Gods' Resolve

Sif's breath tripped on her teeth as she tried to inhale precious lungfuls of air while she did her level best in order to not die while protecting her unconscious friends. The Destroyer had a clear target: Thor, and it'd easily go over any of the Warrior Four to accomplish it. Still, it seemed that it prioritized the destruction of his foes before the hunting down of its quarry.

The sun glittered both over the sweat that matted her labored frown and the true steel of her sword as she struck with all of her might: her armor sat heavily on her body, while her feet barely managed not to trip over the torn and burned ground. The smell of the dust mixed with the faint trickle of blood that dripped down her chin, thanks to a blow that she hadn't parried at the right angle, which had seen her own shield being smashed on her face, and her head onto the ground.

Her black mane clung to the skin of her neck while her muscles screamed in agony, her heart ramming under her ribs despite her attempts to keep her breathing even. Still, she wasn't a stranger to effort. She wasn't going to allow her body to fail her, she couldn't let her shoulders sag, her mastery over herself fail her now that her might was most needed.

Sif rolled onto the ground to bleed off the momentum imparted to her by the Destroyer, who seemed to be refraining from using his beam of energy for the moment, maybe in order to avoid accidentally striking too close to the one-armed elder, only to jump back to her feet, an upward swing of her shield while she darted forward deflecting the downward punch of the Uru machine into the ground while she darted between its legs, her blade striking blindly one hamstring, only for a handful of sparks to show for it.

Distractedly, she was aware of the ancient, one-armed warrior who seemed content to do nothing but watch, but only because he stood close to the fallen Thor and her spent companions. : Volstagg, Hogun, and Fandral were among the best of Asgard, and only their recklessness in attacking an unknown had resulted in their unconsciousness. Too used to being able to shrug off lesser foes, expecting that any of their blows could fell an opponent, many of their proven and true tactics relied on two of the three offering opening for the third to capitalize on.

At the back of the Destroyer, Sif breathed in while she pivoted on her left heel and lounged to strike at what should have been the back of the machine's knee. But where she had hoped to find the hollow of the articulation, she only struck the equivalent of a kneecap, which made her grunt in discomfort as her sword simply bounced back. The creature had turned itself with the blinding speed granted it by the ability to turn the bands of Uru that made its body, and made her attempt fruitless. Once more, the mountain-crushing blow that came from above struck only air as the black-haired woman jumped back.

She had never been one to favor the brute force approach that also described Thor's preferred method of fighting, it wasn't that it was too unrefined, because strength had its place in any battle, but the true prowess of a warrior should be proved by only the necessary expenditure of might, and not one drop more. Valkyries of old had been said to be the most deadly warriors Asgard had ever produced, and what had trickled down of their doctrine revolved around effectiveness.

Why take a blow when by parrying it, you could create an opening in the enemy's defence? Why heave mightly with a two-handed, overhanded blow, when a single twist of the wrist could be enough to separate head from neck? The exhaustion you accumulated early on could stop you from being able to fend off another foe later on. It was an old philosophy, one that only veterans of great wars truly lived by nowadays, as small skirmishes were all that Asgard had been subjected to in order to maintain peace among the Nine Realms not long after Sif's birth.

She swung violently in a horizontal slash when the perceived opening presented itself once more: an overextended limb just begged to be cut off, didn't it? Once again, she gritted her teeth and bore through the exhaustion that threatened to overwhelm her, only to twirl to her right, the sweeping punch of her opponent failing to nail her into the ground.

Sif had been in many fights, but none could truly be called 'battle', the thing that came closest to one was the absolute disaster on Jotunheim: but even there, with Thor raging above them, the Warrior Four hadn't fought long enough for her doctrine to shine through with its ineherent merits. Even Loki's trickery, back when he had been fighting by their side, loathe as she was to admit it, more often than not managed to shorten the time needed to overwhelm any foe on their path.

Her lifelong dedication to the faded legend of the Valkyries was the only thing that allowed her to survive relatively unscathed the fight against the one-armed elder, the only thing that kept her able to stand against the Destroyer. Even Sif could only do so much against the Dwarf-crafted weapon that Buri himself had placed as Asgard's defense: she had slowly managed to find a way to stand her ground, the witless, automatic fighting doctrine of the machine wasn't adaptable enough against her, and while she couldn't manage to win, it seemed that she wouldn't be going to loose, either.

The realization had come a while ago: there was a moment, when the automation shifted its bands around to turn faster on itself, where the gap between one and another was fractionally wider than otherwise. And since she had to remain light on her feet, and couldn't truly put her all into a single strike in order to avoid the very much real possibility of dying if her blow failed to end the fight, she'd make use of that opening.

Almost used to the way in which her body screamed in protest for every single movement she forced it to accomplish, Sif once more moved around the unforgiving, if predictable, blows of her opponent, and darted between its parted legs, not wasting time or effort in order to deliver a glancing blow that would be as meaningless as the many others that she had managed to do up to that point.

With the Destroyer standing tall above her, she already began to turn, her legs coiled and her back tensed.

The towering machine of Uru turned on itself like it had done dozens of times before, and Sif leaped, her sword striking straight ahead, and true to her target.

The blade forcefully broke in the almost invisible opening at the base of the Destroyer's neck, and went all the way through. As Sif began to torque her body, her feet planted on the hips of the machine, she only had a moment to understand that her calculated strike had failed in its purpose.

