Chapter 42: So... what do we do?, Part 2.
48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W - Point Nemo
With swirls of sparks, portals open above the Pacific Ocean.
Beast girls, James, witches, masters of sorcery, Aragorn, and Jean arrive.
The masters of sorcery use universal energy to construct floating pads and keep themselves above the water level.
The beastkin levitate aided by their telekinesis.
The calm in the water feels foreboding.
From below the water, the calm is interrupted by a root, it bursts out rupturing the superficial tension, and keeps growing until it hits about one mile (1.609km). Then it branches out, followed by leaves until finally a small replica of the World Tree stands.
Gaea comes out of the stalk of the tree and the masters of sorcery show a deferential attitude to her. The beastkin smiled at the sight of their goddess.
Aragorn waves a hand, and a glowing blue cube and two black staves appear.
He closes his hand in a motion and the floating Tesseract is broken into cosmic dust, leaving behind the Space Stone.
He waves once more and a crystalline replica of the Tesseract appears, he concentrates for a second and a flow of blue energy goes from the levitating blue stone to the replica Tesseract.
A few seconds later, a perfect replica of the Tesseract and a glowing stone atop another black staff are left. The replica disappears, going back to take the place of the original.
Yao opens the Eye of Agamoto and holds the green gem floating above her hand.
Aragorn moves the blue gem to Agatha and this one keeps it floating above her hand as well.
Emma floats the amber gem to her and Wanda the purple one.
Jean stands above them, ready to help them recover once they grab the stones.
Aragorn takes his heart out and gives it to the blue girl who just appeared.
"You're on damage control and our plan b, sweet girl."- Aragorn holds her face in his hands and kisses her nose.
"I'm ready, Father. Krakoa is on standby and Spark has the Halo loaded and ready."- Seraph hugged her father and teleported.
This made her the third member of their group who could teleport, different from the usual portalling.
Agatha, Yao, Emma, Wanda, and Jean make a perfect square pyramid with Aragorn and the root in the middle. The sorcerers and the rest of the beastkin make concentric circles to the pyramid.
"We've done this thousands of times in the simulations, all you have to do is hold on for as long as you can."- Agatha speaks loudly.
"Trust in your partners and hold on, that's all."- Yao joins Agatha.
"This will hurt like a bitch!"- Wanda smiled madly at the purple gem.
"Remember, I'll protect your souls, but I might have to step out if the Goblin Force emerges."- Jean said.
"Maybe I can get a full-grown tail out of this."- Emma wondered out loud.
"Good luck, my children."- Gaea portals to Halo.
With a mental command, the four grabbed their gems and incrusted them in the middle of their manubrium.
With winces and soft whimpers, the gems fused with them, and their hair turned flaming and gained the coloring of their respective gem. Their eyes—including sclera—became light orbs of their gem's color. Their skin turns black with a circuitry the color of their stone.
Wanda bore the greatest weight since she held the Power Stone.
'Wanda, how long can you hold it?'- Aragorn asked.
'30 minutes, possibly more with Jean's help.'- Wanda answered telepathically.
'That's enough.'- Aragorn confirmed.
His body lost his nose, scales covered his skin, and his genitalia disappeared. He now stands in digitigrade style, the blade on his tail growing, nails are now claws, and his mouth can now open beyond its previous gape
"Ḏ̵̨̠̜͙̻̖͍͓̐͒̇̓̽ǫ̵̨̟̪̳͎͕̘̖̺́͝ ̴̢̝̬̗̮̔́̄̓̂̍̿͒̏̊͜į̷͓͖͕̟͉͍͝ͅt̶̩͖̝̺̄́̕͝"- {Do it} He says.
With his command, they start.
A multicolored magic circle pulses into existence and grows beneath the root, expanding with the casters serving as junctions of power. A bubble forms around the root, encasing it like a snow globe.
The circle pulses once more, and another bubble forms, this one encasing both Aragorn and the previous bubble.
The smaller globe and Aragorn seem to shrink, and shrink even more as time passes until it's hard to spot them—an optical illusion caused by the expansion of space.
Space is reinforced to allow Aragorn to use more of his powers, isolating the area and leaving the only connection to Earth within the root inside the smaller globe. The barrier around the root is strengthened to prevent the devils summoned from escaping.
The bubbles gain a green luster to them and time speeds up inside the bigger one.
This should turn 30 minutes into almost three years...
Inside the trap space...
Aragorn confirms the shift in the time flow and gets to work.
