The end of a Queen's reign

The scream that echoed out across the cityscape was so intense that windows cracked, and car alarms went off for several city blocks in every direction. Everyone nearby were **** to fall to the ground and cover their ears to the intensity of it all.

The destructive, fiery energies Lilith gave off died the instant the blood tainted horn she was stabbed with pierced her flesh, and Lilith fell to the Earth like a dead weight that slammed into the pavement below while streaks of smoke billowed off her skin. Cracking concrete and rupturing water lines from her sheer mass alone slamming into the city streets, she crushed cars caught underneath her body or destroyed storefront facades from her pain filled thrashing. Slamming into the roof of a car sheer seconds after Lilith’s crash down to Earth, Thor managed to crawl himself out of the wreckage of metal and glass and stumble to his feet on the pavement, watching as the massive serpentine beast writhed and cried out as the infection spread across her flesh. Her cries of horror made the Asgardian’s blood curdle as he watched the creature shrink and change, its flesh blistering before his eyes as her coils snapped and chitinous limbs twitch and flail in panic and agony.

“And so Jormungandr the world serpent, the vast leviathan that would threaten to devour all is thwarted once again by my hands…” Wheezed Thor, falling to his knee and clutching his side as it rapidly healed after the impact, his armor and cape still smoking from the intense heat of Lilith’s powers. Managing to get up to his feet, the man continued to favour his good side as he kept an eye on the beast writhing in pain. Without his concentration over the storm, the clouds dissipated, and the rainfall ebbed to a trickle and ended completely, leaving the skies clear where he could see the rippling surface of the Invisible Woman and Scarlet Witch’s **** fields finally relented. Looking up, he found the rest of his allies arriving under their own power, or with the aid of the Richards family in their vessel the Fantasticar.

Stepping out of the Fantasticar when it landed in the middle of the street, with some aid by her husband, Susan watched on as Lilith had shrunk down to half her previous size, her flesh rotting and bubbling as she changed and reduced in size. Her many tendrils and clawed limbs dissolving off her body, falling off at the stump as she returned to a hominid form and their remains dissolved into puddles of gelatinous fluid. By now Lilith’s tail had completely dissolved and her extra pair of heads fell off her shoulders, leaving her a shivering husk of her former self that continued to degenerate and decompose at a rapid pace. Her mass and size shrinking until she was no larger than a human, surrounded by the spoiled matter of her previous form all around her. Gurgling with phlegm in her mouth, Lilith looked up to her mother, breathing harshly and reaching out to the woman with a trembling claw that continued to shrink and change into a humanoid hand.

“Mother… You wouldn’t let your daughter die, would you?” She pleaded, her teeth falling out of her mouth as she grew worse. “I’m the last of your progeny, how can you live without me?”

“You’re the hivemind itself, the central will of the swarm that wore me like a sock puppet and sent me against my family to kill or… Violate.” Steeling herself and leaning against Reed for support, Susan watched on as the creature continued to dissolve in front of her, looking back up to her in confusion. “You aren’t my daughter, you killed her like you nearly killed me. You’re just wearing her flesh.”

Screeching out loud, Lilith swiped her rotting claws at her former mother, quickly losing her strength as she rolled onto her stomach, losing the strength to even move. “THIS… This cannot sssstop meh… ‘Cough’… I am perfff… Perfff…” Vomiting bile as she grew frail and weak, her flesh still rotting as the blood infection coursed through her. Lilith rolled to her side, falling into a rigor state as she slowly died. “I… I devoured worlds… I consumed a universe… I was perfection!”

“I know.” Answered Susan with a hint of pity. “When you took over my mind, my body, you revealed your memories to me, showed my who you REALLY were. I saw all the worlds you infiltrated and consumed from within, how you moved from planet to planet like a virus and scoured entire civilizations and how it took something as powerful as a big bang to end your reign. But now that reign of terror ends, this is the last world you are ever going to threaten.”

Crouching down to her knees, Susan lowered herself to look the dying creature in the eye, cradling her swollen belly and gently rubbing its surface. “Reed’s treatment has severed your connection to the others, you are the last fragment of the hivemind, when you’re gone, you’ll be gone for good.”

Rolling onto her back, Lilith no longer had the strength to look up let alone move, and rapidly decomposed into a pool of gelatinous rotten matter. “I’ll never be gone… I am everything… I am unstoppable… I… I… I will returrrrr…”

Unable to finish, Lilith finally dissolved into a pool of biological waste, curdling, and drying out until her remains became waxy and inert. Not taking any chances, Tony and Johnny set the biological matter aflame, watching on carefully as all that was left of Lilith incinerated until there was nothing left but ash.

Getting up to her feet with some help from Reed, Susan buried her face in his shoulder, hugging the man close and sighing when she felt him do the same. “It’s over Susan, its finally over.”

Turning to walk away from the sight, the two looked up to see the Helicarrier overhead, unloading several transports to their location. Trading looks, Susan gave Reed a worried smile, one reciprocated by the man when he reached down and squeezed one of her hands in his.

“Well… Here’s hoping he won’t be mad.”