CHAPTER 226

[Moments after Draul left…]

"Where's Draul?" Steve asked Ororo and Bucky who were coming down from the balcony where he completely lost Draul's presence. Him, Natasha and Ororo were the only ones with senses bothering on fundamental forces and for him and Natasha to completely lose Draul's presence in the way they did was surprising to say the least. 

Even at times when they couldn't sense him, there was a way that alerted them if Draul ever left the universe as most of the laws in the universe would become dull, like the acceleration of gravity dropping to 9.5 meters per second or some weird things happening. 

It was a tell to them that even if he left the universe, he was still with them although with a slightly lowered presence, but what they were feeling was different. It was like the universe was put back into automatic mode and lost every trace of Draul's ownership. 

"He's gone for Knull. Even the Earth and the universe can feel it. It's been left on its own mercy." Ororo said as even she felt a bit put off by the awkwardness of everything. It felt like everything was less… Draul. Something she'd quite grown used to as it enabled them to sense each other anywhere in the universe but now it felt erased with only a faint outline remaining. 

The room turned somber with Natasha, Yelena and Steve taking in cold breaths of air but Steve was quick to come back to topic. "Where's the battlefield?"

He could never get rid of his soldier mentality as even the past years only lowered it a bit, but now it resurfaced. 

At that question, lightning sparked and Ororo was dressed in her black and gold regalia with the ebony crown neatly lodged on both sides of her head and a ring of stars on her fingers. 

"We are going to be annihilating the horde of symbiotes that are currently spreading through the universe starting from a safe distance closest to the heart of Draul's battle." Ororo looked through the clouds and peered into the vast cosmos and was greeted with the sight of Gods appearing at different points around the center of the calamity. "We'll be fighting near the Asgardians… Are you guys ready?"

They all gained wry smiles at her question. "Honestly? I'm feeling tired. Let's just get this over with." Bucky said, his eyes radiating his determination contrary to his words. 

Ororo said nothing else and covered them with her lightning and shot towards her targeted location while breaking through the light speed barrier that enabled one to brute their way through spatial points. 

… 

They appeared in the middle of space, facing a huge mucous black substance that spewed out smaller blobs that formed humanoid black monstrosities with fanged teeth. 

This was just the first of many they'll face on this day and with that same vigor, Yelena and Steve attacked. 

"We'll take care of this one and move to the next point. Don't worry about us." Were Yelena's words before her entire body got covered in pure white lightning. 

Her fist connected with it and a huge explosion that would have swallowed a city had they been on Earth detonated. She was a walking, well running, nuke – a fact Draul had drilled into her head during their training. 

The amount of energy inside her body could rival the others so there was nothing limiting her to just speed. She had trained herself and her speed to the point that every part of her body was dangerous upon contact. She could release the force and destructive ability of ten lightning strikes with nothing but a flick of her finger. Holding her cells tightly together to the point that her skin became impenetrable and like Bucky, she could also absorb impacting kinetic energy and use it for short burst augmentations. 

It screamed and wailed like a banshee before contorting in on itself and shooting tentacles outwards at impressive speeds. 

Steve, who had fused with space since the moment they arrived, pointed his hand towards the giant symbiote and it started swirling like it was being sucked into a tiny hole in space, which it was, causing it to cry out with a voice reminiscent of two metals grating against each other. 

"Let's go." Was all Steve said before disappearing from Yelena's view and went to the next incoming horde. 

… 

The sound of thunder rumbled in deep space as Thor brought down his hammer on the hellish black monstrosities that dared bare its fang against him. 

"What in the name of Hel are these nightmarish apparitions?" Like every true and prideful born of Asgard, he was the first to wield his hammer when Tyr blew the horns of war and was among the first battalion to be whisked off by the light of the Bifrost. 

"I don't think that's the question we need to be asking right now. What we should be asking is 'how do they keep coming?'. Father surely knows but we'll have to make our way towards where he is to get our answers. Heimdall." Loki walked towards Thor, flagged by the small squad of Asgardians that came with them, before they were all taken up in the lights of the Bifrost towards their second battlefield. 

The planet they arrived on was one that looked like an incursion between two celestial bodies. 

They could see the shadows extending itself from the dark places and shades cast by the panicking people of this land. 

There was no feasible way for them to ideally save everyone despite how much Thor wanted to so they settled for what they could accomplish, and that was reducing the casualties as much as they could. 

"Fall before me." With a loud voice, Thor leapt into the air as the sky darkened and gave its power to the young god. 

Green magic circles appeared in the sky and dissolved into falling flakes that drove the symbiotes out of the darkness they thrived in and into the open they abhorred once it came in contact with whoever they were bonding with. 

The Asgardians advanced while being covered with a green hue that came from the falling flakes that enabled them to really hurt the symbiotes and the dark summons before them. 