When they were wondering how to attract the devils into the trap, since they could sense where they were summoned, they decided to summon them on Earth.
To reinforce this feeling they came up with the solution of having one of the roots of the Arbor Mundi sweeten the bait—since the Arbor Mundi carried a heavy scent of Earth (Gaea).
The next problem they had was how to summon the Council, it's not like it was impossible to summon one Mephisto—the Mephisto of this universe—but what about the rest?
To this problem, Aragorn found the solution in the way that the Council uses to communicate with the other multiversal counterparts of Mephistos.
Mephistopheles are very interesting beings, they are pseudo-multiversal beings. They have a connection between themselves, a form of communication, and a shared existence, that's how they found each other.
So Aragorn thought, 'Why not use this connection to summon them all?', after all, isn't this pretty much what the Ghost Rider was going to attempt? Otherwise, how was it supposed to summon all of the members of the council if not in this way?
Aragorn made a pentagram in the air and fed it an enormous amount of energy. With a column of hellfire, Mephistopheles appeared.
"Aragorn, what's the meaning of this?"- He asked. Aragorn didn't bother to mask his smell from the summoning circle. This Mephistopheles knew what would happen if he denied the summon.
'It's time to end the Council of Red.'- Aragorn replied in his mind.
"You don't have to tell me twice, they already betrayed me and almost made me disappear with the rest of this deplorable world."- Mephisto complained.
'Your hand.'- Aragorn extended his hand and ordered Mephistopheles.
Mephistopheles reached for the handshake and when Aragorn grabbed it, white glowing ink crawled from the handshake and rushed to cover the devil.
"WHAT IS THIS?!"- Mephistopheles demanded and tried to pry his hand free but Aragorn locked him still with his telekinesis.
'Retribution.'- Aragorn simply said.
"AGH-"- Mephistopheles cried... but his cries were cut short when his body was engulfed in this glowing ink.
*Crack!* *Crunch* *Squelch*- Mephistopheles' body and essence were balled into a sphere and the glowing ink wrote on it until a ball of red with glowing markings was left.
'For the first attempt at my magic runic system... it's working.'- Aragorn commented as he pumped his modulated void energy into the scripture that tattooed the red ball.
The scripture rotated on his skin similar to how the atmosphere moved at a different speed than the ground.
*VVVVMMM*
*VVVVMMM*
*VVVVMMM*
The sphere pulsed like Godzilla loading. Aragorn threw the sphere away from the root and sat atop the globe encasing the root.
*BOOOOOOM*- The sphere exploded and after a flash of hellfire and red light, millions of Mephistos and more who fit the requirement he used in his runic scripture—'Member of The Council of Red'—were left confused about the landscape.
Aragorn pulled a dark orb that emerged from Mephisto's sacrifice and ate it.
"I thought the time was right? Aren't we supposed to be invading that dragon's Earth? Where are we?"- One Mephisto who looked like a hellish Doberman spoke.
"We're earlier than anticipated, but this should be that Earth."- This one looked like Pennywise the Dancing Clown.
"Contact the Ghost Rider!"- This one looked like Sauron, it ordered another Mephisto who looked like the one from this universe.
"..."- Mephistopheles-616 remained silent, observing the being sitting on the bubble at the center of this space.
'Have the girl start a distraction and come to my location.'- Mephistopheles-616 ordered the Ghost Rider through the contract on its soul.
"Very interesting approach, Aragorn."- He spoke, his voice unabated by the distance.
"In trying to limit your opponents you decided to summon us all yourself... But what of it? Do you believe your friends outside this space won't be targetted by my Ghost Rider?"- The rest of the Mephistos looked at their host.
"What an idiot! He didn't even sever our connection to our dimensions!"- This one looked like a Gundam.
"He thinks he is enough to deal with us! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA"- This one looked like Ursula from 'The Little Mermaid'.
When Mephistopheles-616 heard the first comment he felt something was strange, why wouldn't he sever the connection?
"And he is not even accounting for our little collaborator, is he?"- The one who spoke was a red Godzilla-like Mephistopheles who was referring to the Goblin Force.
'Have you ever wondered to what extent would you reach in a desperate situation?'- Aragorn asked.
'What is he thinking?'- Mephistopheles-616 wondered.
'Is it time? Can I finally rest?'- He thought to himself.
He knew what type of being the thing in front of him was, he was already counting their losses in his equation, but he knew that even if Aragorn could take a thousand or so of their numbers before the Ghost Rider found them, it would be all over once this space is cracked open from the outside by his servant.
