Firehair slammed into Mephisto once more, the impact driving the five-hundred-foot amalgamation of the Hell Lords down into the God Quarry with enough force to shake the entire realm.
The fiery Phoenix shape around her grew larger. What had been a blazing bird surrounding her body expanded outward, its wings stretching hundreds of feet across the void above the Quarry. Golden-red flames curled around her, every plume burning with heat that exceeded even the hottest stars.
The Phoenix screamed.It was a terrifying sound, full of rage, a cry that would bring despair to any being in the multiverse.
Then she struck.
A massive burning talon came down on Mephisto's chest.
BOOOOOOM!
The Quarry shook.
Mephisto's body sank deeper into the divine corpses beneath him.
Firehair struck again.
And again.
And again.
Each blow came faster than the last, the colossal Phoenix hammering down on the demon with talons, wings, and beak. Every strike released bursts of fire that spread across Mephisto's body and burned through his demonic flesh. The Hell Lord roared beneath her, his massive arms trying to rise, trying to defend himself, but Firehair kept him pinned.
Mephisto laughed.
At first, it was low and muffled beneath the Phoenix's assault.
Then louder.
Then thunderous.
"AHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Firehair struck him again, driving his head deeper into the divine corpses.
Mephisto kept laughing.
His eye blazed red. Before Firehair could pull back, a beam of hellfire erupted from Mephisto's eye and struck the Phoenix form directly in the chest, driving Firehair backward through the void. Her wings flared wide as she tried to steady herself, but Mephisto was already moving.
One of his massive hands shot upward.
Firehair banked hard to the left, narrowly avoiding the grasping fingers.
Mephisto rose from the crater she had beaten him into. His body was scorched and broken, one side of his face still burning with Phoenix fire. The wound where she had taken his eye had not healed properly. Golden flames licked around the ruined socket, refusing to die..
Firehair attacked once more, this time unleashing a blast of energy from her hands, a column of golden-red flame that crossed the space between them in an instant.
Mephisto fired from his remaining eye.
Hellfire met Phoenix fire in the center of the battlefield.
The collision became a sun.
Golden-red flames and crimson-black hellfire smashed together between them, neither side giving ground. The beam struggle expanded outward, forming a massive sphere of pressure where the two energies met. Its edges tore at the Quarry around them, ripping fragments from the ground, vaporizing lesser divine remains, and turning ancient god-bone into glowing dust.
Firehair pushed harder.
The beam intensified, growing thicker, brighter, hotter.
Mephisto laughed again.
His massive feet dug into the broken surface. His hands clenched into fists. The muscles of his enormous body bulged as he poured more power into the attack.
"YOU ARE BEATEN, PHOENIX!"
The crimson beam surged.
The point of collision shifted back toward Firehair.
She screamed furiously and poured even more of herself into the attack.
Max watched it all high above the battle.
Good, he thought. Keep him busy. Just a little longer, Red.
He had a plan. It would have been easier before, when he was not falling apart, but he was sure it would work. He could do it. He looked toward where the others were fighting. Agamotto had already left to save Aurora. The others were locked in battle with the twisted amalgamation of Uranos and Apocalypse.
Max clenched his fists.
"Alright," he muttered.
He closed his eyes.
The ring on his finger sparked weakly.
It was almost useless now. The once-perfect emerald focus that had guided his power for nearly twenty years was blackened, cracked, and barely functioning. Hairline fractures ran across its surface. Green sparks crawled over it and died.
For so long, it had regulated everything, refining the infinite ocean of will into something he could use. It had been the home of Jade, his constant companion. What he was about to do would have been easier with her and the ring.But he could not rely on it now.
He had to channel the raw energy himself.
Max held both hands out in front of him, and green light gathered between his palms.
At first, it was nothing more than a small emerald sphere, barely larger than an apple. It flickered wildly, unstable and uneven, swelling and shrinking as if it wanted to collapse in on itself. Arcs of green energy snapped off its surface and crawled over his fingers.
Max gritted his teeth and forced it to stabilize.
"Come on," he whispered.
The sphere steadied.
Then it grew.
From the size of an apple to the size of a man's head.
Then larger.
Four feet across.
Ten.
Twenty.
The light intensified with every second, emerald fire burning brighter and brighter until everything around him was bathed in green radiance.
Max felt the strain immediately.
It hit him in the hands first.
A sharp, splitting pain spread across his knuckles.
He looked down and saw the cracks forming.
Thin lines of green light appeared across the backs of his hands, spreading from beneath the skin. They crawled over his fingers, across his wrists, then up his forearms like glowing veins carved through flesh.
Max gasped as pain tore through him.
It felt as if his bones were splitting open, as if something beneath his flesh was trying to escape.
