Marvel: Empire of Power-Chapter 139 - 138: The Apocalypse Gauntlet, Part II: A God’s Eye, a Mutant’s Sacrifice, and the Dawn of the Thorne Doctrine
Chapter 139 - 138: The Apocalypse Gauntlet, Part II: A God's Eye, a Mutant's Sacrifice, and the Dawn of the Thorne Doctrine
The global battle against Apocalypse and his Horsemen raged with an intensity that threatened to shatter civilization. Elias Thorne, from his Sanctum Umbra, was the unseen conductor, his True Prime Conduit senses now so refined that he could almost simultaneously perceive the critical flashpoints across the planet, his System processing terabytes of tactical data, psionic feedback, and energy signatures every second. His will, amplified by his apotheosis, became a subtle but pervasive force, bolstering his assets, subtly disrupting his enemies, nudging probabilities in his favor.
Moscow – The Bear and the Wolverines:
Logan, his Berserker Ascendant fury channeled into an art form of adamantium devastation, finally drove his superheated claws through the Celestial-tech core of Horseman War's armor. General Volkov, his pyrokinetic flames extinguished, his augmented body shutting down, uttered one last, defiant curse in Russian before collapsing into a heap of smoking, inert metal and flesh. Miller "Argent," his Feral Legionnaire form riddled with shrapnel and plasma burns but his cryo-resonant talons still dripping with Volkov's superheated coolant, stood beside Logan, a testament to unyielding resilience. They had stopped a nuclear Armageddon, but much of Red Square was a cratered wasteland.
[HORSEMAN OF WAR (VOLKOV V.2) – NEUTRALIZED. CELESTIAL PYROKINETIC AUGMENTATION SECURED (DAMAGED BUT ANALYZABLE BY NOX/FINCH). PRIME ESSENCE SHARD ACQUIRED: +1.5 (FROM ADVANCED CELESTIAL TECH/HORSEMAN POWER CORE). TOTAL SHARDS: 1.6/5.0. SYSTEM NOTE: LOGAN/MILLER COMBAT SYNERGY REACHING LEGENDARY TIER.]
London – The Plague and the Technopath:
In the labyrinthine tunnels beneath London, David Technopath and his Legionnaires finally cornered Horseman Pestilence. Her nano-plague was contained, thanks to Zara Bastion's immense psionic shields holding firm against the tide of microscopic death, but Pestilence herself, a chittering, multi-limbed horror of mutated Morlock flesh and Celestial bio-weaponry, was proving incredibly difficult to destroy. Dubois Inferno's plasma gauntlets seared her, Elena Scythe's kinetic blades sliced her, but she regenerated with unnatural speed.
It was David Technopath who found the key. Analyzing Pestilence's bio-signature with his Legionnaire senses, he identified a single, overriding command frequency emanating from Apocalypse's distant throne that controlled her regenerative abilities. With a surge of focused System energy Elias remotely fed him, David projected a targeted counter-frequency, a techno-psionic "kill switch." Pestilence shrieked, her form dissolving into a pool of bubbling, inert protoplasm.
[HORSEMAN OF PESTILENCE (MUTATED MORLOCK) – NEUTRALIZED. CELESTIAL BIO-WEAPON/NANO-PLAGUE TECHNOLOGY SECURED (CONTAINED). PRIME ESSENCE SHARD ACQUIRED: +1.3 (UNIQUE MUTAGENIC/CELESTIAL SIGNATURE). TOTAL SHARDS: 2.9/5.0. DAVID SECUNDUS – TECHNO-EMPATHIC DOMINANCE OVER ENEMY AI/BIO-TECH CONFIRMED.]
Cairo – The Sands of Entropy and a Gravitic Gamble:
Horseman Famine, an ethereal nightmare drifting across the Giza plateau, his entropic aura crumbling ancient stones and withering attacking Egyptian army units (who had belatedly, bravely, entered the fray), was seemingly untouchable. Jaeger Richter's aerial attacks with the Sky-Reaver passed through him. Legionnaire Nova Okoro's gravitic wells could only temporarily bind his wispy form.
Elias, sensing their frustration, provided a desperate solution through Nova's enhanced Legionnaire mind. He recalled the Kree Resonance Nullifier schematics. While a full weapon couldn't be built in time, O'Malley had theorized that a focused, high-intensity gravitic pulse, precisely attuned to Famine's entropic frequency (which Nova's senses could now faintly detect), might disrupt his connection to the "ley line" Apocalypse was using to empower him through the pyramids.
It was an incredible risk. If Nova overloaded, she could create a localized black hole. But she was a True Legionnaire, her will as strong as her power. Focusing all her gravitic might, amplified by Elias's own energy channeling and the ambient desert heat, she unleashed a single, resonant pulse of pure, crushing gravity directly at Famine.
The wraith-like Horseman screamed, a sound like dying stars, as his entropic aura flickered, destabilized, and then imploded, leaving behind only a shimmering residue of cold, lifeless dust and a faint, lingering scent of ozone.
[HORSEMAN OF FAMINE (ENTROPIC WRAITH) – NEUTRALIZED. CELESTIAL ENERGY CONDUIT (GIZA PYRAMID NEXUS) DISRUPTED. PRIME ESSENCE SHARD ACQUIRED: +1.1 (ESOTERIC ENTROPIC/TELLURIC ENERGY). TOTAL SHARDS: 4.0/5.0. NOVA OKORO – ADVANCED GRAVITIC MANIPULATION (FREQUENCY ATTUNEMENT/NULLIFICATION) POTENTIAL UNLOCKED.]
Three Horsemen down. Only Death remained.