It would take 20 minutes, at most, for his servant to follow their connection now that he was on Earth, even if he was currently imprisoned in this space.
"~KUKUKUKU! What is this idiot saying?"- A female Mephistopheles who looked like a Karen laughed.
"I know what this is! This is what the sheeple call a drowning man! ~HAHAHAHAHA~ I've never seen a creature of The Outside being desperate! This is new, even for me."- An NTR sadist shota Mephisto mocked him.
"Hey! I heard you Outsiders don't have a gender, right? How about you switch to a beauty and submit to me? I'll allow you to live... that is after you paid your dues to every one of us and serve us appropriately~HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"- An NTR faceless dark muscleman Mephisto rubbed his hands.
"I like the sound of that!"- Commented an NTR ugly fat bastard Mephisto.
*SQUELCH!*
Aragorn looked at them and then they exploded. From the remains 3 shadowy orbs floated to his opened mouth and he swallowed them.
'Thank you for waiting.'- Aragorn got up and flash-stepped to the middle of the crowd.
*Squelch!*- This time 5 orbs floated to him, a moth appeared on his back and swallowed the orbs.
"Attack if you don't want to be erased!"- The Doberman Mephisto yelled.
While stalling, he communicated with Selene Galio and sent her a sample of Mephistopheles-616's energy signature—the one Mephisto who carried traces of Amara's signature, traces he could match to the ones he got from Selene. The devil was cunning enough to mask and conceal Amara's signature from Selene, but he couldn't hide his own signature from Aragorn, a being capable of energy manipulation.
'How many of you do you think I can take down before you realize you are in a desperate situation?'- Aragorn asked.
This time, mouths opened all over Aragorn's body and they spat white beams of light—he was using the spell Emma designed, Trabem Lucis, as a breath attack by powering up with his void energy.
A few hundred Mephistos were cut and pulverized by the breaths. Hundreds of orbs floated to the waiting maws of Aragorn.
'I wonder how many I can eat before you become the drowning man.'- Aragorn's voice rang happily in their heads.
That's when all hell broke loose.
As the devils they were, they flooded Aragorn with hellfire, hellfire carries the innate property of soul damage, so Aragorn evaded by jumping into another location and maneuvered around the crowd slaying and eating Mephistos as he moved.
He was using their numbers as shielding.
"He's too fast! We need to slow him down!"- Ursula Mephisto shouted.
Time Manipulation was among the repertoire of skills they shared, but even if they could manipulate time since Yao had separated the time flow inside the bubble from the outside, they didn't realize that they were moving faster than the outside.
When they tried to slow down Aragorn, he simply ignored their time manipulation and moved about, slaying and eating like Kirby.
Time never bothered him anyway!
Seeing it was not working they started to teleport away from Aragorn, from an outsider's perspective they looked like a school of fish evading a depredator.
Aragorn didn't like them escaping, so every time one of them teleported away he flooded their mind with his memories of The Void.
"IIIIIIAIAGAGAGAHAHAHHHHHHHHHHHH IT SHINEEEEEEES"- One Mephisto who looked like a werewolf started shouting, howling, and attacking anything that shone after his mind was invaded by Aragorn.
"Shield your minds!"- A demon goat-like Mephisto shouted.
'Useless'- He heard and then all he could think was about how fluffy his fur was, and how he should bless his friends with the same fur.
The demon goat-like Mephisto went around sporadically using his reality-bending powers to grow fur on the other Mephisto.
An imp-like Mephisto drew inspiration from this and used his reality powers on Aragorn, his barrier shone and then broke, but the imp was left exhausted, it needed time to recharge.
"Attack now!"- It encouraged his counterparts to attack now that Aragorn's barrier was down.
So they showered him with Hellfire... Only for it to stop at another barrier.
'I never said I only made one.'- The imp heard this in his mind and then proceeded to kill itself after memories of ultimate loneliness and emptiness overloaded him, and an orb floated to Aragorn.
'It looks like you are not very compatible with my birthplace.'- Aragorn remarked before jumping to another location and continuing the feast.
Another Mephisto, one more skittish than her peers, tried to teleport to her dimension and escape this nonsense.
"W-w-we can't escape!"- She shouted when she realized they were trapped.
"Keep fighting! The Ghost Rider should arrive in 20 minutes!"- A Mephisto resembling Griffith from Berserk added.
'~Hehehe~ 20 minutes ~Heheheh~'- It heard Aragorn's voice and then a blade came out of his chest, the blade burnt him from the wound to the rest of his body and the orb finally floated to Aragorn.
