Chapter 212 - Chapter 50: Shadows' Twilight part 4

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While Freya was somewhat amused by the young girl taking command, she recognized that the others were all nodding along, deferring to her automatically just as they'd done when she'd suggested they start knocking out possible victims of the Shadows before they could be turned against their fellows. It was impressive and marked what kind of man Jarl Harry Potter was to the queen; that one so young could be trained to lead so naturally. Then Freya was too busy whacking heads as they came up over the battlements to spare such sentiment a second thought.

To make a bleak situation worse, beyond the outskirts of the embattled camp still more danger approached. Scores of stone jotun suddenly appeared in the forest beyond the camp's edge, teleported there in clusters by the Shadows. Many of these clusters activated the traps, both magical and not, that had been placed out there just for this sort of occurrence. The stone jotun also set off the signals just designed to make light and noises to warn of incoming enemies. While that was purely annoying at present, the other traps reaped a heavy toll as they went off, slaying or at least disabling any caught in their areas of effect.

It was a semi-wasteful use of the energy they had drained from Odin, but the Shadows largely felt it was worth it. The illusions they were using to keep Fenrir, the human who had come along with Malekith, and the other two busy in Svartalfheim weren't taking much of their energy. Indeed, Skadi was now under their control and attacking the others, although turning Fenrir himself was proving bit beyond the Shadows at present due to their concentration on the base camp and the majority of the humans there. Once the last of the telepaths had collapsed though, Fenrir would become their tool once more, they were sure of it.

Then the wizard who had troubled them so often and the other foreign magic users would be faced with an utterly unwinnable battle: fighting their own people, the Asgardians, Surtur, and Fenrir.

Roaring and bellowing in challenge, the jotun, controlled by the Shadows just as much as the Einherjar, charged forwards as clans, each clan aiming for a different part of the camp to invade so that they could reach the palisade from multiple fronts, thus dividing the efforts of the defenders. With their minds full of the illusions of the Shadows, the Asgardian Army separated, creating clear lanes with which the stone giants marched towards the palisade unmolested, even as the jotun trampled over their tents and other belongings indiscriminately. What they were seeing no one knew, but obviously the illusions seemed to treat the jotun as some kind of reinforcements.

When Freya caught sight of this new development, she began to curse volubly. In contrast, Amara started chuckling evilly, causing the queen and many of the Asgardians to look at her. But Amara ignored them, barking into her communicator. "Heavy Gunners, switch loadouts. I want half of you to concentrate on the incoming stone giants. Keep them away from the wall. Remember, boys, those guys are not our allies, so no kid-gloves for them!"

"OORAH!" The Heavy Gunners replied to a man. The Gatlings and a few rocket-armed Heavy Gunners instantly made the switch, leaving only the mortar teams for the most part staying focused on using the stun charges. While switching their weapons around—the Heavy Gunners' weapons were modular—had allowed them to fire on more targets, that really wasn't as important as the fact that now they could cut down on the enemy reaching the walls in a more permanent fashion. In this case, that meant making large stone jotun into small rocky chunks with every weapon they had.

Watching the impact the Gunners had on the jotun, the Queen began to , Clea turned her attention from trying to immobilize or slow the enslaved Asgardians to assaulting a band of stone giants that had gotten too close for comfort. Special stone cutting and stone-shattering spells soon reduced the front of the approaching formation into so many dismembered corpses.

It was soon apparent that, contrary to any expectations based on the names of their species, the stone jotun had barely half of the durability of the fire jotun and even less than that in terms of magical resistance. They were by far the weakest descendants of the mighty jötnar of the past, with whom the Asgardians had warred and intermarried with for so long.

Clea's next spell transfigured a large earthen wall in front of the side of the palisade she guarded, forcing the ensorcelled Asgardians to either side of the construct. Some tried to climb over it, others yelled to pull back and wait to assault other areas with their new reinforcements. Ultimately, they pulled back, causing Freya to snort in a distinctly unladylike manner. "Whatever illusions are gripping their minds, there's clearly no coordination between the jotun and the Einherjar. We need to—"

*BOOM!*

Freya's voice cut off as there as thunderous crash as a group of dvergar, who had somehow already tunneled under a thorny barricade erected by Dr. Druid, began to hammer at the front gate leading into the palisade with a makeshift battering ram of some kind, the shape of it Freya and the others on the wall couldn't make out from their vantage point. The dvergar swung with power that no equal number of humans could have matched, but the magic of the palisade stood them in good stead.

As the dvergar swung once more, Garm finally joined in the fight, giving a dreadful howl. The large old wolf leaped forward from where he had been resting at the center of the camp, long since healed by several of the local goddesses from the wounds that Fenrir had given him but not sure where best to join the fight. Garm hadn't been included under the umbrella of protection that Charles and Betsy were using to guard the minds of the defenders, but for the moment it seemed as if the Shadows had overlooked him regardless.

Watching as the massive guardian of Niflheim leaped over the palisade and landed amongst the battering ram team, knocking the dvergar around like pins, Freya considered that such was a most foolish oversight indeed. With the dwarves down, and not likely to get up without healing, Garm then charged forward, smashing nearby formations of Einherjar before turning to one side and crashing into a similar group of jotun. There he bit and tore whereas before he had only smacking his victims around.

After a moment of watching the force of nature that was Hela's familiar at work, Freya picked up where she left off, her tone somewhat droll while in the background, the sounds of battle and Garm's howls rose in equal cacophony. "As I was saying…"

OOOOOOO

Watching all this in their own unique fashion, the Shadows were ecstatic. Once more, they had avoided the need to fight the Midgard wizard who had been the source of much of their troubles or his coterie of fellow human magic users, something they were extremely leery of after their last attempt to get into his mind. Jörmungandr had now also retreated into the depths, leaving the team of humans sent after that most massive of their tethers out of position to help the rest of the humans and unable to continue their mission. It was only a matter of time until the two telepaths there faltered, after which that most formidable team would be turned against one another in delicious irony.

Jörmungandr's interior wounds and the discomfort caused by the stony Midgardian who had somehow invaded his innards did not matter to the Shadows in the least. So long as their tethers ultimately survived when this Ragnarök ended, they would just reset everything, and the earther within Jörmungandr was not a threat to his life

Indeed, a large segment of the gestalt was wondering if they they might even be able to use the magic accumulated from the deaths of the Asgardians to incorporate the humans from Earth into the next cycle in some fashion. Just enough to bolster the hope their slaves had of finally being free. Such theatre would make the resultant despair of their inescapable fates, and the taste of the magic taken from their slaughter, all the sweeter.

Or they would simply die.

Either way, the Shadows were pleased. They would survive, even if this cycle had pushed them farther than they'd ever been before, even to a point that most of their magic had been expended.

All it came down to was how long the last human telepath could stand before falling. Once that happened, the rest of the remaining humans and Asgardians would turn upon their magic users, allowing the Shadows further opportunities to turn them against their still-fighting fellows. Yes, although it had taken a while, the Shadows felt that they had finally turned this war entirely in their favor, even if they hadn't yet neutralized their greatest threat himself.

OOOOOOO

Back in Muspellheim, Harry grit his teeth in fury as he stared at the spot where Surtur had disappeared. Clming down with some difficulty, Harry glanced over to where Odin lay, and where a blue-skinned dark elf should've been as well. "Dammit! So much for hoping that the Shadows didn't have enough power left to do anything," he grumbled, hopping down into the still relatively intact chamber with the runic array. By some miracle, only the ceiling had been shattered by his earlier siege-breaker spell.

As he had half-expected, Odin looked far worse close-up than he had at a distance, which had been bad enough. The All-Father was still breathing, and his body showed no sign of rigor mortis, but it had obviously been drained almost entirely of power. Which brought Harry back to the reason he'd come down to the chamber instead of getting in touch with his team. So the Shadows, or their servants somehow figured out how to drain his life force and magic? But then, where did that energy go? I don't see an outflow rune... Where…

Staring down at the array, Harry absently lifted Odin off of the floor with a simple Leviosa spell, holding the god of Kings in the air as he broke down the array in front of him. Without a source to drain from, the harsh blue light and darkly purple energy of the array faded instantly, sputtering out like a candle.

Harry waited until the chamber was entirely dark, then conjured a small Lumos. Moving around the array, he studied each of the runes, many of which he recognized. Some he didn't, but he had seen a style similar to those before in the Asgardian camp, mostly on some of the equipment the Alfar wore. Stands to reason that those are the runes of the dark elves. And the rest are Asgardian, which I've always been somewhat bemused by the fact that the Asgardians here use a runic language that is so like the ones from my old dimension. No, Potter, focus. You're looking for something entirely different, and it has to be here somewhere.

Harry moved through the chamber, tracing the array to the first of the nine points, where he knelt down, staring at the triangle-like tip composed of three runes. "Got you…" He whispered, his expression turning into one that Garm would have envied for the second time that day.

However, Harry had not thought entirely through the implications of what it meant for the Shadows to have waited until the last moment to teleport away their tether and pawn. Elsewhere in Muspellheim, things were not going nearly as well for the rest of the assault force.

