The battle bent around them.
Where Thor and Anubis fought, the center of the battlefield churned like a vortex. Formations shattered. Frontlines collapsed. Neither side dared to fight too close to the storm these two gods conjured with every strike, every scream, every bone-cracking blow.
Soldiers scrambled to clear the space, some trampled underfoot, others hurled aside by stray swings or shockwaves. A harpy swooped too low, trying to strike a limping mortal beneath her and caught a backhanded swipe from Anubis meant for Thor. Her body split open midair, wings flapping uselessly as she crashed into the sand like a broken kite.
Nearby goblins barked and hissed, confused by the chaos, their small bodies tossed like dolls each time Thor's hammer met the ground. Lightning lanced out from his weapon in frantic bursts, cooking the sand to glass in craters around his feet. One bolt caught a troll mid-roar, vaporizing it in a flash that left nothing but a charred husk and the smell of ozone.
The air near them had become too volatile for flight.
The Valkyries, sensing the edge of death creeping closer, soared higher, circling like vultures now instead of angels of wrath. They watched from above, wings straining to keep out of reach. Anubis had already dragged two of their sisters from the sky, pinning one with a clawed foot and ripping the other's throat out with his teeth before throwing the bodies aside like meatless bones. His pounces had grown faster unpredictable as if tasting divine blood only made him hungrier.
Even allies couldn't remain too close.
A centaur commander tried to rally his archers near the edge of the fight, attempting to use Thor's thunder to mask their volleys. He shouted orders and raised his bow just as Anubis and Thor collided again with a sound like a mountain crumbling. The shockwave rolled through them. The archers flew like leaves in a gale, slamming into rocks and bodies, bones cracking like twigs. The commander never rose.
It became clear quickly that the battlefield was being re-written by this clash.
The dirt turned to scorched, crumbling stone. Pools of molten glass shimmered in spiderweb fractures where lightning had kissed the earth. Blood soaked the sand so thick it clung like syrup to boots. Tactical lines were abandoned. Commanders gave frantic hand gestures, pulling their men to the flanks, signaling new rally points away from the eye of the storm.
Bjorn's warriors, caught on the outer edges, dug in their heels. They anchored their shields and grit their teeth, watching gods fight as the world trembled around them. He barked orders between clenched teeth, trying to hold his formation from being swept up in the chaos, even as Thor's hammer flattened a dozen paces of land with a single strike.
The shield pulsed above them all, its light flickering stronger now, but the center beneath it was a furnace. A slaughterhouse.
And at the center those two.
Thor's body hummed with raw current, his every breath streaked with sparks. His blood steamed. His eyes burned white with fury.
Anubis circled on all fours, ribs heaving, matted with blood and bits of flesh from everything unlucky enough to stand too close. His snarl never faded, his claws twitching with anticipation for the next lunge.
***
Morpheus did not attack immediately he ignored the war around him and focused in on Helga, "For what it's worth Helga I'm sorry you couldn't cure me and I'm sorry you will not be able to accomplish your goal I'm afraid your journey will end here."
"Don't be so sure about that Morpheus," she replied using mind magic to conceal her emotions
Morpheus didn't blink. Didn't breathe deep. His hands rose, and with a twist of his fingers, the sand around the temple flared into dozens of blades, then exploded forward each spear of earth aimed to kill. There was no warning, no pause, no space for sentiment. Helga knew it too. She moved on instinct.
She raised a hand and the air shimmered flesh-mending sigils twisted into whips of emerald light, violently shredding the first wave of incoming blades. A second heartbeat later, she spun, and her palm slammed against the ground. pure regenerative energy sunk into the ground and vines erupted like spears, glowing bright as fire, wrapping around Morpheus's own spells and dissolving them in mid-air.
"Still clever," Morpheus muttered, voice low as he stepped forward through the wreckage. The moment his boot touched the sand, it hissed and turned into a set of jagged spikes, rising up toward Helga's chest.
She didn't backpedal instead she burst forward.
Her mask caught the light. The silver gleamed even through the blood and dust, and for a second, he remembered a different Helga. The healer who once stayed up through the night over his cursed body, her hands glowing, refusing to give up.
Now, she used those same hands to send pulsing rings of healing magic through his spikes curving the spell into a recoil that ruptured the sand formation into a concussive shockwave. Morpheus was flung sideways, but he landed low, sliding, cloak twisting behind him as he let his shoulder dig into the ground and rebounded to his feet.
Helga didn't stop. A thread of gold lanced from her fingers, writhing midair. It looked like a lifeline but when it struck the rock where Morpheus had been a moment before, it detonated into a burst of bone-knitting energy so violent it shattered the entire ridge.