"Fuck him up! I'll restrain him!"- A Shinji Matou Mephisto shapeshifted into a worm and then teleported to Aragorn to restrain him.
Aragorn allowed it and then the mouths in his body chomped!
"AGHHHHHHH!!!!!!"- The Shinji Matou Mephisto cried in agony as it was eaten.
"FUC-"- A King Joffrey Mephisto shouts as Aragorn grows an oversized extra head and eats it in one bite.
"NO MOOORE!"- A Shou Tucker Mephisto cries as Aragorn is squishing it with his telekinesis.
"RAAAAAAAAAAHHHH"- A Spider Mephisto shouts as it tries to suicide bomb him in a burst of madness and insanity.
'Are you yet in a desperate situation?'- He asks and laughs as each strand of his hair seems to gain life and elongate, covered in a white-ish gleam.
A Scar from The Lion King Mephisto shivered as his instincts warned him of the danger and tried to flee.
'I made this by imitating the cosmic fire of the Phoenix Force, it's not the same but it should do.'- Aragorn said about the white-ish gleam covering his hair.
His hair goes wild like Kaguya Otsutsuki's and starts slicing devils in every direction.
Flexible limbs covered in scales, mouths, and claws grow and serpent to the devils with deadly precision.
Every devil begins to feel a pull toward the monstrosity—Aragorn's telekinesis.
More and more devils go mad and erratic as the memories of Aragorn are broadcasted and looped.
'Just 20 minutes, right?'- This time the message only reaches Mephistopheles-616.
Aragorn becomes the blades in the blender and the bubble the recipient of the Devil Smoothie.
"GOOOOOOO!"- The Scar from Lion King Mephisto roars and overcomes its fear and marches to its impending doom.
Madness and Insanity spread and nobody had the mind to notice that the entire space was inhospitable for devils and madness-inducing, courtesy of the 'Wrath of Mother Earth' a form of sanctuary creation function of Gaea's divinity which is spreading from the root.
The Wrath of Mother Earth spreads the resentment and insanity that Gaea had to bear due to the actions of her children. The resentment that was never unleashed upon the culprits of the deterioration of Planet Earth, the scorn she had for outsiders who came to Earth only to harm, the hate she caged inside of her for the ungratefulness of her children.
This agglomeration of negativity, Gaea turned it into a sanctuary made for her enemies' suffering. It was never a damage-dealing card, it was all about debuffing the minds of the targets.
Case in point, the Mephistos stopped trying to escape—not that they could—and now their only focus is to kill Aragorn, even at the cost of their lives.
That was until one of them switched to its energy form to avoid the telekinetic pull...
With a body that could no longer be poisoned because it was pure infernal energy, it saw the madness that was happening.
'STOP! THERE'S DIVINITY POISONING US!'- Like a well-oiled machine, one after the other they switched to their Energy Form when the telepathic message arrived...
And then they felt something was wrong...
Something was warning them...
Something bad was goi—
And that's when Aragorn brute forced his Energy Manipulation and pulled them all at once and ate them...
"..."
"..."
"..."
More than half of their numbers are gone! Just like that!
'Either be poisoned and get slowly pulled to me, or switch to your energy form and get instantly pulled to me... Are you yet in a desperate situation?'- Aragorn's mouths grinned and cackled madly.
'Embrace insanity, it's the only way!'- Aragorn teleports from point to point, desolation in his wake.
"Hold it! It's only 5 more minutes!"- Mephistopheles-616 shouted.
...
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...
1 minute left and the carnage doesn't stop.
...
...
...
It's been 25 minutes and they noticed something was wrong.
...
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...
"What's going on!?"- A desperate hooker-like Mephisto cries.
...
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...
"Something's wrong!!!"- A monkey-like Mephisto yells.
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...
"I don't want this!!!"- A HIM-like Mephisto shrieks as it is mauled to death.
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...
At this point, Mephistopheles-616 notices that he is the only one that is not being affected by the divinity and he starts to wonder why is that.
...
...
...
It's been long enough for Mephistopheles-616 to realize that his messages are no longer going out, he believes that Aragorn deliberately allowed the first message out to lure out his servant.
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5 months, no one no longer communicates, some simply jump into Aragorn when the madness reaches a certain level.
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1 year and 3 months, Aragorn found a way to manipulate every single one of their attacks except for hellfire. He is also very pleased with the new spells he copied from them.
