Dead Cruiser

REACH HEAVEN THROUGH VIOLENCE - Cosmic Isekai Asskicking Adventure

@Rekker I'll eventually have a sample CS that should be helpful.

The character you're describing would be fine as an Inheritor. Your powers won't be "muzzled," in fact I'm sure you'll need every one of them if you want to survive. It's just that the threats you may face are even more ludicrous than your characters already are.

I plan to take a, shall we say, poetic approach to conflict. Will, determination, intent, ambition, these sorts of things matter very much in battle, sometimes even more so than prowess or weaponry. Though it still helps to (for example) be ontologically impervious to all physical harm. Just don't get complacent.

REACH HEAVEN THROUGH VIOLENCE - Cosmic Isekai Asskicking Adventure

@Rekker I wouldn't use the word "limitless," it helps better to envision these as Endgame/Max Level RPG characters. Extremely powerful, possibly the most powerful living thing on their world, but not omnipotent.

PvP will probably occur at some point, but the rest of the RP will involve the characters encountering and dealing with that which exists outside of space and time, which should be a robust challenge even for the powerful characters we'll be playing.

However, it won't be all new frontiers. There is more to ruling than conquering, after all. As they say, enjoy the war, the peace will be terrible.

REACH HEAVEN THROUGH VIOLENCE - Cosmic Isekai Asskicking Adventure

@Dark Cloud Sure. I could imagine a black-soul Inheritor going to extreme lengths like that to prolong their own life.

REACH HEAVEN THROUGH VIOLENCE - Cosmic Isekai Asskicking Adventure

@Randomness I could accept a character that has theorized about other worlds, and their ascension being them putting that theory to the test, but no one should start out as a Planeswalker or anything.

@JDubs Guns are... a little pedestrian, compared to what you're going to be facing.

REACH HEAVEN THROUGH VIOLENCE - Cosmic Isekai Asskicking Adventure

@Dark Cloud "Artificial" can mean a lot of things. I think a Sotha Sil type Clockwork God would be about as sci-fi as I want to push this.

@Kassarock Will you choose to be a king? Or will you choose to remain as you are? Peasant!

REACH HEAVEN THROUGH VIOLENCE - Cosmic Isekai Asskicking Adventure

@Dark Cloud I'm hoping to cleave closer to the fanatasy theming for this.

REACH HEAVEN THROUGH VIOLENCE - Cosmic Isekai Asskicking Adventure

So, you've done it all, have you?

Every foe slain, every treasure hoarded, every challenge conquered.

You're at the top of the food chain, looking down.

Or so you think.

---

So this is an idea that I've tried to do a couple of times, and I think this will be my best attempt at it so far.

The idea is pretty simple: your character is the most powerful champion that ever lived. Full stop. They've beaten the final boss, completed the last quest, and reached the maximum of their potential. But what happens when the game is over? The endgame begins.

By means that I leave up to you, this ultimate character has ascended from their world into the place between worlds, and come face to face with champions from other worlds and realities that match their power. This can be done in any number of ways, from spiritual enlightenment, to artificial apotheosis, to anything in between. Point being, before you were a big fish in a small pond, and now you're a big fish in outer space. What do you choose to do now? Become a god? Destroy the gods? The possibilities are limitless, but so are the dangers. The wardens of time and space don't take kindly to trespassers.

This is meant to be a power-trip fantasy adventure, full of characters who can unleash hilarious and ludicrous levels of carnage. It leans toward more anime-styled over the top action, with heavy elements of mysticism and religious esoterica. Influences (that I can think of right now) include K6BD (obviously), Morrowind, DOOM, and just about any over the top anime you can think of.

I have a loose plot in mind, which can be adapted to whatever characters we come up with. The game will start will your characters "ascending," and then meeting in [REDACTED].

Let me know what you think!

💀💀💀

The Black Dragon

Name

Ophidias Seht
The Black Dragon, the Serpent of Chaos, Magician of Black Chaos
Mekhari Khain (formerly)

Age

Though born mortal, Seht's corporeal form has become suffused with magical energies, ensorcelled to render him beyond the physical limitations that bind mortals. As such, he does not age, and more than two thousand years have passed since his birth.

