but this man had already disrupted his entire army.
He radiated threat without force.
And still, Malekith remained arrogant. He held the Aether, the weapon of annihilation.
"Your tricks will not save this world."
"The moment you touched the Aether again, your fate was sealed. This isn't the universe you remember, Malekith. Your era ended before it began."
Below them, the battle raged. The sky above had darkened, replaced not by storm clouds, but by a terrifying tapestry of alien skies and strange constellations.
Through shattered pockets in space, fragments of other Realms became visible, lush floating continents, shadowy voids, and crystalline forests shimmering with alien stars.
The Nine Realms were converging.
The final alignment approached.
Malekith raised his arms and screamed, his voice echoing with pain and rage.
As he did, the Aether erupted from within him, a flood of black-red energy, viscous and living, oozing into the sky and sweeping toward the battlefield like a sentient tide.
꧁𓊈𒆜༺⚜༻𒆜𓊉꧂
PhantomDream