The world was silent in the aftermath of the lightning strike.
It was the silence of absence, of sound murdered brutally by forces beyond mortal understanding. I let out a steaming breath, then took a step, then a second, a third, a fourth. I walked through the aftermath of my actions.
Steam rose from the ground beneath my feet, or more accurately, what was left of the ground. The earth had been ravaged clean, stone turned to glass, grass to ash, soil to something that crunched like charcoal under my boots. The crater I walked through was deeper than I could calculate and stretched out in all directions, a perfect circle of devastation that carved through hill and valley and the earth. Five kilometers, I estimated with a glance. Maybe more.
The lightning had done its work.
Steam curled upward from fissures in the ground, places where the heat had been so intense it had cracked through to the earth's mantle below. Magma glowed dull orange in those, and each step I took revealed more of the earth's blood leaking up through broken skin.
"Did you feel that, Tiamat?" I muttered to myself, and I could sense something beneath my feet stirring in response to those words. An awareness that fluttered and disappeared just as quickly. The storm still raged overhead, my storm. Clouds boiled, shifting from black to a dark blue. It was angry and churned lightning with every second that passed.
My gaze wandered through the ruin of the crater I found myself in and found the most curious scene of all. Somehow, impossibly, Ikaris still stood.
Barely.
"A right stubborn bastard, aren't you?"
The Eternal swayed mid-air like a tree in its final moments before the fall. Half his torso had been blown open, and his right arm was simply gone. The space where the appendage used to be was a smoking and ruined stump. The wind shifted, clearing the stump and torso for long enough to reveal an interior that was nothing human. His exposed chest cavity revealed golden wires lined with red muscles and crystalline structures that pulsed with gold Celestial energy.
That explained the durability, explained the way he was able to fight back against Captain Marvel for three years without exhaustion. I knew Eternals were not human; they were simply machines given flesh, or flesh given purpose by a machine. It didn't matter which. Yet seeing it for myself...
Still, despite his durability, there was another reason he remained somewhat whole.
His head lifted as I approached, and I saw his face. The left side was untouched, handsome, his hair only slightly ruffled. The right side was a ruin of char and exposed crystalline bone, and his eyes, both eyes, were missing, and in their places were charred pits where the orbs used to be.
At the last minute, Ikaris had looked upward. He had changed the focus on his beam, firing it skyward in a desperate last strike at the lightning. It had saved him. The collision had reduced the bolt's power enough that it hadn't outright vaporized him. Instead, it had merely destroyed him.
"Didn't know Arishem made you folks this tough," I said. My voice came out rough, scraped raw by ozone. "It's a shame. It makes things more painful... for you."
Ikaris tried to speak. His jaw worked, but only a wet gurgle came out. Blood, red speckled with gold.
I closed the remaining distance between us in three strides and buried my fist into his side.
The blow caught him in the ribs, what was left of them, and I felt something break that was already broken. He finally folded, dropping to one knee, and I followed him down with a second strike to the back of his head, burying his face into the ground, his limbs splayed out like a broken doll.
I stood over him and felt something unfamiliar in my guts.
Recognition.
The same recognition that made me decide to kill him. Ikaris was me. The me of a few months ago, and the more I had heard him speak, the more I had reasoned his circumstances, the more it had disgusted me, and staring at him now, it couldn't have been even clearer why.
"I hate you." I started, then clamped shut once more as my jaw moved, searching for the right words, but one thing I never was was an orator. "That is because I understand you." I looked down at Ikaris as he forced his head out of the ground and to the side. "You wanted to fulfill your purpose," I continued. "A purpose given to you by another. Your creator gave you a mission, and you would've burned the world to see it done. Genocide. Slaughter. It did not matter. You ration it all in the name of duty."
I crouched down beside him, close enough that I imagined if he had eyes, they would've rolled to face me.
"I understand that. Better than you know."
Ikaris's mouth moved. No words left his ruined throat, but I got the gist of it.
"How?" he mouthed.
I let out another breath that steamed in the cooling air.
"I was given a purpose, too. Once upon a time, by my father... my creator." I dug my hand through what was left of his fine locks of hair. "Odin, Allfather, king of Asgard. From the moment I was born, my life was ascribed a purpose, a duty. I was to be his tool, his soldier, with no hope of anything different, no true free will to dream for better, no chance to take another route or break the cast forged... ring any bells?"
Ikaris shook his head in what could have been a yes or no, but I didn't care enough to interpret, so I simply let his head drop once more as I moved to sit down on his back. He served as a comfortable enough cushion for me to continue my tale.
"Your Arishem and my Odin, they're not so different. Gods, Celestials, fathers who shaped their children into weapons. Who gave them purpose and called it love. Who demanded blinding obedience." I looked up to the stormy clouds, my red hair matted to my skull. "And we believed them. Because what else could we do?"
The rain was falling harder now, washing away the ash and red and gold blood.
"I wanted to make Odin proud. I wanted to fulfill my duty, my role in his great plans." I continued, and there was something in my voice now, something raw. "I would've done anything. Conquered anything. Killed anyone. If he'd pointed at Midgard and told me to ravage it clean, I would've summoned the storm for forty days and nights and drowned the whole of the realm. Because that was my purpose. There was no room to be anything else."