Race

The child that was named Mekhari, born to the house of Khain, was of a people known as the Remet. Originally a mortal desert people that peacefully farmed grains on riverbanks, they came to be enslaved by demons that had been summoned into their native land, and lived for many generations thereafter in bondage. Most lived as slaves, for their labor or sacrifice, but the house of Khain was among the rare few noble families, permitted to commune with the demons and learn their secrets, and ruled their kin as their dark masters' proxy.

Appearance

Seht is a master of transformation and illusion, and so his physical form is mutable and chaotic. The most common avatar he wears among those he considers peers is that of a jester-like sorcerer with pallid skin and long hair of midnight black. Most of his forms have similar characteristics, generally masculine, though lithe, elfin, and dark-haired. In his mortal youth, Mekhari had been an enchanting youth with bronze skin and golden eyes, though he was thin and weak in the chest and limbs.

Background

Born to the desert-dwelling tribe known as the Remet, "Weeping Ones," in their language, was a child named Mekhari, a scion of one of their people's dwindling noble bloodlines. While they had been shaman-lords when the Remet were free, they were now merely foremost among slaves. No Remet had been born out of bondage for thousands of years, and Mekhari of the House of Khain was no exception. The magical talents of Remeti sorcerers were bent toward the enduring oppression of their tribesmen. They had been taught black magic by the demonic slave-masters that called themselves their kings, and were used to enforce cruel edicts, quell dissent, punish the families and neighbors of troublemakers, and crush the spirit of hope among the Remet. The servitude of the masses was stable under their lash, erecting monuments of stone for unknown purposes as their masters dictated, and appeasing their hunger for blood and suffering. Even their dead served, as mummified puppets hewed stone blocks from the earth. While the masses toiled and were tortured, the House of Khain and others like it lived as their masters' lavished pets; gifted with education, great knowledge possessed only by demons, afforded pleasures, comforts, and luxuries, and were even given medicine and restorative magic if they fell ill.

Mekhari was always a sickly child, having barely survived a birth that killed his mother. As he grew, his heart and chest were weak and frail, and his limbs were thin with brittle bones. The magical houses of the Remet were few, and always dwindling, as the gift of magic did not always pass on to every child. Desperate not to lose their master's favor, they had long since resorted to desperate measures to keep their bloodlines intact. As such, Mekhari did not grow to be imperious and terrible like his father or brothers, but his love of books and learning was all the greater, and he spent long whiles through his youth practically buried in the ancient, malefic tomes gifted by their masters.

When Mekhari was on the cusp of manhood, the demons' terrible scheme that had been mortal generations in the making finally came to fruition. The stone pyramids, towers, and other edifices they had constructed formed the structure of a massive ritual. A blood sacrifice like none that had ever been offered before was extracted, and every one of the Remeti sorcerers were present as the chorus to this black sacrament. Their demonic kings lent their own power to the ritual, and it was successful-- at first. Centuries of toil and sacrifice had summoned Apep, the Sun-Eater, a serpentine avatar of pure chaos and apocalyptic destruction. Its very entry into this world absorbed the souls of every living Remeti, and the power emanating from its physical manifestation obliterated every physical trace of their society. All that had been spared were the stone temples and structures that had been part of its summoning, and the mortal sorcerers that had aided in that act. Apep's first and only action in this world was to immediately devour the demons that had summoned it, which cut off the power supplying the ritual, and forced Apep to be unsummoned to the realm from whence it came.

At once stripped of their masters, their homes, and their entire tribe, the sorcerers of the Remet set off in separate ways, into the world at large. The lazy and untalented were quickly made fodder for other demons, or burned as warlocks. Some stuck together as families, and formed covens that bewitched the countryside for generations to come. Others struck out as lone sorcerers and wizards, some turning to good, most remaining evil. Mekhari was among these, setting off on his own with tremendous purpose to accumulate more knowledge and power. In time he would visit every single one of his tribesmen that remained, tracking them across the world (and across dimensions for some), and killed them himself, starting with his father and younger brother.

