Marvel: Death Dealer

Dante’s POV

The ancient corridors were filled with traps. Sharon had the instinct and reaction time to dodge even if she was by herself,, but Emma wasn’t like that. The pressure plates triggering sharp spikes to protrude from the ground or the other releasing a barrage of arrows couldn’t do anything to Emma. However, there were hidden traps that flooded the chambers with sand, which Emma barely survived after destroying the closed door. The only one she couldn’t escape was the most rage-inducing trap. The ground beneath her collapsed, sending them crashing down into a pit of spikes.

She tried to climb up, but the wall couldn’t be easily gripped. She had no choice but to ask Dante for help, after which he happily pulled her out.

As they descended, Emma talked about opening her own academy for mutants, the trending stocks to invest in, how much she wanted to help Psylocke escape her darkness, and her plans to make Hellions stronger. The only thing she didn’t bring up was their encounter with Candra. She had plenty of experience with shitty parents, so she knew it wasn’t wrong for him to dismiss a mother who had never been present in his life.

He came down a set of stairs and saw the room in the distance being illuminated in a golden glow.

"He sits alone in the darkness…” an old, weathered voice drifted toward them like dust on the wind. “As always. As ever."

Emma stopped walking. “New trap.”

He kept walking. “That’s where we have to go.”

As soon as he entered the bright chamber, he noticed the gaping hole in the center leading into the abyss far below, from which rose a massive stone monolith; it stretched upward like a pillar holding up the pyramid itself. Every inch of its surface was covered in intricate carvings. The golden light they had seen came from deep beneath the monolith.

Ozymandias, Apocalypse’s servant, and the man guarding Apocalypse’s tomb, sat cross-legged in the air next to the pillar, holding a hammer and chisel. He was dressed in the robes of an old king’s minister except his entire body was made of stone. This was Apocalypse’s punishment against the king who had dared to stand against him.

Now, Ozyamadias was forced to guard Apocalypse’s tomb while inscribing the future on a monolith for his master.

Dante took a closer look at what the future Ozymandias had seen in his visions. The topmost section showed a demonic woman kneeling before a council of demons. Then came scenes of demons pouring through portals into the world. The following carvings depicted familiar faces standing against the invasion. Mutants such as Xavier, Scott, Jean, Bobby, Warren, Ororo, Wolverine, Magneto, Scarlet Witch, and her brother. Heroes such as Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow in her Ghost Rider appearance, and Hawkeye.

Demons versus the X-Men and the Avengers.

The next frame was completely dominated by a giant bird, followed by a woman hovering in the air with her arms spread. Flames covered her and the entire planet.

The emergence of Phoenix.

Dante walked to the edge to see the next carvings and took a deep breath. Nothing. The stone below the Phoenix panel was blank. Jean, turned into the Phoenix, was going to destroy the world — most likely in grief after the deaths of the X-Men.

"Once...” Ozymandias spoke. “Before a thousand sunrises Ozymandias stood as a king stands among his minions. Before En Sabah Nur. Before the dark one called Apocalypse fully imprisoned him."

"For sunset upon sunset piled high, one atop the other, the former king has set his blind eye, his stone hand..."

"...to a singular task—to fending off madness."

"But today..."

"...today the burden of solitude is broken."

"Today, Ozymandias has... company."

"Ozymandias is aghast..."

"...for he has been exiled for so long..."

The stone prophet turned his head, his empty eye sockets locking onto Dante.

"...that the very face of humanity has become demonic."

Dante smiled. “I don’t really care what I am. Emma, do you?”

Emma, who had been observing the carvings as well, gave him an immediate answer. "Absolutely not. Our cat-human hybrid daughter should be enough proof of my non-discriminatory nature."

Sharon giggled and nuzzled against Dante’s chest. “Catseye also loves Mama and Daddy!”

Ozymandias pointed one stone finger at the monolith, at the blank space where the future refused to be written. "The doom that plagues this world cannot be stopped. Even my master will be helpless against it.”

“Don’t know any Doctor Doom.” He shrugged. “Guide me to your master. I’m going to end his miserable life.”

Ozymandias’s visions were inaccurate since Dante had already changed the timeline. The demonic woman, Illyana, had already been saved from falling into demons’ hands. The demons would need to find another way to break the dimensional barrier.

