The Avengers have been faced with a host of challenges in recent years, including unleashed gods and Celestial butchers. While some of the battles have pushed the heroes to the edge and splintered the heroes, one event brought them closer together than they'd been in years.
In one of their less widely read crossovers, Avengers: No Road Home by Jim Zub, Al Ewing, Mark Waid and art by Sean Izaakse and Carlo Barberi forced an eclectic assortment of heroes to work together to try as Avengers to save all of reality.
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Broken Path
No Road Home takes place after the events of No Surrender. That epic event ended with Earth's Mightiest Heroes victorious, but with two of the then-present Avengers teams (the Avengers Unity Division and the U.S.Avengers) disbanded. Along the way, the team was forced to work with Voyager, who was revealed to be the teleporting daughter of the Grandmaster. Various heroes around the world are forced to come together again when an inky blackness overtakes all of the sky. Former Avengers like Hercules, Hawkeye, Spectrum, Vision and Scarlet Witch worked alongside a surprised Rocket Raccoon and a bitter Hulk.
What most of the team doesn't know is that Vision is in the process of dying, which he's quietly embraced. Another spanner in the works is the return of the Hulk. The endless night fully unleashes the Hulk from Banner's influence. Resurrected in No Surrender, Hulk has become a more cruel and fearsome figure. As seen in The Immortal Hulk, he only comes out at night, meaning the eternal darkness works out perfectly for him. Hulk spends most of the miniseries as a potential ally and future enemy to the rest of the Avengers. He takes a specific interest in confronting Hawkeye, who was responsible for Hulk's temporary death in Civil War II.
Fight Across The Stars
Arriving in Olympus, Hercules is shocked to see his home decimated and his fellow members of the Greek Pantheon dead. It's revealed the long-contained Nyx, Goddess of the Night, had escaped the prison Zeus had constructed around her thanks to the reality shaking events of No Surrender. The Avengers were quickly overwhelmed by Nyx and her children, and forced onto the run. Voyager scattered the team around the universe, landing them around reality: Rocket, Hulk and Hawkeye ended up in Nightmare's realm while Hercules, Vision, Spectrum and a blinded Scarlet Witch arrived at Omnipotence City.
The larger group of Avengers were forced to deal with Nyx and her children. Dolos, Oizys, and Nyx sought the Shards of Night. Dolos and Oizys help their mother track down the Shards of Night. These three relics turn out to be the scattered pieces of her soul, and could restore Nyx to full power if she reclaims them. Voyager even tries sending Scarlet Witch and the shards to the Hyborian Age, the ancient fantasy world where Conan the Barbarian resides. He fights along Wanda and protects her, with a bond growing between the two. However, Nyx seemingly killed Herclues and Vision, while Hypnos waged war against Nightmare to add his domain to Nyx's power. Nightmare makes a bargain with the Hulk, who helps defend the kingdom of sleep alongside the other two heroes. Hulk ends up murdering Hypnos and taking the first shard.
Avengers Assemble
Eventually learning where Wanda was, Nyx brought Wanda and Conan back to the modern age. She claims the shard Wanda had taken but realizes that when she believed she'd killed Hercules and Vision, Spectrum had tricked her into killing Dolos. Oizys was confronted by another band of Avengers and eventually defeated, while Hulk confronted Nyx directly. Having absorbed the power of one of the shards himself, Hulk tries to bring her down, but Nyx unleashes the sun long enough to revert Hulk to Bruce Banner, costing him the energy Hulk had absorbed from one of the shards. Regaining all three pieces of her power, she attempted to rewrite reality. Only Vision was able to follow her outside of reality.
Vision and Nyx converse outside of reality, with Vision slowly learning how to unleash stories within the white space. He creates an army of his friends and fellow heroes, turning the building they arrived into a literal House of Ideas. The assembled heroes all help Vision defeat Nyx and save reality. As a reward, Vision is repaired and is given the chance to survive. The Avengers all leave on better terms, with many of them re-inspired in their heroic efforts. For the first time in a while, the event ended with the Avengers united, even if they weren't all on one team anymore. This series also set up Conan the Barbarian to join the Savage Avengers and become a hero in the modern era in his own right.
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