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1 year and 7 months, Aragorn seems to only guard against reality warping and hellfire attacks.
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1 year and 10 months, The Mephistos gain resistance to the divine poison... it only serves for Aragorn to increase the force of his pull and to start casting gravity control spells to aid his pulling.
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1 year and 11 months, Aragorn gains control of their Hellfire. Reality warping is all they have.
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2 years and 4 months, their numbers can now be counted.
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2 years and 8 months, desperation is all they are. Misery is all the feel. Distress is their breakfast. Anguish is their lunch. Despair is their dinner. They conclude that suffering is the meaning of life.
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2 years and 10 months, only Mephistopheles-616 is left.
"Why?"- Mephistopheles-616 asks in a defeated tone.
'Because you want to be erased.'- Aragorn explains why he was not affected like the rest and is left unharmed.
"... ~HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE~ AGHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA~ So what?!"- He breaks.
"Is there any purpose to existing? Nothing ever changes, there's no goal, no meaning, and no hope. The momentary pleasures of life only serve to distract you from the suffering that is existing. Family? Tried that. Global Domination? Check. Inflicting pain on the monkeys? Check. Helping the monkeys? Done that. Fighting the overlords? Already failed at that. What's left to try? What's the point in trying at all? I CAN'T EVEN FUCKING DIE!!!!"- Mephistopheles-616 shouts in despair.
... Aragorn looks at him and...
'Why would you think I care about your suffering? Just wipe your memory if you're bored.'- His red eyes scrutinized him like watching an idiot attempt to parallel-park
Aragorn bound him with his hair and then brought a hand to his head and destroyed his mental defenses in search of the location of the Goblin Force and the Pandemonium Cube.
'... You gave the cube to the girl—as expected—but I didn't see it coming that you met the Goblin Force here... I thought you lured it here.'- Aragorn.
"Why would I go through the effort of luring it here and not dying to it in another universe?"- Mephistopheles-616 asked, but Aragorn didn't pay attention. He brought out an icosahedron crystal and sealed Mephistopheles-616 in it.
Aragorn knew that Mephistopheles-616 wanted to die, so initially he thought that when Mephisto mentioned him to the Council, Mephistopheles-616 saw it as an opportunity to provoke him into erasing him.
So he believed that Mephistopheles-616 had brought the Goblin Force to his universe with the intention of causing destruction and then taking credit, hoping Aragorn would erase him—or the Goblin Force.
The reality was different; Mephistopheles-616 did plan to enrage Aragorn and have him erase him. Along the way, he discovered the Goblin Force in this universe and considered having it consume him, effectively erasing him. However, the Goblin Force demanded an unreasonable compromise: 1 million years as its herald, akin to Silver Surfer and Galactus.
Mephistopheles-616 disagreed and proceeded with his Green Door plan. Before doing so, he stole some of the Goblin Force and gave it to the Shi'ar to use in debilitating Jean.
He was hoping the One-Below-All would kill him as it destroyed the Multiverse. If the plan failed, he anticipated Aragorn would be enraged and would erase him.
The plan failed, and he intended to use the Ghost Rider to fully access this universe so that he could confront Aragorn and meet his end. The Council of Red served its purpose and helped him complete and charge the Pandemonium Cube so that he could be summoned entirely into this universe if the Ghost Rider was having it difficult to do so.
But uncertain of the outcome, he gave the Pandemonium Cube to Madelyne Pryor—whom he found through Essex—either to meet his end at the hands of Aragorn or the Goblin Force, after the latter went on a rampage because he tampered with the cube.
... Aragorn denied him the outcome he was expecting and sealed him... He attacked him, and Aragorn was not going to be forgiving about it.
'I'm done, it's time to go to the real fight... Or more like another trampling under an unbeatable enemy.'- Aragorn thought about the rampage that he would probably have to deal with.
_________________________
United States, Alaska.
Ghost Rider's hiding place.
'Have the girl start a distraction and come to my location.'- A message from his master is received.
The flame in the skeleton's eyes flickers and he confirms that he can feel a pull in a certain direction, a pull to his master.
"You're up."- The flaming skeleton instructs a naked girl lying on the cold floor with an empty stare and fiery red cracks all over her skin.
"..."- The girl doesn't answer and stands up, following the Ghost Rider.
The Ghost Rider pulls a flaming chain and spins it in front of him.
*Whoosh*- With a sudden breeze, a circular portal made of flames opens.
On the other side, a wilderness of conifers awaits.
*Clack* *Clack*- The rattling of bones indicates Amara to follow her superior to the other side.
