Chapter 217 — It won't change the outcome.
Corvus Glaive's body had barely settled before the space he left behind felt different.
For a brief moment, even in the middle of the chaos, something shifted.
Proxima Midnight saw it clearly.
She had been watching the exchange from only a short distance away. Close enough to act. Close enough to see everything without anything in the way.
Her grip tightened around her spear.
Her husband was gone.
Just like that.
There had been no drawn-out fight. No moment where he could adjust or pull back. No chance to recover.
He had stepped forward.
And he had died.
Proxima didn't move at first.
Her body remained steady, her stance unchanged, but her hand tightened slowly, the metal of her weapon creaking slightly under the pressure.
There was anger.
Clear. Direct.
But underneath it, something else pressed in.
Shock.
Not loud. Not obvious.
But real.
She had fought beside Corvus for a long time. She knew how he fought. She knew what he could survive.
This,
This was not something she had expected.
Her eyes lifted.
And locked onto Gaius.
Ebony Maw stood beside her, relaxed as ever, his hands resting behind his back. But even he had grown quiet, his eyes following Gaius with a measured, careful, calculating gaze.
Thanos stood ahead of them both.
He had seen it, of course he had.
His expression didn't change. Not when Cull died, not when Corvus followed.
Though there was a flicker of surprise at the weapon's power in Gaius' hands, capable of cutting them down with such ease.
Gaius walked toward them.
No rush.
No wasted movement.
Each step was steady, controlled, his armor catching the light of burning fires around him.
Bodies and broken ground lay between them, but he moved through it all without looking down.
His focus remained forward.
His gaze settled on Thanos, and on the two who remained at his side.
When he spoke, his voice was calm.
"Fight if you want. It won't change the outcome."
There was no anger in it, no rise in tone, just a statement, final and absolute.
Ebony Maw's eyes narrowed slightly.
"How dare you," he replied, his voice still smooth but edged with something sharper now, "speak that way to the great Titan."
He took a small step forward.
"He is the savior of this universe, the one who brings balance to all life."
There was belief in his words, not forced or rehearsed, but absolute.
Gaius did not respond.
He simply continued walking.
Moments earlier, the battlefield behind him had erupted into motion.
The Ultramarines held their ground in disciplined formation.
Titus stood at the front, chainsword roaring in his hand as he cut through the last few Chitauri in their area.
One of the creatures lunged toward him.
He caught it with his free hand mid-motion, gripping it by the torso.
Without slowing, he slammed it down into the ground.
The impact cracked the surface beneath it.
Before it could move again, Titus brought his armored boot down on its head.
The motion was clean.
Direct.
Then he turned, chainsword sweeping across another attacker, the blade cutting through with a sharp, grinding sound.
The area around them had thinned out.
The pressure in their section of the field was lower now.
Controlled.
—
"Hey guys!"
The voice didn't match the tone of the battlefield.
Light.
Quick.
A little too casual.
Titus turned his head slightly.
A figure dropped in beside them.
Red and blue.
Moving fast.
Spider-Man landed with a small hop, already turning his head left and right.
"Okay, wow, uh, hi," he said, even as he fired a web to pull a Chitauri off balance and kick it aside. "So… are you guys from Earth?"
He glanced up at Titus, then at the others.
"You're all… really big," he added. "And the armor, like knights? Or like Asgardians? Orare you like a secret military thing? Because I feel like I would've heard about that…"
He kept talking, even as he moved, dodging and striking without pause.
Titus watched him for a brief moment before giving a short nod to one of the Bladeguard as they finished off another enemy. He recognized it immediately.
A child.
Not by size, but by the way he spoke and moved. There was no fear in him, yet there was still… a certain lightness.
Titus was about to respond when a figure dropped beside them.
Tony.
Spider-Man's attention snapped instantly.
"Mr. Stark!" he said, stepping forward. "I, okay, so, I just woke up, right? And everything was dusty, and then Doctor Strange was there, and he said it's been five years, and then he opened a portal and said we had to come here"
Tony didn't answer.