One of the first lessons Mekhari learned was that names carried power, and unless he wanted to become someone else's slave, he should conceal his own. He took up the sobriquet Ophidias Seht, taking the names from books he remembered from his cloistered youth, about the ancient gods of his people, and foreign treatises on astrology. Another early lesson was that he could not hope to match a demon when measuring power against power. His only hope when confronting demons, as he often did in his pursuits, was to outmatch them in knowledge or preparation. Demons often carry many secrets, and so Seht loved to learn from them, and use their secrets to defeat other demons, only to then learn their secrets as well. In this way Seht learned many varied and powerful magics, manipulating terrifying forces such as elemental death and the void between worlds. All this while Seht could only think of the terrifying power of Apep, and how if he could wield the might of the Chaos Serpent, there would be none that could ever enslave him again.

Centuries passed, and Seht grew powerful. The stronger he became, the easier it became to gain even more power. However, he was always tempered by caution and distrust, which saved his life on many occasions. The schemes of other mages were trivial to foil for one that had been raised as the slave of a demon, and grew up to battle them for their knowledge. Furthermore, he had seen firsthand what overreaching into the forbidden wrought, and it had been the doom of beings powerful enough to enslave nations. His research was methodical, careful to avoid magics that could consume him, or unfair bargains with greater powers. Seht took up a hobby of sorts through his long life and wide experience: trapping noteworthy or rare demons into playing cards, collecting them, and traveling with them so that he might summon them again at his pleasure.

It was only natural that such an august presence as the Demon Lord, a king among kings with a nation of devoted followers, would seek the service of one of the greatest black magicians to ever live. While his task seems childishly simple, Seht of course has an ulterior motive to his service. He plans gain enough power to capture and enslave the Demon Lord himself, which he could use to di the same to Apep, the most powerful chaos god of all, and assume his rightful place as master of the universe.

Skills and Abilities

Ophidias Seht is a black magician of nightmarish strength, with mastery over many different styles and studies of magic, centuries of experiences, and the victor of countless magical battles. He has proved himself more than a match for many demons that greatly outstrip him in raw power, as he can win out through guile, preparation, and the breadth and esotericism of his knowledge. His expertise is focused in powers and lores such as necromancy, void magic, alchemy, psionics, draconic magic, infernal sorcery, diablery, hexes and curses, chaos magick, dimensional travel, pyromancy, sangromancy, umbramancy, oniomancy, ophiomancy, astrology, hypnotism, and haruspicy. He of course knows much of the natural world, mathematics, and philosophy, as would be needed to attain his magical expertise. Seht's physical body is completely suffused with enchantments and spells empowering and protecting his mortal flesh, to the point where magic has taken over for almost all of his vital functions. If one were to manage to pass through his numerous wards and protective spells, and harm his reinforced flesh, magic would keep him alive for the few moments until his flesh was healed.

Quips

Omega

The familiar of Ophidias Seht is the mutant beast he calls Omega. She was the final result of Seht's dragon breeding program, which itself was a product of his lifelong fascination with dragons following him witnessing Apep destroy his people's civilization. With a careful selection of stolen dragon eggs, and painfully extracted dragon hormones, he was able to magically force dozens of generations of dragons to grow, breed, and die in mere decades, accelerating the timetable of his artificial selection by centuries. He suffused the dragons with enhancing magics and dark blessings until their bodies were saturated, and chose the children that kept those traits, enchanted them, and repeated the process. This often carried painful, unwanted side effects though, and after fewer generations than he had hoped, the dragons began to pass on defects and mutations. Many eggs were stillborn, and more did not survive long past birth. Omega was the final, and most successful subject of these experiments, a mutant dragon suffused with darkness to her core. A sleek, silvery-grey beast with five heads, she is a creature of ferocious, evil power, and cold, predatory intelligence. Normally she would hold no affection for Seht, and likely kill and devour him for the crime of her birth. However, he has implanted powerful mind-altering crystals into her brain, forcing Omega into slavish loyalty. This terrifying, hulking monstrosity accompanies Seht into pitched battle, or wherever he wishes to terrify others into compliance.

