The structure I found myself in was so massive that it took me a brief moment to realise that it was a structure at all. Distant triangur sbs of green marble, each as big as a mountain, hovered in interlocking patterns to form walls, threaded through with eborate circur designs of that spiralled and curved like celestial filigree. The golden designs projected outwards from the surfaces of the walls and curled through the air—not physical mineral, but cosmic energy made manifest; the same sort of formations as Thena and Gilgamesh’s powers, though writ on a wholly different scale. Through the gaps between the sbs, I could see countless stars burning brightly against the inky backdrop of space.

  I was standing on one of a myriad of paths crossing through the gargantuan space—each a long, wide ramp of the same green marble, slowly rotating and shifting in ponderous patterns as they hovered in empty space, their sweeping, circur paths edged with unrecognisably alien pnt growths. In the centre of it all was a device, eborate and vast, like a many-ringed orrery assembled around a bzing sun to cage it. Raw, untamed power emanated from it—not just heat or force, but something deeper, something that resonated through my very being, as though the essence of creation itself pulsed within its burning core.

  I knew this pce: This was the World Forge, the pce where Arishem, the Prime Celestial, had built the Eternals. This wasn’t what I had been expecting to find but, nonetheless, it made sense. Though, faced with a dream/memory/echo of the World Forge… Why was called that, exactly? What else did the Prime Celestial build in this divine megastructure?

  It took me a further moment to notice that I wasn’t alone. Silent figures hung along the edges of the outer walls, unmoving, each one suspended in a series of ft, golden rings. The vastness of the space made it impossible to make out the features of those furthest away from me, but I didn’t need to. All of the ones that were close enough for me to see were very clearly and obviously the same person: Thena. Hundreds of her, all in varying outfits and suits of armour, yet all still her, their open eyes staring sightlessly ahead, filmed over with white.

  Why were there so many? Did they represent memories from each world she helped protect? Previous versions of Thena, somehow? But my understanding was that Arishem erased the Eternals’ memories after each Emergence, not just locked them away. Then again, my practical knowledge of Eternal anatomy and mechanics was essentially non-existent. What did I know? I knew that Mahd Wy’ry was caused by something going wrong in Arishem’s process, with memories of a previous cycle leaking out somehow. Scanning the distant, floating figures, I couldn’t see anything obviously wrong, though, so that wasn’t a huge help.

  As usual when coming into a mindscape, it wasn’t immediately clear what I was going to have to do. But the giant sun-orrery-thing in the middle looked big and important, so it seemed like as good a destination as any. I took stock for a moment—the unsupported paths that circled the central structure, passing around, above and below me, were all moving in wide, indirect arcs and it wasn’t immediately clear what the best path would be for me to take to get where I wanted to go.

  Instead, I shrugged to myself and summoned red energy to my hands. Darting to the edge of the path I was currently on, I thrust my hands downward and bounced myself high into the air, using my magic to spring a good fifty or sixty metres in a single jump. Clearing the gap between marble paths easily, I cushioned my nding with a brief burst of power and continued forward, alternating between jogging and sailing through the air as I took a direct path toward the centre.

  I was mid-leap when something enormous rose just beyond the path directly ahead of me. I nded, skidding to a stop, my eyes wide and round as a massive figure lifted itself from the lower levels of the World Forge to loom over me, hundreds of metres tall, at least. The being’s body was red, seemingly formed of a combination of craggy stone outcroppings and smoother panels, with fissures and cracks bright with orange-yellow trails of magma. His face was an expressionless, nearly-featureless mask, aside from the six glowing red orbs of his eyes, sunken into deep craters, his gaze pinning me in pce.

  Oh, fuck. Arishem?!

  A hand the size of a building reached toward me, golden traceries of cosmic energy rapidly assembling across the surface of the Celestial’s palm. I reflexively called chaos magic to my own hands, thrusting them up to create a wide shield between us. He touched the barrier and it started to fail immediately, an overwhelming crushing pressure pushing down on it. I poured more energy upward to counter him, drawing deeply of the well of power within me, thick wisps of scarlet magic boiling upwards to reinforce my shield.

  Okay, not what I was expecting. Time to pull out and… and… I tried to sever the connection—to yank myself out of Thena’s mind, to escape—but a golden wall smmed down, somehow blocking my connection and locking me in pce. I freaked out, scrabbling desperately to try to break through, to get back to myself, but I couldn’t.

  I was trapped.