The construct wavered.
"No," Max snarled.
He pushed harder.
The sphere grew.
Fifty feet.
A hundred.
Two hundred.
It no longer looked like a simple ball of energy. Currents moved beneath its surface, streams of emerald plasma flowing around a burning core. It pulsed like a heart, each beat sending waves of green light across the broken Quarry.
It kept growing, so massive that it began to create its own gravity.
Fragments of dead gods began to rise from the ground.
At first, they were small pieces, shards of divine bone and crystallized blood.
Then larger chunks followed.
Broken slabs the size of houses lifted from the Quarry's surface, turning slowly as they were pulled into orbit around the growing sphere.
A star tended to have that effect.
More cracks appeared across his body. They crawled past his elbows, then up his arms and across his shoulders. One jagged line split down the center of his chest, glowing brightly. Another spread over his ribs. A third climbed the side of his neck.
Max screamed through clenched teeth.
"UAAARGH!"
The pain was beyond anything he had ever felt before. Something vast beneath him was pressing upward, filling the shell of him, pushing against the limits of blood, bone, and skin.
The sphere grew brighter.
The orbiting fragments accelerated. A piece of dead god skull the size of a tower spun around the emerald mass and broke apart under the pressure, scattering into smaller fragments that joined the ring.
The cracks spread again.
"Max."
The voice echoed in his mind.
It reminded him of Jade. Maybe it was her. Maybe it was only a memory.
"Max, stop."
He ignored it.
He kept building.
Down on the surface, Firehair was beginning to lose ground.
Mephisto's beam pushed forward inch by inch, forcing her back through the broken void. The collision point between Phoenix fire and hellfire moved closer to her.
She screamed.
The sound tore through the God Quarry as she poured more power into the attack.
The beam thickened.
For a moment, she pushed him back. The sphere of colliding energy shifted toward Mephisto.
"AHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
He took one step forward.
Then another.
"DIE!" Mephisto roared.
The hellfire surged, but Mephisto faltered for a moment as green light began to fall over him. His remaining eye shifted upward.
That was when he noticed it.
Above the battlefield, an emerald star was forming.
It burned brighter with every passing second.
Mephisto's expression changed. For the first time since the battle began, Firehair saw fear on his face.
"WHAT IS THAT?" Mephisto snarled.
He tried to break the stalemate at once, pouring more power into the attack, trying to overpower Firehair quickly so he could turn his attention to Max. The crimson beam expanded, widening until it was almost as large as the Phoenix herself.
Above them, Max's vision blurred.
Blood ran from his nose and down over his lips. His hands shook violently as he continued feeding power into the emerald star. He looked away for a moment toward his friends.
White fissures had begun to appear all across the void surrounding them, and the Avengers were pinned down by the abomination.
Only Ghost was still moving freely.
He ran through the chaos. The abomination turned toward him and fired a beam from the orange crystal embedded in its chest.
But Ghost dodged it all, closed the distance, and landed a devastating punch to the abomination's midsection. Then he began to push it toward the white fissures, and much to Max's relief, his friend succeeded in forcing it inside and ending the threat.
He did it, Max thought happily relief spreading through him.
The happiness did not last long.
Two enormous hands burst out of the white fissure.
They grabbed Ghost and pulled him in.
"GHOST!" Max screamed.
Ghost vanished into the fissure.
For a moment, Max faltered.
The emerald star above him flickered.
"No," Max whispered.
The star dimmed.
"No!"
He quickly looked away, forcing his mind away from what had happened, away from the terrible understanding that his friend was gone.
The pain became unbearable.
The star grew.
And grew.
And grew.
A miniature sun burned above the God Quarry. Its surface churned with violent currents of green plasma.
Max screamed.
"RED!"
Firehair heard him and immediately knew it was time.
She broke the beam and dove straight toward Mephisto, striking him directly in the face.
The impact snapped his head back.
Before he could recover, she hit him again.
A slash across the throat.
Then a strike through the shoulder.
And finally, with a massive blast, she drove him down once more.
She quickly made her way toward Max, toward the emerald star.
The star moved downward as Max positioned it and hurled it toward the battlefield.
It descended slowly at first.
Then it picked up speed and fell faster and faster.
It crossed the shattered expanse of the God Quarry, and Firehair flew directly toward it.
She entered the star itself as she vanished beneath its surface, diving straight into the core. The star changed as green plasma turned gold at the edges as Phoenix fire spread through the star, transforming it into something greater.
The entire sphere blazed brighter, no longer only green as golden fire burned through it. The power of the Phoenix and will combined.
Firehair flew out of the star and rushed to Max's side, catching him with one arm as he faltered in the air.
