The Abyss roared.
It hadn't roared when Doom first imposed his will upon it, a silent, grudging surrender. It hadn't roared when Doom stained its primordial fabric with the defiant color of his own law. But now it roared. A soundless, psychic shriek of pure, instinctual agony and rage that vibrated in the very soul of creation. The Abyss got angry. For it had met its absolute, conceptual opposite.
Light.
And Knull, its master, matched the roar of the Abyss. His thought-voice was a thunderclap of malevolent creation, and the living darkness answered his call. Creatures of the black began to mold themselves from the roiling void, taking the form Knull intended, while the Abyss itself fueled them with its infinite, hungry power. These beings were not merely beasts of flesh and scale, but living constructs of the void, their forms a shifting, inky blackness that writhed with cosmic hunger. Their appearance was a grotesque fusion of serpentine grace and nightmarish distortion, with razor-sharp claws that could rend reality itself and fangs that dripped with an ichorous, life-draining venom.
They were the Klyntar dragons, the foremost of Knull's armies. His most basic, yet brutally effective, creation to battle the light. And now, he let them loose once more for their intended purpose: to unmake light itself, to restore the primordial, absolute darkness.
---
"Uhh, Mr. Ranger…" Peter's voice was a nervous squeak, a tiny island of human anxiety in a rising tide of cosmic horrors. "When you said I was brought here to fight against 'grunts'..." He gestured with a trembling hand towards the ever-swelling legion of draconic nightmares. "Please, please tell me you don't mean that those are the grunts. Because there are at least a million of them, and they are being made even faster… I don't think I might be able to handle more than five. They are dragons after all."
"Peter, yes, I brought you here to fight the grunts. And no, the dragons aren't the grunts." A sigh of pure, profound relief escaped Peter's lips. "They're more of a wyvern than a dragon, technically speaking. And it's not a million of them. My last scan put the number at approximately ninety-seven million, three hundred forty-five thousand, and five hundred and two, with a current production rate of about three million-ish per second, and the pace is increasing exponentially."
The sigh of relief caught in Peter's throat and turned into a horrified gulp that was audible even over the comms. "And I… I have to fight all of them?"
"Not all of them." Ranger's voice was infuriatingly calm. "Most will instinctively try to fight the new Captain Universe and die in a glorious, futile blaze of golden light. But my projections indicate that around ten million or so will likely come after you. Most will not go after Doom; he controls half of the Abyss at this point, which makes him… family, in a twisted sort of way. And I." Ranger's form shimmered and vanished from sight, "have a pretty sweet camouflage option." Peter could still feel where he was, a void in his Spider-Sense, but it was a feature he desperately wanted for himself right now.
"So don't expect any help from us two. But hey, don't worry. I have a few lifelines for you. One: Thor. He seems to have taken a liking to you. Two: WEB-ster is going on full combat mode. So no quips in the middle of your fights; every action will be lethally efficient. And three: I promised you would be back for dinner. I will make sure of that. But hey, we got at least two hours before it." The words were meant to be consoling, but they only served to underscore the terrifying scale of the task ahead. "Oh, and the symbiotes you rescued, the Agents of the Cosmos. They will fight with you. They don't want to see the King in Black escape even more than we do."
Ranger threw a small, shimmering cube. A cube Peter was very familiar with. The Black Lattice. Peter caught it, his hands shaking, holding it as far from his body as possible, terrified of being accidentally sucked into its time-dilated prison. Then, it opened. Peter didn't flinch, his Spider-Sense remaining silent. The Black Lattice then spit out the Agents of the Cosmos.
Symbiotes and their hosts. They stumbled out, disoriented, their eyes wide with fear as they felt the oppressive, all-consuming gaze of Knull and the Abyss upon them. They didn't dare breathe out loud.
"Would you look at that? You got a small battalion of symbiotes to fight alongside you." Ranger's disembodied voice was laced with a familiar, predatory amusement. "Wouldn't it be more fun if you and Venom bonded for this fight once more?" He tossed the canister containing Venom to Peter. The other symbiotes shrieked, a chorus of telepathic horror that momentarily overshadowed their dread of Knull.
"You really did bond with that psycho?!" the pink symbiote, Agony, shrieked, pointing an accusatory, clawed finger to Peter.
Venom flowed from the canister, its inky black form slithering up Peter's arm before latching onto his chest, its familiar white spider-emblem blazing to life. "Agony. Long time no see. We see you still have the same bad taste in your host." Venom eyed Agony's host, a grizzled, battle-hardened man, and licked its teeth with a long, prehensile tongue.
"And yours was a freak who crashed the hivemind a minute after you bonded with him because all he cared about was human porn about some 'Cable x Scott' pairing, featuring two healing-factor mutants dripped in chimichanga sauce made with sweat!" Agony shrieked back.
Venom went utterly still, its toothy grin freezing on its face. It grew completely silent.
Peter just let out a long, drawn-out "Uhhh…" as his head swiveled, trying to make sense of the profoundly bizarre and deeply disturbing information he had just received. "Is the Scott you mentioned… Cyclops? From the X-Men?" he asked, his voice weak.
Venom slowly, reluctantly, nodded. "Yes, and he was the bottom."
Peter's mind just stopped working for a bit. The cosmic horror, the millions of dragons, the impending battle for the fate of the universe… all of it was momentarily eclipsed by the sheer, brain-breaking absurdity of what he had just learned. Bottom Cyclops.