“Don’t know any Doctor Doom.” He shrugged. “Take me to your master. I’m going to end his miserable life.”

"You are a fool, demon... if you believe the Eternal One can ever die."

Ozymandias descended until he hovered directly in front of Dante. “Foul demon, in quest for my master’s death. Emboldened by the flame of ambition. Someone must extinguish thy flame. Let it be Ozymandias’ army of stones.”

He reached behind himself and closed his stone fist. The monolith rippled before chunks of stone exploded outward and reassembled into familiar stone figures. Magneto, Xavier, Scott, Jean Grey, Iceman, Angel, and several other mutants he didn’t recognize. Behind them stood naga warriors with stone-scaled bodies, their spears raised. Human soldiers in formations, riding beasts from different historical eras. There were even demons among them.

It was a formidable army.

Emma stepped forward and grabbed Ozymandias’ throat. Her diamond fingers crushed the brittle stone without hesitation. His headless body crumbled as his head rolled to the ground and stopped at her feet. She raised one heel and brought it down. The head became gravel.

“Emma, I was going to ask him something…”

He was going to decide Ozymandias’s fate. Normal methods wouldn’t be able to kill Ozymandias anyway.

“Ask his soul.” She turned to face the army and rolled one shoulder. "Leave them to me. I’ll get mad if you lift a single finger. You hear me?"

He took a step back. “They are all yours.”

The chamber shook as the stone army charged.

Magneto’s duplicate initiated the attack as he ripped massive chunks of metal from the walls and hurled them at Emma. The first slab hit her shoulder and detonated into powder. The second one hit her full in the chest, making her rock half a step back from the sheer mass of it. She straightened herself and walked through the next one, only to be hit by Scott’s beam of compressed sand and rock. Jean's stone version raised her hands. Every loose piece of stone in the chamber lifted at once and converged above her. A hundred pieces of sharp rocks launched at Emma, striking her from every angle at once.

When the dust cleared, Emma was still standing without a scratch. She brushed stone chips off her dress.

“Darlings,” Emma said, brushing stone chips off her dress. “If you wanted to get my attention, you could’ve just sent some flowers. Throwing stones is such primal age behavior.”

Scott’s sand beam passed by her, barely missing her face.

“Summers, you’ve got no visor, but you’re still missing. Impressive aim.”

Stone-Iceman aimed both hands at her and fired shards with the velocity of a bullet. Each one shattered on contact, doing nothing except adding to the growing debris field around her feet.

“Bobby, you said you love beautiful sculptures. Now you’re actively working to ruin the most beautiful one in this universe.”

Stone-Angel was the most committed. He flew at her and smacked his mace right in the temple. The stone mace shattered as it should, but Warren carried two maces, not one. The second mace was slammed down on her head, shattering once again. She grabbed his now-empty hand and slammed his on the ground. He crumbled on the impact.

“This is a no-flying zone.”

Jean’s telekinetic projectiles shattered against her.

“Jean, sweetheart, die!”

She bull-rushed through the attacks and destroyed Jean with one punch. Scott was next. She grabbed his head with both hands and squeezed until he exploded.

A jagged chunk of rock from Magneto slammed into her chest and exploded into fragments, bringing her attention to the old man’s statue. She destroyed a dozen of naga warriors to reach Stone-Magneto and ripped his arms away before decapacting him.

She destroyed every single one of X-Men.

The naga’s half serpent bodies slithered toward him. The spears slammed into her as she stood in the center of the swarming mass. The nagas coiled around her legs and arms, pulling with full force. Her human form would have popped like a balloon. Her diamond form didn’t get a scratch. Tearing, twisting, pulling, and crushing, she dismantled the stone army. Stone bodies piled up around her feet.

When the nagas were exterminated, human warriors on beasts swarmed her in coordinated waves, blades and spears and shields striking her from the front. The demons swarmed her from behind, their sharp, stone fangs biting into her, only to explode.

“Really fueling my one woman versus the whole world agenda.”

She moved through the army like a force of nature. Every step she took left a trail of shattered stone in her wake. She was feeling drunk on her strength. Arrogance could be the end of someone, but damn did she look thrilled destroying armies with her bare hands.

A stone demon tried to claw her face, but she grabbed its arm and crushed it into powder. Surrounding her were mountains of broken stone. They had all been exterminated.

