The World-Devouring Serpent opened its abyssal maw.
Jormungand looked gentle and harmless on the outside, but the inside of her mouth was horrifying.
Warped starlight turned into a swirling vortex and streamed into that enormous mouth, like the eye of a hurricane dozens of miles wide.
Even the ground beneath Skyl, Thor, and the others was falling upward toward the giant mouth in the sky.
When gravity becomes too strong, moving even a little closer to the source makes a noticeable difference. If someone were falling into a black hole, the parts of their body closer to it would be pulled harder than the parts farther away. That uneven pull worked like a tide, stretching the human body out like a noodle.
Thor's face got pulled so long he looked like Doctor Strange with a horse face. Skyl nearly lost it when he saw him, but there was no need to think too hard about it—his own face was probably stretched just as absurdly.
Gali waved at Jormungand and shouted, "Stop! Alita, stop!"
Thor tried to swing Mjolnir and fly away, but the second he leaped, he fell into an even fiercer gravity current and dropped faster than before.
At the critical moment, Skyl opened portal after portal, sending everyone to the top of Jormungand's head without incident.
The enraged Asgardians saw the monster's skull right beneath their feet and immediately prepared to smash it open.
"Stop!" Skyl barked. "You can't kill her like that. You'll just make her even angrier."
Thor struggled with it for a second, but in the end he raised a hand to stop his people. "Listen to the wizard."
Gali gently patted Jormungand's skin. She showed a sense of responsibility no one had ever seen from her before.
"Mom? Is that you?"
"It's me. Alita, be good."
Gali's voice was soft, and it soothed Jormungand's fury. The great serpent slowly closed her mouth, then shrank down and wrapped herself around Gali's arm.
"My body hurts, Mom. The little people were hitting me." Jormungand's slender tail pointed at Thor.
Even Thor, whose courage was bigger than a polar bear, couldn't help shivering in front of this beast of catastrophe. Even so, he still lifted his chin proudly and let out a cold snort, showing true Asgardian backbone.
"That's because you did something bad."
"What is bad?"
Gali tried to teach Jormungand the difference between right and wrong, but she didn't really understand moral rules herself. In the end, she could only look to Skyl for help.
Skyl told Jormungand, "If you eat other people's food, they'll go hungry too."
"Go hungry? Going hungry is bad." Jormungand writhed uneasily. She had no eyes—only a glowing brain—and observed the world through telepathy. "Who are you? Ah, you're scary."
Jormungand curled up in Gali's hands and trembled.
Even the Daedric Prince Azura didn't dare make telepathic contact with Skyl.
Skyl guessed it was because of the gate-shaped mark he carried.
Thor was getting restless. After all, his whole family had fallen into the snake's stomach. How could he not be anxious?
"Wizard, you said Asgard can still be saved. What do we need to do?"
Skyl gave him a reassuring look, then continued speaking to Jormungand in a gentle tone. "Alita, do you remember swallowing a pen once?"
"I do. Mom told me that pen was amazing and said I wasn't allowed to touch it whenever I wanted."
Skyl shot Gali a glance, and she looked so ashamed she wanted the ground to swallow her whole.
"All right, then. Can you give me that pen?"
Jormungand twisted unhappily a couple of times, but she still obeyed. She started regurgitating, slowly coughing up that plain-looking Pen of Creation inch by inch.
Skyl told Thor, "With this pen, Asgard can be saved. And you too, Gali—remember to apologize to Thor. You really caused him a huge mess this time."
Gali bowed again and again.
Thor's expression eased a little, but he still didn't believe this pen could save his ruined homeland. If Skyl hadn't been acting so mysterious and unfathomable, Thor probably would have charged straight back into a fight with Jormungand.
In Norse myth, Thor and Jormungand really were old enemies. They fought a final battle at Ragnarök and ended up killing each other.