To Be Filled With Trivia Spontaneously

Seht currently holds 108 different demons enslaved in his deck of cards. These correspond each to a symbolic figure on the card. These are his rarest and most treasured minions, valued greatly over the ghosts, undead, and other entities he can summon to do his bidding.

Seht's skills in political maneuvering and subterfuge were forged in his noble house, as his family and their peers would often scheme and sabotage each other to gain their demonic masters' favor. In his youngest years, before he had learned deadly curses, Mekhari favored poison in the wine cup as a means of dispatching rivals. He killed two of his brothers this way before reaching age fifteen.

The ruins of the demonic ritual site that destroyed the Remet now serve as Seht's home and headquarters. The stone monuments and much of the ground below them has been hollowed out to form his lair. The ruins serve as the hub of Seht's network of leylines, portals, and teleportation circles, allowing him to travel great distances with almost no effort. Besides that, his lair is warded with powerful geocentric enchantments and charms, guarded by numerous malevolent entities under Seht's control, and the land itself is cursed and inhospitable, teeming with tortured Remeti ghosts. The location is now known as the Tomb of Chaos or the Serpent's Lair.

An avid alchemist, Seht has crafted a series of homunculi through advanced alchemical practice. They are each very different, and serve different purposes for him. The first he created, and weakest is Nigrido, who resembles a many-eyed humanoid made of living tar. Nigrido is Seht's most "domestic" familiar, and serves as his equerry, butler, and bodyguard on many excursions.

Seht's magical focus of choice is called the Leviathan Staff, a deeply cursed magical staff. Carved from the bones of a demonic whale-beast, adorned with the preserved skull of a snake-demon, with "eyes" that are orbs of concentrated chaotic power, the staff serves as a locus of prepared spells, a reservoir of stored magical energy, and either a magnifier or focus for Seht's spells. To those with magical or spiritual sight, the staff takes the form of a searing black tear in reality. An artifact of chaos, the staff is capable of warping its shape to better match Seht's forms and disguises.

Sensation & Wonder: An Absolute Comics Roleplay [DC & Marvel One Universe Style Game]

@Retired Glad you're on the mend. Your experience sounds pretty similar to mine, so I can certainly empathize with getting knocked into convalescence out of nowhere.

Sensation & Wonder: An Absolute Comics Roleplay [DC & Marvel One Universe Style Game]

#6

V O Y A G E R

---

Erik Selvig was beside himself with excitement. Four hours ago, he had been looking at a grainy, low-resolution render of their inter-dimensional visitor. A hurried summons from the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and three sweaty, nervous hours in a quinjet later, he was now standing face-to-face with the him. It seemed that this stranger from a strange land identified as none other than the Norse god Thor, and some functionary of Director Rogers' had run Dr. Selvig's background and learned about his undergrad minor in Germanic and Norse myth. Never in a million years had he ever considered that his pet interest would present him an opportunity like this one.

He walked abreast of this "Thor" as armed guards led them through the helicarrier's labyrinthine interior toward the hangar. The man beside him didn't seem much like a god. Sure, he was enormous, standing a head taller than the six-foot Selvig, and his chest was the size of an engine block. Nothing about him besides that seemed particularly supernatural. Selvig was not a medical doctor, but as far as he could tell this man had a pulse, he breathed air, his eyes blinked, and Thor's other biological functions seemed no different from his own. He carried a curious smell about him; it reminded Selvig of the scent of wet earth that followed rain.

While the two men walked in silence for some time, each occasionally stealing a glance at the other, it was Selvig that first spoke up. "Well Mister, uh, Thor... If we're going to be working together, would it be alright if I asked you a few questions?"

Thor glanced at him for a moment, his expression seeming more curious than anything else. "Ask whatever you like." he said, his gaze returning to the hall in front of them.

"I have a... basic idea of what we're going to be looking for, but I could use some specifics. What exactly are you hoping to find?"