He stepped forward and pulled Peter into a hug.
Just like that.
Peter froze mid-sentence.
"…oh," he said quietly.
Then hugged him back.
For a second, the battlefield faded.
Titus glanced at them once.
Then looked away.
There was nothing more to say about it.
He turned back toward the field.
"Move," he said to the others.
They continued forward.
A sudden shadow passed over them.
A Leviathan descended fast, its massive body angling down toward their position.
The Ultramarines shifted.
Preparing to move.
"Take this, xeno!"
The voice came like thunder.
A massive slab of concrete tore through the air and slammed into the Leviathan mid-flight, the impact warping its trajectory and sending the enormous creature spiraling into the ground. It hit with devastating force, the shockwave rippling outward, cracking pavement and kicking up a storm of dust and debris.
Before the echoes of the crash could fade, the Dreadnought moved.
It stepped forward without haste, each footfall heavy, deliberate, like the advance of something inevitable. The ground seemed to protest under its weight, faint tremors following in its wake.
The Leviathan writhed, its massive body twisting as it struggled to rise, to reorient, to fight,
It didn't get the chance.
The Dreadnought's arm came up in a single, precise motion. Then it drove the weapon down with brutal finality, the blade punching through armored flesh and bone, embedding deep into the creature's skull.
For a brief moment, everything held still.
Then the gatling spun.
A low whir built into a deafening roar as it fired point-blank into the Leviathan's head. The sustained barrage tore through it from the inside out, ripping apart anything that remained. Blood, fragments, and smoke burst outward in violent sprays, the sound unrelenting, mechanical, absolute.
The Leviathan's body convulsed once, massive, involuntary.
Then it went still.
The gatling slowed, the roar fading into silence.
The Dreadnought did not move for a moment, its weapon still buried in the corpse, as if ensuring there would be no second chance.
Then, without a word, it pulled free.
Spider-Man stared.
"…Mr. Stark," he said slowly, "are those… new suits?"
Even as he asked, he already doubted it.
Tony pulled back from the hug.
Shook his head.
"No," he said. "No, they're…"
He paused.
"…Ultramarines."
That was the best he had.
"Move," Tony added. "We'll talk later."
Then he lifted off.
"Ultramarines?" Peter repeated quietly.
He didn't get an answer.
Tony was already gone.
Peter looked back toward the fight.
"…okay," he said to himself.
Then shot a web and pulled himself forward into the battle.
High above, Tony slowed for a moment.
His eyes swept across the battlefield, scanning, searching.
The Infinity Stones were all that mattered now. They couldn't allow them to fall into enemy hands.
"Tony," a voice came through his comm.
Scott.
"I can't find Clint," he said quickly. "He said he's got the Stones. He's being chased, somewhere in the rubble below."
Tony's jaw tightened.
"Find him," he said. "Fast."
He turned mid-air, adjusting his position.
"We also need the tunnel," he added. "We have to send Thanos back."
A short pause.
"That's not happening," Scott replied. "The quantum tunnel's gone."
Tony already knew.
He had expected it.
The odds of it surviving were low.
Still,
"…yeah," he said quietly.
There was a brief silence.
Then Scott's voice came back, sharper this time.
"Wait, the van! Tony, the van!"
Tony's head lifted slightly.
He hovered in place and scanned the area again, focusing on the debris fields.
There,
Half-buried.
But intact enough.
"I see it," Tony said. "It's still there. Not completely destroyed."
"Okay," Scott replied quickly. "I'll find Clint first."
"Do it."
Tony angled downward again.
As he descended, he fired off a few quick blasts, clearing out a cluster of Chitauri below him.
Then he turned.
Back toward the center.
Gaius had stopped.
Not far from Thanos.
Proxima Midnight stood ready, spear angled forward.
Ebony Maw remained still at her side.
Thanos stood between them.
Waiting.
Tony landed behind Gaius.
~~~
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