From her position with the assault force, Emma was only the first to collapse. Nearer to the point of conflict with Surtur than she probably should've been, she was the first to feel the full pressure of the renewed mental offensive. She collapsed within seconds, a cry of anguish rending the air as her eyes rolled up in her head. She fell to one side, boneless, bleeding out of her eyes, ears, mouth, and nose.

The Heavy Gunners who Emma was sharing a magic carpet with all froze, only two of them turning to reach for her after a moment's pause. Before they could reach her the psionic assault struck them. Several of the Heavy Gunners instantly fell under the Shadow's sway. Instead of illusions, which their suits might well have blocked for a short while, the Shadows were now inside their very minds, controlling them like puppets. The now-enslaved humans quickly turned their attention to the nearby Valkyrie and the troops on the ground, their rockets and autocannon rounds firing within seconds of Emma's scream.

Coming under unexpected attack from their allies, the Valkyrie scrambled in every direction on their flying mounts, firing back as they could. Unlike most of the controlled Heavy Gunners, they did not miss. Two of the Shadows' puppets fell, their powered armor penetrated by the magical arrows of the Valkyrie. In return, only one of the horsewomen went down.

Luckily, while the explosions the rockets caused hurled them around, Colossus, Hela, and Tyr were practically immune to hurt by them. They were not immune, however, to the Shadows. They, along with Cyclops, soon found themselves falling under the sway of the insidious puppeteers. The only exceptions to this widespread coup were E, for obvious reasons, and Hela, who had developed magical means of protecting herself based off of a set of spells that Stephen and Harry had taught her since her Seidr Man had freed her from the Shadows.

The Asgardian Goddess of the Dead now found herself fighting all three of her fellow close combatants. Thankfully though, Harry's use of the golem-creation spell earlier on had already tipped the numbers game dramatically in their favor. The few surviving jotun were struggling against more than thrice their number of golems and were falling quickly.

Flying over the battlefield under his own power, E dove out of the way of a kinetic blast from Cyclops' eye-beam, watching as the X-men's leader twisted around to bring his deadly beam to strike up at another target, one of the magic carpets carrying a group of Heavy Gunners, those on his own carpet having split off already. Now, those Heavy Gunners being targeted also used their jet packs to get back down to the ground, where they fired at everyone, including one another.

At that point, E had decided on a rather drastic course of action. His arms disappeared into several fist-sized clouds of nanites, which flew in every direction seeking out his comrades. I must focus on incapacitating without hurting the men within as best I can. How much that limits my abilities is sincerely annoying.

The Heavy Gunners were, of course, the easiest to deal with. Swarms of nanites covered large sections of their powered armors, and when enough had landed, the tiny machines released the energy stored within them in a single sharp jolt. So many volts at specific points overloaded the powered armors' systems, shutting them down, trapping the individuals within. E felt that such a fate would not be pleasant, but it was the best he could do.

Another group of nanites appeared from his feet, eating into the ground underneath him to rebuild his reserves while E sent more of their fellows in swarms towards Cyclops, and then even more over to Colossus. Distracted by combat with Hela and several golems he had attacked, the metal-clad Russian proved far less of a threat despite being closer.

For Colossus, a loud enough carefully regulated noise straight into his eardrums was enough to knock the metal-clad man unconscious. Cyclops was similarly dealt with, and with much more ease, however Tyr and Balder were proving to be completely immune to such a tactic. Two of the strongest Asgardians, their ears were also just as strong as the best of them.

Arrows abruptly slammed into E, courtesy of the Valkyrie above, all of them having turned to focus on E as one. The Shadows had become greatly annoyed that this creature who they could not get any handle on had taken away so many of their toys in Muspellheim so quickly.

Yet while several of those arrows did penetrate his metallic body, and he was even knocked onto his back by the impact, E's nanites simply repaired the damage as quickly as it occurred. And while the magic on the arrows seemed to negate his nanites ability to eat them, the ground was still under him providing material.

Even as more arrows hit him, E Lifted his hands once more. Another cloud of nanite burst out towards the Valkyrie. In response, the sky riders attempted to scatter even further, racing away in every direction. But they had waited too long, and the swarms caught up with them, one after another. Although the Valkyries too seemed to be immune to any sound-based assault, enough electric shocks to their spines garnered similar results.

By this point, Tyr and Balder had pushed Hela back towards E and the massive crater his nanites had eaten out of the ground. Hela was an excellent swordswoman, and far more magically powerful and active than either of her opponents, but with both of them in her face as they were, she was forced to only use small-scale, quickly cast spells. Worse, any magic that she attempted to use to blind or otherwise non-fatally incapacitate the two was simply brushed off.

With the Shadows pulling the strings, their puppets didn't need eyes, or any of their other senses, and both Asgardians were so durable that stunners, or similar, would hardly bother them at all. Hela did manage to occasionally cause Tyr to stumble here and there, but Balder completely ignored her magic, none of it phasing him at all.

"Well done E, but beware!" Hela barked out as she was backed to the edge of the large crater that had been steadily growing as E used his nanites so profligately. Even as she spoke, an extremely adroit move with his blade caused Hela to mistime a block and Baldur's sword caught her across the chest, sending her sprawling backwards. tThankfully, the attack hadn't penetrated her armor, but her chest was now stinging something fierce.

Grimacing, as much as his robotic face could allow, E turned his attention to them, his arms shifting into long sabers with wide shields on either side. As the constructed weapons grew into existence, the crater underneath the synthetic life form became another foot deeper at the bottom . "This is not going to be pleasant."

Then, Harry appeared, landing nearby with a scowl. Pointing at the two enslaved Asgardians, he sent out a chain of prepared spells. Tyr was bound in place by the magic with ease, and quickly knocked unconscious by the combination used as several large explosive spells struck his head from both sides, bouncing his head literally between them for a few seconds. It wasn't so much the explosions themselves, but the repeated impacts to his brain that finally had the god of justice succumbing, although Harry doubted he would be out for long, hence why Tyr was also tied up so much he resembled a mummy.

Balder, on the other hand, ignored Harry's spells just as he had Hela's, the magic slipping off like he was a greasy pole, unable to get a grip on him in any way. He whipped around toward Harry, dodging a strike from E in the same fluid motion. A backhand from the Asgardian prince's magically enhanced blade carved through the android's arm, despite it's built-in shield, and Balder charged at Harry in the next second. The intervening distance was crossed so fast by the Shadow-controlled warrior that Harry had no choice but to backpedal quickly.

This must be part of his protection, the Blessing Freya laid on Balder so that nothing but mistletoe can harm him! Still, Harry knew that eve such a geas as this could be overcome with sufficient power. Balder told us about how he'd been shocked when Surtur had injured him with that ruddy spear. Still, with the fire bastard now gone and us running out of time I have to worry about conserving my own magical reserves for now. Although… I wonder…

Unwilling to use any more of his magical strength than he needed to at present, Harry decided to try a trick first. He reached down, grabbed up a piece of volcanic rock and, when Balder attempted to stab him through, he negligently tossed it at the Asgardian's chest.

The portkey he had cast onto the stone activated and, a second later, Balder was gone, popping out of existence. "Yes! So if it isn't a direct attack or creating any sort of negative effects like halting his movement or blinding him, magic does still work on Balder. I had hoped, but still…."

"While it is all well and good that luck has gone our way for once in this conflict, I rather doubt that simply sending him wherever you did will halt the Bright One for long," Hela grumbled. The Lady of Niflheim sounded a little put out that her sword fight with the two Asgardians had been ended so abruptly. Or maybe it was that her Seidr Man had managed to get his magic to work against the pair when she had not. "Especially given that this is clearly the work of the Shadows and their mental domination. E's quick-thinking might have saved us from our own men slaying one another for the most part, but Balder is not reckoned one of the strongest of my people without due reason."

"I quite agree," E said, another nanite swarm coming out of his feet and the large wound to his arm. Soon enough, the injury was repaired, the metal looking as good as new, although by this point the crater the nanites were making beneath E's feet had grown so large it looked like a meteor strike. "However, what we should do now eludes me. We may have won the field, but I fear that we have taken too long to do so. If Mrs. Frost was overcome here in Muspellheim, it is only logical to assume that the Shadows will have pressed home of the advantage on the Astral Plane elsewhere. Nor do we have any idea where Surtur and Malekith were teleported to."

"True. We can only hope that Freya, Jean, and the others back at camp will have created some measure of defense just in case something like this were to happen. As for us…" Harry looked around at the rest of the unconscious members of their attack force, shaking his head before looking back over towards Surtur's palace and the runic array within the nine-pointed star chamber. "At every turn, the Shadows have proven to be far too adaptable, more so than we'd believed them to be. But they made a mistake here."

Hela looked at him strangely, her teeth bared in a snarl. "How so? Because from my perspective, E is quite correct. The Shadows whisked away the one real target we were here for, leaving us no idea where they'd been taken, and then our own troops were turned against us en-masse! Certainly, finding Odin alive is a pleasant surprise, I suppose, but not enough to -"

"But what if I told you that what they were doing to Odin is the mistake they made?" Harry interrupted, lifting away, gesturing for Hela to follow. "E, put the others onto magic carpets and keep them on lockdown. I know you can't move the carpets yourself, but they should be safe enough from Balder if he's sent back if you get can get them into the air. I doubt the Shadows would have him waste time going after the others when Hela and I are still active."

