Xu Wenwu sent his rings into yet another of those alien attackers. He admitted that their lethality was high, yet their defenses were lacking. All around him lay their crumpled forms as he slaughtered them easily enough.
Though he did have to admit that if he weren't able to funnel them into a choke point, he would have struggled if they surrounded him. After all, one shot of their weapons would kill, or at least seriously wound, even him.
And as he looked at the sky outside, he didn't doubt that they had more than enough to surround him and tear him apart with sheer numbers.
Yet, he couldn't pull back. Behind him was hope; behind him lay the corpse of a slumbering dragon, the power to bring back the dead.
The work of extracting them was by no means easy; apparently, the dragon bones were holding up half the fucking city, so removing them would cause it all to collapse. And while he was personally fine with that cost, his ally Kaecilius wasn't willing to risk that.
Apparently, that wasn't the way of Kamar-Taj, and since he did need the sorcerer, he had to take the slow road. Which meant having these aliens killing all the staff currently digging away underground and destroying everything couldn't be allowed.
It wasn't easy getting specialists for this kind of underground digging work, much less getting some who wouldn't speak about their work, people who understood secrecy.
Each one was worth more than their weight in gold, and having these killed would make it near impossible to get new ones. Skilled archaeologists were a tight-knit group; you didn't just fire dozens of them and lose them all, and then expect their colleagues to pick up the same contract.
So he had to keep them safe, something that would be a whole lot easier if Kaecilius was still around, but apparently, he had something else to do.
Honestly, for someone apparently obsessed with bringing his family back, he seemed to be doing a whole lot of other things than focusing on their shared goal. Still, Wenwu couldn't deny that the sorcerer had played a huge role in this and that he was still important.
After all, this elixir of resurrection could only work on those who had just died. And his wife was beyond the limit. Not to mention, he had her cremated.
So, on paper, it should be impossible to bring her back, but magic made it possible; it was difficult, but he had seen the result with his own eyes. His wife, frozen in ice as if she had just breathed her last, or was just sleeping.
He was amazed by the wonder of magic, something he had once dismissed as unworthy of his time. Now he was regretful. If he had spent a few decades learning it back then, wouldn't he have been able to set up protections around his home?
Even if his attempts back when he first encountered it showed he had little talent, so what? While he might not have the same kind of talent as Kaecilius, he had time on his side.
So what if he had to spend years learning what that man picked up in a week? It would still have been easy to master everything given a few centuries of effort.
His jaw tightened.
Regret was a luxury.
One he could not afford.
Because the moment the thought crossed his mind—
SKREEEE—!
A piercing mechanical shriek tore through the sky.
Wenwu pivoted sharply, instincts honed over a thousand years cutting clean through his introspection. A Chitauri scout broke through the windows of the neighboring building, trying to sneak up on him.
And it wasn't alone.
Another wave of them came.
Dozens poured from the sky.
With a snap of his wrist, the Ten Rings shot out, spinning around his forearm before launching forward in a blinding arc of blue-gold light.
CRACK—WHAM!
The first Chitauri was ripped apart mid-air, its body folding around the impact like wet parchment as it slammed into the pavement outside. Sparks skittered across the stone steps leading into the building Wenwu was defending.
But there were more.
A lot more.
They swarmed over the rooftops, vaulted across balconies, crawled over the crumbling masonry like metal locusts, converging on him from every angle. Their weapons hummed, charging with deadly pulses of blue.
Wenwu inhaled once.
Then he moved.
The Rings answered him instantly — streaks of glowing steel orbiting his arms before flying forward like hunting beasts.
BOOM—BOOM—KRAK!
Three Chitauri vanished in flashes of twisted metal.
A fourth dropped from above, aiming its spear-blade for his spine—
but Wenwu spun, Rings whirling around him in a tight cyclone.
CHNK!
The alien was shredded before it even hit the ground.
A trooper on a chariot swooped down, aiming its energy cannon straight at the doorway behind him. Wenwu growled. These things were smart enough to realize that he was defending the building.
Which naturally meant they wanted inside it, to see what he was defending. And the only reason they were going through the door at all was thanks to the enchantments on the building itself, making it too strong for them to break through.
Though that only seemed to make them more eager to figure out what he was protecting in there.
Still, he couldn't allow them in; a single one might be enough to kill dozens of his workers and break expensive equipment.
Unacceptable.
He slammed his fist forward.
