EYLIS ※ Tony Stark [3]

16 - THREE

She was the closest one to Quill. The only one who could stop him.

But she hesitated a second too long.

⁂

A SHUDDER SWEPT her up. It all happened very quickly. Quill pulled out his pistol and punched Thanos twice with its handle, causing Mantis to let go of his temples.

"No!"

Mantis' hold broke off. Thanos came back to his senses.

He grabbed the cuff of the gauntlet just as Tony, Angie and Peter were sliding it off his hand. He knocked the three of them back in one swift motion and threw Mantis violently off his shoulders.

With the recovered powers of the Infinity Stones, he yanked on the Crimson Bands holding his right hand to whack Doctor Strange away.

Angie groaned in pain as Tony helped her off the ground. Unlike him, she had no armour to soften the impact of the blow. Her heart was beating hard against her ribcage and her breath came out in short huffs, but not from the pain or the effort...

"You okay?" Tony's arm supported her as she got back on her feet.

"W-we almost had him..." her voice trembled from both frustration and the distress of having come so close... so very close she could almost taste it, if only she hadn't hesitated, if only she had stopped Quill in time.

"Hey, it's okay," Tony's hand rested on the crook of her neck "It's not over yet."

Angie watched him charge back towards Thanos, leaving her behind to recover.

Tony clearly didn't understand the significance of what had just happened, what she allowed to happen.

A few meters away, Doctor Strange was hoisting himself back up after having been unceremoniously swatted away by Thanos, like a mere insect.

Strange was panting hard as his eyes met Angie's for a moment. It only took a short, swift glance to confirm the horrifying realization that she, until this moment, still hoped was only a gut feeling and nothing more.

But when has her gut feeling ever been wrong?

⁂

On the other side of the galaxy, in a crooked cottage of Vanaheim, the Witch of Ravencliff stood at her window soundlessly. Her trembling hands were the only sign of distress in her otherwise completely impassible demeanor.

She turned away from the window and went back to sit in front of the hearth at the center of her cottage. There were four small chunks of wood laid out evenly on the ground. She picked one up slowly and dropped it into the fire.

Ranveig's expression hardened as she watched the piece of wood coming apart in between the flames before it crumbled into ash.

"Three," she whispered, a quiet, ghostly sound in the dead silence of her cottage.

⁂

Back on Titan, the Guardians jumped up and charge again towards Thanos. But their efforts were in vain as the Mad Titan fired a blast of purple energy beam that knocked all four of them completely unconscious.

Doctor Strange stepped in at that moment, throwing all of his tricks at Thanos. He led a phenomenal fight but even a master of the Mystic Arts was no match for four infinity stones. It had come to a point where Thanos had Strange by the throat as the wizard struggled futilely against his hold.