As an android, a synthetic life form, magical objects and many spells didn't acknowledge E's existence, for lack of a better description. He simply wasn't alive in the terms that the magic of say, a magic carpet or a ward would understand. Some wards worked on him, the Fidelius for example, and he could make use of runic arrays and doorways as well, so long as someone else was there to activate them. But for the moment, he was baggage.

E nodded and moved to comply, lifting the unconscious soldiers and Valkyries one after the other into his arms and up into the air.

As he was busy with his assigned task, Hela followed Harry back towards the room where he'd left Odin. Harry was almost surprised the old god was still there, but it made sense if the Shadows had left him behind in their haste to reposition one of their all-important tethers.

Catching sight of the floating figure of the nearly naked Sky Father, Hela snorted, shaking her head at the sight and looking away deliberately. Despite acknowledging that many of her long-term memories had been manipulated by the Shadows, she still didn't particularly like Odin, and seeing the focal point of so much of her past ire like this was both amusing and somewhat disturbing.

Taking in the runic array that filled up the chamber she'd been led to, Hela grimaced and deliberately stayed away from the center of the spiral. "It is an incredibly intricate work, to be sure. But what exactly are we looking at? I can tell it is a mix of styles and should absorb something, magic perhaps? But there are several runes that are utterly unknown to me."

Harry gestured to the large runes directly underneath the floating Sky Father. "Those are transfer runes I think, from the dark elves' school of runes, whatever they call it." From there, he backed away, pointing to one of the points of the star. "These three runes set at the points of the star, just by where they are positioned in the array alone mean they have to be destination sigils. Some rules of runic arrays are universal I've come to find out, and that is one of them That goes especially for an array where you're using the magically significant number of nine to further enhance the impact."

Hela's eyes widened, and she stared at the runic array with new appreciation. "And if you know where the energy was being sent, you believe you can what, trace or attack the recipients somehow?"

"I know I can. If magical energy can travel along the current created by the array, a spell crafted to carry my willpower can do the same. After all, there's only a very thin line between will and magic for those of us with magical cores, and that line becomes even thinner at the deific level. In this case, the runic equivalent of a Legilimens spell." Harry frowned, staring down at the array for a few moments before shrugging. "Controlling the energy I send along the path will be more difficult for me than it would be for, say Odin himself, sure, but I think Stephen and Clea's lessons on utilizing raw magic will come in handy here."

"You are not telling me something. Out with it, my Seidr Man," Hela ordered, scowling at him.

"… Sending out my will like this, purposefully into wherever the Shadows will be, means that they in turn will be able to attack my mind and soul. It may come down to a pure contest of will. Worse, I don't think I will be able to retreat once the battle's kicked off. Coming back at all is going to be tough enough," Harry answered reluctantly, worry plain in his face. "Yet, given Emma's collapse and what it implies is going on elsewhere, I don't think we have the luxury of playing it safe anymore." Given that Harry's attempt to use a magic mirror to get in touch with Jean had failed, and no other means of communication they had here could reach across dimensions, Harry knew that things were going poorly back at the base camp.

In contrast to her Seidr Man's tense apprehension, Hela's concern faded instantly and she laughed, leaning forward to kiss Harry's cheek. "Is that all? You may have concerns on that score, my husband-to-be, but I do not. I have often questioned your decisions. I have often questioned your knowledge. I often see your sense of humor as bizarre, and I have commented numerous times on how you have a disturbingly high level of empathy for a king. But never have I ever had cause to question your honor or your will."

Harry smiled at that, pulling Hela into a hug and kissing her lightly on the lips before pulling away. "Thank you for the vote of confidence love. How long do you think it will take Balder to get back here from the bridge?"

"Without any enemies in his way? No longer than half an hour, perhaps less. That is, of course, as long as we are not entirely wrong about the hold the Shadows have on him emphasizing the two of us as high priority enemies," Hela mused.

"Do you think you can hold him off on your own?"

A part of Hela wanted to brag that she undoubtedly could, but while she was more than Balder's equal in raw magical power, in a martial contest, she knew she was not the best match against the prince. And as Harry had confirmed, no negative or status-changing magic could work on Balder, and that left Hela without many options. "Prepare another portkey just in case. I can perhaps hold him off for a half-hour to an hour. No longer than that can I promise without aid."

Knowing what it had cost Hela to admit such weakness, Harry simply nodded, and when she asked, used a nearby wooden pole of some kind to create the portkey, its head having been removed by the rubble of the mountain when Harry had hurled Surtur through castle and mountain alike. The piece of rubble briefly glowed blue before the light faded and he held it out to Hela. "Toss it at him and say the word 'activate.' This one will trigger on verbal command rather than touch."

Hela nodded, took the portkey, then leaned forward and kissed him again. This time was no mere peck. It was a long, hard, and deep thing, with open mouths and twining tongues. The kiss only ended when Hela's slightly more advanced hearing picked up the sounds of someone running up the mountainside nearby.

With that, she pushed Harry away, turning and leaping up and out of the shattered roof. "Go, my Seidr Man. Go and finish this! Free my people from their endless enslavement. I will hold the Bright One off."

Outside, Hela found Balder racing up the incline of the mountain, sword in hand, with a wild, almost insane burning in his eyes that should never have been on such pretty a face. To her surprise, he didn't shout any imprecations or indicate what exactly he was being forced to see, as Heimdall had outside of Asgard. This was because, unknown to the goddess, instead of trying to do to every individual Asgardian or human mind as they had done to Heimdall, the Shadows had instead taken the same route they had for the civilians that Harry and Hela had run into in Asgard the city: that is to say, they had simply pushed into Balder's mind the images of their targets, labeled them as foes, and then ramped up feelings of hatred and aggression for said targets. This method of mental domination wasn't deep or intricate and needed constant oversight, but it worked.

Regardless, Hela moved forward as if to engage her cousin blade-to-blade, only to instantly stop when he tried to close the last few meters. Quickly, she gestured to the ground, which morphed into a sludge with a bit of magic. The bespelled earth eagerly reached for Balder, the tendrils of stone reaching up like a living thing. Without the Jotun King present, Muspellheim had no defense to Hela's spells, unlike the man walking on it. Therefore, as liquefied balsamic rock reached for his feet, a nearby a fissure cracked open and spewed lava toward Balder as well.

But the Bright One simply shattered the reaching fingers of molten stone around his feet with a contemptuous kick and whirled his sword at such a speed the lava spun away as if it were was so much water hitting a fan blade. Attack dealt with, Balder charged forward with a growl, barreling through several other Transfiguration-type constructs with similar ease. Hela was soon forced backward, but gracefully leaped up onto a nearby boulder as he closed, where she struck down at his head with her sword.

Balder blocked, but when he went to counter, Hela tapped her hand onto the rock she stood on, whose shape instantly changing. A stony fist punched out at Balder's face, causing him to stumble, although the surprise attack didn't actually hurt the Bright One through his imperviousness.

Then, Hela was behind him, her next strike flashing out. She caught him in the back, but between his armor and his mother's magic, her blade did no damage at all while the sound of a bell the size of a hill rang out as steel met armor. A strong back kick caught Hela in the stomach, throwing her back and rolling down the hill with a squawk. A hastily conjured grapnel appeared with a whisper, and Hela used her tumbling momentum to hurl it up at him. The near-to blind throw snagged Balder's leg. Before he could react and set himself, Hela tugged on the princeling hard, pulling him along with her down the mountainside.

Righting herself, Hela smirked as she saw Balder shredding the rope around his leg as if it was so much string. Now a more significant distance from her Seidr Man than before, the Lady of Niflheim slowly circled her ensorcelled foe, angling to bring him even further away. When Balder hurled himself down the mountain further towards her, outstretched sword pointing towards her heart, her smirk only grew. "Excellent. Follow the leader away from the real threat to those who have so violated your mind oh cousin of mine."

Meanwhile, back in the chamber where Odin had been so drained, Harry looked up from his work as he heard a shriek of metal on metal, so loud that it probably would've rattled a normal person's bones, such was the strength of the two fighting. He thought to go and help his lady for a moment, then shook his head at himself. "She wouldn't thank me , and this is more important, Harry. Remember that."

With that, he turned to his work, examining the runic array below him, mentally preparing his own, having already cleared out a space in a nearby room where he would carve the array down into the stone. Over the next forty minutes, Harry toiled in silence, slowly puzzling together his version of the array, using four new runes that he'd discovered from the draining array, along with a few others he had learned previously.

He was almost finished when Hela appeared in the opening. She was a little battered around the edges; her sword shattered, armor scuffed, and she had cuts in several places. There was also dried blood around the corner of her mouth that had been hurriedly wiped away, and even from where he stood he could see a large bruise was forming on her cheek. Yet for all that , she was smiling a grim little smile. "I require another portkey, I fear. I held him off as long as I could before using the last one, but unless I continue to send him away, Balder will overcome me soon enough. My conjurations and transfigurations are only helping so much."

"You've held him off nearly long enough already, Hela," Harry answered while shaking his head, although he still paused working long enough to grab up a nearby piece of stone debris and set the same portkey enchantment on it as he had last time. He held the finished product out to Hela, who took it gratefully. "I don't know how long the actual fight will take when I send my will out to wherever the Shadows are, but I think I only need another two runes worked in, and then I'll be ready."

