Age Of Miracles | Pietro Maximoff

Chapter Forty-Six: Screaming For Deliverance

Music is the "Chronos" album by Brand X Music.

Picture is Thanos from Avengers: Infinity War.

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"You don't have to be ashamed of who you've been...what you've done. I know...better than you could imagine...what it is to sink to the depths. To be on bended knee before God--screaming for deliverance."

- Stephen Strange, Doctor Strange

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CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Infinity is the first to lunge. Her several meters height towers over everyone in the room, including Thanos. She extends her large, black and yellow hands towards the Mad Titan, letting out an ear-piercing scream. Thanos doesn't move an inch. He only holds the Gauntlet up to her as she nears. When her body makes contact with the golden glove, she stops in an unnaturally quick way. Her body almost seems stuck on the Gauntlet.

Then Thanos grins, and Infinity is absorbed into the Gauntlet itself, pieces of her body collecting into the five Infinity Stones. "One down," he says to himself, clenching his fist, "three to go."

At the sight of his sister's demise, Eternity screams, the sound seeming to echo throughout space and time itself. As he summons his power, blasting Thanos with all the wear and tear of his namesake, Death turns to me and shouts, "Release us! Or we will all die!"

"I don't know how!" I shout back, picking up the spellbook. "I'm not a sorcerer!"

"This was a terrible idea," Killbane mutters to himself.

I turn to him as Eternity faces off against Thanos. "Go! Leave!"

Killbane shakes his head sharply. "Not happening."

I open a small portal behind him, the other side showing somewhere in Sokovia. "If Thanos gets that last Stone," I grab his wrist, "we are all dead!"

But my portal doesn't stay open. It closes before Killbane can go through. A force outside of my own powers, a blue aura, pushes my portal back in on itself. I turn, seeing Thanos' Gauntlet stretched towards me. He's used the Space Stone to force us to remain inside the ship. On the ground next to him, the mystical cloak of Eternity starts to fade to pitch black.

First Infinity, and now her brother Eternity. Two of the primordial beings of this universe are dead--or at least gone--in less than a minute.

And it's all my fault.

Entropy remains still, standing between Thanos and Death. The life-givers of the universe, Eternity and Infinity, are gone. All that remains now is literally decay and death. But these beings are not evil; they merely do the job that they were created to do. They hold no malice in their hearts. They hate no one. Thanos' actions are overwhelming their prospective jobs. They can't keep up.

Even Death and decay realize that the universe needs balance.

"You have to get out of here, Mistress," Entropy mumbles to the cloaked female behind him. "Break free. You are the strongest of us all."

Death lets her hood fall off her head, collecting on her neck. Her skull face is shrunken in, paler than when I saw her earlier. Her head is hairless, but I can tell there used to be locks there once upon a time. She shakes her head, oddly at peace as Thanos moves closer. "Even Death must die," she speaks. "It's my time."

I shake my head desperately, turning my face towards the spellbook. I flip it open, strenuously turning to the page where the spells were. My eyes swiftly move through the paragraphs, trying to find the releasing spell. From Stephen's notes, it doesn't look like anyone has ever attempted this spell, or if they have, they haven't lived long enough to release the beings or at least write about it. "Come on, come on," I mumble to myself.