But the other ancestors were acting strange. They looked as if they were waiting for something—or someone—to appear. And Vorusk... the Immortal King was walking toward a desolate, lonely corner of the Rift, his footsteps uncharacteristically hesitant.
"We are planning for a soul," Bul-Kathos said simply, taking another swig of wine.
His armor was battered, his beard stained red, his appearance haggard and filthy. He hadn't changed out of his combat gear since fighting Raekor, which was the real reason Johanna was worried.
"A battle for a soul?"
"Nazeebo told me he felt this soul once," Bul-Kathos added, then fell silent.
Vorusk knew whose soul it was. He knew that waking it could bring catastrophe. But he went anyway. It was something the "cowardly" Immortal King had to do.
The Ancient One stood upon the battlements, watching the Three Ancients sweep through the demonic tide. Her expression was grim. She had imagined the horror of a demon army, but standing on the front line was a different kind of pressure.
A massive demon, as tall as a skyscraper, was trudging toward the wall. Harrogath wasn't just accessible through the main gates; this was going to be another brutal theater of war. Around her, nameless ancestors stood ready with ballistae, catapults, and barricades. They were prepared for the walls to be breached.
"Larzuk! You didn't tell me 'logistics' meant being on top of the damn wall!" Tony Stark yelled, his voice laced with panic.
Looking at the endless carpet of demons would do that to anyone. Tony was already calculating if his missiles could even dent those hides. If this army ever hit Earth... would humanity even stand a chance?
"Stop whining! This is the best place to fix gear. When a blade breaks, I fix it, and the warrior gets right back into the meat grinder!" Larzuk shouted back, peering over the edge. "We aren't just a transport team! I can cave a demon's skull in with my hammer if I have to!"
"How strong are they?" Tony asked. He thought back to the corrupted Daleks in London. If the demons were that tough, humanity was in trouble.
"Strong? That's a hard question to answer," Larzuk scratched his head and turned to an elderly woman nearby. "Auntie Malah, how strong are the demons?"
"Strong? They'll never be stronger than Bul-Kathos, Larzuk," Malah said, wiping an axe with a clean cloth. There were no wounded to treat yet, so she had picked up a weapon.
"Hear that, Tony? Not stronger than Bul-Kathos. Relax," Larzuk said dismissively.
Tony didn't find that answer comforting at all.
"You guys won't even die! The ancestors will just kick you out of the Rift if things get hairy," Larzuk added, though his own eyes betrayed a flicker of worry. He was a bright, lively young man, younger in years than Tony, and he could feel that this Rift was... wrong.
"Doesn't matter. You don't just wait to die because an enemy is strong. You fight. That's it," Rumlow said, clutching a standard-issue helmet. He was surprised to find actual gear being handed out in a Rift.
"How am I supposed to charge on a wall?" Kaecilius asked, tapping his helmet. The walls of Harrogath were thick enough for catapults, but for a warrior who inherited Kanuk's "charging" style, there wasn't enough room to build momentum.
"You can charge from one end to the other!" Raekor said, patting Kaecilius on the shoulder and pointing toward General Qual-Kehk.
General Ross was standing near the General, looking like a man whose entire worldview had been shredded. He had planned to go back to his army to hunt for MODOK, but the Rift had opened and swallowed him whole before he could say goodbye.
"My teacher... or rather, my former teacher," Kaecilius said, looking at the Ancient One's profile. His voice was tinged with melancholy. He still hadn't quite moved on from his life as a sorcerer.
"What, you looking for revenge?" Rumlow asked.
"No! My fall was the result of my own greed! It was my fault! I should be reflecting on my failures!" Kaecilius roared. It was almost a Battle Cry.
"Hahaha! What did Kanuk do to you?" Raekor laughed, clapping Kaecilius on the back.
The man was a fine warrior now, but he was clearly suffering from a bit of Pavlovian conditioning.
"Nothing. Ancestor Kanuk just taught me some life lessons... by pounding them into my skull in the most literal way possible," Kaecilius said, rubbing his jaw.
"Eat something. It'll be another thirty minutes before the demons break through the siege engines and hit the walls," Matt Murdock said.
The noise was overwhelming for him, but his new Barbarian physique kept him from being incapacitated by the cacophony. A Barbarian's battlefield was never quiet; if you couldn't handle the noise, you couldn't handle the fight.
"Eat... what?" Hit-Monkey asked, perched on Matt's head, picking through his hair out of habit.
"Here, take this," Kaecilius handed Matt a long, hard loaf of bread that looked more like a club. Hit-Monkey took one look at it, hissed in disdain, and went back to grooming Matt.
"Black bread? This long?" Matt asked, confused.
"I think I'd prefer some soup," Matt said, trying to break the bread and failing.
"Wait, wasn't Malah in charge of food and healing?" Larzuk asked, his hammer hitting an anvil with a dull thud.
"I forgot these youngsters still need to eat. My mistake," Malah said, pulling a massive iron cauldron from a pile of supplies and setting up a makeshift stove right there on the battlements.
"Who's getting water?" Rumlow asked. He looked around, sighed, threw the cauldron over his shoulder, and jumped off the wall into the clean snow below.
"Are we even going to finish cooking before the fight starts?" Tony asked irritably. He looked down at his chest, where a "Flawless Royal Diamond" had been crudely jammed into his miniaturized Arc Reactor as an auxiliary power source. Larzuk had used a chisel to make the hole, a process that had left Tony in a cold sweat.
"Who knows? If we don't, you can just jump into a demon's mouth. The ancestors will pull you out," Larzuk joked.
Just then, Raekor looked up as a legendary figure approached.
"Ancestor... Raekor!" The young girl, also named Raekor, looked at her namesake with trembling awe.
"Hello, little Raekor. Did you get what you wished for?" The elder Raekor's voice was incredibly gentle.
The girl was her blood descendant. Though the elder Raekor's son with Joret hadn't been preserved as a spirit, their bloodline had endured.
"I've waited for this day for a long time," the girl said, her voice small. She felt a deep shame; as a descendant of such a legend, she hadn't even survived five battles before dying to a molten trap.
"This will be a brutal fight," the elder Raekor said, her gaze sweeping over the recruits. "I am here to watch over you. The moment I judge that you can no longer fight... you are leaving."
The battle for the walls had always been the bloodiest part of the war.
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