He was snapped back to reality by a firm hand on his shoulder.
"Spider-Boy, enough talk." Ranger's voice was a sharp command in his ear. "Now is the time for your graduation to Spider-Man." He tightened his grip, and then, with a surprising surge of strength, threw Peter off the platform and into the seething, dragon-infested grounds below.
"And don't damage the Black Lattice! I borrowed it from Doom!" was the last thing he heard before his Spider-Sense exploded, a raw, unfiltered scream of **DEATH** from a thousand different directions at once.
He was falling into a sea of claws and fangs. A dragon lunged, its maw gaping, dripping corrosive ichor. Before Peter could even react, a tendril of black goo, a familiar and now terrifyingly welcome presence, shot out from his own back, wrapping around the dragon's jaw and wrenching it open with a sickening crack.
Peter acted. He twisted in mid-air, firing a web line that latched onto the dragon's exposed throat, using its momentum to swing. He backflipped, his feet landing with impossible grace on the head of another symbiote dragon. WEB-ster was already feeding him data, the suit's HUD displaying the creature's characteristics. His eyes fell on one critical line: **STRUCTURAL VULNERABILITY: KINETIC IMPACT**. Physical damage can hurt them.
"Okay, Peter. You can do this. Your punches can hurt them." he muttered, his own voice a fragile anchor in the storm as he dodged a glob of corrosive goo that sizzled and ate through the ground where he'd been.
"Boy. Have hope in yourself." Venom's voice was a low, guttural rumble in his mind. "Even half-bonded to you, we can feel the immense strength you possess. You can do more than hurt them. You can break them."
He took a deep breath. Then he stomped. He brought his foot down on the dragon's skull with all his might. There was a wet, satisfying crunch, and the dragon collapsed, its form dissolving back into the roiling abyss. He didn't have a moment to celebrate. Three more dragons swarmed him, their claws carving deep gouges in the crystalline floor. He leaped, his suit's micro-thrusters firing to give him extra height.
"WEB-ster, tactical analysis!" he shouted, spinning in the air.
"**Analysis complete. Multiple hostiles converging. Probability of survival via standard evasive maneuvers: 1.3% and declining. Recommendation: Engage Strength Mode. Overwhelm with superior force.**"
"Do it!" Peter roared. The suit shimmered, a wave of blue energy washing over the red. The sleek lines of his costume bulked out, reinforced plating flowing over his limbs with a soft hiss. He felt a surge of raw, explosive power, his muscles coiling like springs. He landed with the force of a small meteor, the impact cracking the ground and sending a shockwave that staggered the nearest dragons.
He was a blur of motion. He seized one dragon by its serpentine neck, using its body as a bludgeon to smash another into a shower of black goo. A third lunged, its fangs dripping venom. Peter didn't dodge. He caught its head in one hand, his fingers digging in, and with a guttural roar, he tore its jaw clean off. The creature shrieked, dissolving as he turned to the next.
He fought with a ferocity he didn't know he possessed. It was a brutal, desperate dance. He was a whirlwind of red, blue, and black, his fists and feet blurs of motion. He punched through carapaces, tore off wings, and crushed skulls. The Agents of the Cosmos, inspired by his ferocity, joined the fray, their own unique symbiote powers adding to the chaos. Agony created blades of solidified psychic pain that shredded the dragons' forms, while others unleashed sonic blasts and corrosive acids.
But for every dragon they destroyed, two more seemed to rise from the living darkness. The ground was a writhing carpet of them now. A colossal dragon, easily three times the size of the others, slammed into him, its claws piercing his suit's augmented armor, drawing blood. Peter cried out, a sound of pain and fury.
"The boy is injured!" Venom roared, not just in his mind, but telepathically, a broadcast to their allies. Black tendrils erupted from Peter's wound, not just sealing it, but forming a hardened, spiky carapace over the damaged section. "We will not fall!"
Peter gritted his teeth, grabbing the colossal dragon's head. "WEB-ster, power to maximum!"
"**Strength output at 900%. Warning: Structural integrity of host's skeletal system may be compromised.**"
"Just do it!" Peter bellowed. He lifted the colossal dragon, its weight immense, and with a roar that was pure, unadulterated willpower, he hurled it like a javelin into the densest part of the swarm. The impact was cataclysmic. Dozens of dragons were obliterated in the collision.
He was panting, his body aching, the adrenaline the only thing keeping him on his feet. The sheer number of them was endless. They were a tide, and he was a solitary rock being worn down by the relentless waves. He saw one of the Agents of the Cosmos go down, overwhelmed, his host and symbiote dragged into the screaming abyss.
Then the Abyss itself shook. A peal of thunder, so loud and powerful it was a physical blow, sent him and every dragon on the field flying. The symbiote dragon, near the thunder, withered and broke as they merged with the Abyss.
Lightning, not the divine gold of Thor's usual storms, but a raw, untamed silver-white, rained down from the non-existent sky, each bolt striking with the force of a meteor, vaporizing dozens of dragons at a time.
A voice, filled with the righteous fury of a slighted god and the booming authority of a king, echoed through the void, a challenge to the primordial darkness itself.
"**KNULL! YOU DARE SHOW DISRESPECT TO BOTH MY FATHER'S AND MY BROTHER'S NAME IN MY PRESENCE?! YOU SHALL DIE A DEATH THE COSMOS WILL REMEMBER TILL THE END OF TIME..**"