“Humanity’s finest, reduced to gravel. How poetic.”

She dusted off her hands and walked toward Dante with a confident smirk.

“A billionaire, a telepath, a teacher, a mother… And now a formidable fighter as well.” She held up her hand over her face, showing off her glimmering hand. “Don’t you just want to put a ring on the pretty fingers of a capable woman?”

Dante gave her an amused smile. “Hate to break it to you, but they aren’t dead.”

Emma blinked and looked over her shoulder. Stone bodies pulled themselves together from the rubble, reforming back into figures. The army she had just annihilated was already rising again.

If that wasn’t enough, Ozymandias also reassembled before them.

She couldn’t help but groan, “Are they immortal? No, that can’t be. Should I mix them with water to turn them into mud? Where would I even get that much water down here?”

Dante didn’t entertain Emma’s idea, which would never work. He looked at the old prophet. "Ozymandias, are you going to stop?"

The stone king remained unfazed. “Ozaymandias has been cursed to live forever… to serve the Immortal En Sabah Nur forever.”

Dante narrowed his eyes. “Then die.”

He connected with Death’s Resonance and ended Ozyamandias’s life right away, putting an end to his sorrowful tale.

Ozymandias’s stone body trembled. Fine lines spread across his face and arms, glowing with a faint golden light. For the first since forever, the old prophet lost his calm as a deep, shuddering breath left him.

“…At last.”

Ozymandias still had that stone expression. The old man had simply forgotten how to express his emotions.

“Kill the Eternal One,” Ozymandias whispered as his body fell apart. “En Sabah Nur must fall. Not for vengeance… but for the sake of all that still lives.”

He raised what remained of his hand toward Dante in a solemn gesture.

“Save everyone from the doom that waits beyond the horizon.”

With those words, the last of his stone body disintegrated. The dust that had once been Ozymandias gently scattered across the chamber floor. At the same moment, every stone construct in the room crumbled into dust.

Silence fell over the chamber.

Emma brushed the last of the stone dust from her sleeve, her gaze lingering on the spot where Ozymandias had stood only moments ago. She turned to the carvings he had left behind. "I'll admit I'm a little intrigued. Was Apocalypse some sort of Egyptian king? What doom is this guy talking about?”

“A lot more than that.” He walked to the edge of the abyss beneath the monolith and peered down into the darkness. “Why don’t we just meet him?”

He stepped off the edge and Emma followed a second later. They descended for several seconds before landing in a vast, well-illuminated chamber. The golden light was coming from a rotating cube; within its energy, the monolith could defy gravity and stay afloat for Ozymandias to carve his visions.

He turned to the enormous door in the distance, beyond which he slumbered. “We’re almost there.”

“When we’re done here, let’s have a candle-lit dinner.”

He smiled at her offer. Even after rejection, she stayed stubborn. “As long as you're paying for it."

“Darling, everything of mine is yours…” She reached out and lightly took his hand. “Dear, it’s rude to walk away when a lady is still talking.”

He gave her hand a light squeeze and approached the massive door. He placed one hand against its surface. Even with his strength, it took a moment of focused effort to push it open. The stone groaned loudly as it swung inward, revealing a space so vast it felt like the desert itself. The ceiling stretched high above them, lined with glowing panels. And in the center of it all, resting on a raised platform, sat a massive object. It was blocky and geometric, clearly not of human design. A part of its surface was covered in intricate-pattered circuits.

Apocalypse being sealed inside a Celestial ship had been within the realm of possibility, but seeing it with his own eyes still caught him off guard. Celestials were nigh-omnipotent beings that created entire universes in their sleep. Even Death was nothing against the Celestials. Anything the Celestials built would be obscenely advanced and powerful. As much as Dante would like to possess the ship, it probably wouldn’t be possible since the Celestial Ship had its sentient ego.

“Wow…” Emma whispered. “I feel like an ant. Which giant could’ve made it?”

“Celestials. You’ll never meet them.”

“You will?”

“Probably. I don’t want to, though.”

She let out a sigh. “Still hiding secrets from us. Secrets Death would know.”

“Death mama?” Sharon grumbled from her sleep, blinking her eyes adorably. “Hmmm… sleepy.”

Dante frowned and slowly turned around. Two figures floated down from the hole behind them and silently landed in the chamber.

Candra and her bodyguard.