The Battle Of Titan

Titan had been beautiful once. Long ago — before the hunger, before the ruin — its towers had touched the sky and its people had been proud. Now the towers were toppled. The sky was copper-colored and empty. Broken columns lay across cracked plazas, and the wind moved through archways that used to lead to market streets.

This was where Thanos came to wait.

And this was where the heroes came to find him.

They arrived in pieces, from different directions — which is usually how the best plans start.

Iron Man and Doctor Strange and Spider-Man had been flung into space aboard a ring-shaped ship, and they crash-landed on Titan's surface with a BOOM that sent dust spiraling up into the copper sky. They found the Guardians of the Galaxy — Star-Lord, Gamora, Mantis, Drax, and Nebula — already circling the ruins, looking for Thanos.

For one extraordinary, brief moment, all of them pointed weapons at each other in a very fast, very complicated misunderstanding.

Then they realized they wanted the same thing.

They made a plan. Doctor Strange had looked forward through fourteen million possible futures using his Time Stone — his eyes going white, the golden rings of the Eye of Agamotto spinning around him — and had seen exactly one path that ended in victory. He had not told anyone what it was. He simply closed his eyes, opened them, and said quietly: "We should try this."

The plan was this: Mantis, who could sense and calm feelings, would press her hands to Thanos's enormous temples and put his mind to sleep — like a wave of warm water washing over a very powerful, very complicated brain. While she held him, the others would remove the Infinity Gauntlet from his hand.

Take the gauntlet. Take the stones. End it here, before Earth.

They hid. They waited. They heard his footsteps.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

Thanos walked into the ruined plaza like he owned it — which, in a way, he believed he owned everything. He was enormous and calm and he carried the gauntlet with four glowing stones on his fist as naturally as you might carry a schoolbag.

WHOOSH — they attacked from every direction at once.

Star-Lord fired. Drax leaped. Spider-Man swung on webs, wrapping them around the gauntlet fingers, pulling backward. Iron Man came in from above with repulsor beams blazing — ZAP ZAP ZAP — and then drove a blade of nanotech into the gauntlet, prying at the gold. Mantis landed on Thanos's shoulders and pressed her hands to his head.

His eyes went glassy. He swayed.

The gauntlet was coming off. The golden fingers were lifting from his hand. One more moment. Just one more second and —

Star-Lord landed in front of Thanos. He had heard something from Nebula — a piece of terrible information, whispered in the chaos of the fight. Gamora was gone. Not captured. Gone. The orange glow on the gauntlet told the whole story.

Peter Quill's face crumpled. He hit Thanos.

He couldn't stop himself. The grief was a wave and he was in its way.

The gauntlet slammed back on. Mantis went flying. Thanos's eyes cleared.

He looked around at the heroes scattered across the ruins like leaves after a storm, and then he looked up.

He reached into space with the Space Stone and grabbed a moon. An actual moon — a small grey world that had been orbiting peacefully overhead for a billion years.

He threw it.

CRASH. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. Chunks of moon the size of houses rained from the sky. Every hero ran or flew or dove behind broken columns. The ground shook. The sky went grey with debris.

Doctor Strange rose above the chaos. His hands moved in golden patterns — the Sorcerer Supreme at full power — and a thousand mirror images of himself spread out across the plaza like a reflection in a shattered mirror, each one holding chains of golden light to bind Thanos in place.

Iron Man drove forward, sword raised. He was the last line. He put everything into it.

Thanos caught the blade. He twisted it. He drove it back.

Tony Stark fell.

Thanos stood over him with the gauntlet raised. The four stones pulsed softly. Tony looked up through his broken visor at the largest, most certain being he had ever faced.

Then Doctor Strange raised one hand.

In his palm — green, spinning, glowing — was the Time Stone. The Eye of Agamotto. He held it out.

"This is the only one I'm giving you," he said, very quietly. "One life. For the universe."

Thanos took it. Five stones on the gauntlet now. He looked at Tony for a long moment — acknowledging something, though Tony did not know what — and then opened a portal with the Space Stone and stepped through.

Earth. Wakanda. The Mind Stone.

The last one.

Doctor Strange helped Tony to his feet. Tony looked at him with furious eyes.

"You gave him the stone. You said you'd protect it."

"I went forward in time," said Strange, "and I looked at every possible outcome. There was only one way we win." He paused. "This had to happen."

"What are you talking about?"

Doctor Strange said nothing else.

Iron Man looked at the portal Thanos had left behind, and understood — with a cold, quiet certainty — that this was not over. That it was somehow just beginning.

He did not know yet what it would cost. What it would require.

But the sorcerer knew. And that was enough.

For now.