When the dust cleared, only the destroyed throne room remained, lava bubbling across the floor.
"You should spend more time on Earth, Mephisto," Arthur said, his voice vibrating with rage. "Maybe you'd learn how to write a better script. I give that performance a zero."
There was no reply.
Suddenly, a chill ran down his spine. Mephisto was behind him.
A clawed hand reached out, phasing through Arthur's physical defenses, aiming straight for his essence.
"The illusion was just to make space for this," Mephisto whispered in his ear. "Now die."
Soul Rend.
It was the same move that had nearly ended Arthur years ago. A direct attack on the soul itself, bypassing shields and armor.
The claw touched Arthur's back.
FLASH.
Blinding silver light erupted from Arthur's chest. The symbol of the Deathly Hallows burned through his suit, casting a triangular shadow.
Mephisto screamed, snatching his hand back as if he'd touched a hot stove. His fingers smoked, the skin blistered and blackened.
"The Mark!" Mephisto hissed, cradling his injured hand. "I forgot you bore Her brand."
Arthur spun around, righting himself mid-air. He glanced at his glowing chest.
He still didn't fully understand the Deathly Hallows or what they truly represented in this universe. But they had saved his life for the second time now. And apparently made him immune to soul attacks.
"Nice try," Arthur said, checking his HUD. Twenty minutes remaining. "But it looks like your cheap shots won't work."
Mephisto cradled his burned hand, eyes blazing with hatred. All playfulness was gone.
"Then I'll simply destroy your body instead."
—
The demon grew.
Twenty feet. Thirty. Forty.
His form split as he expanded. One becoming two, two becoming four, four becoming eight. Eight massive avatars, each radiating the full power of a Hell Lord.
They attacked from every direction.
Mephisto was done playing. Arthur knew it was time to stop holding back.
The purple crystal embedded in his suit flared to life.
Purple light bled into the silver aura.
He met the first Mephisto's fist with his own.
BOOM.
The collision sent shockwaves rippling through Hell itself. The demon's arm shattered. Bones breaking, flesh tearing, the avatar being hurled backward by the sheer force of the impact.
Arthur spun to face the second—
A claw raked across his back.
He hadn't seen the third avatar flanking him. The blow sent him spiraling through the air, blood arcing from three deep gashes. Pain flared white-hot across his spine.
But before he could even cry out, purple light pulsed through the wounds. Flesh knit together. Skin sealed over. In the span of a heartbeat, the injury was gone. Instant healing magic.
Arthur caught himself mid-air and thrust his palm forward. A beam of combined Ancient Magic and Power Stone energy punched clean through the second avatar's chest.
The third avatar breathed hellfire.
Arthur answered with Fiendfyre.
His cursed flames met the demon's fire and devoured it, growing larger, hungrier until it consumed the avatar. The third avatar disappeared into a hurricane of white flame.
But another caught Arthur with a point-blank hellfire blast. The flames engulfed him completely, burning through his defenses, searing flesh from bone—
Silver and purple light exploded outward.
Arthur emerged from the inferno, his suit charred but his body already healed. He grabbed the sixth avatar by the face and discharged a concentrated burst of Power Stone energy directly into its skull.
The demon's head vaporized.
Four. Five. Six.
Arthur moved through them like a force of nature. Power Stone-enhanced punches shattered demonic bodies like glass. Beams of energy carved through flesh. The Thunder Dragon joined its sibling, electrocuting and burning anything that got too close.
But Mephisto was learning.
The seventh avatar feinted high, then drove a claw straight through Arthur's stomach.
Arthur looked down at the arm protruding from his abdomen. Blood poured from the wound, black ichor mixing with red.
"Got you," the avatar hissed.
Arthur grabbed the arm with both hands. Purple light blazed.
"No. I've got you."
He discharged the Power Stone's energy directly through the connection. The avatar disintegrated from the inside out, matter breaking down at the atomic level.
The wound in Arthur's stomach sealed shut as if it had never existed.
Eight.
The final avatar stood before him, reforming its siblings through sheer will, drawing them back into a single massive form.
Mephisto stood whole again, panting slightly.
"The Power Stone," the demon gasped. "You're channeling an Infinity Stone directly."
"A piece of one." Arthur's voice carried the harmonics of cosmic power. "Want to see what it can really do?"
He raised both hands.
Power gathered. Ancient Magic and Power Stone energy.
Fiend Supernova.
Two elemental dragons emerged and spiraled together, merging, compressing. Fire met Lightning. Silver met Blue. They coiled into a single point of impossible density.