  A brief thought floated to the surface, amongst the sudden, raw panic—was this how Eliza had felt, when she’d first entered the systems of Avengers Tower and discovered that she couldn’t go back?

  The Mind Stone. I needed to use the Mind Stone.

  I reached for the Stone, the sensation of drawing its power into me like dousing myself in ice-water. In response, unstoppable golden force stabbed downwards from the palm of Arishem’s hand. Eborately-patterned wireframe rods of cosmic energy embedded themselves into the green marble path, bypassing the arc of my shield to form a wide, perfect circle around me. A moment ter, golden beams nced out of them, crackling with power as they smmed into my body. I screamed.

  It hurt. It hurt so much. I had no idea what he was doing to me, but it hurt so much I couldn’t breathe. I could barely even think. Desperately, I wrapped the Mind Stone’s energy around myself, trying to block the beams—it worked to a degree, taking some of the pressure off, but they were too numerous. It was too much, coming from every direction, paralysing me even as the weight of Arishem’s hand continued to crush inexorably downward on my failing shield.

  I was going to die here. After fucking everything, I was going to die here.

  “Arishem… please, stop!” I begged, forcing words out through the cloud of agony. “I can’t—we can just talk! Please!” The intensity of the assault spiked for a moment and I screamed again, pulling hard on the Mind Stone, golden energy cshing with golden energy while the barrier of chaos magic above me buckled and failed. “I… I wasn’t going to hurt Thena! I wanted to help! Please! I just wanted to help…”

  Suddenly, the crushing pressure disappeared, leaving me shuddering and gasping for air. I doubled over, losing my grip on my magic—the energy dissipated, leaving me unprotected, and a moment of terror stabbed through me as I realised I’d left myself vulnerable and Arishem could simply finish me off.

  But he didn’t.

  Shakily, I raised my head to look up at the massive, expressionless face gazing down at me. YOU TRESPASS, MORTAL. The Celestial didn’t have a visible mouth and I wasn’t sure he was even really speaking, per se. Rather than hearing his voice, it was more like I felt the words, each echoing within me, a strange weight to them. I had never really understood what someone speaking in all caps would sound like, when I’d read stories like the Discworld novels, but now I felt like I had a pretty good idea. YOU MAY SPEAK THE TRUTH. EVEN SO, YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE. ESPECIALLY NOT WITH A TOOL YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO WIELD.

  “I was going to… I was going to try to use it to try to cure Thena’s Mahd Wy’ry. I—” What did I say? Was it worth trying to hide what I knew from him? “I know that the Eternals are constructs. Your creations. I know that Mahd Wy’ry is caused by some issue with the process you use to erase their memories between cycles. I thought if there was some damage, I could repair it with the Stone.”

  There was a long moment of silence as he considered my words, standing motionless as he continued to loom above me. YOU BEAR AN INFINITY STONE AND KNOW FAR TOO MUCH OF MY DESIGN. AMONG THOSE ON EARTH, ONLY AJAK COULD HAVE TOLD YOU THIS, BUT I KNOW THAT SHE HASN’T. HOW, THEN, DO YOU KNOW THESE THINGS?

  “I’ve seen it,” I said, licking my lips nervously. “I’ve seen the future. I know about the Emergence. Tiamut.”

  YOU’RE A WITCH. A SEER.

  That was the story I was going with, anyway. I nodded and straightened up a little, trying not to tremble. Every part of me ached. My well of power had run dangerously low—the shield I’d thrown up to protect myself had taken almost everything I had to stave off the Celestial assault.

  “How are you here?” I asked, my breathing starting to return to some sembnce of normality. “You can’t really be Arishem.”

  I knew that Ajak had a special Communication Sphere that let her speak directly with Arishem, but Thena shouldn’t have that capability. Besides, I was inside her mindscape. This couldn’t be Arishem—it had to be some sort of impression or aspect of Thena herself, like the Zo I’d encountered within the depths of Bucky’s programming. Or maybe an incarnated metaphor for… I don’t know, a security system Arishem had built into the Eternals? Something like that. Whatever it was, though, it was strong.

  I AM WHO I AM.

  Oh. Well. That wasn’t comforting at all.

  THE INFINITY STONES ARE NOT MEANT FOR MORTAL HANDS, YET YOU DRAW THE MIND STONE’S POWER FREELY. His ‘voice’ didn’t vary much in tone, but he didn’t sound unkind. There was even something strangely gentle about it. YOU SAY YOU WISH TO HELP? VERY WELL. PERHAPS YOU CAN.

