Daisy's voice drowned out Thor and Loki's heartfelt exchange. The brothers stared at each other, blank-faced, then watched her launch into the sky.
A cascade of beautiful red hair streamed behind her. The sword in her hand pulsed with an entrancing glow. Daisy charged upward with an aura that bordered on the mythic.
Jörmungandr was confused. Through Skadi's eyes he'd seen Daisy before—same face, same features, just different armor. He recognized her.
The hatred struck him as absurd.
You smashed Skadi's Hammer, didn't you? The Original Sin memories showed a red-haired human woman, and Jörmungandr was fairly certain he was looking at her. She'd shattered the hammer that housed Skadi's soul, then beaten Skadi's body to ash—and now she had the audacity to demand revenge for Skadi? Where exactly had she learned this breathtaking talent for turning black into white?
Even with the feat of fighting Skadi to a draw on her record, the World Serpent still considered humans beneath contempt. Malice flickered in his eyes. His tail whipped around, crashing down toward Daisy like an avalanche.
The air detonated. Every building, tree, and boulder in the tail's path was pulverized. The force didn't diminish—it actually intensified as the serpent threw his body behind the swing. If that tail connected, Fensalir or no Fensalir, Daisy would be reduced to paste.
She didn't flinch. Against something this massive, a one-hit kill was out of the question—any idiot could figure that out. Hovering in midair, she snapped her wrist upward and fired an Atomic Cutting beam straight at the incoming tail.
Against a serpent several kilometers long and hundreds of meters thick, the cutting ray was thin as a strand of hair. But the concentrated energy punched through the serpent's surface barrier and pierced the oily green scales.
The beam's penetration gave out roughly 20 meters (66 feet) in. The residual energy, carried by the serpent's own thrashing momentum, slashed left and right through flesh, carving a narrow wedge-shaped wound 10 meters (33 feet) long and 2 meters (6.6 feet) wide.
Purple blood sprayed everywhere. The stuff reeked badly enough to trigger a gag reflex and carried powerful corrosive properties.
Jörmungandr shrieked. Before the echo faded, Daisy was already on him.
The Godslayer had been forged for this exact target, and it lived up to its name. Phoenix Force surged through the blade, amplified a hundredfold, a thousandfold. The sword danced—a bolt of lightning ripping across the sky.
Under normal circumstances, Daisy's amateurish swordsmanship would have struggled to hit the same spot twice. But Jörmungandr's body was enormous. The Atomic Cutting beam had been partially absorbed by the serpent's innate resistance, yet the wound it left was deep, wide, and two meters across. Missing was harder than hitting.
She hacked at the wound repeatedly. The corrosive blood was a nuisance—she had to dodge intermittently.
This was where Fensalir showed its teeth. The golden half-armor boosted her flight capability by an entire tier. The war boots delivered explosive bursts of propulsion. Daisy darted across the serpent's massive body like a firebird, weaving with the rhythm of combat—strike, retreat, strike again—her agility carving an ever-deeper, ever-longer gash.
She shredded the surface barrier. Scales littered the ground. She'd even cracked half the bone beneath. By the time she pulled away, a full third of Jörmungandr's tail had been severed.
Asgardians who'd been drowning in fear watched as Daisy bellowed a war cry and charged. Then the blade danced, and the serpent's flesh and blood rained down like a monsoon.
One woman, alone, challenging the living embodiment of the world's terror. What extraordinary courage.
The display galvanized every Asgardian present. Thor lacked Daisy's vibration-broadcast trick, but the man's lung capacity was inhuman—a one-man loudspeaker system. He roared, seized Mjolnir, and launched himself skyward.
"For Asgard!" He'd already forgotten the prophecy. First into the fray, as always.
Loki wore a look of weary resignation. He was a mage. He despised this kind of brainless charge-in. But circumstances left him no choice—he gripped Gungnir, grit his teeth, and followed.
The remaining soldiers shook off the fear one by one. Every warrior found their voice, whooping and hollering as they stampeded forward. The disciplined formations Daisy had admired minutes ago were thoroughly, joyously abandoned.
While Daisy pulled aggro, the walking loudspeaker Thor landed several thunderous blows on Jörmungandr. Muscles bulging, arms swinging high, eyes wide with fury, he wound up Mjolnir and cracked it against the serpent's skull. No reaction. He hit it again.
Jörmungandr had no time for Thor. Daisy had hurt him.
Losing a massive chunk of his tail was agony beyond description. He wasn't in human form—this was his true body. Instant regeneration was impossible. Relative to his total mass the wound wasn't catastrophic, but the sheer tonnage of lost flesh meant the injury would take at least five years to fully heal.
Barely registering the hammer-wielding fly at his head, the serpent wheeled around to attack Daisy. He wanted this human woman dead.
Locking onto her position, Jörmungandr's throat swelled. A massive blast of purple breath erupted, blanketing the sky as it surged toward her.
Having fought Shou-Lao, Daisy had some experience with oversized monsters. She ducked behind the serpent's own body, letting his bulk shield her from the reeking purple torrent.
Her sword never stopped. In the span of a heartbeat, she sliced a horizontal groove along the grain of the scales, then followed with two vertical cuts.
Her brows arched. Her eyes blazed wide, something volcanic burning behind the irises. The ambient temperature spiked by ten degrees Celsius (eighteen Fahrenheit).
"This one's for Skadi!" she roared. Her left fist ignited—flames and translucent seismic energy rippling across every knuckle. Her arm, lean but far from frail, seemed to carry the weight of a mountain as it drove into the cross-shaped wound.
The punch wasn't fast. Plenty of Asgardian warriors could track it with their eyes. Against the serpent, she was practically an insect. But she swung at the titan regardless, and her defiant roar echoed across the battlefield.
Her iron fist was unstoppable. The punch's force shattered the barrier, pulverized the scales, and slammed full-power into the serpent's body. Muscle caved inward. Bone cracked and splintered.
At the point of impact, flesh was seared to charcoal by the flames. Seismic energy followed immediately—a web of fractures spreading outward as carbonized tissue peeled away from the body, leaving a blackened crater.
Daisy wasn't satisfied. The punch hadn't done enough lethal damage. She'd hit a non-critical area, and all she'd really accomplished was making the serpent angrier.
Jörmungandr coiled his body in reverse, trying to crush her between his loops.
She wasn't about to play tug-of-war with a tail. This kind of attrition was pointless—nothing she did back here would be fatal. If she was going to make this count, she had to aim for the head.
She seized the opening as the serpent contracted and sprinted across his body. Feet never stopping, gravity manipulation, magnetism, her own bioelectric field, and the war boots' flame jets all working in unison—speed maxed out. She tore along the serpent's coils, covering several kilometers in moments.