The Power Stone's energy flooded into the compression.
What emerged was a miniature sun. White-hot plasma pulsing with purple lightning, contained only by Arthur's will. The heat alone vaporized everything within fifty feet. The gravitational distortion warped the space around it.
Mephisto's eyes went wide.
"Wait—"
Arthur threw it.
ERASURE.
The sun didn't explode on impact. It unmade everything it touched. Mephisto's form ceased to exist. The throne room vaporized. A quarter-mile of Hell simply disappeared into white nothingness.
Arthur floated above a glowing, perfectly spherical crater.
Five seconds passed.
Ten.
Then, slowly, Mephisto reformed, pulling himself together from the fabric of the realm itself. He was slower than before, visibly strained.
"Impressive," the demon admitted, genuine respect entering his voice. "Truly impressive."
He raised a hand.
The crater filled in. The palace rebuilt itself from memory. The devastation reversed as if it had never happened.
"But as you can see," Mephisto continued, spreading his arms wide, "you cannot win through destruction. Everything you damage, I restore. Everything you kill, I resurrect."
He smiled, cold and certain. "This is my realm, Hayes. I am this realm."
Arthur's jaw tightened.
The demon was right.
To kill Mephisto for real, he had to destroy the realm itself. But how do you destroy a dimension? It wasn't a planet he could just blow up.
Still, impossible odds had never stopped him before.
Arthur reached for his suit again. The blue crystal flared to life. Blue light erupted, joining the silver and purple.
"The Space Stone?" Mephisto's eyebrow arched, interest flickering across his face. "So that's your secret. Two Infinity Stones."
A low chuckle rumbled from his chest. "No wonder you've grown so powerful so quickly."
"Think what you want," Arthur said coldly, the three colors swirling around him. "But I was breaking through my limits long before I touched these stones."
His aura flared brighter. "They just help me break them faster."
Mephisto's smile widened, clearly amused. "Then why bring out another one? Planning to run away, little sorcerer?"
"No." Arthur's eyes hardened, silver light crackling dangerously around him.
"You said you are this realm." His voice dropped to something lethal. "So I'm going to destroy it."
Mephisto's amusement died instantly. "Then die trying, fool."
Arthur didn't waste breath on a reply. He slashed his hand upward.
A portal tore open directly above Mephisto's head.
But this portal didn't lead to Earth. It led to the surface of a blue supergiant star in the Andromeda galaxy.
The hellscape screamed as stellar fire erupted through the dimensional tear. Plasma at temperatures beyond measurement. Radiation that would sterilize planets. All of it flooding into Hell.
Mephisto was caught in the torrent.
His form ignited. Not hellfire-ignition, true stellar combustion. His very atoms excited beyond containment. He screamed, a sound of genuine agony, as the star's fury consumed him.
Arthur held the portal open for five full seconds.
Then Mephisto's will reasserted itself.
The portal snapped shut, not by Arthur's choice, but by the demon forcing reality to reject the intrusion. The stellar fire vanished. Hell's natural state returned.
Mephisto reformed, gasping.
"You... insane..."
Arthur opened another portal.
This one led to the event horizon of a black hole.
Gravitational forces that would spaghettify a moon reached through, grabbing at everything. Mephisto was pulled toward the tear, his form stretching, distorting, being drawn into the infinite compression of a collapsing star.
Again, the demon screamed. Again, after agonizing seconds, he forced the portal closed.
He reformed further away this time, his regeneration noticeably slower.
"STOP THIS!"
Arthur opened a third portal. To the heart of a neutron star. Radiation and gravity combined into something that would have killed cosmic entities.
Mephisto countered, closing the tear through sheer will.
A fourth portal. To the crushing depths of a gas giant's core.
Closed with a scream of effort.
Each portal was harder for Mephisto to counter. Each one cost him more. Arthur could see it. The demon was being pushed, tested, his control over his realm strained by attacks that didn't play by normal rules.
But the realm kept resetting.
Arthur, refusing to yield, went full power. He opened every portal at once.
The result was catastrophic. Space broke. The ground shattered into a chaotic kaleidoscope of fire, gravity, and void. Arthur had to use the Space Stone just to teleport himself to safety at the edge of the destruction.
From the distance, he watched Hell tear itself apart.
But then, ten seconds later, the tears mended. The fires died. The realm snapped back to normal.
Arthur stared at the restored throne room, sweat dripping down his face. He had thrown stars, black holes, and the power of the cosmos at the demon.
And he was back to square one.