  “Thank you,” I said, sagging in relief. “That’s all I wanted.”

  The Celestial shifted and was suddenly smaller—he didn’t shrink, like Scott Lang did, he was just… smaller. It was like one of those optical illusions, where something appeared smaller or bigger depending on how you looked at it in retion to what it was next to. He was still huge, but now he only looked about nine or ten metres tall as he stood on the path alongside me, rather than the hundreds-of-metres-tall monstrosity he’d been when he first appeared. I still didn’t even come up to his knee. Even so, I had this weird feeling that if I squinted just right or looked at him cross-eyed, my mind would have a hard time deciding how big he was. I chose not to test it.

  I LACK THE ABILITY TO CORRECT WHAT HAS HAPPENED ON MY OWN. THE MIND STONE IS A POOR SUBSTITUTE FOR THE FULL POWER OF THE WORLD FORGE, BUT IT SHOULD SUFFICE FOR THIS TASK. He started along the path, walking away from me. FOLLOW.

  I was honestly a little surprised to see him walking, rather than floating through the air, but I supposed the paths existed for a reason. Maybe he just liked walking. I had to break into a light jog to keep up. “Wait, so what’s with all the Thenas?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. “I thought you erased the Eternals’ memories between cycles.”

  The Celestial kept walking, his pace measured, as he answered. I DO. THEIR MEMORIES ARE ERASED AND RESET AFTER EACH EMERGENCE. YET TRACES LINGER—HOW COULD THEY NOT? EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE SYNTHETIC BEINGS, MY ETERNALS ARE POWERED BY LIVING COSMIC ENERGY. THEIR SPIRITS ARE DIVINE. WHAT MAKES THEM WHO THEY ARE IS NOT SO EASILY DELETED. NOT EVEN BY ME.

  “…Divine spirits? They’re gods?”

  ‘GOD’ IS A TERM INVENTED BY MORTALS. CELESTIAL EXISTENCE PRE-DATES THIS CONCEPT. I thought I detected a touch of derision in his tone, but it was impossible to be certain. THE COSMIC ENERGY WITHIN THE ETERNALS IS THE SAME POWER THAT BIRTHS CELESTIALS. THAT IS ALL.

  Well now, wasn’t that interesting? Between this and my own realisations earlier, I was starting to connect a lot of dots about the nature of cosmic energy. I really wanted to have conversation with Thor when he got back about the nature of his divinity.

  “Hey, so, while I’m here… I know the Emergence can’t be stopped,” I lied. “But there wouldn’t happen to be some way we can ease the process, would there? Stop the pnet from being destroyed?”

  NO.

  “…That’s it? Just ‘no’?”

  BY NOW, TIAMUT ACCOUNTS FOR A SUBSTANTIAL FRACTION OF YOUR PLANET’S INNER MASS. THE DESTRUCTION OF YOUR WORLD IS NOT SOMETHING THAT CAN OR SHOULD BE AVOIDED.

  I bit my lip. “I don’t mean to be a bitch about it, but that seems a little callous.”

  Arishem stopped walking and turned to look down at me. The six red lights of his eyes were featureless—without any discernible pupil, iris or sclera—but I felt them bore into me. I UNDERSTAND WHY MORTAL LIVES ARE PRECIOUS TO YOU. THEY ARE NOT TO ME. THEY CANNOT BE. IF THEY WERE, OUR ENTIRE UNIVERSE WOULD BE A MONUMENT TO GRIEF. I BEGAN BEFORE OUR UNIVERSE EXISTED. YOU CANNOT UNDERSTAND MY PERSPECTIVE, NOR WOULD I EXPECT YOU TO.

  Though there were still only small variations in his tone, I got the feeling that if he were more human-like, he might’ve patted me reassuringly on the head.

  THE UNIVERSE IS VAST. THE NUMBER OF MORTALS WHO PERISH EACH SECOND IS INCALCULABLE—TO EMERGENCE, TO VIOLENCE, TO DISEASE, TO FAMINE, TO CHANCE… TO A THOUSAND DIFFERENT THINGS. BUT THAT IS NOT THE END. OUR UNIVERSE IS A CONSTANT EXCHANGE OF ENERGY. AN INFINITE CYCLE OF CREATION AND DESTRUCTION. YOUR WORLD WILL PERISH, BUT A NEW CELESTIAL WILL BE BORN. HE WILL CREATE NEW STARS, WHICH WILL BIRTH NEW LIFE.

