"With trash like you as subordinates, Thanos can't be all that impressive either."
"You're insane, you can't just say that — what's wrong with saying it?"
...
By now, even The Other couldn't miss it. Even with whatever passed for his intelligence.
This Loki was working with the Earthlings.
The whole thing had been a trap to lure his army to its death.
"Loki, you dare collude with Earthlings , I am The Other!" The Other's roar shook with pure, impotent fury.
The Chitauri army answered. They poured from the portal like ink flooding a drain, blotting out the sky.
These were nothing like the cannon fodder before. Every soldier in this final wave radiated a suffocating pressure. Their heavy armor gleamed with cold metallic light. Energy crystals studded every joint, flickering with dangerous pulses.
The Other's voice cut through some kind of device, resonating directly inside every Chitauri skull: "Loki! You traitor!"
"I will make you pay!"
"All Chitauri warriors — kill Loki and those Avengers. Whatever it costs!"
The Other had gone completely mad. He was staking everything on a single throw, and he knew it. The invasion was finished. There was no coming back from this. His only path to survival was to kill the traitor and Earth's defenders, bring Thanos that offering, and pray it was enough to keep his head attached to his body.
This last wave proved it. More ferocious than anything before, their combat power dwarfing every previous unit. These were the Chitauri's trump card , the elite of the elite, personally bio-engineered by Thanos himself, fitted with the hardest armor materials available. The Other's greatest asset. His last card.
The battle lurched to a new level.
The moment they engaged, the Avengers felt the difference. These weren't the same enemies they'd been grinding through all day.
The Chomping Cabbage Army was still tearing in, still relentless , but their chewing speed had slowed. Even the Crazy Chomping Cabbages were feeling the pressure of that armor.
"These guys..." Tony fired a repulsor blast, shouting into the comms. "Did they get harder?"
Steve swung his shield, deflecting an energy beam. "Their armor's thicker. Weapons hit harder too."
"We need to close that portal!" Natasha's voice was tight. "Otherwise it doesn't matter how good Hermione is , they'll just grind her down!"
"The portal..." Something clicked in Tony's head.
"The Cosmic Cube!"
He remembered. On the Helicarrier, Hermione had walked them through the Infinity Stones.
"If the Cosmic Cube and the Scepter of the Mind are both Infinity Stones , same power source , then maybe the Scepter can punch through the Cosmic Cube's shield!"
The thought hit everyone at once, like a bolt of lightning.
"Where's the Scepter?" Natasha asked.
"Loki still has it!" Tony answered.
That's when it hit them. Nobody had been paying attention to Loki. They'd been so busy watching Hermione tear through an army that they'd nearly forgotten the man who started all of this.
"Stark Tower!" Steve's decision was immediate.
The Avengers wheeled around and moved.
They reached the rooftop to find Loki lounging in a deck chair, a glass of red wine balanced in his hand. He looked like he was on vacation.
Tony's jaw tightened. He was already lining up something cutting to say.
Then Loki raised both hands.
Slowly. Palms out. He set the Scepter of the Mind down beside him and leaned back, the picture of harmlessness.
"Don't misunderstand. I have no intention of resisting."
"The Scepter's right there." His tone was almost breezy. "Take it whenever you like."
The Avengers looked at each other. Nobody quite knew what to do with that.
Steve frowned. "Loki. What are you playing at?"
"What could I possibly be playing at?"
Loki shrugged, all innocence, and tilted his head toward the massive black hole hanging overhead.
"You want to close the portal, don't you? The Scepter can do it. I'm not lying."
They were skeptical, but Tony stepped forward, picked up the Scepter, turned it over carefully. No traps he could find.
Steve looked at Natasha.
"Close the portal."
Natasha nodded and moved toward the portal device. The others held position , one eye on Loki, the other ready to break toward Hermione the moment she needed backup.
"Wait!"
Hermione's voice cut across everything.
"Close what portal? Leave it open."
A beat of silence.
"Is Earth somewhere they can come and go whenever they feel like it?" Her voice was flat and cold. "They came. Fine. None of them are leaving. Not one."
"Every last one of them dies here."
The Avengers stared.
...This girl really has no mercy.
They wanted the invaders gone as much as she did , but wanting and doing were two different things. This wave was nothing like the ones before, and the Avengers were running on fumes. Pushing further was a gamble nobody liked the odds on.
"Hermione, you—" Steve started.
"Step aside."
She rose slowly into the air, faint ripples of magical energy curling around her like heat off asphalt.
She confirmed it first: no more enemies coming through the portal. Then the world shifted. The color bled out of everything. Gray. White. The battlefield spread below her in muted tones.
Her gaze swept across it. Wherever she looked, a dark red mark bloomed above each Chitauri soldier's head.
The mark of a curse.
She let it spread until every last enemy was linked. Then she raised her wand.
At its tip, a knot of eerie green light gathered and held.
"Avada Kedavra!"
The green light struck the first marked target.
Then it moved. Fast, branching, unstoppable , spreading like a spiderweb snapping taut across the sky, leaping from mark to mark until every linked enemy was caught inside a single glowing lattice of emerald death.
Silence fell over the world.
All of it. Every sound, gone.
The sky full of enemies froze. Suspended. Paused.
Something spread through the air then , not a smell, not a sound. A presence. An indescribable aura of death that seeped into the lungs and sat there.
Every person on the ground felt it. Avengers. Civilians huddled in basements and behind overturned cars. Every one of them felt the same thing at the same instant, deep in the chest, below thought.
Don't touch that light.
The certainty was absolute. Primal. Not a warning their minds had worked out , something older than that, something that lived in the marrow.
Touch it and die. No exceptions. No second chances.
They watched the Chitauri hanging motionless in the sky.
Then, all at once, the Chitauri fell.
No explosions. No screams. No struggle. They dropped like switches being thrown, eyes already empty, bodies rigid. THUD. THUD. THUD. One after another, the dull, heavy impacts came without pause, each one landing in the silence like a stone dropped into still water.
It made the skin crawl.
➤ Next: Ruthless Harvest
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