With the blood-curling sound of steel grinding on steel, the Destroyer faced her exhausted form directly, and for the first time since its first attempt that had been fiercely repelled by the one-armed elder, its faceplate slid away, unveiling the solar storm inside, and heat and pain was the only thing that Sif could feel as she barely managed to rise her shield in time, the unmatched beam of power struck her defense and pummeled her into the ground as the weight she could feel on her, already unsustainable, grew and grew as everything became white for a time.

She had to have fallen unconscious for a second, but quickly regained her senses. Maybe it was a spark of her own well-hidden indomitable will, maybe it was simple spite that wouldn't allow her to fall to any of Loki's manipulations, or maybe it was the freezing rain that liberally washed her face, and the bone-rattling thunder that seemed to engulf the whole world.

Agony seared through her as the extent of her exhaustion and wounds made itself known, and as her body finally failed her, true unconsciousness finally claimed her, she saw the previously bright day disappear beyond a dark, impossibly vast lightning storm.

The by-now familiar pain coursed through his body while lightning streaked across the sky. White flashes of unmitigated power ran through him and amidst that cumulonimbus above as the winds carried him in the air.

Thor clenched his jaw hard enough that, were he still mortal, his teeth would have cracked and been ground into dust as he bore the unrestrained might of his power for the first time in his life: a thunder was born anew with each of his heartbeats, and the sky echoed them, drowning out every other sound as his blue eyes opened, white plasma sizzling from them as he breathed.

The fallen god of Asgard stood tall in the eye of the storm, and his rage grew as if to answer the pain that his power constantly put him through.

As he had always done when wrath struck him, he sought a target to crush, and fortunately for Midgard, which might otherwise have to bear the full brunt of his fury, Thor found one.

On the ground below, the fabled Destroyer was trying to accomplish the task described by its given name, while Sif began to succumb to its might.

Instinct carried him now that Mjolnir couldn't act as a bridge between his power and his will, and with the same, unmatched rage that had brought him to strike Odin in that place between life and death, he descended in a flash of lightning. The shoes gifted him by the mortal Jane exploded into nothing as his feet touched the dirt, and the right sleeve of his arm suffered the same fate as he punched the bent-over shape of the Destroyer.

The machine made of Uru didn't manage to turn its head to strike at his renewed target, and far away on the Throne of Asgard, Loki's face paled as he witnessed something that he couldn't stop: Thor's knuckles made the shell of Uru fold as the Destroyer's faceplate automatically closed, the sword still stuck in its neck acting as a pivoting point for the stressed juncture as the entire machine was flung away.

Barely sparing a glance at the unconscious Sif, Thor's bare feet dug into the ground as he leaped ahead and the storm with him. As Thor reached his already self-repairing quarry, he let free the shout that he felt building up in his throat: it contained a fraction of his fury, it was an echo of his pain, a measure of the trial that he underwent after Yamamoto struck his heart, and as his mouth opened, true thunder was unleashed.

The dirt glassed over in the trail of his steps, and as he delivered a great uppercut, hurricane-grade winds roared, lifting the Destroyer along with the unmatched force imparted by his fist, and once more, the sky broke out in a peal of bombastic laughter that sounded just like thunder as Thor ascended, rage and elation at seeing his power curse through him once again, greater than ever before.

As the rain pelted the world, the winds roared and the lightning struck aimlessly all over the desert, the storm kept growing in strength, just like him. Punches struck Uru over and over, as the storm god unleashed, for the first time in his life, the full might of his inborn power. Only now Thor could see that Mjolnir, magnificent as it had been, truly was holding him back: this was what he had been born for.

Even held aloft by the winds, the Destroyer managed to strike back, but Thor had been a brawler before a warrior, and he easily managed to stop the attack in its place, delivering a punch of his own that dislodged the sword from the neck of the machine, only for it to be carried away by the roaring winds.

The faceplate slid down once more in order to reveal the solar storm held within, and the unstoppable beam of power smashed Thor square in the face while the God of Thunder closed his hand around the Uru construct's neck, a fierce, too-wide smile on his face appearing as the bright yellow and white energy spluttered revealing a signed but otherwise unmarred man.

The Destroyer unleashed a punch of his own, its incredible power forcing back the Asgardian in front of him, only for the latter to feel a vague throbbing sensation where he had been hit. But the winds still held them both aloft while they kept growing in intensity, and Thor shot ahead once more, his form blurring across the sky while lightning seemed to fall upon his back to form a cloak, plasma sparks of the purest white falling from his eyes as his power roared forth.

A bolt of lightning fell as thick as a star-faring ship over the joined forms of the aliens in the skies of Midgard, and the blond man punched again. And again, and once more, soon losing count of the blows it delivered, losing himself fully in his rage now that he finally had a worthy opponent.

Below the storm, the freezing downpour began to bring the sturdy Asgardians back to their senses, and it left the bald, one-armed elder to stare up at the sky with something akin to satisfaction sparking awake in a corner of his mind while his eyelids peeled back of a fraction, only for his focus to shift on the still unconscious, wounded form on the ground.

Maybe there was hope for some of these children after all.

AN

Hello to y'all I hope you find this chapter to your tastes, but it was always part of the plan: meaning that this entire scene was part of the idea that sent me off writing this fic in the first place.

I know that my updating schedule is kind of all over the place, but I've yet to hit a groove IRL, so you'll just have to deal with it :)

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