A part of Harry had hoped that he would have time to go over his work. After all, every detail mattered when working with runes, and even the tiniest mistake could mess things up so easily. However, he knew it was an impossible hope. It was only a matter of time before Charles fell, and after that, Freya and the rest of the defenders at the camp would find themselves under the Shadows' sway once again. Team Fishermen would be cut off from all chances of being helped, and would to be overcome in turn. If he didn't take the battle to the Shadows now so they couldn't concentrate on the telepathic side of the war, then E, Tony, and the magic users would find themselves alone, battling the entirety of the Einherjar and their own expeditionary force combined.

"I will attempt to hold him off as long as possible," Hela said, blinking in confusion as Harry created several more portkeys. This time he'd used smaller bits of rubble holding six small stones out to her.

"Just keep hurling these at him every time you can. Either it'll buy us enough time for me to get this done, or it'll make his stomach rebel to the point he'll be completely unable to fight. Either/or works."

Hela chuckled at that as Harry turned away and marked down the last of the runes he'd needed into his array. He gazed at his rushed creation, mentally walking through what should happen, then knelt down, placing his hands on either side of the primary energy intake rune. "Wish me luck?"

"Bah. I have said it before, but I will remind you again, my Seidr Man. Luck is for fools. You, my husband-to-be, are a great many things, but a fool is not one of them. You have skill, and thus you have no need for luck." With that, Hela turned away, once again hearing once more the sound of running feet in the distance. By the time she'd reached the shattered rooftop leading out onto the mountainside, Balder was close enough to slash at her as she emerged out of the rubble of Surtur's castle.

"GAH!" A hastily tossed portkey caught Balder in the shoulder, sending him away once more just as Hela flung herself back to avoid his searching blade. Thankfully, it disappeared with the rest of the ensorcelled Bright One, and right before it would have clipped her skull. Hela turned to toss a final quip over her shoulder, only to pause. Harry was slumped forward in the middle of the chamber he'd built his array in, his body now covered by a visible aura of magic osculating around him. She grimaced as she noticed fresh wounds beginning to appear on his slouched figure before resolutely turning away.

The die had been cast, and all that mattered now was seeing what would give out first: Charles, Betsy and the other telepaths, the wounded Surtur in his fight with Fenrir, Jörmungandr and Ben, or the Shadows and Harry.

OOOOOOO

Harry had not told Hela one important aspect of this gamble, that being he had no idea of how the process of using an avenue designed to only take 'simple' magical energy would mindt his mind, body, and soul once he'd sent his mental projection along it. The answer was, it was excruciating. After all, the array had been designed specifically to suck out magical energy, regardless of the target's wellbeing.

The pain was like having a bad migraine, but then accompany that by adding in the feeling of flensing knives carving into his astral projection. He'd only learn later that the damage was so severe it even imprinted itself onto his body back in Muspellheim.

But Harry was no stranger to pain. In truth, what he was suffering now wasn't even the worst he'd ever felt, not by a long shot. Focusing on that, he grit his nonexistent teeth and pushed forward. His surroundings were a whirl of color and light and dark and chaos and order and nothing and everything until, eventually, his senses suddenly returned. Once they did, he had to take a moment to orient himself.

At first glance it appeared almost as if Harry had just merely thrust out a projection of his mind onto the Astral Plane, only this time without the aid of Jean or one of the telepaths, which had previously been impossible. As his mind traced the pathway of power opened by the runic array, Harry felt his consciousness diving deeper, deeper beneath the surface of the Astral Realm where most peoples' minds resided.

Eventually, he found himself in an area that, oddly enough, reminded him almost like a miniature of the pocket dimensions around Yggdrasil. Only instead of residing in the branches of the tree, this realm was separate from the Astral Plane, clearly delineated by a circular dome of lethal green and roiling purple energy.

Within, Harry could make out that the realm was… nothing. There didn't seem to be anything real within the realm itself. The energy barrier on this side, on the other hand, wasn't the same. Instead, it acted like a projector screen showing numerous scenes from across the realms visible simultaneously on the various segments of its enormous surface area.

In one segment, the focus was on the image of Jörmungandr swimming under the surface of the ocean while Ororo and the others could be seen following him from in the air. Xian and Emma (the black-haired one) were clearly fighting off a telepathic assault from the back of what Harry supposed was Þór's chariot while everyone else was trying to spread out or, in the case of Ororo and Strange, prepare for combat.

In another, larger fractal, a full battle was playing out in the remains of the Einherjar's camp. Wolverine and Laura held the shattered gateway while vicious fights were occurring scattered before the wall. The remaining defenders were clearly trying to not kill the ensorcelled attackers, given their choice of weapons and the spells Harry recognized. The attackers had no such compunctions, and he could also see that several of the Valkyrie were wounded. Just then, Coyote teleported with someone off the roof. To one side, the Heavy Gunners were now also being knocked out by Clea, and Harry realized that Charles and Betsy were removing still more minds from the pool they had to protect from the Shadows.

In a third section, Surtur and Fenrir brawled across a strange landscape, while elsewhere in that same viewpoint, Malekith was toying with Steve, alongside the goddess Skadi, who Harry had met last night. Harry started as he finally caught sight of something—no, someone—on Fenrir's back! There, rag-dolling as the dread wolf fought and howled and raged, was Dani, still tied in place.

All of this, along with dozens of other images, was all sprawled across the outer shell of the dome, reflecting the images back into the nothing area within. And in the center of the area, there was cloud of darkness. It was a barely contained amorphous blob, like someone was actively trying to condense several disparate storm clouds into one and barely succeeding. Within that roiling sphere, various pieces moved and shifted, darkness on darkness, black on black, as smaller bits of storm clouds moved under their own power, possibly showing the separate entities that made up Those Who Watch Above in Shadow.

This… this is it? No bodies, no life, a bare minimum of individuality? The Shadows really do live vicariously through the eternal plays and games they put the Asgardians through. Why? Harry questioned, staring at the blob, absently noticing that the Shadows had yet to respond to his intrusion. Is death really so terrifying that you would so remove yourself from life to escape it? I'd almost feel sorry for them if I didn't know they were murder-happy slave-making fucks who deserve to meet Death face-to-face almost more than anyone else I've ever had the displeasure of meeting.

Banishing such thoughts, Harry smirked as the situation touched on a memory, one involving another deep, dark place infested with evil abominations of darkness and shadow. Smirk stretching to a truly evil grin, he created a mental impression of one of his favorite spells. "Expecto Patronum!"

Instantly, a pure blazing light exploded from his astral body. As close as he'd managed to get to them, the ball of Shadow-shades couldn't dodge and instantly burst, the individuals within—if they could be called that—shrieking in pain, confusion, fear, and rage. The suddenly parted Shadows raced every which way within their pocket realm, to get away from the unexpected light that burned so hatefully into the hollowness of their beings.

One moment, the Shadows felt as if they were on the brink of final victory. The humans were finally beginning to be overwhelmed by a mixture of last-minute, teleportational legerdemain of their remaining jotun and sheer psionic power. Then they had become aware of something, something new, there, in their own realm! Turning their attention that way they found a astral projection where none should be. And it had looked disturbingly familiar; the image of the Midgardian wizard plain, the one who they blamed above all others for their current travails. The projection had stood there, glowing with navy blue, gold and white energies.

And then PAIN!

It had long become a foreign feeling. The Shadows, formless, bodiless entities had been inhabiting their own separate realm of the Astral Plane since time forgotten. Indeed, they had been there far longer than their deal with the Asgardians had existed. Odin and his ilk were not the first so-called 'Gods' they had tricked into hidden slavery.

. They'd had no bodies to attack, to age or become sick. They'd had no senses to strike at, at least in the terms that the average mortal would understand the term. But now, those self-same bodiless spirits, Those Who Watch Above in Shadows felt pain. They felt a mind-ripping agony, a searing of their spiritual being.

The Shadows scattered, and as they did, the burning agony faded slightly, allowing them to once again think. Gathering their collective willpower, the Shadows halted all attempts to fight their way through the flaggin telepaths, halted even aiding their precious tether Surtur against Fenrir with their illusions. What did those separate battles matter now that their very realm had been invaded?

OOOOOOO

In their tent at the center of camp, Charles and Betsy were hanging on by a thread, their defenses on the Astral Plane crumbling. For all his age and power, even Charles could be worn down by constant pressure. But then, just as Betsy teetered off the edge into unconsciousness, the Shadow's attacks… completely disappeared.

They did not slowly ebb away, waiting to rebuild their strength for another assault. No, it was a sudden, full retreat. For the first time since the Shadows had become aware of the expeditionary force in Yggdrasil's boughs, Charles felt his mind and powers no longer under any kind of attack.

Utterly flabbergasted, the professor checked several times, but there wasn't even the faintest touch of the Shadows on the Astral Plane any longer.

His eyes snapping open, Charles tried to speak, but found his throat far too dry despite the fact he could still feel and taste the blood that leaked from his mouth. It took him a moment to release his grip on his wheelchair enough to reach for a nearby glass of water. He took a long drought before shouting at the top of his lungs, his hoarse words becoming clearer as he went. "The—the Shadows! The Shadows are gone! They've pulled back entirely!"

