Prologue

TONY'S POV

"You are no match against the rathe of DOOM!"

Screams shredded unrelentingly from Tony's throat. His vision was a havoc of black and green, plumes of gas like a swarm of hornets that danced before his eyes. His armour was caving inwardly beneath the seething pressure, splintering and disintegrating into crimson and golden blades, embedding into his scorched and bloodied flesh. He couldn't run. He couldn't stand. He couldn't even move. He could only lie beneath the sweltering beams of energy that assaulted him from multiple directions, unprotected by the iron that was melting into simmering coals against his skin, hearing Pepper shriek repeatedly through his commlink, "Get up, Tony! Get up!"

I can't, Pepper. I'm sorry...

The scent of flesh burning caught in his nostrils. The metallic taste of blood coated his lips. Involuntary tears streamed free.

Even the helmet shielding his identity melted away...revealing what he'd hoped no one would ever see... Himself... His identity... Splayed out in broad daylight... With no where to hide...

And he could do nothing. After all his struggling to keep the manic monster in his clutched, Doom still managed to slip free just like the lethal viper he was and steal all he possessed, taking it with little effort, despite all Tony had laboured to possess it in the first place.

Tony gripped the ground in his trembling fingers as agony simmered within his bones and gurgled in the blood that had turned to sludge in his veins, despite the new heart pulsating with fracturing pressure against his ribcage. He shrunk from the excruciating afflictions gnawing at him alive, desperately yearning to seep through the crackling cement beneath him so Doom could no longer reach him. Yet he doubted he could miraculously twist into an intangible form just as Ghost could whenever he pleased.

Putrid smoke was rising, burning his lungs, searing his throat and stinging his eyes. He was howling and choking so much that his chest would no longer heave in breath, as though iron hands had clasped their cold fingers around his neck and squeezed so tightly that he wouldn't be surprised if they punctured through his tedious skin. With a hint of delirium, he wondered which would kill him first; burning alive, or drowning on his futile attempts to breathe.

Just as he was dawned with the reality that both might just cease his existence at once however, the blaze of acid-green and obsidian dispersed into nothingness and the ominous, metallic features of Doom hovered over his sizzling body like the Grim Reaper looming stoically over the dying, scythe in hand to deliver the final chilling blow. Doom's scarlet orbs scathed into his eyes, observing Tony's face, identifying him amongst the clotted blood and charring iron.

"Tony Stark," he drawled, the icy edge of steel lingering in his mechanical tone. "The mere child behind the scraps of metal they name 'Iron Man'; how pathetic."

Tony gulped hagged amounts of oxygen into his lungs, yet as Doom raised his metal fingers, breath gushed from him as quickly as it had returned, his nauseous abdomen curdling with frigid dread.

"You never fail to rile the fury of Doom. Now I shall conjure a spectrum of despair. Familiar with this, I believe?"

Doom spun his hands in front of himself with a circular motion, unleashing a vortex of black and green.

"No," Tony rasped, his azure eyes bulging in their sockets as memory flooded back of his most terrifying nightmare he'd ever experienced in his entire life.

"It shall remove the very soul from your body. And do not think I will be merciful; I know you're identity now, Tony Stark. I can use that against you."

A vast hole expanded within the centre of the vortex. From its maw crawled out a disfigured hand, large enough to grasp a meagre tower in its palms. It lunged towards Tony's crumpled body and clamped around his torso. A quivering yowl broke ceaselessly from his lips as a sensation of internal tearing and shredding rendered through his being, ebony cubes correlating across his vision until they veiled everything with black...