Five Rings shot out at once, striking the chariot dead-on and snapping the vehicle in half. The rider spun through the air, screaming, before Wenwu recalled the Rings and hammered all of them downward in a single crushing strike.
The creature hit the pavement hard enough to crater it.
But the real threat wasn't the scattered scouts.
It was the brute.
A massive Chitauri war-beast landed heavily on the street outside, its weight shaking the entire block. Its armor was thicker, layered, and its weapon — an enormous plasma cleaver — burned bright with enough energy to melt through a tank.
It roared, a bass-heavy, deafening bellow that rattled windows.
Wenwu snorted.
"Overcompensation."
The brute charged.
Wenwu braced himself, Rings orbiting him faster and faster until the glow illuminated the entire doorway. The brute's cleaver came down like a meteor—
CLANG—BOOOOM!
Wenwu caught it.
The Rings absorbed the force, shredding the plasma field and sending a shockwave back into the creature's arms. Its armor cracked down the length of its forearm.
Before it could recover—
Wenwu tore the weapon from its grip.
One smooth motion.
One display of overwhelming superiority.
The brute staggered, confused — its two remaining eyes blinking out of sync.
Wenwu's expression did not change.
He spun, Rings trailing behind him like comet tails—
and PUNCHED.
All ten Rings fired at once, each impact rippling through the creature's chest like consecutive thunderclaps.
KRAK—KRAK—KRAK—KRA—BOOOOOOM!
The brute was lifted off its feet, thrown back through a parked car, and embedded into the far wall hard enough to crack its support beams.
Silence fell again.
A few sparks crackled across the walkway.
Alien bodies twitched once, then stilled.
Wenwu straightened, adjusting his coat.
"That was the last of you."
He turned slightly, checking the door behind him—
checking that none of the blasts had penetrated deeper into the building.
Still intact.
Still sealed.
Good.
He was about to step back inside when—
A distant sound rolled across the city.
A hum.
A thunderous crackle.
He frowned, lifting his gaze.
Through the destroyed rooftops, through the clouds of smoke drifting overhead, Wenwu saw a familiar blue glow far above Manhattan—
the shimmering light of the alien rift.
Except now—
It was shrinking.
The edges pulled inward like a receding tide.
The Chitauri ships still trying to pour through struck the collapsing edges and shattered apart, fragments dissolving as the portal swallowed itself whole.
Wenwu exhaled slowly.
"So," he murmured. "Someone up there finally managed it."
One last shiver of cosmic energy rippled through the sky—
then the portal snapped shut with a distant, echoing crack.
Silence followed.
Wenwu let his arms fall to his sides, the Ten Rings dimming as the adrenaline waned. The battle above had ended. For good or for ill.
Barely had he taken one breath of air before a golden portal opened up near him, and Kaecilius stepped out.
"Finally showing up just as everything is over?" Wenwu scoffed as he rolled his shoulders.
"I was busy protecting other areas. I couldn't look away from something like this, not while in the city. It would have looked bad. And honestly, it seems like you handled it fine." The sorcerer said as he looked at the hundreds of dead aliens all around.
"Naturally, I had it handled; it would take more than a few aliens to take on me, who once ruled half the known world." Wenwu didn't allow himself to look weak before his partner, so he pushed down the fatigue.
Kaecilius just nodded and didn't say something right away. "Maybe we should get rid of these?" He motioned to all the dead aliens. "It would raise questions about how they died here, questions we wouldn't want to deal with."
"Can you send them to my stronghold? I think I know a few people who would like to get their hands on alien samples and weapons." Wenwu asked, not willing to just lose these spoils of war.
It had been many years since his enemies last had anything worth claiming, but alien tech… despite him caring little about technology, he did admit that this level of tech would be valuable. Just the flying vehicles alone would likely be the future.
Humanity had always dreamed of flying cars, and he suddenly felt like those weren't far away.
Plus, if new energy weapons became mainstream, then he would need to be ahead of that and ensure that they weren't used against him and his family.
He was done taking chances like that.
"Very well," Kaecilius said, waving his hand to conjure a portal that swept across the area, swallowing up all the signs of battle, before using a few more spells to clean the area entirely.
"Show-off," Wenwu scoffed. "I trust the situation is handled now? And that there is no reason to worry about this situation affecting our plans?"
"It has been handled, and given that the Ancient One is paying attention to this situation, there should be no problems in the future."
(End of chapter)
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