The battle for the wall started miles north of the ancient stone itself, as over ninety tactical nuclear warheads, escorted by both aircraft, dying to intercept Jotun ACs and prevent them from intercepting the projectiles, as well as the very spirits of the dead, rained down on the invading forces, focused on the four Starships that were supposed to be providing close-in air support. These weapons were coated in materials to make them harder to detect and intercept, with propulsion based on the Jotun's own missiles; creating an extremely difficult situation; at the cost of both the power remaining to the dead, and the lives of the pilots, ensuring there were so many targets that point defense became impossible.
Chinese command was prepared to launch another wave; and another; until those heavy targets were taken down; over eight hundred of the smaller nukes had been prepared for exactly this purpose. But... thanks to anti-missile systems being degraded by, quite literally, hostile spirits manifesting inside the weapons themselves, none of the massive vessels would survive to reach the wall; their ruined, radioactive forms carving vast holes in the Jotun army as they came down; making larger, more devastating nuclear fireballs in northern china that even further ruined the Jotun forces... as well as any potential recovery of Mongolia or northern china.
The sky over the wall was filled with constant flurries of lead, tungsten, and plasma; with the Jotun advance in the sky being met by constant fire from thousands of sources making leaving the ground intensely hazardous. Artillery strikes meeting an AC in midair as it was pushed off-course by a floating, glowing figure in ancient armor wielding a spear; aircraft constantly circling, firing into the Jotun advance with whatever missiles they had, evading what fire they could, then returning, if they survived, to reload. Chinese aircraft took atrocious casualties; only a handful of them returned to base, most of them achieving, perhaps, one enemy kill, and then falling to enemy fire.
On the ground, it was better, in that only those immediately facing the Jotun could open fire; but they were being hounded by flying spirits, corpses bursting from the ground; their innate advantages in speed and firepower were being overwhelmed by constant, ceaseless assaults; a Jotun soldier might try to evade an incoming attack only to have his claws grappled from below and a dozen enemy soldiers firing on him at once. For every Jotun attempting to advance against the wall, there were hundreds of enemy targets trying to bring it down; and while they blasted numerous holes and pathways into the ancient structure... no assault seemed to quite get past it.
There was no escape; no fire support coming. Any attempt to retreat was met by artillery fire and mobs of the dead slowing them down. By the end of the battle, hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers were dead, the northern reaches of China were radioactive, and the fallout would surely be a serious problem in the years to come... but if any Jotun survived the attempt to invade China, they did so by hiding and cowering amidst the ruins of their forces. Out of over thirty thousand Jotun who started the invasion, most of the survivors were still performing clean-up operations in Mongolia.
***
When Eyeball reached the edge of the forest, he came to an abrupt halt. Jotun, he would have expected. Maybe some local South American soldiers. He wasn't even certain what country he was in, so any given uniform would have been par for the course. Hell; he knew the machines were ready to intervene when the Jotun attacked. He wouldn't have been surprised to see Ascension marching by.
What he saw was a machine with a little boy riding on his shoulder, chatting with the machine as if the two were best friends. The boy seemed to be laughing and pointing at... Eyeball himself as he spoke with the robot, and the robot itself actually turned, seemingly at his direction, and started to approach.
Eyeball just stared, at first; and settled his weapon in the holster. Ascension wasn't about to kill him, and the boy... seemed on friendly terms with the machine as it stopped at the edge of the forest. He could hear gunfire sounding elsewhere, in the jungle behind him, and see smoke rising from a massive clearing up ahead; but nothing in his immediate vicinity. "..Hello there, Ascension. Looks like you've made a friend?"
Ascension halted just a few meters away. "The Jotun have the ability to disable my IFF capacity. Over the past hour, I have lost over ninety-eight percent of my production capacity, and over eighty-seven percent of my field units."
Eyeball blinked. "Ahh, f....rag." He glanced at the smiling child. He didn't even know if the boy spoke english.
"So... he tells you if its a human or a monster?"
"Precisely. In addition, carrying a seemingly happy and cooperative human child dramatically reduces the odds of humans who are unaware of events along the coast attacking this unit."
He shook his head, looking at the boy and waving. "Hey there, kid. So... how did it go on the coast?"
"The Jotun have suffered dramatic casualties among their forces on all fronts. The only successful large-scale assault they've made so far is into India; they came down in an unpopulated area, far from the coasts, and destroyed most of the country before meeting serious resistance. The force assaulting China met heavy resistance in mongolia, giving them time to prepare their forces and halt their advance at the wall. Also... the dead rose during that advance and met them at the wall. We appear to be dealing with a benign version of a Zombie incursion. Current information points to the ghosts and zombies both being related to Odin."
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
"Lovely. Zombies, ghosts... I've got an Angel working for me, and the DMA has some demons... Hah. So the war goes well then. Good to hear. Do you have a signal to Dragonslayer? I could use a ride home, or to wherever the action is."
"I would not say the war goes well. But yes, I do. Dragonslayer, alongside most of the escape pods launched from the stations, landed here in the southern-most region of South America. It is already en route."
Eyeball blinked. "Thanks. Wait. If only one of their big assaults was actually successful... how is the war not going well?"
Ascension sent a signal. After a moment, Eyeball saw a projection on his HUD; showing the world highlighted in green, red, black, and blue. Antartica, Siberia, and most of India were highlighted in blue; the southern regions of China, most of Australia, and much of the US and Canadian west coast were in green; there were also solid patches inside Africa and South America, in the northern areas. The rest... were all in shades of red and black.
