The Battle For Wakanda

Far away from Earth, on a world called Titan that was once beautiful and is now quiet and broken, a battle was happening that would decide everything.

Iron Man. Doctor Strange. Spider-Man. Star-Lord and the Guardians of the Galaxy. They had come together on Titan's crumbling surface — a place of broken columns and falling rock and a sky the color of old copper — to face Thanos.

Doctor Strange had looked through fourteen million possible futures using the Time Stone, and he had found exactly one path to victory. He told no one what that path was. He simply folded his arms and waited.

They had a plan. Mantis — a gentle, empathic woman who could sense and calm feelings — would touch Thanos's enormous head and put his mind to sleep. While she held him, the others would pull the Infinity Gauntlet from his hand. The gauntlet — five glowing stones — would be gone. Thanos would be helpless.

The plan almost worked. It was so very, very close.

THWIP — Spider-Man's webs wrapped around the gauntlet fingers. Iron Man's nanobots pushed back against the gold. Star-Lord grabbed his arm. Mantis pressed her hands to Thanos's head, her eyes glowing, and he swayed.

Then Star-Lord learned that someone he loved — someone brave and green and bright — was gone. Gamora was gone. Thanos had taken her to the cliffs of Vormir, and she had not come back.

Star-Lord hit Thanos. He couldn't stop himself. The grief was too big.

The gauntlet slammed back onto Thanos's hand.

Thanos reached up — CRACK — and pulled a moon out of orbit. He threw it. A moon. At the heroes. Chunks of rock the size of buildings rained down from the sky like the loudest storm you have ever imagined.

Doctor Strange split himself into a thousand identical mirror-copies, chains of light holding Thanos in every direction. Iron Man drew a sword from his nanotech armor and drove it forward. But Thanos twisted that blade back and drove it into Tony's side, and then stood over him with the gauntlet ready.

Doctor Strange looked at Tony Stark. He looked at the Eye of Agamotto — the Time Stone — hanging around his neck.

And he held it out.

"One life," said the Sorcerer Supreme very quietly, "for the universe."

Thanos took the Time Stone. Five stones glowed on his gauntlet now — purple, blue, red, orange, green. Only one was missing.

He left Titan and went to Earth.

And on Earth, in the beautiful golden city of Wakanda — surrounded by fields and waterfalls and a vibranium dome of shimmering energy — everyone was waiting.

King T'Challa, the Black Panther, had opened the borders of Wakanda. He stood with his army — the Dora Milaje in their red armor, the Border Tribe in their blue, warriors running across the open plains. Captain America was there. Black Widow. Bucky Barnes. Sam Wilson. And the brilliant princess Shuri was inside her lab, working fast, trying to safely remove the yellow Mind Stone from Vision's forehead before Thanos could claim it.

The Outriders came first. They poured from dark portals like a wave — four-armed creatures without eyes, fast and hungry, hurling themselves at the Wakandan armies. The battle was enormous and loud and fierce.

Then — KRAKOOM — lightning split the clouds, and Thor fell from the sky like a hammer himself. He had been to the dying star of Nidavellir and forged a new weapon with the dwarf king Eitri: Stormbreaker, the mightiest axe in all the realms. He swung it and cut through the army like wind through paper. Hope rushed back into every heart on that battlefield.

But Thanos arrived.

He stepped through a portal of violet light — purple-skinned, golden-gauntleted, calm. The five stones on his fist glowed softly in the sunlight.

Hero after hero tried to stop him. T'Challa. Steve Rogers. Thor. Wanda Maximoff used everything she had, holding back the most powerful being in the universe with one arm while her other hand unmade the Mind Stone. It cracked. It exploded. Vision crumpled.

Thanos held up the Time Stone.

He turned time backward.

The Mind Stone reassembled. Vision stirred.

Thanos reached out and gently, carefully, plucked the yellow stone from Vision's forehead. He placed it in the gauntlet.

All six stones. Six colors. One enormous CRACK of power.

Thor hurled Stormbreaker with every ounce of force he had. It crossed the battlefield like a comet and buried itself in Thanos's chest. He stood there, stormbreaker in him, and looked at Thor.

"You should have gone for the head," Thanos said.

He snapped his fingers.

One dry click.

And then the world went quiet.

On the Wakandan plain, warriors became grey ash and drifted away on the wind. In the streets of cities around the world, people reached for each other and dissolved before they could catch hold. On Titan, a young man in a red suit said "I don't feel so good" and crumbled in Tony Stark's arms.

Half of all living things in the universe. Gone.

Thanos stood on a quiet orange world and watched the sunrise.

The remaining heroes stood in the silence of Wakanda, in the ash that had been their friends, and looked at each other with eyes full of loss.

It was the saddest moment in the history of the Earth.

But it was not the end. Not yet.