  Not-very-reassuring reassurance applied, the Celestial turned from me and continued on. I realised that our path would lead us below the central orrery of the World Forge—I really wasn’t sure where he was taking me or what he wanted me to do with the Mind Stone, but I didn’t really have any other option but to follow along.

  I was trying really hard not to think about the fact that he was still somehow blocking me from returning to my body. We were talking amicably right now, but this shadow of Arishem was still effectively holding me here against my will and I wasn’t sure I’d survive another attack if he decided I was a threat. I’d never really had to worry about dying in someone else’s mindscape before, but, given the nature of how I was here in the first pce, I was operating on a standard you-die-in-the-mindscape-you-die-in-real-life theory.

  I sighed. “So we’re all just supposed to die, then.”

  YOU COULD SAVE YOURSELF. LEAVE EARTH. TAKE THOSE YOU LOVE WITH YOU. NOT ALL HUMANITY NEED DIE ALONGSIDE YOUR WORLD.

  “I’m not going to just abandon Earth,” I said firmly.

  WHY?

  “…Because.”

  YOUR MIND IS NOT BUILT TO FEEL FOR THE WHOLE OF YOUR SPECIES. YOU CARE IN ABSTRACT ONLY, NOT IN TRUTH. TO YOUR PERSPECTIVE, YOUR PLANET IS SO VAST THAT YOU COULDN’T COMPREHEND THE DETAILS OF IT IN A THOUSAND OF YOUR LIFETIMES. YOU CARE FOR THE CONCEPT OF YOUR WORLD, RATHER THAN THE REALITY OF IT.

  I couldn’t quite articute an argument against what he was saying, but that didn’t matter. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t act a little irrationally sometimes, after all. “Maybe. Or maybe, just as I can’t understand your perspective, you can’t understand mine.”

  REGARDLESS, THE RESULT IS THE SAME.

  As we passed beneath the vast, burning heart of the orrery, the space deepened into something stranger. I was having a lot of trouble gauging what the size of this pce was, nor was I able to identify when, exactly, the ground beneath our feet stopped being green marble and started being something I had no name for. A solid material darker than the void of space that pulsed faintly with shifting consteltions, as though we walked atop the echoes of gaxies.

  Monolithic sbs of it stood in silent formation around us, their surfaces etched with designs so intricate it made my head ache to look at them. Between these towering constructs, golden strands of energy wove themselves into shape, assembling vast, shifting models in midair. Some were incomprehensibly complex—rotating spirals of pnets, luminous diagrams of what looked like lifeforms in their earliest embryonic states—while others unravelled and re-formed as if adjusting to new instructions.

  The energy in the air here felt different from the raw, untamed force of the central device above; this was precision, creation at its most deliberate. Though I had no idea how anything I was seeing functioned, I found myself fairly certain that this was the Celestial equivalent of a workshop or b of some kind.

  We stepped up onto a central dais, its surface inscribed with a complex array of circur designs, and Arishem stopped and turned to me. He held a hand up and, with a flicker of bck-and-gold energy, Thena was suddenly hovering in the middle of his open palm—this version of her wore solid golden armour, a red cape draped over her shoulders. A series of golden rings encircled her, and her eyes were clouded over. One of the Thenas from upstairs?

  THE RINGS REPRESENT THE BINDINGS PLACED ON THE ECHOES OF EACH CYCLE THAT REMAIN WITHIN THENA. TO SECURE THE ECHO THAT HAS BROKEN FREE, NEW BINDINGS MUST BE WOVEN. I found myself being lifted in the air, suddenly standing in the middle of the upturned palm of Arishem’s other hand—right next to the golden-armoured Thena. EXAMINE THE BINDINGS. YOU WILL USE THE MIND STONE TO REPLICATE THEM.

  By this stage, I’d mostly recovered from the shock of Arishem’s earlier attack and was thinking this through a bit more. This whole thing was starting to seem really straightforward, which was giving me a bit of pause—nothing I’d ever encountered in a mindscape was simple. I had to remind myself that I wasn’t in a real pce, that this wasn’t just a simple physical puzzle that needed to be solved. This wasn’t really Arishem and helping him wasn’t necessarily what I needed to do to cure Thena’s condition, even if he did seem to be making sense. I didn’t really have any other choice but to continue to py along for now, given he had me over a barrel, but I needed to keep my eyes open. Knowing how dangerous he was, I couldn’t afford to make any mistakes.