I took in a fresh breath.
"You wanted to make Arishem proud. You would've killed millions. Burned the strange new continents. Drowned the world in blood, all to see that Celestial born. Because that was your purpose. That was what you were for. Duty and purpose hardcoded into your being, just as it was beaten and manipulated into mine."
Ikaris's single working hand trembled, his fist grabbing a handful of the charcoal-like ground.
"So aye," I said softly. "I understand you, Ikaris. I understand you better than anyone in your family ever could."
I raised my hand and stared at my open palm. It was scarred, pitted, and filled with calluses. A lifetime of swinging a weapon. Lightning came to life, arcing between my fingers without conscious thought.
"I didn't realize it at first," I muttered after that brief pause, and my voice was barely audible over the wind. "All I know is that from the moment you opened your mouth and spoke of culling them like cattle, from the moment I saw that familiar look in your eyes, I wanted you dead."
My hand trembled, then stilled.
"Yet despite that, I unconsciously held back." I could almost feel the disbelief on the broken form of the Eternal, and looking down at him, I let out a chuckle that rumbled like the storm above us. "Aye, I can see how hard that is to believe, but you still draw breath, Ikaris. If I truly wanted you dead, lad, it would've taken a single word." I looked up at the storm.
"Mjolnir."
The hammer didn't come, yet semi-sentient as it was, I felt it twitch where it remained, at the foot of my bed. A stray lightning crossed the sky, as a thunderous boom accompanied my usage of the name.
"If I'd summoned my hammer, you'd be paste." I continued. "This would not have been drawn out. You'd be nothing but a strangely colored stain on the ground." I lowered my hand slowly. "But I didn't call it. Why?"
Ikaris's eye was on me, wide and unblinking.
"Because I didn't want to kill you," I said, and the words felt like pulling arrows from a wound. "Deep down, beneath the anger, beneath the righteousness, I didn't want to be the thing that ended you. I wanted to do what Kratos did for me."
My throat tightened.
"What Ajak did for me."
I let out a sigh as I closed my eyes until the wind sent the smell of burnt vegetation into my nose. I grunted as I moved to stand, and Ikaris was grateful for the disappearance of my weight on his back, judging by the soft grunt.
"I wanted to give you the chance they gave me. To choose. To be more than programming and duty." I spread my arms, gesturing toward the devastation around us. "But I couldn't do it with words. You're too far gone for that. Too committed. So I had to break you first."
I turned back to him.
"You're broken now," I said simply. "Body and belief both. Your purpose is ash. Your mission is done, not because you completed it, but because you simply can't complete it anymore. Arishem's orders mean nothing when you can barely stand. Anytime the vague thought comes to your mind, you will remember today. You will remember me, and that will be enough."
I crouched down one more time to look him in his burnt-out sockets.
"So now you get to choose, Ikaris. For the first time in seven thousand years, you get to decide what you are. Not as Arishem's soldier. Not as the Prime Eternal's favored son. You get to decide who and what you want to be as Ikaris."
His mouth moved, and this time sound escaped them, confusion and fear lacing every single broken word that left his lips.
"What... do I...?"
"That's up to you." I stood, turning away from him. "But whatever it is, know that you only get one chance. If we are forced to have this conversation again, it will be with Mjolnir in hand."
I began to walk away, only sparing a glance for the strange Faraday mesh cage, along with a massive lightning rod that stretched into the sky. Inside it were the unconscious duo of Sprite, Makkari, and Kingo. The only person who stood, and that was barely, was Sersi. She must've created the cage in the last second. It spoke of her strength and skill. I gave her a nod in response.
Then I walked away, leaving Ikaris broken but breathing in the center of devastation.
The rain was finally letting up as I slowly loosened my grip on it, pulling back the fury and stowing the rage that had brought it forth.
I made it twenty paces to the edge of the crater before I saw her.
Ajak stood at the top of the crater's edge, her clothes soaked, her face, her fear, tears, and worries barely held together by her sense of maturity and strength.
I stopped and looked upward at her. Then she walked, her steps slow as she descended into the crater, until she was right in front of me. Then she embraced me, holding on to me tightly as her body shook lightly. When she pushed herself back, her eyes were red, even if her features didn't seem to have changed much. Any wetness on my chest was ascribed to the rain that had been falling seconds ago.
"Thank you," she whispered, then she walked past me toward her favored son.
I stood rigid and uncertain for a long second before I continued the long trek up. If she got to him fast enough, Ikaris should survive. The whole plot of the Eternals had been sent off the rails, but what did that matter? Canon could get railroaded by Jormugandr with a rusty cock for all i cared at this point.
I crested the crater just in time for the clouds above to finally clear and for my blue gaze to spot the black dot flying down from them.
I squinted up in time for the bird to drift close enough for recognition. It was a black raven dotted with red feathers, and as it dropped on the single tree that had somehow survived the storm and the lightning, its all-too-intelligent black eyes stared at me. Its head cocked to the side before it cawed out.
"Allfather!"
Despite it all, I smiled at the black raven.
"Why, hello to you too, Huginn."