"Why do I get the impression I should be saying something like in that Transformer's movie? Potter did it, he turned the tide?" Husk quipped, from where she and Amara had raced along the wall away from the others to help defend another section.

"Probably because it's true. Now help out with those stone lungs of yours, if we can get Freya and the others to wake up our forces, we can turn this fight around too!" Amara ordered.

OOOOOOO

Harry grinned viciously at the Shadow creatures formed into wraith-like individuals reminding him very strongly of Dementors in appearance, or perhaps mutated lethifolds. They were vaguely humanoid in shape, their forms below the 'belt' becoming more ephemeral as it descended to their absent feed. To a one they shared the trait of weilding wide, clawed hands of condensed darkness, the limbs coming out of what strangely looked like long, shadowy wizard-style cloaks, complete with hoods. None of the Shadows made the effort to form faces. Perhaps they couldn't remember what they'd looked like in life?

And then they charged forward, clawing at Harry's astral form with all the fury of a mob.

Harry in turn was clad in the blazing energy of his Patronum, coating himself in blazing light. For a moment, it was a clash of opposites. The dark energy of the Shadows tore at Harry from all sides, trying to injure, to kill, to drive him away. While many of the Shadows' claws glanced off his shining armor, a fair number cut into his glowing form. Where the darkness got through, jolts of pain shot through Harry, forcibly reminding him of the times he had been subjected to the Crucio.

The Shadows were fast as well, able to dodge his counters with ease. And as Harry missed one, others would attack from every angle. "GRRAAAHHH!" Harry howled in pain, lashing out in every direction, adding his magical might to the battle. But to his shock, his spells, simple spells like the Reducto and the Protego, didn't work. They didn't fizzle out as if suppressed, or appear but do nothing like against Balder, they simply didn't appear at all.

Despite Harry's concentration, his magic, his main arsenal against any foe, failed him. Taking advantage of their foe's surprise, several Shadows sliced into him from every side. "FUCK!"

As the Shadows continued to close in, and Harry's original Patronus spell began to fail, he knew he didn't have time to contemplate why his spells were failing. Patronus alone it is then.

Perhaps it was because the Patronus spell didn't just produce a material form, but it also had a psychic component, the Patronus did, very obviously, work here, and it hurt the Shadows something fierce. The spell was only supposed to create an aura of good feelings and happiness, not just create an energy form in the material world. Another way to say it is that it weaponizes positive emotions, condensing the caster's selected memories of happiness, joy, excitement, etc. to the point it created light. So…

Harry grimaced as he ducked away from another claw seeking his eyes, trying to complete his thought. So was it the light or the positive emotions that hurt them? No… he realized, shaking his head. It wasn't just light or emotions. The fact is that the Partonus is an extension of-"UGGH!" Harry snarled as several blows shredded his astral body, pain lancing into him. The attack nearly caused his astral self to come apart for a moment, so sharp and widespread was the pain.

But Harry held it together, and moment later, his astral self began to glow brighter, the Shadows skittering away in mass bar one, whose clawed hand had been caught in Harry's chest due to how deeply it had penetrated. The light Harry projected also seemed to cause the Shadow entities pain, and he grinned toothily. If you're weaponizing emotions, that's just a different way of saying you're weaponizing your willpower. So, willpower made manifest then? I can work with that.

As the other Shadows watched in horror, Harry's light pulsed, overcoming the Shadow impaling him. The entity let out a psionic scream of fear and torment and then, the Shadow disintegrated, leaving Harry's astral self in a new form as the light dimmed ever so slightly. Having used the existing template of the Praetorian-style Patronus, Harry had clad himself in new armor much like the Praetorian knights he had used to clear Camelot of the Dementors, complete with a sword designed to look like the sword of Gryffindor.

"Now, let's see which of our wills is stronger, ya ruddy cocks!" With that, Harry struck. The Shadows retreated before him like dust before a fan, even as they got over their shock at seeing one of their member reduced to the point of losing form. Realizing just what was at stake now, the remaining Shadows began to attack once more.

But now, with his greater understanding of the nature of this realm and what could hurt his enemy, the battle became that of will versus will. Every attack, every strike, became a question; which was stronger, the light or the dark. And as Hela had said, Harry had willpower to spare.

But this assault on the representation of the physical wasn't all the tricks the Shadows had up their non-existent sleeves. Here in their own realm, the Shadows' ability to attack him was severely limited, as they couldn't get through his mental defenses, to take control of his mind, they were still able to create various illusions pulled from the previous attempt to attack Harry's mind via twisted memories of his past.

Around Harry the images of his dead friends from his past life appeared. Neville. Hermione. Fred and George and Luna and all the rest of them appeared, screaming bloody murder about how he had left them to die, about how he should have died with them.

"You left me behind Harry! You said you loved me, but then let me go home with no protection! You don't deserve to be happy when I died tortured in the worst way possible!" The phantasm of Hermione shrieked like a banshee, taking some of Harry's guilt and a thought he had wrestled with several times and turning them into a weapon once more.

"You led us into battle mate, you led us to our deaths. Why should you get to live when none of us will ever get the chance thanks to you?!" Neville and several others demanded, damning him with every word.

Meanwhile, the Shadows continued swiping at him with their claws, forcing Harry on the defensive as the voices of his dead friends hammered into him. However, this type of attack was one Harry that had dealt with before, and no matter how much it hurt, he knew he could push passed them, slicing and battering the Shadows aside. Every time he managed to hit one he could feel his 'blade' cut into something, the Shadow in question shrieking as light overcame its form. It was incredibly obvious that pain was so foreign to them even the potential for it practically paralyzed the Shadows, their movements becoming more forced and unnatural as more of their number were wounded.

Then, somehow, came the memories of what Harry had ordered done to the Shi'ar Empire. Perhaps the Shadows had pulled them from the thoughts of The Thing or the others who'd been involved. Perhaps Harry's astral projection carried memories as well as his willpower. Regardless, the Shadows must have realized that bringing out his old friends to condemn Harry hadn't worked. Instead, they tried to break his will by pointing out that he was no better than them or the Shi'ar government he had consigned to destruction. They whispered that he was only interested in growing his own power, building his own empire.

But once more, such a tactic didn't work. Although Harry had shed a few tears for the friends he'd never be able to see again, he had moved on, leaving behind his guilt and racking grief. And while a part of Harry was still guilt-ridden about what he had done to the Shi'ar, What he, Ororo, and the others had helped to set up afterward with Corsair and the Starjammers would help mitigate the Shi'ar tragedy tremendously. Even now, Harry knew that the decision had been necessary. Earth had too many enemies to miss the chance to remove one.

"This is all you are illusions and trickery," Harry said softly, shaking his head even as his voice rose with every word. "All you have ever been. You are shadows, illusions, falsehoods, trickery, and mind games. You are nothing real!" Harry bellowed. Like a detonating bomb, the Shadows were flung away, unable to touch his astral representation any longer. "And it is time to do away with you!"

With that, Harry went on the offensice. The light of his astral self became brighter, his presence a small star in the strange, sub-dimension. He lashed out with his sowrd, cutting at every Shadow entity within reach.

The Shadows tried to strike back, but every time, just like before, it became a matter of which side had the willpower to break the defense of the other. Their touch might've caused Harry intense pain, and he really wasn't looking forward to seeing how much of that agony was being carried over into his real body, but it didn't break him as his blade did the Shadows. The instant they felt the pain of his sword's edge, the Shadow in question lost any desire to continue the contest but was unable to get away. Each and every one simply couldn't think when in agony, and thus the contest became one-sided.

Soon, Harry was cutting them away one from one another, culling each of them from the herd. The wraith-like forms of the Shadows could only take so much before they exploded or sliced apart. There were attempts to focus through the mind-numbing pain, to try and concentrate, through Harry's assault, but to no avail. It was too much, too unfamiliar and all encompassing, and in the end Harry's strength of will was just too great for them to overcome. All they could do was suffer as they clung to existence. It was similar to a cloud formation, one that that, even if dispersed, would linger on in remnants.

But no longer could the Shadows be called entities in any fashion. No longer could they constitute themselves out of their darkness. No longer could they even form thoughts. Harry had torn asunder everything that had made the Shadows able to think or feel, cutting them into ever smaller pieces. And as Harry grimly kept up his work, even those pieces faded into nothing. The small sub-dimension soon began to come apart at the seams, the last of the combined power and will of Those Who Watch Above in Shadow failing in the face of their utter defeat. All that was left to the powerless, twisted souls that had been the Shadows was pain and the agony of being creatures that had once been gods to gods, torn down by a single semi-mortal human being.

OOOOOOO

From the first moment Harry attacked the Shadows in their own sub-dimension, he was already making a difference elsewhere. With their complete focus on survival and destroying their adversary, none of the Shadows' attention was left to to keeping their various machinations going elsewhere.

For example, the illusions that had worked to subvert Skadi, Steve, and even Fenrir's minds ended abruptly, leaving Malekith and Surtur to their own devices.