"Runestones." Thor said plainly. "Ancient oaths, written in stone, carved by my father's own hand. They tell of the conquest of Midgard, the peace your people made with mine, and the obligations they owe to my father's throne."

"I see." He had been informed of how casually this character discussed conquering the Earth during his en-route briefing, but hearing it himself was somewhat unsettling for reasons Selvig could not quite describe. "And where do you expect to find these runestones?"

"Where the peace was made and the oaths were sworn. I don't know your name for this place; it's been hundreds of Midgardian lifetimes since I've last been there. My father favored it because it reminded him of our home: a land of fire and ice, beautiful but unforgiving."

Selvig looked at Thor with trepidation. He was beginning to understand why Director Rogers was suspicious of him. Too much of what he said seemed unverifiable. Even if he was from another dimension, that didn't mean anything he said was necessarily true. Selvig needed evidence, or at least something he could verify before this task seemed like anything more than a fool's errand.

"Well, if you've been there before, can you take us back there?"

"Of course, what kind of a sailor would I be if I couldn't navigate?" He said, looking at Selvig and smiling.

Selvig smiled back at him, but still felt uneasy as they entered the helicarrier hangar and boarded yet another quinjet. The space inside the plane was more cramped than usual from having to share it with their bulky visitor, but Selvig knew that these things were build to accommodate the Hulk, and decided not to complain. Their pilot asked Thor for the coordinates of their destination, but he wasn't familiar with latitude and longitude, and didn't know them. Then the pilot offered him a tablet screen with a satellite view of the Earth, which Thor claimed to be equally unfamiliar with.

"I've never seen this planet from above. I only ever travel here with the Bifrost bridge."

"Is that how you came to Earth today?" Selvig asked, and Thor nodded. He would have to inquire more about that later. "How were you planning to get there if you can't say where it is?"

"I may not know what your world looks like from the stars, but I know what the stars look like from your world. Once night falls, I can take you there."

Of course he used stellar navigation, he was (or thought he was) a viking. Selvig could have slapped himself for not seeing the obvious answer any sooner. At least they would not actually have to wait for nightfall, were he telling the truth. He took the tablet from Thor and replaced the image of the Earth with a stellar map of the Northern Hemisphere, and returned the screen for Thor to inspect it.

He studied it for some time, before saying, "This is... not what I remember. The stars seem familiar, but they've drifted out of place. It's been a very long time since I've last been on this world, by your people's standards."

At this point, Selvig was nearly at his wit's end. Only now was he realizing why Director Rogers was so desperate to pawn this guy off on someone else. He had one last idea before he was totally tapped out. He took the tablet again, and turned the screen into a blank, black canvas. He gave it back to Thor, and told him to draw the stars he remembered over the land of fire and ice. With any luck, he could use a few constellations as reference to triangulate a general search area.

"Hm, well, first is Leida, the guiding star. Then Dagst here, Sudrst there..." He tapped a few stars onto the empty sky, before beginning to add more complex arrangements of stars. "The fisherman, the wolf, the chariot, the battle..." Selvig watched with what was curiosity at first, but then rapt fascination as Thor continued to fill in the canvas with stars. While the space seemed to quickly fill with dozens, then hundreds of stars, none of them seemed to be placed randomly. Thor stared at the screen with unwavering focus, placing each star swiftly but deliberately.

After a few minutes he seemed satisfied, and handed Selvig back a tablet that very much resembled a functional stellar map. He cross-referenced the impromptu map against S.W.O.R.D.'s astronomic charts, accounting for stellar migration. After a few moments of processing, the computer had finished the comparison. The map that Thor had drawn was a 98% match for astral bodies visible from Iceland, circa 400 AD. Stunned, Selvig felt his knees buckle under him, and he fell into his seat.

"Well professor?" The pilot radioed them from the cockpit. "Do we have a destination?"