But this cosmic tapeworm was not the Jormungand of myth. She was the granddaughter of Galactus. If you really wanted to trace the family tree, that made her the great-granddaughter of the One-Above-All himself. Her pedigree was on a level the giant serpent of Norse legend couldn't begin to compare to.
As the Pen of Creation gradually emerged, everyone's eyes locked onto it.
And then, at that exact moment, a colossal shadow descended from the sky, blotting out the sunlight and the stars.
Sensing that something was wrong, Thor spun around and saw a giant striding through deep space.
The giant was unimaginably vast. His head alone rivaled Earth in size. The light reflected in his eyes could illuminate the four seas. His arms and legs looked as though they could reach into every corner of the Nine Realms. The storms born from his breath could spread across tens of millions of miles, and even satellites orbited his massive body.
The celestial bodies of deep space flickered and sang in praise of his arrival.
"It's him..." Heimdall said, his voice trembling. "The immortal Galactus."
All Asgardians had heard of that god. He fed on planets, had existed since the Big Bang, and was ancient, exalted, and peerlessly powerful.
The instant Skyl saw Galactus, his heart started pounding. Without even meaning to, he slipped into a moment of perfect foresight and saw Galactus obtain the Pen of Creation, then devour the entire Omniverse and rise into a god above gods.
"Thor, hold him off in a minute. Don't let him come any closer."
Galactus rapidly approached, and his size rapidly shrank as he did. By the time he landed on the wreckage of Asgard, he stood only a mere three hundred feet tall.
Gali looked up at her mountain-sized father, dazed and unable to find any words.
"Galacta. It has been a long time." Galactus looked at his daughter. He knew this was the cosmic tapeworm that had once lived inside him. Then he looked at Jormungand. "You gave birth to offspring this quickly? Let me hold the child."
Seeing the old man about to come take the kid, Skyl immediately grabbed the tip of the Pen of Creation. The slightly dried ink seeped into his fingers. He pulled a little harder, and Jormungand suddenly shook her head, clearly uncomfortable, then spat out another short section. A third of the pen was exposed now.
"Hurry up and spit it out," he urged softly.
Galactus noticed what Skyl was doing, and anger appeared on his solemn, imposing face.
"Insolent mortal. You dare lay hands on my descendants?"
He extended one rough finger, as coarse as stone, and an ice-blue beam shot from the tip. It struck Skyl before he had time to dodge.
The enchanted wizard's robe frantically absorbed the energy, but Galactus's output was too overwhelming. In less than a second, it exceeded the robe's upper limit. The robe exploded apart and blasted Skyl away.
Jormungand shook her head again and coughed up another section of the pen.
Gali screamed and threw herself toward Skyl. "Skyl! Are you okay?"
Thor roared, "Asgard! Protect the wizard!" Without another word, he swung Mjolnir and charged Galactus in close combat.
Galactus looked at Thor with disdain. "Son of Odin, you are no match for me."
Mjolnir flew out and smashed Galactus so hard he staggered and crashed heavily backward. Thor leaped onto his chest and grinned at that huge face. "How about now?"
"Hmph." A trace of a smile appeared in Galactus's eyes. "Not bad, I suppose."
He exhaled a freezing storm, and Thor's body rapidly iced over.
Thor was trapped beneath solid ice. Mjolnir flew back to him on its own and shattered the frozen shell. The God of Thunder broke free, frost-white arcs of lightning bursting across his body, and laughed at Galactus.
"Let's do it again!"
Gali dug Skyl out of the pile of rubble. As a master mage, he normally went out wearing a dozen layers of protection at all times. Ordinary people couldn't hurt him at all. But against Galactus, who could brute-force miracles into existence, even he had gotten humbled.
"Gali, get your daughter to spit out the pen. I'm going to trade a few blows with your dad."
"Skyl, wait!" Gali still wanted to stop him, but there was no way she could hold him back.
Skyl floated into the air like a feather and opened the Book of Mora. In the depths of space, the suns all began to shine with an ominous green glow.
The battle of gods had begun.
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