He was literally coming apart.
"Max," she whispered.
He looked at her, and even through the pain, even with his body breaking apart in her arms, he managed to smile.
"You know," he said, his voice hoarse, "I thought we agreed. In sickness and in health. So it would be a real dick move if you left me now." He glanced down at the glowing cracks spreading across his chest. "Then again, I am literally falling apart."
For a moment, Firehair could only stare at him.
Then, despite everything, a small smile touched her lips.
Below them, Mephisto began to recover, his body still burned from the phoenix fire. The Lord of Hell looked up at them with his ruined face twisted in hatred, one eye gone and the other blazing with crimson fury.
Max turned toward him.
"Together," Max said, his eyes meeting hers.
Firehair stared at him for half a second.
Then her expression hardened.
"Together."
They both thrust their hands forward.
The star descended.
"NO," Mephisto shouted.
"NO! NO! NO!"
He raised both hands, and hellfire burst from his palms in raging torrents. More erupted from his eye, and then from his mouth, a flood of crimson-black flame rising upward to meet the descending star. The two forces collided above him, and the impact shook the entire God Quarry.
The star slowed.
Mephisto held it back, roaring and laughing all at once as he forced every ounce of his stolen power into the struggle.
Max and Firehair hovered above the star, hands extended, their powers flowing together through the burning mass.
The star pressed lower.
Mephisto bent beneath it.
His arms shook.
The skin of his palms burned away first. Mephisto screamed and forced more hellfire upward, trying to push the star back.
For a moment, he succeeded.
The star stopped inches above him.
Mephisto looked up at them through the blinding light.
Then he laughed.
"AHAHAHAHAHA!" he roared, even as his hands burned. "IS THIS IT? DO YOU SEE NOW? EVEN TOGETHER, YOU ARE NOT ENOUGH!"
Max stared down at him.
Then he looked at Firehair and winked.
As if to say, watch this.
Max closed his fists.
The star collapsed.
All that raw power compressed in an instant. It shrank from the size of a planet to the size of a mountain, then from a mountain to a boulder, and then smaller still. Every fragment of their combined power folded inward upon itself and became a single point of light hovering inches above Mephisto's face.
Mephisto stopped laughing.
He stared at it.
Then up at them.
Max's smirk was faint and utterly merciless.
"You should have stayed in Hell."
Mephisto screamed.
The compressed star exploded.
KRAKOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The explosion ripped across the God Quarry, shaking the dead realm to its deepest foundations, and Mephisto was burned away, his screams echoing through the realm.
"It's done," Max said.
The explosion had torn through everything, but the Quarry did not completely break apart. Max noticed how it was putting itself back together. Massive fragments that had been blown into the void began drifting back toward the broken surface.
The God Quarry was rebuilding itself.
Max turned to Firehair. "Red, you need to..."
Agamotto's voice cut through both their minds.
Max. Firehair. All of you. I need help. The situation is worse than I thought.
Odin's voice answered immediately through the psychic connection.
We are coming, Motto.
Max turned toward the distant ritual site. His heart clenched at the thought of his daughter there, alone and terrified.
"Red," Max said. "You go with them. I need to end this. Reed is still in there somewhere."
Odin's voice came again, harder this time.
Then I will come with you.
Nur followed almost instantly.
As will I.
"No," Max said.
"All of you help Agamotto save Aurora."
There was silence for a moment.
Then Odin's voice returned.
You better not die, Grænlaðr.
Max smiled faintly.
"You know me, old friend. I'm not that easily beaten."
Agamotto's voice cut through them again, more strained than before.
Come quickly. All will be lost soon.
That ended the argument.
The others began moving toward where Agamotto was.
Max stayed where he was for one moment longer.
So did Firehair.
They looked at each other in the light of the shattered realm.
Max tried to smile.
"Maybe you were right," he said, his voice rough. "Maybe we should have left with Aurora after her birthday."
A bitter laugh escaped him.
Firehair reached up and touched his cheek.
"I will save her," she said.
Max closed his eyes for a moment.
"I know."
"Do not forget your promise," Firehair said.
Max swallowed.
"I won't."
Firehair held his gaze.
"Go," Max said, his voice breaking despite his attempt to keep it steady. "Go and save our baby."
Firehair leaned forward and kissed him. Max kissed her back, one hand finding the back of her head, the other closing around her waist.
They pulled apart.
Firehair rested her forehead against his.
"I love you," she whispered.
Max gave her a tired smile. "I love you too."
Neither of them moved for a second.
Then Firehair let go and turned toward where Aurora was, beginning to fly away, only looking back for a moment.
Max watched her go, then turned away, descending slowly into the Quarry.
.
.