He reappeared behind her in a flash of sand. No hesitation.
His hand was already inside the folds of his robe.
The dagger came out red-hot coated with liquid flame and it aimed straight for the spine between her ribs. A killing blow.
Helga spun, too late but her shoulder rolled, and the blade sliced instead across her side. Blood sprayed, but her lips whispered something ancient, and the wound sealed before it finished opening.
"You've learned new things," Morpheus said, circling, now wielding three floating blades made of crystallized light. "Good. I'd hate for this to be boring."
Helga didn't reply. Her eyes glowed with steady pain. Then she thrust her arm up, and beams of healing magic shot into the sky before slamming down in a ring around her a baptism of explosive mending, melting stone and earth into molten traps.
Morpheus dove between two pulses, rolled, and dragged his hand through the sand. Chains made of obsidian snapped out of the ground and aimed for her neck and legs.
Helga clapped her hands, and the chains burned away in a pulse of purification. She hurled the radiant energy outward—blinding, white, searing. It wasn't healing. It was a burn, a cleansing from the inside out. Meant to sterilize wounds. Meant to kill what festered.
Meant now for him.
Morpheus took the hit. His ward flared cracked but he didn't slow. He surged forward, ducked a burst of limb-mending energy that would have pulped his ribcage, and punched his hand toward her mask.
Helga parried with a shield of translucent skin-forging magic. The sound it made when it met his palm was like bones snapping in reverse.
Their eyes locked for half a second.
"I meant what I said," Morpheus growled. "I'm sorry."
"I know," she whispered.
He summoned a monolith of sand behind her and detonated it.
The blast flung her forward—and he met her mid-air with a blade of condensed glass, aiming for her throat.
Helga twisted in the air, used her magic to force her muscles to bend beyond human limits she caught his wrist, twisted his elbow back, and her other hand formed a needle of glowing white.
She went for his heart.
He caught it with a ward. It shattered, but it bought him a breath, and that's all he needed.
Morpheus bent low, drew power from the glyphs on the stone beneath, and sent it screaming through his spine into his palm. With one final push, he drove the momentum forward, hurling Helga backward, her boots dragging through the dust.
She skidded to a halt, one knee down, panting, blood running from the edges of her mask.
He advanced again.
There would be no break. No time to speak.
This was war, and Morpheus had already mourned her.
She just didn't know it yet.
***
Anubis's claws raked across Thor's chest again, teeth bared, snarling like a rabid god as his paws tore grooves into the earth. Thunder cracked over them like a whip, but he didn't stop. Blood black and steaming poured from a dozen gashes along his flanks, but Anubis only fought harder. He lunged forward, jaws snapping toward Thor's throat—
—and was blasted back by a hammer strike that cracked the sky.
Thor roared.
The ground buckled beneath him as power cascaded from his body—cascaded, not flickered. Thunder streamed off his arms and legs like liquid lightning, boiling the sand around his feet, scorching the stones into glass. His eyes were pits of stormlight. His mouth opened again in fury, and the howl that followed split the wind like a blade.
He charged.
Anubis sprang, but he was slower now. Blood loss. Bone showing through fur. Limbs trembling with the cost of survival. Still, he met the god of thunder mid-leap.
The clash was monstrous.
Stone exploded beneath them. Shockwaves rippled through the battlefield, sending soldiers and monsters sprawling. Valkyries above flinched and veered higher, out of reach of the black-furred predator that had already felled dozens of them. The tide bent around them. Allies and enemies alike gave wide berth, too afraid to be caught in the fury of titans.
Anubis struck at Thor's legs. Thor answered with an overhead hammer swing that connected square to the shoulder—crack. Anubis collapsed to one knee.
Another swing.
This one took part of his jaw with it.
Blood poured freely down his chest, and yet Anubis stood, snarling, spit and gore slinging from his fangs. He tried to pounce, but his hind legs buckled. The muscles weren't answering anymore.
Thor loomed over him, lightning wreathing his hammer. The glow illuminated every scar on Anubis's body, every ruin of war carved into fur and flesh.
The shield the great golden dome pulsed. Then pulsed again. Slower this time. The glimmer was fading. Cracks of energy fizzled like spiderwebs along its surface.
Thor raised his hammer for the final blow.
"This ends now," he growled, voice deep enough to shake the bones of the dead.
Anubis bared his teeth. A last defiance. No words. Only fury. Only will.
Thor swung—
"SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"
A piercing falcons cry sliced through the sky above.