The air crackled with searing heat, thick enough to suffocate. Doctor Strange, his body slick with sweat under the Cloak of Levitation, moved with a desperate urgency. His hands wove through the air, tracing intricate patterns of golden light as he barked commands into the chaos.
"Mysterio, coordinate with me!" he yelled over the elemental's guttural roar. "The target is its primary arm! Help me restrain it!"
Without a word, Mysterio complied. Triangular energy constructs materialized in the air, pulsing with an emerald glow. From their vertices, columns of thick, illusory energy shot out, wrapping around the Fire Elemental's colossal limb like spectral chains. Strange summoned the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak, the mystical ropes glowing with power as they cinched tight alongside Mysterio's illusions, momentarily anchoring the fiery behemoth.
"Hold on! Just a little longer!" Strange gritted his teeth, sweat stinging his eyes. He thrust a hand forward, the Sling Ring on his fingers blazing to life. He drew a circle in the air, and a shimmering portal tore open the space directly in front of the elemental's restrained arm. With a forceful gesture, he expanded it, the gateway yawning to a diameter of dozens of meters, its edges hungry to consume the limb.
He pushed his hands together, trying to snap the portal shut and sever the arm with the shearing force of a collapsing dimension.
But it wasn't that simple. The malevolent, dark purple veins coating the elemental's body pulsed with an ominous light. A wave of corrupting energy washed over the portal, resisting its closure. The circular gateway began to shudder violently, spitting sparks and threatening to tear itself apart. The air warped around it, a sign of imminent dimensional collapse.
Strange's eyes widened in alarm. Forcing it would be catastrophic. With a sharp curse, he canceled the spell, the unstable portal vanishing just as quickly as it had appeared. He fell back a step, his mind racing, desperately trying to find a counter to Dormammu's insidious, reality-bending corruption.
Seeing the plan fail, Mysterio wisely withdrew his own power, conserving his energy rather than wrestling with the monster alone.
Just then, another portal opened nearby. Strange, instantly on guard, snapped his hand up, erecting a shimmering mystical shield in front of the gateway to protect whoever was on the other side from the incinerating heat.
Christine Palmer and Wong stepped through, their faces etched with shock as they took in the sight of the four-hundred-meter-tall creature of living magma looming before them.
"What are you doing here?" Strange demanded, his voice a mixture of frustration and relief.
"I saw the emergency broadcasts from D.C.," Christine explained, her gaze fixed on the monster. "I saw you, Tony, all of you… I had to come help!"
Strange glanced toward the capital and, sure enough, saw several news helicopters hovering at a safe distance, their cameras broadcasting the carnage to the world.
"Good. I need you," he said, his focus returning to the problem at hand. A new strategy was already forming in his mind. "You can assist me. Wong, I need you on portal duty. Christine, you and I will hit it with everything we've got. Maximum power Bolts of Balthakk! Once we disrupt the dark corruption, Wong, you sever the arm!"
He rapidly laid out the plan. The corruption from Dormammu's dimension was a finite resource; it was a parasitic energy, not something the elemental could generate on its own. A concentrated blast of pure mystical energy should be enough to overwhelm it momentarily. With Christine's help, he could pour on the power, and Wong's mastery of portals far exceeded his own, making him the perfect choice to make the final cut. They both nodded, understanding the strategy instantly, and took their positions.
In the distance, the Iron Legion, commanded by Tony, harassed the elemental, drawing its fiery gaze. The swarm of drones zipped through the air, their repulsor blasts peppering its hide. The creature swung its massive arms in wide, destructive arcs, periodically spewing torrents of superheated magma from its mouth. Under Tony's deliberate guidance, the drones lured its attacks away from the sorcerers, giving them the opening they needed.
Strange and Mysterio moved in concert once more, their combined powers binding one of the monster's arms. Wong, his face a mask of concentration, summoned a new, stable portal, ready to slice through the limb.
"Now!" Strange roared.
He and Christine unleashed the Bolts of Balthakk. Twin streams of crackling golden energy shot across the battlefield, slamming into the elemental's arm. The collision was spectacular. The pure mystical power of the bolts warred against the dark purple veins, causing the corrupting energy to flicker and recede.
Seeing his chance, Wong contracted the portal with lightning speed. There was a grinding, tearing sound, and then the Fire Elemental's left arm was gone, severed and banished into the Mirror Dimension.
The monster threw its head back and let out a roar of absolute rage. It stomped its massive foot, and the very ground shook with seismic force.
"No! Into the mirror, now!" Strange yelled, having witnessed this devastating counterattack before. He threw his arms wide, pulling his allies into the safety of the pocket dimension.
A split second later, the ground where they had stood erupted. Columns of lava, even more terrifying than before, shot hundreds of feet into the sky, turning the air into a deadly inferno.
"Oh, my God! JARVIS, evasive maneuvers!" Tony's voice was strained, his pupils contracting in his helmet's display. Caught outside Strange's protective spell, he was now the sole focus of the elemental's fury. Lava columns erupted all around him, forcing him to bank and dodge frantically, pushing his suit to its limits as he desperately climbed for altitude, escaping the attack range by a hair's breadth.
From a safe distance, Captain America and Hawkeye, piloting their quinjet, watched in horror, knowing a single one of those molten geysers would obliterate them.
Once the eruption subsided, Tony cautiously descended. The ultra-high temperatures had done nothing to the symbiote-clad figure he now spotted scaling the elemental's leg. Zooming in on his display, he confirmed his suspicion. The 1st generation Spider-Man was climbing the monster.
Somehow, the kid was completely immune to the heat.
Spider-Man's only thought was to climb. He had seen Scott Lang take down a giant from the inside, and he intended to do the same. He would find this thing's core and destroy it. But as he scaled the hardened lava of its hide, he couldn't find a single crack or fissure to enter. He didn't have the luxury of shrinking to a microscopic size.
Strange and his team emerged from the Mirror Dimension and immediately went back to work. With seamless coordination, they severed the elemental's other arm. The creature roared again, drawing on its core to regenerate the first limb it had lost, but the effort visibly cost it. Its towering form shrank, dropping from over four hundred meters to just over three hundred. The strategy was working.
The elemental seemed to realize this. It stopped engaging them directly and turned its attention to a row of high-voltage transmission towers in the distance. It needed metal, reinforcement.
Tony saw its intention and a spark of an idea ignited in his mind. That's when he spotted the tiny black dot on its thigh again. "Jarvis, magnify." The image of Spider-Man filled his display.
"What? How is he even…?" Tony began, but there was no time for questions. He understood what the wall-crawler was trying to do, and a bold, reckless, quintessentially Tony Stark plan bloomed in his mind.
He redirected the remaining drones carrying the black hole grenades, sending one in stealth mode directly toward Spider-Man's position. If Spider-Man couldn't find a way in, Tony would make one for him.
Unfortunately, the sheer, oppressive heat radiating from the Fire Elemental was a weapon in itself. Before the drone could get close enough to be effective, its stealth coating began to bubble and melt, the sophisticated material failing under the extreme temperature. The drone shimmered, becoming visible just meters from its target, a vulnerable piece of machinery in the heart of the inferno.