As the extra-dimensional battle began, Surtur had just pinned Fenrir. The two combatants had fought for what felt like hours, and in that time the Shadows had finally discovered a mixture of visual and olfactory tricks that could momentarily confuse the dread wolf, thanks in large part to Surtur's odor being much easier to duplicate than that of a flesh and bone individual. For just a moment Fenrir had been vulnerable, freezing in indecision, sure he'd suddenly been surrounded by multiple jotun.

Surtur had then used his mastery of earth magic to lock down Fenrir's hindquarters, get behind him, pinning the massive wolf on his side using his own impressive weight. Finally in a position of power over his foe, the Jotun King had then begun stabbing him with Gungnir, but Fenrir's fur and hide had still proven proof against such an assault.

As the bladed head of Gungnir had come down over and over again, it became obvious that Fenrir's durability was slowly being overcome. Despite Fenrir's desperate gyrations, Surtur was working into a position to stab Fenrir through the mouth or eyes. Even the dread wolf's nigh unbeatable magical resistance and durability could have survived such an attack on such vulnerable targets.

And then Surtur's had mind filled with the shrieks of his patrons. So closely linked were they to their tethers at that point that the Shadows' sudden agony even traveled through their link to their servants. The king of Muspellheim had reeled, a majority of his weight still pressing down on Fenrir even as his hands shot to his head, grabbing at his skull as he howled at the pain of his lords and masters, the sheer agony threatening to drive him insane.

Now, as Fenrir tried to break free of the weight on his back and the half-formed earth prison keeping him bound him, Dani, who had long since woken up, decided to act. Her previous wounds had not healed by any means, of course, and by now she even added more to the tune of what felt like several additional broken bones. Indeed, she knew that were it not for her mangled power armor, she might well have died at this point due to blood loss alone. But some of the features of that same armor were still keeping her alive, even if its vaunted emergency array had somehow been broken by Fenrir's drool, and she had been able to understand what was going on.

As she felt her side and back smack into the ground again, Dani concentrated for a brief moment, forcefully pushing through the haze of pain that muddled her vision and thoughts. In her hands, the unbroken rope that tied her to the Fenrir's back shifted into a spear, and she immediately fell off Fenrir's back, rolling down the hill Surtur had raised in an effort to keep Fenrir pinned.

The various pains she felt flared into unified agony at the jarring motion and Dani tried to clench her jaw tight, but in the end she couldn't fight it, and a long squeal of pain came out as she rolled. Fenrir's massive head to snapp towards her, some of his battle lust fading at seeing his long slumbering passenger awake. Locking eyes with the dread wolf, Dani pushed through her pain to speak. "Aaaaa! Gg, gguh… The, the spear. Fenrir, the spear. Get it out of his hands! It's the only th, the only thing he has th, th, that can hurt you!"

By then, Fenrir's desperate scramblings had broken enough of his half-formed prison that it was more of an earthen blanket than anything else. Before Surtur could even try and push through the agony of his gods, Fenrir bucked hard, throwing Surtur off his side. The giant jotun cried out as he flipped back, hit the ground, and rolled away like a ragdoll. Each time he crashed back into the ground caused a minor earthquake, and Dani couldn't help but scream again as the erratic movements of the earth hurled her off her feet and to the ground.

As Surtur tumbled, the combination of the agony of his masters, his own wounds, and the force of his tumbling caused his right hand to finally go limp, releasing Gungnir from his grip. The mighty spear, loose for the first time in millennium, clattered and rolled away into a nearby ditch the various battles of the day had torn out of the ground nearby.

Nearly insensate from the torture of her injuries, Dani just barely managed to keep her senses, and her grip on Sigyn's Gift, which had shifted into a small knife, thankfully. Now she watched as Surtur came back to himself somewhat, at least enough to dodge to the side of Fenrir's charge by shifting his body into playdough, the wolf barreling through a hole made by Surtur. She grit her teeth in frustration. Even with as much damage as the Jotun King had taken, he was still keeping up with Fenrir.

That's when she realized that his latest transformation had put Surtur's head directly over where she lay, Quickly checking, Dani his hands were well out of position. In an instant, Dani moved. Gathering what remained of her strength, Sigyn's Gift responded to her will and shifted into a javelin, which she hurled upward with all her might. "RRRRAAAAAHHH! FLYYY!"

The javelin flew straight as an arrow, stabbing into Surtur's eye, overcoming the Jotun King's limited durability there into the overlarge orb.

"ARGH!" Surtur screamed, real pain from his own body finally washing away the last vestiges of the Shadows' pain-filled shrieks from this mind. Instinctively, he lashed out, his foot catching Dani and kicking her away. She sailed through the air before smashing side-first into a nearby tree of glass and metal. Momentum abruptly cut, she slumped down to the ground, as limp as a marionette with its strings cut.

Lost in his agony, and half blinded, Surtur didn't see Fenrir leaping at him once more. He did, however, feel Fenrir's jaws as they clenched around his throat.

Instead of flailing in panic, the Jotun King snarled and wrapped his large arms around the wolf, squeezing hard. He might've thought to use magic, but he couldn't concentrate through his mounting injuries enough to use magic. Beyond his now ruined eye, the wounds Harry had caused had opened up once more, weeping lava. Fenrir's claws occasionally caught on them as well, ripping them open further.

The two titans rolled and grappled, tossed and turned. Again , the whole dimension of Svartalfheim shook around them as the fight continued. Neither foe would give their adversary an inch, Fenrir struggling to close his jaws and tear open Surtur's throat while Surtur put every drop of strength he had left into frantically crushing Fenrir's spine between his arms. All the while, his conscious mind was rapidly tearing itself apart under the weight of the Shadows' pain. The torturous sensation wasn't like his own body's pain, which he could push through. No, the shrieks and phantom cuts and burning wounds transmitted directly into his mind could not be ignored, every one of them just as real and painful as the last.

in Svartalfheim the impact of Harry's direct assault on the Shadows might not have had as direct an impact close by, but it was still certainly felt.

The mental domination imposed upon Skadi, which had covered her perception of the world around her, faded just as she and Malekith were about finish Steve off. The great huntress blinked, freezing for a moment, desperately wondering which was real for a moment, what she saw now or what she'd just been seeing for the last however long. Instantly, Steve took advantage of such hesitancy, taking the goddess's feet out from under her before shield charging an equally flatfooted Malekith.

The dark elf king recovered quickly though and dodged just enough that the charge didn't catch him clean. It still did knock him aside, and Steve was forced to turn to keep him in eyesight, grimacing as his wounded leg took his weight for a moment. Hunkering down now that the fight was, at best, back to one-on-one, he lashed out with his shield once more.

On the ground, Skadi shook her head again, her mind heaving to reconcile the sudden shift in perception. What was real? Was it now? Or what had been? Nearby, she heard Surtur's cry in anguish. Turning her head in that direction, she yelped as she, the spangled human, and Malekith were nearly hurled into the air as the ground suddenly heaved beneath them.

When the rumbling ceased and Huntress was able to turn back to the closer fight, Skadi saw the shield-wielding human and the dark elf king again trade blows. Malekith was trying to get an attack spell past the human's defense with his off hand with little success, despite the wound to the human's thigh and lower leg. Meanwhile, the human's own offense was thwarted by the very need to defend himself from his opponent's magic. Just then, Malekith tried to use his multiplication trick, but it failed as the human kicked up gravel off the ground and into the illusions before they could even settle or attempt to spread out. The one the stones hit was obviously the real one, and the battle would continue.

But it was the sight of the human's wounds that decided it for her. Neither had been there a moment ago, but Skadi could remember those injuries had existed when she had first joined the fight. Illusions! The Shadows must have been playing with my mind and senses once more. Blast them to Hel! I don't know why, but their influence is gone now!

With that thought she hopped to her feet and swung her spear at Malekith. The blow nearly caught him in the side of the neck, but at the last second he caught sight of it out of the corner of his eye and dodged just enough so that she only grazed him. In response, he lashed out with an attack spell which Skadi easily blocked with that selfsame spear, cutting through the cutting curse launched at her. "My sight is true once more! You will not escape me this time dark one!"

"We shall see," Malekith taunted even as he dodged a blow from Steve and leapt away to land on a nearby boulder. Using the momentary space, he, lashed out with spells at both his opponents. Without a word between them, Steve and Skadi separated, coming at their shared foe from two different directions at once. Cursing, Malekith wheeled back and frantically looked around for a way out. His continuous use of magic was beginning to tire him, and he hadn't exactly been fresh when they had arrived here in the first place. Worryingly, there was no help from the Shadows this time, and he already knew there would be no help from Surtur. For the first time since this war began, Malekith was on his own, a feeling that sent a shiver down his spine even as his opponents closed.

OOOOOOO

Far away, across a dimensional gap and in the vast ocean of Asgard, Jörmungandr had been trying desperately to ignore the pain that the stone-like human was causing him. And perhaps, if that pain had remained the only discomfort to deal with, the serpent might well have succeeded. After all, even a dullard knew it was better to suffer through a stomach ulcer to eventually shit out one annoying insect than deal with several more insects that had proven they could truly cause harm.