---

As advanced as S.H.I.E.L.D.'s bleeding-edge aeronautic technology was, a transatlantic flight still took a fair amount of time. Now that Thor had given some credibility to his story, Selvig was more willing to hear him out, and the two passed the time by indulging each other's curiosity. Thor mostly had questions about the Earth, and its people. He asked about their culture, the history that had transpired since he had last been to Earth, and attempted to glean from Selvig why the people of Earth had abandoned Odin. Selvig did his best to answer what he could, but he was an astrophysicist, not a theologian.

In turn, Selvig quizzed Thor. At first he wanted to know as much as possible about this "Bifrost bridge" that he had used to open a wormhole to Earth. This line of questioning quickly proved disappointing, as he saw Thor's eyes glaze over as soon as he heard the phrase "Einstein-Rosen bridge," and Selvig realized he wasn't going to get any answers he could use. Instead, he asked Thor many questions similar to the ones that the alleged God of Thunder had asked, himself. Thor told him about Asgard, the Aesir, his parents Odin and Frigga, and the Nine Realms. Selvig had no way of verifying anything that he was being told, but Thor seemed to earnestly believe what he was saying, and so the scientist recorded his attestations all the same. He wished that the quinjet they were on had been equipped with better scientific sensors and scanners so that he might conduct a biochemical analysis of Thor, but that would have to wait.

"All of the Aesir are gods," Thor patiently explained, "Most of them are gods of something minor: a particular river or mountain for instance. Only Asgard's nobility can claim dominion over forces like light, or war, or thunder." A prideful gleam glinted in Thor's eyes as he gave the final example. "Now, your turn Erik. I want to know more about these Minnesota Vikings. How much plunder would you say they bring home after a typical raiding season?"

"Not much after they traded Case Keenum, but-"

He was interrupted by the pilot radioing them, "Professor, we're here."

Selvig stared out over the austere landscape of the snow-capped Icelandic volcanoes. Though they seemed calm, he knew that Iceland was a hotbed of near-constant volcanic activity; "a land of fire and ice" was an apt description for the island nation. He turned from the window to look at Thor, who was also staring out over the vista of glacial ice and volcanic rock. He seemed wistful, melancholy even. The landscape below them seemed so alien to Selvig, he wondered if this place truly did remind Thor of his distant home.

Their pilot touched down at the coordinates Selvig had gleaned from Thor's star-map, and the two disembarked the quinjet. Thor, clothed only in his barbarian garb and a simple cloak, seemed completely unperturbed by the icy chill of the volcanic peak they had landed on. Selvig, by contrast, had to borrow a hazardous environment suit from the quinjet's emergency cache, and yet still stood shivering in the ridiculous foil overcoat.

"This is the place," Thor said, possibly to Selvig, possibly to no one. "My father walked here, I can feel it." Selvig did not have a chance to question this statement, as Thor continued onward, forcing the scientist to hurry after him in a frantic, penguin-like waddle. After minutes of seemingly aimless wandering, Thor suddenly stopped. "Here, I've found something."

Selvig caught up to see what Thor had found. It was a boulder of smooth, grey stone, jutting up out of the ice. It had clearly been buried there for a very long time, and the stone did not match the black volcanic rock of the mountain they stood on. Looking closer, Selvig saw that the stone was inscribed with what appeared to be Nordic runes, though he could not translate them by sight. More remarkable than the runes, however, was that the stone had seemingly not eroded at all. If this truly was a relic that dated back 1600 years, he would assume that very little of the original inscription would remain intact. Despite this, the carvings were deep and sharp, as though they had been chiseled into the stone only the day before.

"Is this it?" Selvig asked.

"Yes." Thor sounded perturbed, despite having found what he was looking for. "But there are supposed to be more. This is only one of many stones that mark the history that transpired here."

"Perhaps the others were destroyed? Or relocated?" Selvig offered.

"No." Thor dismissed him out of hand. "No force on this world could destroy a runestone carved by the Allfather, nor would he stand for any mortal disrespecting his sacred runes." Though he said it, Thor was starting to severely doubt the latter fact. Nothing of what he had seen on Midgard so far, nor that Selvig had told him had given Thor the idea that Odin had any clue what was transpiring on Midgard.