Washington D.C. – The Shadow of Death and a Captain's Choice:
The Horseman Death was proving to be Apocalypse's most insidious weapon. Not a physical combatant, but a psychic vampire, a being of pure despair and existential dread, whose very presence drained the will to live, causing widespread panic, suicides, and societal collapse. S.H.I.E.L.D. was in chaos. The US government was teetering. Captain America and his small Task Force Vigilant were fighting a desperate, losing battle against an enemy they couldn't see, couldn't punch. Charles Xavier and Jean Grey, even with Cerebro amplifying their powers, were struggling to shield even a fraction of the populace from Death's suffocating aura.
It was Wraith (Bucky Barnes), with his lifetime of enduring psychological torture and his System-stabilized mind, who finally located Death's physical anchor: not a person, but a "Mourning Engine," a piece of Celestial technology hidden deep beneath Arlington National Cemetery, drawing power from the site's immense concentration of grief and loss, and amplifying it into a global wave of despair.
Anya Petrova relayed this critical intel to Captain America and, through him, to Xavier. The objective: destroy the Mourning Engine.
Rogers, along with a grimly determined Peggy Carter (who had invoked emergency S.H.I.E.L.D. protocols, cutting through the red tape), Jean Grey (shielding their minds with the full, terrifying might of the Phoenix Force, which was dangerously close to erupting uncontrollably), and a handful of their most trusted operatives, descended into the catacombs. They faced not soldiers, but horrifying psychic manifestations, specters of fallen comrades, visions of personal failure, amplified by Death's power. Many fell, their wills broken.
But Captain America, his spirit an unbreakable shield of hope and resolve, pressed on. Jean Grey, her eyes blazing with Phoenix fire, burned away the psychic illusions. They reached the Mourning Engine, a pulsating, black heart of despair. Rogers, knowing it was likely a suicide mission, prepared to destroy it with a series of specialized explosive charges Gabe Jones had designed.
It was then that Elias Thorne, observing the escalating psychic backlash that threatened to shatter even Jean Grey's Phoenix-augmented mind, made a critical, almost sacrificial, intervention. He couldn't physically be there, but he could project his will. He focused his [Psionic Shielding (Tier Omega-Minus)] and his newly developed [Genetic Code Weaving (Minor)] (not to alter, but to reinforce living psionic signatures) through his tenuous empathic link with Xavier, and then, through Xavier, to Jean Grey. He didn't try to control her; he offered her an anchor, a conduit to his own vast, cold, System-derived mental fortitude, a way to channel and control the burgeoning Phoenix Force without being consumed.
"Focus the fire, Jean Grey," Elias's mental voice was a calm, unyielding whisper in the inferno of her mind. "You are the Phoenix. Not its puppet. Burn away the despair. Not just for them. For yourself."
Jean, startled but sensing an unexpected, immensely powerful ally in the psychic storm, seized upon his offered strength. The Phoenix Force coalesced, not into wild, destructive flame, but into a focused, incandescent lance of pure, cleansing psionic fire. She unleashed it upon the Mourning Engine.
The Engine shrieked, a sound that tore at the fabric of reality, then imploded, its despair-wave collapsing.
[HORSEMAN OF DEATH (PSYCHIC ENTITY/CELESTIAL MOURNING ENGINE) – NEUTRALIZED. GLOBAL DESPAIR FIELD DISSIPATED. JEAN GREY (PHOENIX FORCE) – ACHIEVED TEMPORARY CONTROLLED FOCUS VIA EXTERNAL PSIONIC REINFORCEMENT (HOST ELIAS THORNE). Prime Essence Shard Acquired: +1.0 (UNIQUE PSYCHIC/CELESTIAL/DEATH ENERGY NEXUS). TOTAL SHARDS: 5.0/5.0. SYSTEM NOTE: INDIRECT HOST INTERVENTION WITH OMEGA-LEVEL MUTANT (PHOENIX) HAS CREATED UNPREDICTABLE RESONANCE. FURTHER MONITORING REQUIRED.]
Five full Shards again. And Captain America, though he would never know it, owed his life, and the salvation of Washington, to the unseen hand of Elias Thorne.
The Throne of Ages – The Final Confrontation:
With all four Horsemen defeated, En Sabah Nur's global energetic grid was fractured, his power significantly diminished, though still colossal. Nox and Vex, Elias's Klyntar-bonded champions, using the intel from the Horsemen battles and Logan's previous Arctic incursions, finally located Apocalypse's hidden "Throne of Ages" – a mobile, trans-dimensional Celestial ark, currently cloaked within a pocket dimension anchored to the North Magnetic Pole.
Elias gave the final command. "Nox. Vex. Logan. Miller. Adamantium Guard Praetorian Cohort Alpha & Beta (all eighteen True Legionnaires, led by Marcus Primus and David Technopath). Thomas MacIntyre, commanding. This is the final battle. En Sabah Nur must fall. The world depends on it."
He considered joining them himself. His personal power was now truly god-like. But his Apotheosis was still too recent, his understanding of his own "Localized Spacetime Distortion" and advanced energy manipulation too nascent for a direct confrontation with a being like Apocalypse who had wielded Celestial tech for millennia. His role was as the global conductor, the System nexus. His Legionnaires, his Prime Conduits, they were his ultimate weapons for this fight. He would support them, augment them, guide them with every ounce of his will and System power from Sanctum Umbra. This was their war to win, their triumph to claim, under his unseen, omniscient gaze.
The fate of Earth hung on this final, desperate assault against an ancient god. The dawn of Elias Thorne's New World Order would either be cemented in Apocalypse's defeat, or consumed in a global inferno of his making. The final pieces were in play.