But it was not to be. Jörmungandr was instantly impacted by Harry's distant assault on the Shadows. in agony, and their shrieking reverberated in the serpent's mind, and the pain reverberated there, the pain of those who'd never considered the idea they'd ever feel such horrible sensations. It was too much, too much, and it was all thrust into Jörmungandr's mind like so many daggers of agony.

In an act of karma, the screams of the Shadows, the same Masters that their largest tether had willingly pledged to, slowly drove their servant mad. Jörmungandr couldn't stop nor block the Shadows out, and their screams never ceased. The sound alone drove out any thought or instinct of self-preservation.

Soon enough, Jörmungandr's vast bulk burst out of the ocean like an island chain rising up out of the waves. This was accompanied by involuntary thrashing, the strength of which caused numerous tsunami-level waves to ripple out from where the World Serpent rose to bellow a cry of agony.

It was so loud that Strange was forced to use his magic to block out all sound around himself and the rest of Team Fishermen. Even Þór was grateful for the spell that snapped into place, protecting the hearing of all present.

Two hours rest might not have been much, but Thunderbird, Thundra, and the others bar Xian and Emma Steed—who'd collapsed some moments ago—felt as if they were fully battle-ready. And as Jörmungandr finally burst out of the ocean once more, they were ready, having followed the serpent thanks to the magic carpet tracking Ben.

Now, magic bolts lashed out en masse as Stephen called out a series of large spells he had prepared for this type of moment. "By the Blood of the All-seeing, be bound in place, unable to move without my leave!"

These spells couldn't keep Jörmungandr entirely still; the World Serpent was simply too monstrously huge and too magically resistant for that. They could, however, keep the beast on the surface. But, for some reason unknown to the sorcerer, Jörmungandr didn't even acknowledge his spells. Instead, there was just more shrieking, no longer even coherent words.

"Something seems to have happened," Storm mused as she called lightning to come crashing down, aiming for areas of Jörmungandr's body that had already been the most brutalized by the others.

"Indeed, it seems as if what little mind the monster had previously has fled," Stephen answered, sending down more spells, now also aiming for weak points. There were bowel-exploding curses, curses to freeze the blood, even curses to implode the target area in the mix. Most of them wouldn't take, but if even one out of every ten hit a previously weakened area, it was energy well spent to the sorcerer. "I wonder why?"

"I rather suspect that my love has had a hand in whatever this is," Storm said before beginning to laugh as Þór and the others closed in.

The Thunderer led the way, his mighty hammer crashing into the side of Jörmungandr's massive head, shattering several teeth the length of three men tall. Now completely maddened by the Shadow's demise, Jörmungandr's retaliatory bite missed by half a mile, the dexterity and control that had made it so deadly for Team Fishermen to attack previously entirely gone. Such was the complete collapse of the serpent's mind that there wasn't even notice of Rogue, Thunderbird, and Thundra landing on individual lengths of broken scales. The three dug in with gusto, tearing out bloody, dripping chunks of tender skin that had been long hidden underneath said scales.

"Ugh, this is no place for a man with multiple PhDs," Hulk grumbled as he landed next to Thundra.

"Shut up, Brain-boy and start tearing," the extra-temporal woman warrior shot back.

The only enemy that Jörmungandr seemed capable of recognizing was Þór, who led a merry chase as the others did their damage. Eventually, after ripping and tearing for so long the motions were becoming ingrained in Team Fisherman, when the sun rose high in the sky, the damage done finally began to pile up. The team wasn't just carving out flesh at that point, they were ripping out nerves and shattering bone. Jörmungandr screamed through it all, giving voice to the agony of the Masters that had broken the mind of their own servant in their death throes.

Then Rogue broke through a particularly tough piece of fleshy muscle and reached a vertebrae. Once she realized what exactly she was looking at, she reached with all of her stolen strength and tore into it. At first, the bone only cracked. As she kept pulling and tugging, however, there came a sudden snap. Chunks of the vertebrae broke off, taking yards of spinal cord with them as Rogue fell back at the abrupt loss of resistance. Almost at once, Jörmungandr seized, completely coming to an unnatural stillness. A second later, the World Serpent went limp, head free falling and crashing down into the ocean.

Shocked but thinking quickly, Ororo hastily used her mutant powers to freeze the ocean directly underneath them all before Jörmungandr could disappear down into the waves lost forever. Between her own power and Stephen's, the two magic users swiftly created harpoons and ropes. Þór and the others stabbed the constructs into the giant serpent and pulled Jörmungandr's head and upper length up and out of the ocean as much as they could. No one was willing to take the chance that whatever malaise was affecting Jörmungandr's mind would disappear or that even such horrible wounds might eventually heal given time. After all, many of the initial injuries they had created at the start of their hunt had healed entirely by this point. Even close to death, the monsterous Ouroboros still had insane levels of endurance and stamina.

Therefore it was with grim, solemn faces that Team Fishermen reeled in their catch, slowly heading back to the shoreline where the battle had begun. The oceans crept higher as they hauled their prize along, but Storm left the others to it. Instead, she rose into the sky alone, calling upon her mutant powers to mend the insane amount of damage she had caused to Utgard's ecosphere by keeping the ocean frozen as long as she had.

Just as they reached the shoreline, tired and worn and not a little wounded, there came a tremendous explosion of water and blood from farther down Jörmungandr's immense body. Stephen moved to investigate, spells at the ready, and found Ben Grimm had punched his way out of the beast, blood and guts covering him from head to toe so thickly that even the ocean's waves couldn't wipe it all away before he surfaced.

Stephen wordlessly used a spell to levitate Ben up into the air, one eyebrow rising as he saw the state of the stony man. "Excuse me a moment, Ben."

"What for, Doc?"

Ben's question was followed by a yelp as Stephen gestured down with his extended fingers, directing the spell keeping Ben aloft down into the waters again. "You desperately need a bath my friend."

The sight of Ben's large form being dunked over and over again, the man sputtering and cursing indignantly the entire time, caused Thunderbird and Thundra to break out in wild laughter. Even Þór let out a hearty guffaw, shaking his head as the three of them continued to pull the now moaning Jörmungandr up onto solid ground. Eventually, Ben was cleaned enough for Stephen's liking. The Sorcerer Supreme then raised his freshened up friend into the air to float beside him until his magic carpet, which had dutifully followed him for so long, dove down underneath him.

Ben glared over at Stephen as they slowly descended, but his stink eye subsided as Thundra flew up to sit beside him, dropping the rope connected to the harpoon that she had been previously pulling. She leaned against his side, staring down at the incredible monster they had just defeated. The fighting now over, all that was left was the execution. "The women of my home world will never believe such a monstrous creature existed, let alone that we killed it."

That execution Þór saw to right then, marching up the monster's quivering snout to a point high up between bloodshot eyes. Even now, Jörmungandr was still keening, mind broken from the reverberations of the Shadows' own deaths, or at least, as far as they could die anyway. Some vestige of them would still cling to existence until the tether that was Loki was dealt with. Until then, all that existed now were simply whispers on the wind, dark memories quickly forgotten.

Looking into Jörmungandr's eyes, Þór saw that madness reflected there and shook his head slowly. "Bestial hunger you had cousin, and bestial hunger you allowed to control your actions. A maddened beast you have but become now. I could wish you could hear me as I mete out justice to thee, but whatever has happened to you has robbed me of that joy. So be it. Still, I will finish you."

With that said, Þór brought Mjolnir down, shattering the scales over Jörmungandr's forehead with each strike. The power of the blows held so much of Þór's power that a sonic boom nearly knocked the Hulk off his feet, the others clapping their hands to their ears. It took several dozen strikes, and Þór was quickly just as drenched in blood and guts as Ben had been mere moments ago, but eventually, he reached Jörmungandr's thick skull. Another dozen strikes were needed to crack the stone-like dome of bone, but finally, Mjolnir smashed through and into the brain hidden inside. After so much death and destruction, Jörmungandr knew no more.

For a moment, as the pitiful creature's final convulsions rocked underneath his feet, Þór looked down at his hammer, lost in thought. When even those died down, he then looked up at the others, true allies all. With the battle over, he was at a loss as to what to do. "What now?"

"Bathe!" Came the echoed cry from every throat.

Þór began to laugh, long and loud. Such humor did much to begin shaking off the immeasurable grief at what he now knew he'd lost. He and his folk were still alive, and if Ororo was right, perhaps they too were soon to be free. If so, the future was once more wide open for his people, and he longed to grab it with both hands. Or perhaps one hand? I must needs speak to the Lady Sif, after all.

OOOOOOO

At Charles's shout, Freya took advantage in an instant, waking the ODM troopers and several of her own folk while the Einherjar, no longer under the control of the Shadows, turned on the jotun in their midst. The battle was close and horrible for a time, but the numbers of jotun present were not enough to sustain any combat for long. Once the fighting there died out, Freya sent a force of ODMs and Dr. Druid toward the dimensional border with Svartalfheim on the remaining magic carpets. She figured that between the assault force and Danielle and Skadi, the two huntresses were more likely to need aid than Team Fishermen.

OOOOOOO

It was the battlefield in Svartalfheim which was the last to fall silent.

The battle of the two titans ended in a loud, gurgling cry as Fenrir at last overcame Surtur's durability, tearing his throat out. The Jotun King's bear hug had broken a rib or two. Unable to concentrate enough to use magic, and without the aid of the Shadows, or Gungnir, Surtur had been forced to rely on waning physical strength alone.