"Well," Selvig started, rubbing his arms for warmth. "We are on top of a volcano. It's possible they were buried in an eruption."

While he said nothing, Thor agreed with Selvig's theory. He had no choice but to believe it, as he had no other way to prove Odin's kingship to the Midgardians. He would have to unbury his father's lost runestones, else he feared that he would never be able to leave this world and return home. Without warning, Thor clenched his fist and punched down into the ground under him with all of his might. Ice and stone buckled and shattered under his strength, and the resounding "BOOM" of his strike echoed across the frozen peaks. Selvig reeled as though he had just been next to a firing cannon, and before he could say anything else, Thor struck the ground again, opening another huge crater in the volcanic peak.

Collecting himself, Selvig cautiously approached Thor, "I don't think that's a very good-" BOOM "Christ!" He reeled back again. Thor's impromptu archeological excavation had turned up nothing but the first stone they had found, but Thor showed no signs of stopping his one-sided battle with the mountain. Again and again Thor crashed his fists into the black stone, sending massive chunks of rock and ice flying in every direction.

Selvig tried to yell out to Thor and get him to stop, but the more he dug the more desperate he seemed to get, and the scientists words seemed to have no effect on him. Eventually he had to retreat back toward the quinjet just to avoid being struck by flying rubble. Thor continued to batter the ground under him until the entire mountain range seemed to shake with his thunderous blows. A sulfuric smell filled Selvig's nostrils, and he rushed to equip a gas mask from his environment suit's bespoke compartment. The last thing he needed was to die here from inhaling volcanic fumes.

Thor had practically vanished from sight at this point, having burrowed so far into the mountain, and swirling, dark clouds began to coalesce overhead. Lava plumes suddenly burst up out of the rock around the crater Thor had dug, and Selvig could see other floes erupting further down the mountain. This was getting dangerous, quickly. They had to leave before the volcano fully erupted, but he couldn't conscience the idea of leaving the still mostly-unknown Thor to his own devices. Tightening the straps of his gas mask and pulling his metallic environment coat closer, he trudged toward the caldera Thor was digging. The entire mountain shook with Thor's blows, and it took everything Selvig had to stay on his feet as he pressed onward.

Eventually he came to the lip of the pit Thor had dug, and stared down at the God as he continued to destroy the mountain in a mindless frenzy. Thor was up to his knees in bubbling lava, but didn't seem to notice as he continued to wreak havoc on everything within arm's reach. Selvig tried screaming at him to stop, telling him he'd kill them all, but he could not be heard over the sound of Thor's fury. Soon, the heat grew almost unbearable, and Selvig collapsed to his knees at the volcano's mouth. He didn't want to die, but he didn't know what else to do.

The mountain then began to tremble all on its own, and Thor's frenzy of blows ceased. The lava bursts became more intense, and the volcano rumbled under them. Selvig figured that those would be the last moments of his life, before he was consumed in a volcanic eruption triggered by a superhuman alien with daddy issues. The rumbling became louder, and Selvig realized that what he was hearing wasn't rumbling at all. It sounded almost like... roaring.

Before he had another moment to think about it, the caldera pit exploded in a shower of molten rock. Selvig had to dive out of the way of a glowing-orange boulder the size of a compact car, but he was surprised to find himself still alive moments later. He looked up, and what he saw frightened him even more than the possibility of a volcanic eruption. What had burst out of the volcano was not a life-annihilating stream of lava and ash, but a huge, winged beast. It resembled a horned serpent the size of a humpback whale, propelling itself into the air on leathery wings. Its scales were glossy black, and white-hot lava dripped from it as the monster continued to rise further into the air. The beast roared again, the same sound Selvig had heard before it emerged, and a plume of baleful fire erupted from the beast's fanged maw.

Selvig would not have realized that Thor was standing next to him, also staring up at the winged monster, had he not put his huge hand on Erik's shoulder. Thor brandished his axe, and gave Selvig a firm shove in the direction of the quinjet. "I think you should go," he said curtly, "It's been some time since I've had to slay a dragon."