*Whoosh*- The portal closes after her.
"You know what to do."- The Ghost Rider orders, he forms another portal and his bike comes through on its own.
"Don't disappoint our master."- He reminded her before the roar of the infernal engine carried its rider toward the Pacific Ocean.
"..."- Amara dazedly watches as the Rider shrinks in the distance and a trail of fire is left.
The trail of fire spread and the forest began to burn.
With the inferno as her background, Amara turns into a human of lava and fire.
Contrary to her usual orange bright appearance, her skin turns cooled-lava black and the cracks of lava cover her body in the style of painted body armor. Her hair lights up in hellfire...
Mephistopheles-616 had blessed her with a spark of hellfire and corrupted her body to empower her, all in an attempt to make his pawn a useful piece.
The ground turns bright red lava and Amara's feet sink up to her ankles.
She reaches to the molten ground with her hands, and...
An ominous rumbling resonates through the region...
As if signaling the awakening of a dormant giant.
Pressure builds beneath the earth's crust, fissures crack open, spewing forth billowing columns of ash and steam into the sky.
The ground trembles violently, causing mountains to shake and crumble, and fiery lava flows start boiling and cascading down the slopes, consuming everything in their path.
Amara keeps concentrating, her hands and feet submerged in the lava she stands, the rumbling intensifies as if ascending to a dreadful conclusion, and then...
*BOOOOOOOOM*- She is engulfed inside an exploding column of lava and the Yellowstone Caldera erupts...
The solid ground bursts or melts with no other choice, and any forest surrounding the caldera is no more.
The sunny sky is replaced by an unending tower of burning hot ash, casting an eerie twilight over the infernal landscape.
The boom of the eruption arrives only after the shaking of the ground has devastated the cities encircling the caldera, and what isn't brought down by the earthquake is demolished by raining pyroclastic bombs.
*Crackle*- Lightning rains after the volcanic ash charges the atmosphere. As if Mother Nature decided it was enough and took action to restart life on the surface.
From a distance, the horizon glows with an ominous red hue as the eruption continues unabated, sending shockwaves across North America.
The south of Montana, the east of Idaho, Wyoming, and the Northern part of Utah—the states in the initial kill zone—are no more.
Amara stands at the epicenter, inside the spewing lava column, her body obstructed by ash, lava, and pyroclastic material. In contrasting tranquility with the destruction she unwillingly caused, her eyes catch a blue blur moving toward her.
Before she could react, she felt her ribcage crack into dust, and her internal organs burst inside her. Her augmented body by the infernal corruption could do nothing against the impact, and her enhanced mind by the hellfire couldn't understand what was happening before she found herself flying across the ashy skies—away from the supervolcano she just unleashed.
'She is rolling your way in 17s'- Seraph sends a telepathic message. Her body, impervious to the liquid lava and the chaotic pressures.
She silently floats and emerges from the tower of bursting lava.
She rapidly gains altitude until she reaches the top of the ash cloud. Her arms and legs are in a star position, and she begins to close her hands—as if pulling something— and lift her knees, her body thrumming with a subtle vibration.
*VVVMMMZZZ*- The microdroplets in the air oppose gravity and gather into bigger droplets.
*VVVMMMZZZ*- The flow of lava and the tower of ash stop.
*VVVMMMZZZ*- The pressure below the crusts sleeps peacefully once more.
*VVVMMMZZZ*- The bass-like vibration spreads with Seraph at its center.
The expanding destruction slows, halting the apocalyptic rain of pyroclastic bombs in mid-air as if by magic. Hydrometeors and sulfur dioxide, polluted by ash, defy their predicted movement and flow back toward the caldera. The earthquake wave diminishes, and finally, everything stops in silence.
Seraph continues to bring her extremities to her body's core, and the hazardous material flies to the caldera below her.
She piles everything around the lake of lava leaving an opening for the lava to harmlessly flow.
Her eyes scan the terrain through different filters until she is sure the supervolcano won't naturally erupt and the giant is resting once again, as was intended before Amara took action.
"This was a good job, I'll have Father remunerate me, I'll see if he can share some memories to grow faster!... but not that many, I like myself very much!"- Seraph comments.
After another volley of tests, she teleported to the site where Amara had crashed.
Amara is suspended unconscious in the Air and Selene is inspecting her with a magic circle in each hand.
"How is she?"- Seraph asks as she starts an examination of her own.