"The Green regions have less than 10% projected short-term civilian casualties if the war ended immediately. The red, greater than fifty. The Black, greater than ninety. The blue, currently held by the Jotun, likely one hundred percent civilian casualties. I am actively relaying this information to those military forces still active. Nuclear and chemical weapon deployments have inflicted billions of casualties, and the bio-weapon attacks will likely inflict billions more. The odds of an organized global human civilization persisting after this war are... low."
Eyeball stared at the image floating before his eyes. "Good lord. I thought that Apollo took out their ships built for anti-ground work, the ones with all the.. bio-weapons and so forth."
"Unfortunately, your former ally, Clone, was temporarily turned by the enemy, though may now be mostly deceased. He had access to a truly inordinate amount of firepower in various forms, and... is single-handedly responsible for most human casualties. Based on recorded information of the bio-weapons he released, he will ultimately be responsible for the probable death of eighty to ninety percent of the human species, if quarantine procedures are not implemented immediately. Such procedures, isolating the infected and probably infected, would likely contribute greatly to the Jotun victory, and are unlikely to be followed."
Eyeball blinked. Clone....was a friend. An ally from the very beginning; reliable, competent. One who had figured out how his power worked. Had known for years, now. If Clone had been taken by the enemy... the Jotun knew how his power worked. And could prepare appropriately. The commander he'd allowed to die on Prometheus station? Pointless. Worse than pointless. Apollo... well, the god was pointing a gun at him, so that one was sort-of a given.
"Well. Fuck. Alright. I suppose I could do the most damage in India, then?"
"Negative. If I hadn't encountered you, I would be re-purposing your fighter for my own purposes, I was trying to locate a trained pilot willing to undertake a flight that risked almost certain destruction by the Jotun. Your associate, Butcher, was aboard a Jotun starship en route to attack La Famiglia... which is currently a ruined husk, floating towards the moon."
Eyeball looked up. A steady whine was filling the air, as Dragonslayer was flying in for a landing on a nearby highway. He could see Ascension units clearing vehicles from the road even as it descended, the machine's remarkable efficiency allowing it to make a good path even as the craft lined up. "Hell yeah, I'm down with grabbing Butch.. Though....Is he still alive? I mean, he's tough as nails, but.... is the ship still holding atmosphere?"
"He has apparently 'crossed the threshold' to use his own terms, and is now a Titan. I am uncertain what can kill him at this point, but based on studies of his mother, neither freezing nor suffocating will do the job. It is possible, but unlikely, starvation could if he were left in space long enough, or, if he gives up hope, he may injure himself to cease existing. The only thing I am aware of injuring Valkyrie is Valkyrie herself, though its likely Spike could do the job as well, and Yue, while she lived, may have been able to as well based on current physics understandings."
Eyeball took a deep breath. "Alright then. Lets do this. Anything I should know before I take off?"
"Zeus is already on the way to India, along with most of the Olympians, Odin, Odin's Valkyries, and Valkyrie herself. I lay significant odds that by the time you return, the only Jotun stronghold on earth will be Antarctica. I would advise bringing Butch, if you recover him, to either Los Angeles or La Famiglia for the next stage of the war. And... please hurry."
"Hurry? Why? I thought Butch was a titan now? I can understand not just jumping to earth from a tumbling ruin of a starship, but he should be fine til the war is over."
"Virtually all of the remaining Jotun vessels are grouped together around a series of asteroids, orbiting in such a way that any projectile launched from earth would need to pass through the moon to reach them. A single, compact, supposedly safe target, for the first time all close together and not actively moving; and the Chain of Eternity has been destroyed. If I were Spike, this is when I would strike. If the Jotun retrieve the damaged vessel while Butcher is still on board..."
***
The United Nations Colonial Fleet vessel Zheng He was preparing for its final FTL voyage, its primary crew deck being methodically detached from the massive vessel's spine. Most of its crew and cargo had been left behind in the Sirius system; a midway point being built into a mining operation, so that if the Jotun were to track the Zheng He back to its source they wouldn't be able to locate humanity's fledgling colony.
The crew deck was almost entirely self-sufficient; its engines would, slowly, bring it in to earth orbit... after a few years. Its hydroponics bay would keep them fed and breathing, and they were currently amidst a cluster of valuable asteroids in the inner Oort cloud; they would likely begin construction of a new craft even as they slowly made their way in-system.
It was also completely unneeded for what was to come. Spike smiled as Diss leaned up to give him one last parting kiss; the vacation had been... fun. The new world... named Sanctuary... would take decades of work; but Spike himself had helped them reduce that from centuries into something living humans would be able to witness. Now? The threat of alien mind control was gone. Sensors showed that earth had savaged the enemy; the fleet he'd seen in outer lunar orbit was a pale shadow of the one that had reached Sol; all clustered together to form one nice big target.
Once Desire and the rest of the crew were offboard, and the ship seperated, so that it was just Spike... the Zheng He would make one final voyage. And when it arrived? Spike would increase his mass so heavily that the Zheng He and the entire Jotun fleet would all get turned into one little ball of scrap.
And, well. He'd likely have to spend years adjusting the moon's orbit. Again. To keep the tides proper. That was always a pain. Why couldn't they just lose the moon, and the tides, and not deal with those problems anymore? Ahh, well.
Time to get to work.