In another part of the battlefield that consisted of Asgardian royalty, soldiers, spawns of darkness and panicking mortals, Loki walked with a calm gait, unbothered by the chaos around him. He held two short swords that both glimmered in green as he walked past a symbiote who just let him pass as if it didn't notice him until… 

SLICE. 

The symbiote turned into a sludge that dissolved into black motes, not knowing how its existence ended. 

"So troublesome. Though I won't deny that the advent of this chaos brings its own kind of opportunities." None of the sounds from Thor's lightning reached his ears with booms as they were all muted in his presence. Loki continued walking around the battlefield as a spectator, killing all symbiotes he came across. While he saw opportunities in the chaos, he knew he couldn't let something like this come to persevere so for once the Mischief God of the Asgardians got serious and helped his people with his talents. 

On Thor's side, he had no need for Loki's enchantments against evil as he brought down his hammer with all his might against even the tiniest smudge of the demonic horde. 

His lightning coated hammer destroyed any symbiote it came into contact with a ferocity that very few know of. 

Lightning ran across his iris as he brought his hammer down to the ground and lightning from heaven followed. He was no more the boisterous prince of his people nor was he the prideful heir, all he was now was the Nordic God of Heaven's Cry. The first son of the Allfather, Odin, and the wielder of Mjölnir. 

His wrath alone made the heavens cry in trepidation and made it want to sooth him with the sound of its judgment. 

RUMBLE. 

Space waved in a viscosity it never had as lightning descended from the clouds and wrapped every dark apparition before disintegrating them. 

Thor got up from his kneeling position and started walking the wake of destruction that he had wrought before he abruptly stopped. 

-! 

He sidestepped the extended shadowy appendage that aimed to skewer and grabbed it with his bare hands, his face betraying no emotion since the beginning except for extreme apathy, and tugged it forward, causing the symbiote connected to it to come flying towards him only for his hands to grab its neck. 

The symbiote tried to enter his body but it screeched in pain as something prevented it from continuing its actions. 

"You simply lack the will to erode my might. Whoever your primogenitor is, I only pity the misfortune he'll suffer when the might of Asgard falls on him."

SCREECH!

He ionized the slimy symbiote to dust and continued his walk only for Loki to shimmer into existence at his side. 

"Are you provoked, brother?" Loki asked as he saw how Thor's countenance had continuously fallen ever since the fight started. 

"Provoked? No. My emotions have been stoked brother, and yet I simply can't let them run free, so I vent on these worthless things. This is no battle, Loki. This is the workings of a parasite, attacking the weak ends in order to bring the entire body down. I loathe such things." Thor said as his eyes scanned the place they had fought. It was a marketplace by the numerous stores and land produce littered all over the place, same as the bodies. 

"This is not the only place that has been attacked. Bring us there, Loki. Mjölnir cries for more of these black thingies." 

Loki nodded at his words and portaled them to where Heimdall directed him - the city's capital that was quickly becoming a death zone. 

CRACKLE. 

The sky darkened which made Loki roll his eyes at the flashy display of his brother. "Can you tone the dramatics down a bit, brother?"

Thor frowned as he saw how the sky flashed with lightning. "… That's not me."

Before any of them could say another word, they saw a woman, one Loki was familiar with, bring down the divinity of the sky and began a tribulation of lightning, hails and death to all of Knull's spawn in the city capital. 

"I can feel her divinity as a Goddess of the Sky. Do you know which pantheon she hails from, brother? I should have knowledge of such a strong Sky Goddess but I have no recollection of her." Try as he might, he couldn't come up with any image that identified the woman with such great authority over the Sky, even stronger than his, in his memory. 

If he had looked at Loki at that moment, he would have caught his dear brother breaking his famous long façade for a moment as he saw Ororo. "… That, brother, is Draul's beloved. And no, while I had knowledge of her divine status, I had no idea she was a Goddess of the Sky with such a terrifying authority." He wasted no time in pleading his case and also informing his brother of the identity of the woman before them. 

Unlike what he expected, Thor didn't show any negative emotion except a small smile on his face. "It would be remiss of us to let her do all the work herself when we are here." Swinging his hammer with imperceptible motions, he took off to the sky with a thundering rumble and beelined towards the city. 

Flying through the air, he caught a starry lightning with his hands and aimed it towards a crowd of attacking symbiotes and threw it with all the strength his blessed muscles could exert. 

BOOOM! 

He landed beside Ororo who had stopped to look at the incoming God. 

"Thor Odinson. May I know the appellation of the Goddess before me?"

"Ororo Munroe, Earth's Goddess of the Sky." Ororo replied with a small smile of her own. "Do you want the honors?" She asked gesturing to the massive army of symbiotes making their way towards the both of them. 

"I respectfully decline. After you, my lady. First come, first served – it is the Asgardian way." 

Ororo let out an amused chuckle at his words but accepted the Asgardian hospitality and rushed at the symbiotes with lightning gracing her form while Thor followed behind. 

"Here here!!" The brute with stoked passion screamed.