"Her body was corrupted beyond repair, but that's not a problem I can't solve, her mind was altered so there's that. It will take some time but it is fixable."- Downcasted, Selene explains.
"Her soul is the problem, huh?"- Seraph asks in confirmation after a scan with her soul forge.
"*Sigh!* Yes, her soul was tempered with hellfire. I can't fix that... Can your father fix her?"- Selene asks, a glimmer of hope in her eyes.
"Mmmmmm, sort of... Mother would have to do it, but you should speak to Father first. For the time being, let's seal her in stasis."- Seraph pulled out an icosahedron like the one her father used to seal Mephistopheles-616.
'Tony, how are you doing?'- Seraph contacted Stark while Selene initiated the magical sealing of Amara.
'... There's so much blood... I... I don't see an end to this... *Sigh*... There's only devastation as far as the eye can see... I'm having the guys from Krakoa help me establish some temporal health centers, some of them are helping me with the search and rescue, that guy, Logan, is particularly useful, by the way.'- Seraph received a report from Starks armor, and connected to a live feed.
From a first-person point of view, she sees the red and yellow arms of the armor blast away some debris and enter a dark room to rescue an unconscious child.
The repulsor on his left reforms and a blue light scans the child from head to toe, a medical report clears the child as healthy with only a minor concussion.
'Reed's troupe is working on the est side of the disaster while we focus on the west, once they are done they will move to assist this side—since it is more affected—but I think we are talking about a work of weeks if not months.'- Stark informs.
'Probably Father will do something later, but thanks for your efforts and helping out, Tony.'- Seraph reassured him.
'Can you send some of the healing types from Krakoa? The kid with the psionic senses you assigned as my scout said that they have a few of those types of mutants.'- Stark asks.
'No, Tony. I'm sorry but those are considered a strategic asset to Krakoa. The council would never approve their mobilization to the country with the highest presence of Hydra.'- Seraph laments.
'Fuck Hydra!'- Tony yells, luckily the amor only allows for active communication, so no one heard him.
'Any problems with the armor? I'm not seeing any in the report.'- Seraph asks, trying to keep Stark's mind off of the death in his surroundings.
'No, princess. Everything is running green numbers, though there are a few details here and there we could improve after this, but that's expected, the armor was intended for combat not search and rescue, I'll run it through you later on.'- Stark answered.
This time the live feed showed him lifting a building and logan running inside the hole below it, a few seconds later he came out carrying three unconscious men, two of them had lost at least one limb.
'Call for me if you encounter any problems, I need to return to Halo and keep scanning the planet and deep space.'- Seraph informed him.
'Right... How could I forget the cosmic hunger himself? or is it herself?'- Stark exaggeratedly remarked.
'Probably herself, most accurately itself... Bye, take care.'- Seraph set the communication with his armor to passive and opened a portal for Selena and her to walk through, she was done sealing Amara.
_________________________
48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W - Point Nemo
20 minutes after Aragorn started fighting.
The four wielders of the infinity stones surround a bubble of sealed space the size of a two-story building. Above the bubble, Jean floats with four tendrils of cosmic fire drifting from her back to the said wielders.
She places more attention on Wanda who is handling the most troublesome gem.
The sorcerers and the rest of the beastkin stand in a circular formation around the bubble, helping to stabilize the magic circle safely handling the sealed space.
'Jean, 6 o'clock, incoming.'- James gives Jean the heads up.
James' psionic sense is in no way as overreaching as Jean's, but he felt a 'creature of the shadows' approaching. Having lived most of his life in the shadows and accepted an evolution from a creature with the highest affinity to the concept of shadows, James could not mistake the presence of the creature approaching.
Jean focused her draconic eyes on the horizon and she eventually spotted the Ghost Rider, driving his infernal vehicle atop the quiet ocean.
'Hostile approaching. I'll deal with it.'- Jean informed the rest.
She calmly floated to the approaching flaming skull, the four tendrils of cosmic fire still connected to the recipients.
She opened her arms, like in a T pose—as if asserting dominance—her palms extended and then she abruptly brought her hands in front of her chest, one grasping the other.
The Ghost Rider was left in mid-movement along with his bike.
Her hands shook and she saw the Ghost Rider trying to resist her hold.
Jean looked at him coldly, not pulling any punches back, and increased the pressure wantonly.
"AGGHAGHHAAAAAAAAAAAA!"- The skeleton rider shouted in agony.
*Fwoosh*- It bursts into a hellfire ball.
The hellfire began to eat at the psionic energy Jean was using to hold him in place.