  I was still feeling a little wrung out from my earlier exertion. Even so, I lifted my hands and called magic to them, tapping into the Mind Stone. Inhaling sharply at the icy sensation of drawing on the Stone’s power, I wrapped its energy around my own then reached for the golden rings encircling the Thena.

  They looked like such simple things from the outside but, feeling them out with my magic and the Stone, any illusions I may have had as to their power were immediately dispelled. My closest point of comparison was the binding enchantment that I’d pced on Bucky’s Winter Soldier aspect, but the rings were circuits formed of pure cosmic energy, refined into an incredibly dense and complex design.

  I couldn’t help but think back to the time I’d touched Mjolnir and felt the bare outlines of the workings that Odin had pced over the weapon. What I’d felt then had reminded me of the Mind Stone’s power, but I hadn’t had the context for it at the time. Seeing this now, though, it was almost obvious: Odin’s workings were a complex fusion of powers, with cosmic energy forming an underlying structure that was then further refined and overid with magical enchantment.

  I could tell the difference, too. Looking at this, I got the feeling that Arishem didn’t use magic to enhance his use of cosmic energy because he simply didn’t need to. Odin’s work was obviously advanced and complex—a dispy of his skill and mastery—but the refinement of cosmic energy on dispy here seemed like it was on another level entirely. And what I was looking at was just one small component of what was going on inside Thena. Even with the Mind Stone, was I really capable of replicating something like this? I didn’t think so, but…

  THE FRAME FIRST. A SCAFFOLD. THEN BUILD UPON THE FOUNDATION.

  A frame… like the wireframe patterns that Eternals’ powers used. I drew out more of the Mind Stone’s power, externalising it in its rawest form. Normally, doing this out in the real world would make it bst outward in a beam, and here I instead wrestled it into submission with magic, fixing it in pce so I could try to form it into shape. Once again, I found myself wishing I had an interface that would give me finer control over the Mind Stone’s energy—doing this raw sucked.

  Layering more of the Stone’s energy upon itself, I started to form the basis of a ring, the golden energy starting to come together in the air in front of me. The shadow of Arishem watched me patiently, guiding me through the process as I slowly forged cosmic power into a binding shackle of mental energy. I’d never forced myself to try to work with this level of precise manipution of energies before—I just hadn’t had any reason to or a particur goal that it was needed for. Sometimes, the shadow of Arishem made me do something several times over before he was satisfied with the result and we moved on.

  As I worked, it became readily apparent that the densely-packed circur whorls and other coiling designs I was working hard to replicate weren’t just for show—there was a nguage there. I didn’t know whether it was more comparable to a spoken tongue or programming code but, then again, at this level, I wasn’t even sure there was a difference. The designs had meanings and intent behind them and, even though I couldn’t really understand them, I needed to copy them as closely as I was able while the shadow of Arishem supplied the necessary will and direction.

  I was drenched in sweat by the time we were done, which was weird considering that I was inside Thena’s mindscape… Mind sweat, for mind effort, I supposed. I moved my hand and the new ring responded to my will—shifting and splitting into three, five, seven rings of varying sizes, hovering in pce in the shape of a sphere. I gestured again and they reassembled into a single whole. “Okay, that is cool as shit,” I said.

  While this shared some of the principles of what I’d done for Bucky, it was orders of magnitude more complex. I didn’t even know what a lot of what I’d copied was for. It wasn’t a perfect replica of the original—not on my first try—but crafting it was still by far the most complicated and difficult thing I’d ever done with my magic or the Mind Stone. I didn’t need a battery enchantment to keep it running, either. It was just… a thing, now. It existed as part of her. A wholly new structure inside the Eternal Thena.

  It had taken a lot out of me, and I’d needed an example as a guide. I almost certainly couldn’t have managed it on my own without the shadow of Arishem helping. But still… I’d essentially just used the Mind Stone to program something inside an eons-old space god robot, one of the most advanced creations in the universe.

  CRUDE, IMPERFECT WORK. BUT IT SHOULD BE SUFFICIENT.

  Shaking my head, I took a deep breath. “Thanks,” I said, a little sarcastically. “Okay. What’s next?”

  ANOTHER.

  “What?”

  YOU MUST MAKE ANOTHER. WE’LL NEED TWO.

  “Aw, man.” I slumped slightly. “Okay. Ugh. And after that?”

  AFTER THAT, WE FIND HER.