Meanwhile, Malekith, also bereft of the help of his benefactors, now battered and exhausted, found himself similarly overwhelmed by the seemingly tireless red, white, and blue-spangled human and Skadi. The Huntress's spear could block or shatter any spell sent her way, just as the human's shield seemed able to survive any of the attack spells sent his way. That was not an easy proposition, as both his opponents were extremely quick and easily able to dodge or avoid any spells he tried to use on the surrounding area for his benefit.

Worse, Skadi had proven to be utterly immune to Malekith's illusions and trickery. When the dark elf king had caught the human with the same sound-based deception spell he had caught the red shielded one in previously, Skadi had managed to block his follow up attempts to stick the human from behind. Similarly, the human seemed able to discern which of his body doubles were leaving actual footsteps if he tried to escape, thanks in large part to how broken the ground was around them now.

Eventually, simple physical exhaustion caused Malekith to make a mistake. In an effort to finally get around Skadi's defenses he overextended and couldn't quite retreat in time to avoid the human's blow.

The dark elf king's collarbone shattered as Captain America's shield took him in the side of the neck. Malekith's sword dropped, his hand suddenly numb and nerveless. Before he could try anything else, Skadi ran him through, her spear tip taking him high up in his chest.

Malekith glared at the Vanir goddess for a few moments, then the light of life left his eyes, and he slumped forward. Skadi stepped backward, letting the corpse fall to the ground unceremoniously. She spat on freshly dead dark elf before looking up as a shadow loomed over them.

Steve was already staring upwards, readying his shield as he glared at Fenrir despite feeling more exhausted than the super-soldier had ever felt in this second life of his. Still nothing like the bad days of the war, but God as my witness it is close. "Well, Fenrir? You fought Surtur and won. Was that enough for one day, or are you going to pick a fight with us too?"

The dread wolf's sides were heaving, his muzzle flaring as he pulling in large gulps of air. One of his legs didn't want to work quite right, and one eye wouldn't stay open, caked as it was with blood, although it was Surtur's magma-like blood rather than his own. Despite having torn Surtur's throat out moments ago, his fangs and mouth seemed uninjured. Truly, Skadi thought, this beast was well beyond her and her human ally's ability to fight.

Luckily, Fenrir didn't seem to be in any hurry to attack either of them, though he didn't exactly seem happy to see Skadi. "… I do not take with the Asgardians. I have genuine grievances with them. But Danielle Moonstar, she broke my hunger madness. She called me friend. For her, I will stay my fangs. This time."

"Good. I have interest in that lass too." Skadi raced over to where Danielle had been flung by Surtur's hasty kick. She knelt down beside the girl, checking her vitals as she motioned Fenrir to come closer. "Unless any of us have a means of reaching across the dimensions to call for aid, you will have to carry her again wolf. And… I suppose myself and the man with the shield as well. I do not think either of us can get across the dimensional gap on their own. Not from this direction at least."

Grumbling, Fenrir followed, but thankfully for his sensibilities, help was already on the way.

The Ragnarök War was over, and at last the allies had emerged victorious.

OOOOOOO

Danielle opened her eyes and found herself staring up into a woman's face. It was the face of a woman somewhere around her age, or maybe in her late 20s? Somewhere around there.

Regardless, Danielle found herself unable to look away, not even to blink. Oh no, she's sexy! Was the somewhat bleary thought that went through her mind as she stared at this strange, new face.

That face had high, thin cheekbones, the skin that of a woman who spent a lot of time outside, although she had no crow's feet around her eyes. The face was marked instead with blue whorls around the woman's left eye and three blue claw marks that ran down her other cheek, with pouty lips currently set into a beautiful smile.

That smile caused Dani's heartbeat to race while hawk-like eyes gazed into her own. Only now did she see that the entirety of her face was framed by dark black hair interspersed with white streaks here and there. Instead of age, the streaks caused the woman to appear all the more striking, much like Ororo's hair did the African woman.

A featherlight touch against her cheek caused Danielle's eyes to look down slightly, seeing one of the woman's fingers tracing her cheek before looking back up at the woman, she finally spoke. "Well done, young huntress! Not just in this hunt either, but in your total dealings with Fenrir and before. Your Jarl and friends have all been singing your praises since we returned victorious. Though I acknowledge that Freya might have some claim upon you, I will fight even my queen for your worship!"

Danielle found herself blushing more with each word than she ever had since she'd had her first crush. Desperately, she stammered something, causing the woman, who she now realized could only be Skadi, goddess of hunters and skiing, to laugh as she pulled away, shaking her head. "Calmly, young huntress. Calmly now, my Dani!"

Despite knowing that the 'my' bit of that sentence probably had more to do with the goddess's previous comment about fighting queen Freya for her worship, Dani could not stop a shiver from racing down her still somewhat exhausted body. As she shifted this way and that in embarrassment, she noticed due to an absence of pain that the wounds she had taken during the campaign were now gone.

That could only mean one thing. Despite still being embarrassed and her wildly unhelpful horny thoughts, Danielle concentrated on that concept to the utmost. We won. We really won! But… at what cost? "How, h-how is everyone? If we didn't win, I wouldn't be here, but what did it cost us?"

This won her another smile of approval from the goddess leaning over her, and Dani found the woman's arms soon sliding around her slightly, lifting her up and pushing her back to sit up. Skadi turned her head to shout over her shoulder that Danielle was awake before turning back. "Yes, we won. You won your battle, and Jarl Potter found the means to rout the Shadows. Whatever they once were, they are gone now thanks to him. And thanks to you, we did not even have to face Fenrir in this war. Jörmungandr also was dealt with by you humans for the most part. Your Jarl's plans worked there far better than at any other point it seems, and Fenrir killed Surtur in a fitting twist of fate."

Danielle's eyes widened. "I… I remember that, I think. I… Did I hurl a spear at his eye?"

Skadi smiled even wider, although she was interrupted from answering as a massive snout poked its way into the tent. Hela's voice filtered in from outside, her volume alone making clear she was shouting, "Let the poor girl be Fenrir! She will go hunting with you soon enough, I'm sure!"

A moment later, Harry Potter pushed his way in and, with a gesture and a slight flash of magic, rolled up a portion of the tent to allow Danielle to see past him and Fenrir's bulk both. She immediately saw that her friends had been waiting for her outside. She smiled at her leader, who smiled back until he brought his hand down in a chop to the top of her head. It was a very light blow all told but still made Danielle's eyes cross for a moment.

"That was for following through with your own personal plan rather than trying to retreat with everyone else. While I am proud of what you accomplished, please don't try to do something like that again. Remember, there are many people who would be very sad to see you die, all right?" Harry growled, shaking his head.

Even if it could be called an open question if you would truly die permanently here in Asgard given your faith. Still, she came far too damn close to it, and Nikolai did. Her body was more broken than whole when she came back, it's a wonder she lived at all, especially after whatever it was broke her spine.

Unaware of Harry's thoughts, Dani nodded, trying to look sheepish and apologetic. Unfortunately for her, the look did not fit her very well. Still, after only a second of glaring at her, Harry asked solicitously if she was well enough to move. When she answered in the affirmative, he helped her off of the medical cot she'd been laying on and, between them, Harry and Skadi helped her outside, where she was instantly greeted by her friends, especially Fenrir. Harry left them to it after giving Danielle the news that Sigyn's Gift had been slagged beyond repair by Surtur's blood.

Harry stepped back for a moment, watching as Freya arrived at the head of a contingent of several of Valkyrie. The Queen almost instantly kicked off an argument with Skadi as to who would claim Danielle as a follower, and Harry could only shake his head. Leaning against Hela, who leaned back into him, he looked around the camp as he thought on the cost of the war.

Nikolai remained the only death among the Custodes, although it had been a touch and go affair for Husk, Amora, and several of the others. Emma and Jean were both still out, along with Steed, Xian, and even Betsy. All of them would be all right in the end, having since been seen to by Harry and Ororo both, much like the rest of their wounded. Those wounded amongst the Einherjar were to be helped along by the more mundane healing abilities of Amelia and Una as well as their own healers. But all of the telepaths bar Charles were still unconscious, their bodies paying the price for the effort they had put forth.

Thinking on it, Harry swore that all of the telepaths, especially Charles, would be excessively pampered and feted after recovering by the Asgardians and expeditionary force. Without them, everyone knew there would never have been anything close to a victory in the first place.

And without Harry and Storm, the Orbital Drop Marines would have been dealing with hundreds of casualties. As it was, they had still lost ninety-three men between the various battles. In spite of that, the Oh Damns and their leader Falcon had most decidedly proven their mettle here. Harry had already made plans to immensely expand the project over the next few months once they got back to Earth.

For now, though, all that remained was for Odin to be well enough to once more take his throne and make certain that, beyond dealing permanently with the Shadows, Earth would get its due compensation for their efforts in this war. The time for being a hero is over, Harry thought with a mental sigh, as Hela, ignoring the fact that they were in public for once, nuzzled into his side, smiling faintly. That smile grew into a downright grin as her Seidr Man's arm slung over her shoulders. The time for being the king is about to begin...