"So what?"- Jean asked out loud in disinterest.
"Burn as much as you want, for I am the psionic nexus of this universe... are you the nexus of hellfire to think you can battle me in a protracted fight?"- Jean increased the flow rate of psionic energy, and the flaming ball kept burning in place—unable to move.
*Crack* *Crack* *Crack* *Crack*- His bones were crushed but his regeneration kept him whole, making the cycle repeat and repeat.
'Aragorn said not to use fire on him, to lock him in place to prevent his warping, avoid the chain—though I don't see it—to fill my surrounding to the brim with psionic energy to prevent him from remotely projecting his hellfire... something about him possibly summoning biblical plagues... and that he could potentially grow infinitely his strength.'- Jean thought.
'But his advice of using brute force is working ~Hehehehe!~ Besides, I don't need to win, I just need to hold him back. Oh shit! He is outputting more force!'- Jean increased the flow once more.
'Right now I'm placing enough weight on him to pulverize Adamantium, but the stubborn thing keeps reforming and powering up!'- Jean complained in her heart.
The Ghost Rider inside the flaming ball summoned his chain.
'Right! I shouldn't look at his eyes and always stay away from his reach to protect my soul-Fuck!'- Jean had to exponentially increase the load.
'How much can this guy lift?!'- Jean hadn't met anyone who could bodily output this much strength before.
*SWISHH!*- A burning chain came out of the fireball and rushed to Jean's floating form.
For a moment it looked like the chain was going to keep cutting her energy and reach her but it stopped and was then pushed back inside the hellfire ball.
"So? Even if you can cut my energy with that little whip of yours, what's the point? Can you cut an infinite ocean with it?"- Jean haughtily declared.
'Fuck, that was close! Where was he keeping that thing?... His ass?... or maybe his Ribcage... Yeah, let's not tell anyone that my first thought was his ass instead of the very convenient and obvious storage space in his ribcage.'- Jean kept an outward facade of coldness, her hands grasping the other with more force, reflecting the increase in the weight on the Ghost Rider.
She kept her 'calm' and observed how the chain tried to move and swing from time to time only to be stalled by the increasing pressure and weight of her psionic output.
'Hurry up, Aragorn! I don't want to deal with this thing anymore!'- Jean lamented.
It's not that she wasn't trying to kill it, because she was putting enough pressure on him to do that since the beginning, but with her fire banned she felt nerfed.
'Could this thing really endure Phoenix's flame?'- She wondered.
'NO, IT CAN'T'- She received the answer from the stalking bird in her head.
'Eh?! really? Then can I kill him?'- Jean eagerly asked.
'... YOU HAVE CHANGED.'- Phoenix commented about her change in attitude, she felt proud.
'BUT YOU SHOULDN'T, THE SOUL INSIDE THAT HUSK IS AN INNOCENT ONE... YOU CAN KILL HIM IF YOU WANT BUT ARAGORN WANTED TO KEEP HIM ALIVE TO GET SOME TIPS ABOUT HELL-MANAGEMENT.'- Jean deadpanned about the reason.
No, she was not walking the murder hobo path, she wouldn't be eager to end an innocent soul. But she feels like the weight of his life to Aragorn is too cheap. Tips in Hell-Management, that's the full worth of his life in Aragorn's eyes.
'HUHUHUHU, KEEP AT IT. YOU'RE DOING GREAT, JEAN.'- Phoenix chuckled and cheered for her host.
'Ugh!'- She increased even more the pressure, she was sure she was putting more weight than the Moon's on the Ghost Rider.
'This thing can really power up as it wills it.'- Jean quibbled.
They kept at it, for a few minutes until suddenly the flaming skeleton stopped resisting.
'What now?'- Jean asked in concern about it.
'NOW YOU REST, YOU'VE SUCCEEDED.'- Phoenix congratulated her and then she felt Aragorn emerge from the sealed space and the bubble disappearing, leaving behind the huge miniature replica of the Arbor Mundi.
'Leave it to me, Jean. Please carry our people to Halo. We don't have much time until that thing goes into a rampage.'
Jean hurriedly complied. She ripped the incrusted gems from the girls' manubriums and sealed them in their corresponding staves. Then she hovered everyone through the portal Aragorn opened to Halo.
'Good luck. :Love: :Concern:'- Jean sent Aragorn.
':Reassurance:'- Aragorn answered simply.
__________________________________
This was it, hope you liked it.
The next chapter is against the Goblin Force, but I haven't written anything of it, so bear with me.
Best of wishes!
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